Once, I was one of a whole bunch of other fellas called Star Pilots. We?d roam the home galaxy looking for stuff. Good stuff to bring back to Earth, only I never did see much of that. Bad stuff we'd mark on our space charts as ?BAD? or ?UNIDENTIFIED,? and I seen a lot of that. But mostly, we'd blow up meteorites and other such floaters so as our LDs could swallow the crumbs.

LD was the name for the type of ship we Star Pilots flew, and it stood for ?Long Duration? since they had no need to return to base port. We all called them LaDys. Those gals ate cosmic crumbs for fuel the same way the ancient whales on scooped up plankton.

Star Pilots would fly in groups or pairs, jawing to each other over our LaDys' long-range transmitters. Since there weren't no night nor day in space, our headsets were plum full of nonstop horseplay. Oh, we stuck to regulation chatter for near 'bouts two years ?til it got too dang dull. But we did our jobs and that was what mattered.

Nowadays, I don't hear much besides static and them alien click-clacks. All the horseplay went dead precisely 8 months, 17 days, 3 hours, and 46 minutes ago when I got sucked into this ?UNIDENTIFIED? region of space. HQ warned me many a time not to wander off alone, but did I listen? I wish like heck I had someone else to jaw with. I'd even talk ?reg? for a chance to hear another human voice.

I don't know how I happened into this strange neighborhood to begin with, so I sure as heck can't figure a way back. It?s a puzzler. But the stars here are as pretty as Christmas lights the way they twinkling all in different colors. And there?s this thick, orange, acid cloud that corrodes metal. You can be sure that me and LaDy steer clear of that! And another thing, the planets here make Jupiter seem like a speck of dust. I mean THEY ARE BIG. BIGGER THAN BIG. The HUGEST I?ve ever seen. Found life on most of them, I did, but I won't get into that just yet.

A while ago, I found software in LaDy's Recreational Library on poetry, so I took up writing to help pass the time. I even got the Automated Guide of Navigational and Universal Systems to make poems. I nicknamed her AGNUS-G. The ?G? stands for her revision letter. She already knew how to arrange things numerically, so teaching her poetic meter weren't tough. And she was programmed to handle verbal communications, so she already knew her words real good.

It was AGNUS-G?s idea that I write my memoirs in case I ever died, and so I did that. Then we decided to send all we wrote into space in case any folks might be listening. Sure hope you get our transmissions and come callin? on us before I'm a goner. God bless you anyways if you don't.

Much obliged,

Shaula Randolf, Star Pilot: 3rd Class & AGNUS-G

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