Datapad Diaries

Disclaimer: I do not own Mass Effect.

It's official. Today is the worst day ever. It is absolutely impossible for anyone to have a day worse than the day that I currently had and I will not listen to lies attempting to challenge my belief. Because, yeah, I'm sure that dying would be pretty bad (I wouldn't know, I've never tried it) but it's still not this level of bad.

I don't even know where to begin. It's just all so…ugh, you know? Well, I know and I don't see why anybody else would be reading this. Maybe one day if I retire and sell my memoirs and make a ton of money or something. Of course, with the lengthy lives of certain species – Asari, I'm looking at you – that might not be a good idea but, well, I'll be retired so any fallout will not actually be my problem.

And, shockingly, it seems like one day my story might actually be worth something.

Or perhaps I'm about to crash and burn. That actually seems more likely, come to think of it.

But whatever. After the terrible day that I've just had, I'm entitled to be a little optimistic.

Actually, it was more like two days but I was unconscious for fifteen hours so I'm not sure that should really count. And that first part had to have lasted less than nine hours so even if it took place over two days it was still well within one twenty-four hour day so…yeah.

But anyway, it all started when I was told that I was going to be the XO on the Normandy and serving under Captain Anderson. I…didn't actually pay any attention to what our mission was but who can really blame me? Well, maybe a lot of people. Still, as long as I go where I am told to go and shoot who I am told to shoot, does knowing our objective really make that big of a difference? It's not like I was in charge or anything. When and if that ever happens, I'll try to pay a bit more attention.

And it's not like I make it a habit of zoning out either! Well…okay, maybe I kind of do. I dislike boring things. Who doesn't?

But this was different. All Alliance ships are named after old battles and the Normandy is one of my favorite battles…and not just because it's one of the few battles that I know. But hey, a ship called Bunker Hill would sound kind of stupid, wouldn't it?

And I guess I just get all caught up in the mythos. Those brave Allies (and it's almost like Alliance, too, which helps) storming the beaches of Normandy and liberating France before beginning to take back the rest of Europe from evil personified…Real life always has a lot more nuances than that but this was centuries ago and so I don't have to care about that.

Movies like Saving Private Ryan depicted it as a bit more of a bloodbath than in my romantic imaginings (formed back before I knew that Normandy was in France and wasn't a country of its own and that actually wasn't as far back as you'd think) but I guess that's to be expected. And yes, I do still watch movies from the 20th century. There is nothing strange about that.

I'm not the only one at any rate. I like movies from even further back than that and one thing that everyone can agree on is that it's far weirder to watch one of those old black and white movies even though, color or not, these movies are from centuries ago. Apparently just the lack of color make it hard to follow the plot or something. Whatever. I can have obscure interests!

But anyway, I was talking about the Normandy. I would have liked her just for the name alone but it's also the most top-of-the-line ship in existence (suck it, Destiny Ascension!) and commanded by one of my personal heroes, Captain David Anderson.

They say you should never meet your heroes and I can certainly see why but I met this particular hero of mine years ago and he's been a mentor of sorts for me over the years. You know the best way for a hero to live up to your expectations? If they seem to like you and see potential in you.

Apparently the rest of the crew has been paying a lot more attention than me, though. I probably wouldn't have even noticed that there was a Turian onboard if it hadn't been for the fact that nobody can stop talking about him. Well, maybe Iwould have because he was kind of stalking me ever since he stepped onboard but if it hadn't been for that. Incidentally, do you capitalize the names of other species? I'm never sure but it just doesn't look right lowercase so whatever. I'll just do it my way in my own personal and private journal.

According to the crew, we were supposedly testing out some stealth systems or whatever. I wasn't really paying attention to them trying to tell me what the mission was after I wasn't listening the first time but that doesn't really matter, I guess, because they were all so very certain that it was just a ruse.

So I guess it was the most obvious ruse ever. My only question, then, is why bother wish such a transparent ploy? Do they think that we're idiots or something? Or maybe it was less transparent to those not on the ship and they were the ones who were supposed to be fooled. I could see that.

Anderson, the Normandy, and a Turian Spectre? Yeah, this is so not just a stealth test or whatever it was supposed to be.

The presence of a Spectre automatically attracts attention. No one is really all that sure what they do because they're so rare and so most people never see them. We are all agreed that they answer only to the Council and so can do whatever they want and that makes them extremely badass. There are no human Spectres and the Alliance desperately wants that changed.

No one actually seems to like having a Spectre around, though, because the fact that they answer to no one but the Council makes them dangerous and they generally aren't around unless things are about to hit the fan. Being a Spectre must suck if no one ever wants you around. Still, there are perks in the 'feel free to ignore every law out there' area. I know that I can never keep track of all these strange laws that different places have. Not that I really make much of an effort but that's not actually the point.

