Ship’s Notes: Landing on Arcadia

Despite the engineers’ misgivings, landing went quite smoothly.  It is nice to have a pilot to do these things for you, and he executed the landing perfectly.  I suffered some damage to my landing gear from the lack of a proper cradle, but not any worse than last time.  Radiation levels around my landing zone were, while perhaps not what the doctor would recommend, perfectly fine for anyone who didn’t stick around too long.

And now I am left behind, save but for the pilot.  It is an unfortunate limitation that I don’t get to walk around and explore the planet with my crew, but such is the existence of a ship.  Someday, once I get around to being open about my presence, I’m going to have to invite natives aboard me, get a chance to talk with them.

Meanwhile, Captain Zheng and the others are off having no end of fun.  Well, not presently, as I suppose they are still hiking towards the nearest farmlands, and then putting their translation software to the test. (The language here in Arcadia is no doubt related to the languages spoken in New Montreal at the time of launch, but languages do tend to change over half a millennium of generation ship travel.)

I am rather upset that quite so many people left.  Captain Zheng wanted to go, of course.  But then Susana also felt it was relevant to go, which, obviously, meant that Ms. Santiago was going to go as well, as useless as a ship’s engineer may be on a primitive agrarian planet.  And then the doctor went, citing that injury off of me was more likely than injury while sitting around inside of me.  And then first mate Landerson decided he should go as well, for reasons that, as of yet, remain unknown.

Which leaves me with the pilot, who really wanted to get out there, but got ordered to stay with me at least until the initial expedition returns.

I worry a lot, I’ve come to realize.  Right now I’m worrying about my crew, even though I have no reason to believe anything has gone wrong, or is going to go wrong.  It would be nice if the Captain could message me every now and then, but that would probably look pretty strange to the rest of the crew, if they were watching.  Yet another argument for me being open about my presence, I suppose.  And if I were open, I could get one of the engineers to modify the com-pieces to always transmit audio, so I could, at least, overheard what everyone is saying.

I suppose I’ve gotten used to being able to see and hear all of my crew, one hundred percent of the time (and accessing video-logs and journals, if I wasn’t paying direct attention).  Now, with my halls mostly empty and silent, it feels very wrong.  I could watch the pilot, but he’s busy reading some story, and watching someone read isn’t terribly interesting.

I’m pretty sure I could fly back to the Linked Systems all by myself, if needed, but these days I wonder whether I could do it without going insane from ennui.  What if my dependence on humans isn’t technical, but rather emotional?  How is that supposed to work for a ship?  I don’t think there is an answer to that.