III

The mail room was truly a dismal one: small, dimly lit and poorly looked-after. As soon as the door opened a wall of brown-paper parcels fell out all over the place. Fourteen of these were mine; that much I knew. But which fourteen? I had no choice but to pick up and examine every single one. For some, this wasn't too difficult. The smallest were about the size of VHS tapes. I considered whether this might be because they were VHS tapes. The largest, though, was over six feet high and a two feet wide, as well as several inches thick. The label was addressed to 'DSPSCV Archimedes', from 'Alpha Iota Systems'.

"Oh, I'll take that." A voice came from behind, almost making me jump out my skin. I turned around to see that Brad was now stood behind me. He nodded towards the parcel, gesturing me to pass it to him. "New pod for Science and Medical." He explained, as he took the package from me. It was incredibly heavy to me, but Brad lifted it with ease, and within a moment he had already reached the end of the corridor with the huge box. Turning back to the mass of brown boxes before me, I continued to pull at the labels until I'd recovered exactly fourteen that displayed my name. Then I felt irresponsible for leaving the other packages all over the floor, so I decided to pick them up. Whilst I was picking them up, I decided that I might as well sort them out a little. And whilst I was sorting them a little, I decided 'Hey; why not sort them a lot?'

Nearly twenty minutes had passed by the time I'd sorted everyone's packages and taken my own back down to my quarters. 'Well done, Matthew' I said to myself as I shut the door behind me and dumped the parcels on the floor. 'You just killed another twenty minutes of your life.' By the time I'd opened them all, another hour had passed. And it's not like they were anything to get excited about, either. Most of them were, in fact, videotapes, but they were all labeled as 'NEWS', and I wasn't prepared to sit through three years worth of news. Other boxes included a new pair of shoes, kindly sent to me by my mother, and a crate filled with nothing but tea bags, which in fairness I had asked a friend to send me just after leaving Earth because the tea bags provided onboard were shit.

After finishing on the parcels, I looked up at the clock. The time had reached 11:30, so I decided to head to the dining hall early for lunch. Stepping out of my quarters, I decided that first I ought to head around to Science and Medical to see if Brad had built the new pod yet. Long story short, he hadn't. He was still working on it when I walked in, as was Ryan. When I asked about Nathan, they told me that it was his turn in the kitchen.

"He's making pie and mash for dinner." Brad told me. "Not bad for out first meal in three years, eh?"

"Pie and mash?" I asked, shaking my head. "Dickhead. I was going to make that tonight."

A few minutes later, the two technicians decided to leave the rest of the pod for later, and the three of us went around to the dining hall, which was pretty oversized for such a small ship. There were enough seats for fifty people, but only enough hypersleep pods for six. Needless to say, even when the entirety of the crew had entered the room and sat down, it was still almost empty. Nathan had prepared a pretty decent meal of steak and kidney pie and mashed potatoes, along with tea (which of course I didn't drink). Even Alan paid his compliments to the chef.

"Wonderful meal, Nathan." He beamed, as he stuffed the last forkful of potato into his mouth.

"Thanks very much, sir." Nathan replied. The other crew members were always much more reluctant than myself to simply call him 'Alan'. "Glad you liked it. Think you can beat that tonight, Matthew?"

By about half past twelve, everybody had finished lunch, and we now we were all just chatting to one another as Nathan cleared away the last of the trays. I decided to use this opportunity to find out more about the ship that he, Cara and I would be going aboard tomorrow.

"So, Alan," I began, relaxing back into my seat as I spoke. "Tell us more about the XH-12."

"Sorry, Matthew," He shrugged. "Archie's already told you the whole story."

"Oh, come on Alan." I sighed. "You think I was born yesterday? We all know that Archie's built to automatically redact certain information from lower ranking crew members. What do you know about the ship that we don't?"

"Matthew, I assure you, there's nothing else you need to know about the XH-12." Alan insisted. "Now, I think it's time we all got back to work. Go and prepare for tomorrow, why don't you, Matt?"

Standing up from my chair, I left the dining hall, but not before staring Alan hard in the back of the head. Sometimes I just wanted to slap him so much. Heading down the corridor, I noticed Cara struggling outside her living quarters with a large box. I went over to see what was going on, and noticed that the box was filled with letters.
"What's this, then?" I asked, taking the box from her and setting it down on the floor for a moment.

"Junk mail." She said, grinning. "Started sorting through yours yet?"

"Uh, no." I replied. "I was going to, but I opened all my parcels instead."

Cara chuckled, and leaned down to pick the box of letters back up from the floor. I walked with her as she headed around the corner towards the engine bay. That was where we stored most of our rubbish, what with the ship not having any waste disposal capsules on board.

"Get anything good, then?" She asked as we walked along.

"Just teabags." I replied. "I asked a friend to send me some."

"Nice one." She nodded. "The ones onboard are shit."

"Thank you!" I exclaimed. "I knew I wasn't the only one who hated them."

Reaching the door to the engine bay, Cara reached out and pulled it open. Then, we stepped through it into the loud, hot and filthy room. She walked over to a corner and tipped the box upside down on top of an already vast pile of rubbish. As she did this, I asked how she was feeling about being part of the support team tomorrow, to which she replied in much the same way as I'd expected. She said she didn't really want to, because she wasn't sure what to expect. But if the crew of the XH-12 could be in trouble, it was best if someone went over to help. I could agree with what she was saying, although I was still annoyed that Alan wasn't going aboard with us. As the commanding officer of the ship, he was supposed to set an example, yet he was literally so scared of just being in space that he refused to leave the ship. 'Some example', I thought to myself.

A few minutes later, and after disposing of her huge box of junk letters, Cara had gone back down the corridor to her quarters. I did the same, thinking I could probably now start sorting through my own letters. But when I did finally get back in, I only had another hour before I had to go back to the kitchen to start making the evening meal, so yet again I decided to just ignore them for the time being. Slumping down into my desk chair, I asked Archie to pull up a monitor with a VCR player, and inserted a VHS tape labeled 'NEWS – 30/03/2316-03/12/2316'. The next hour went by about as quickly as a horse-drawn carriage being pulled by a snail. But at least I could safely say I'd watched some of the news now.

When the clock at last reached four in the afternoon, I turned off the monitor and headed to the kitchen. Since Nathan had already stolen my idea for lunch, I did not make pie and mash. Instead, I made sausage and mash, which still didn't go down too well, as everybody complained they'd already had mash once today. I told them that out here in the middle of nowhere, I couldn't just pop down to the shops for some oven chips, and that they'd just have to deal with what they'd been given. That caused even more complaining, and I suddenly felt glad that I hadn't given anyone tea made with my own bags. 'Ungrateful swines', I thought to myself. 'It's not my fault Nathan stole my idea for lunch'.

The rest of the evening passed by quite swiftly. By the time everyone had eaten and I'd washed up all the trays, it was already seven. After a long period of gazing through the window of the observation deck, it was eight. Finally, another long period of gazing through the window, this time on the ship's bridge, brought the time up to nine. When I finally climbed into bed that night, the time was 9:30. And do you know what? I was shattered. The first day I'd been awake in three years, and I couldn't wait to go back to sleep again. Perhaps it was because I'd spent most of the day sorting through three years' worth of post, perhaps it was something to do with tomorrow's support mission to the XH-12. But that night, I slept like a light.