The Privateer/The Typewriter

[illegible] Ah, there we go. It just needed a quick warmup.

The old thing still works. Chief Engineer Ingram found the suitcase last week, among the possessions of a colonist from Earth who didn't survive the worm-cloud jump past Mars. I will never understand why Earth-born colonists always try to bring every last worldly possession - honestly, the money they'd earn from selling them beforehand would help the lot of them live more comfortably - but there's certainly no reason to say no to a perfectly working typewriter.

I mean, I respect the dead. I conducted the eulogy at poor Ms. Grassi's funeral. But when we're so far from market, and scrapping through the unused rooms of the SLCN Orenomah just to see if there's anything remotely useful, I can't help but have some desire to keep some of the odder mementos. 2nd Lt. Gregorovich has started an impromptu museum in an empty rec room, and stocked it with the stranger items we've found in abandoned suitcases. Wooden nickels, sketchbooks, the odd piece of last-century electronics. In one bag, he found what he said was called a "smart phone" - functionally, not all that different from the PDAs all our officers carry, but just old enough that it doesn't work without being hooked into the ship's power grid with a wire, and of course, not really designed for interstellar communication, so it complains about being unable to connect to its network. Mr. Ingram claims he can refit the ship's intranet to interface with this smart phone, but I've told him not to bother. At best, it still won't reach the rest of the galaxy At worst, it could pose a serious security risk.

In the meantime, I've once again contacted SLC command to try and requisition some new building materials, so that my crews can see about repairing some of the unusable rooms on the lower decks of the Orenomah. I seriously doubt that they'll respond, but I feel it's my duty to at least try to make it look like I'm still doing my job out here. God knows I can't do much of anything else on board this scrap heap. Ingram thinks I'm a fool for staying. I think he's a fool for suggesting that I leave.

Lt.Col. Virgil Heidegger