Anyway, I finally left behind all the conspiracy theories to go see what Anderson wanted and it turned out that the Turian Spectre (I did not know his name at the time but I have since learned it to try and not look stupid in front of the Council and it was Nihlus) was there and Anderson wasn't and he wanted to talk to me.

I guess he was trying to be cryptic or something but he just ended up confusing me and I don't like being confused. He was talking about how Eden Prime (the world we were headed to) was a symbol of how far humans had come or something and then solemnly asked if we were ready for that kind of responsibility. The…responsibility of having a colony? I don't know if he missed the memo or something but we've had colonies for a generation now so it's a little late to start fretting about that. You might as well ask if we're ready for the responsibility of space flight.

But then Anderson came in and it turned out that Nihlus was actually probably talking about whether or not humanity is ready for me to be a Spectre.

Um…What? You can't just casually drop that information on someone!

Me? A Spectre? I don't even…

A Spectre is extremely important to humanity for obvious reasons. From the moment that we first knew that there was a Council, we knew that we had to be on it. Unfortunately, it's been thirty years or so (History? Not really my thing) and this has still not happened. Needless to say, people are getting pretty impatient.

But the thing about getting onto the Council is that it has to be done in steps. Or, at least we're pretty sure that it does. I'm reasonably certain that the Asari and Salarians co-founded the Council ages and ages ago and the Turians are the only species to ever be invited to join and that was only after they brought in the Krogan to smash down the Rachni. Or maybe it was when they helped stop the rampaging Krogan afterwards? Whatever, it likely had something to do with the Krogan.

So it's not like there's a lot of precedent and there are so many species that the line to be a Council race is obscenely long and I suspect that the Council races don't ever want to have to add anyone at all. The Asari probably only brought the Salarians along so it didn't look like they were the one master race ruling over all of us. And the Turians really pulled through and saved everybody so they almost had to on that front. But the more races achieve Council status the less prestigious the Council races will be.

Our plan is to slowly (well, if feels slow to us although the rest of the galaxy accuses us of being impatient) immerse ourselves into every aspect of Citadel life so that we can count as a proper, Citadel species and then…Well, I'm not really sure, actually. But we've got to get there first.

The first step was C-Sec and we have a few people there. I think we upset the Turians, actually, because our first C-Sec officer turned out to be a disgraceful drunk. We couldn't possibly get rid of him because we felt that calling attention to his failings would hurt us as a species. The Turians have no use for considerations other than sheer utility and so we lost some points with them over that. Not that we really care.

Does it seem like I don't like Turians? Well, I don't. I don't like Asari (especially Asari) or Salarians or any other species, either. I don't necessarily dislike them (except for the Asari, they're too damn superior for my tastes) but I'm just sort of awkward around them. I don't really have much experience around other species, though, so I suppose that might change at some point. Except probably not with the Asari. I'm just saying.

We have a few more C-Sec officers now but we have yet to make the big leap to Spectre. A Spectre is supposed to be the most elite of the elite, the best that a species has to offer. And since this will be our very first Spectre and influence whether there will be others in the future and how the galaxy sees us (as well as when we'll get our damned Council seat), this is even more important. This is perhaps the most important human position ever.

And they want to give it to me.

Now, I'm hardly the modest type. I am well-aware that I'm awesome and I'm not going to deny I've looked at people who have gotten themselves killed by being stupid and thought that if I were there things would have gone much better. I won't admit that publicly, of course, because that sounds horrible but it's totally true.

It's just that this is a huge responsibility. I don't want to be single-handedly responsible for handing us our Council seat (okay, fine, maybe I wouldn't mind that) or setting us back decades! And the thought that I am the best that humanity has to offer…That's kind of a worrying thought. I certainly don't feel like the best that we have to offer. Would anyone, in my position? Maybe that's actually a good sign.

And isn't anybody interested in whether or not I want to do this? Don't get me wrong, the perks would be wonderful but I really don't think I can or probably even should and I certainly don't want to be a failure. People always say that it's better to try and fail than to have never tried at all but, all things being equal, if I knew I was going to fail something I'd probably want to spare myself the humiliation of failing. But then, you never do know for sure, do you?

There's no way that my background won't be extensively dug into just to be considered and that's not really what I want. Everyone makes far too big of a deal about my so-called heroics during the Skyllian Blitz. I say 'so-called', of course, because a word like 'heroics' really doesn't seem to belong to real life.

What happened was this: I was on Elysium during some shore leave when suddenly a bunch of criminals (largely Batarians) starting attacking. The Alliance Navy destroyed the invading vessels but it took several hours for everything to fall into place on that front and in the meantime I 'single-handedly held off enemy troops during a breach in the defenses.' I'm not sure I really remember it that way. I mean, I remember that there was a breach in the defenses and I remembered wondering why nobody was taking charge and doing something about it instead of letting us get overrun. Then I remembered that I was there and could be the one to do something and so I did. Was it impressive? Perhaps. It felt a lot more desperate and suicidal while I was doing it.

But everyone seemed pretty impressed by what happened and I got the Star of Terra which legally makes me a hero so there you go.

That parts fine, I guess, but then there's my scandalous background. You see, I was born on Earth and, well…

And they just expect me to want to put myself through this.

Since there didn't really seem a tactful way of telling them to go bother someone else with this, I agreed to go down to Eden Prime to pick up some Prothean artifact, a beacon we think. Great. I get to do guard duty on some archeological wonder.

I don't like the Protheans either. Going through this, it seems like there's an awful lot I dislike but I don't really feel like there is. Just, well…virtually any species I come across. Well, that hardly sounds better does it?

But about the Protheans. All I ever hear is how wonderful and advanced and enlightened they were for having invented the Mass Relays and built the Citadel and how they all must have been so brilliant and we owe them everything and should really just bow down and worship them now despite the fact that they've been extinct for ages and we can't even tell what they would have looked like. Actually, I think that the Hanar already do that. It takes all kinds, I guess.

But I didn't have to like them to realize that everybody else is damn near obsessed with them and so discovering a rare artifact like that on a human world was a huge deal. It should have been a simple mission not really worthy of the attention of a Spectre candidate let alone an actual Spectre but it was high-profile and sometimes you get missions like that. I didn't think that many of the other missions that Nihlus and I were to go on together would be like that because high-profile but boring missions are all well and good but how are you supposed to judge someone based on them?

Unfortunately, right before we landed we got some rather unfortunate news. Ouch, there I go using 'unfortunate' twice in the same sentence. That doesn't look right, does it? If this were something official I'd erase it to keep myself from looking stupid but I figure that if I start censoring this now then I'll never write anything truthful and so the doubly unfortunate sentence shall stand. Perhaps I should stop calling attention to it?

Anyway, it was extremely unfortunate. There, that's better. There was this camera feed of a squad on Eden Prime – an almost annoying peaceful world! – under attack and then the camera being broken or something because the feed ended. Cleary there was some sort of issue here.

Nihlus just sort of ditched us, claiming he could move faster on his own but would let us know if he found anything interesting. I went with Alenko and Jenkins at a much slower rate. I was strangely tempted to shoot those balloon-y creatures off in the distance but that would make my subordinates think that I was odd and possibly sociopathic and there really wasn't any point. Besides, we were kind of busy with the Geth invasion.

Yeah, I said it. We had a Geth freaking invasion. No one had seen them since they kicked the Quarians off of their planet two hundred years ago and so God only knows how we managed to recognize them but we did and it's really weird. Kind of horrific, too, since they kept impaling the corpses on these strange spikes that came from the ground. Well, at least I hope it was the corpses that they were impaling. We think that that's how they make the husks (weird black and blue-ish zombies that are weak but super annoying and have an iron grip if they get too close to you).

Jenkins was kind of useless. I feel bad saying this because he's dead and everyone was so very traumatized by it but…so useless. When people were talking about him afterwards I was kind of wondering if this was the same Jenkins that I had met. He was sort of endearing, in a way, with his puppy dog enthusiasm but he was more annoying than anything. Every time I looked at him I couldn't help wondering how he had managed to not get himself killed yet. And, well, now he's managed to get himself killed.

Alenko says that it wasn't his fault, that the Geth weaponry tore through his shields immediately. Well, technically he said that it wasn't my fault and that the Geth weaponry just tore through his shields. But I figured that he also meant that it wasn't Jenkins fault because otherwise what do the shields matter? It was a bit annoying having only one man backing me up but I doubt that Jenkins would have been much use so it's all the same.

We weren't alone for long, either, as this woman I recognized from that video we saw of the Eden Prime attack earlier came running towards us and we quickly started killing Geth together. I was pleased to have her instead of Jenkins because the fact that she had survived this long when apparently literally every other member of her squad was killed meant that she had to be extremely badass.

That was surprising since my first impression of her was that she resembled a Barbie doll. I suppose that objectively there was not nearly as much pink in her armor as I'm remembering (it's actually mostly white, I think) but for some reason that's what I find myself focusing on. She didn't actually look like a Barbie or, God forbid, act like one but it's just that pink. I really hope I don't say something stupid about that later on but no promises.

I said the standard commander thing to say when someone has survived when other people had died and Williams – the woman – surprised me by saying that she already knew it wasn't her fault. Well that was convenient. More people should be like her. She explained what happened and how the attack had started from her point of view and we went looking for survivors (Alenko seemed very keen on this) and that damn beacon.

Nihlus was occasionally telling us about the Geth that he had seen but it really wasn't very helpful. The survivors were a little better. We met two scientists who gave us directions. The rational scientist told us some pretty standard things and told us not to listen to her troubled and rambling colleague. I kind of wish that I had now, actually, as he was saying some things that didn't make sense then but might actually kind of be important now. He said that there was a Turian there before the attack and that he was the Geth's leader or something. Also quite a bit about how we were all going to die but that's just not going to happen so whatever. Unfortunately, we didn't think that any other Turian besides Nihlus was on the planet and we knew that he hadn't been involved with the attack as he was with us. How very young and naïve we were.

We also ran into some smuggler who had seen the whole thing. And by 'the whole thing' I mean Nihlus' murder.

Before I go any further I should probably mention that I kind of liked Nihlus even though he was a Turian. He wasn't very condescending and made a point to insist that he didn't care what species I was because we just needed some qualified Spectres and getting one – qualified – human Spectre meant we'd be likely to get more. I think he really believed it. And from a Turian, too! He was a little too cryptic but he meant well and was reasonably friendly and I was a little sad to see him go.

He was apparently murdered by someone that he seemed to know and that he might have been friends with, according to our eyewitness. This second Turian's name was Saren and he's a Spectre as well. He shot Nihlus in the back and left. I had better not have to take the blame for this.

A Turian working with Geth didn't make any sense. Or, to be more precise, the Geth working with any organic at all given what had happened with the Quarians. Admittedly, the details on that are a little sparse but whatever it was can't make them particularly eager to try again. But I'll have time to puzzle this out later, I suppose.

We raced towards the Beacon and when we got there, Alenko got too close and started to shake and levitate and so I acted on instinct and knocked him out of the way. Given that we had no idea what that thing would do to him, it was good instinct but it also unfortunately meant that I was caught in its path instead and Williams made Alenko stay down so that he couldn't get back in the path. Fortunately, the Beacon didn't kill me. No, it just gave me a massive acid trip experience. It was just a bunch of jumbled up and truly disturbing images.

I'm trying to recall them and piece them together now and I think it was some sort of attack. That's…extremely unhelpful, I know, but there you have it. Were the Protheans the attackers or were they being attacked here? Or does the image have nothing to do with them?

Whatever that Beacon did to me (I'm not ruling out getting a tumor or something from this even if it takes awhile to develop), it knocked me out for fifteen solid hours and so Alenko and Williams had to bring me through a war-torn land and back to the ship. And apparently they also went back for Jenkins to give him a proper burial as I had promised Alenko that we would. I don't actually remember doing this but then I had not really been paying attention at the time since I just wanted to hurry up and so maybe I did.

Williams is still on the ship. She never actually met Jenkins but she feels kind of guilty about his death because she wouldn't have a spot if he hadn't died and opened one up. She's much better to have around than he was anyway so I'm not bothered. In fact, I told her that she belonged here and she seemed really heartened by that. Possibly that's because she seemed a little star-struck by my official hero badge (also known as the Medal of Terra) and admiration is always nice. Let's see if it lasts.

But yeah, going back, I awoke in the medical bay. Doctor Chakwas was there, of course, and didn't detect anything wrong with me so while that's not a complete guarantee it is certainly better than nothing. I was a little…unnerved that Alenko was apparently also in there waiting for me to wake up. Chakwas says that as an L2 biotic he has migraines and is lucky that the Alliance didn't really screw him over and so maybe that was there but still…Kind of weird…

He feels guilty apparently since he probably activated the Beacon and I got hit saving him. That's sweet, I guess. I'd be really annoyed at him if he didn't admit that my predicament was pretty much all his fault, actually. He wanted to know what was going on and he'd been pretty decent (not dying, not being useless, keeping me alive when I was unconscious, admitting he screwed up…) so I told him what Anderson told me.

Apparently he knew Saren and Saren is a Spectre and a total asshole. He didn't actually come out and say that last bit but it was pretty implied. This whole thing was a mess and nobody was going to want to deal with it. It would also be our word against Saren's and we had no proof while he was a Spectre and pinning the blame on him might be our only chances of salvaging my chances to become a Spectre. I still don't actually really want to be a Spectre but I don't want my chances sabotaged like this either.

We have to head to the Citadel and tell the Council our tale in person (if we can even get an audience) and that involves meeting with our ambassador. I don't remember what his name is and I've never met him either but I've heard that he's an asshole, too.

It's the worst day ever already and it's not even close to being done yet.

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