The Legacy of Donnell Veeris

Donnell leans back from the computer, rubbing his eyes as he does so. It’s taken a long time for him to get to this moment, but the work finally feels complete. For now, at least. It’s taken him the past few cycles, updating the project whenever he could find the time between his duties as a Wing Commander, and now he’s ready for it to be shared.

The project consists of almost his entire career’s worth of work. Images and videos taken from orbits and surfaces of surveyed planets. All sorts of data – atmospheric, geographical, mineral compositions – from all sorts of places. Scanned handwritten notes and typed text files of his thoughts and observations, almost like pages of a diary. Everything that Donnell had collected and stored using McCloud over the past decades.

These files make up the main bulk of the project. Their names, when created, were merely date-time stamps. It meant the data was stored chronologically at least, with all data from a single survey together, but the names alone didn’t help anyone. He has spent so many nights going through each image and video and table and file updating its name and providing a description to explain what it represents. He’s created tags to allow similar data to be searched for and grouped together by a user. He has sorted everything into folders based on the survey’s system, and then sub-folders for planets and other bodies.

And now it’s all done. And he is tired.

He gets up from his seat, strolling across his office to make himself a drink. He yawns as he returns to his desk and turns back to the screen.

Of course, it’s not just survey data that he’s compiled. Various sections of research that he’s carried out during his lifetime are present here as well.

Some of the oldest notes that he recorded with McCloud were regarding safety measures that could be taken during surveys. Descriptions of various risks and how to reduce them. Explanations on approaching planets safely and dealing with potential dangers like debris. How to keep both yourself and your team safe. It has been a long time since he first wrote the guides, and he has gone back through them to refine the information with an additional fifty cycles of experience.

There are pages about his research into terraforming techniques, an interest that he had held for a long time, but that was truly sparked into action with the survey data taken from Do-Loris III. None of it is particularly rigorous, and he certainly isn’t a leader in the field, but he knows enough that he can form competent terraforming plans now.

Finally, there are a few pages of notes about newer interests. Leadership and diplomacy, rules for first contact, Vourac communication, organisation and archival of documents. This research is less detailed, with Donnell having had less time to delve deeply into the topics, but there are still important groundworks present.

He closes his eyes for a while, leaning back in his chair on the verge of sleep. He knows he shouldn’t have pulled an all-nighter to get this done, especially with such a busy day tomorrow, but he couldn’t rest when he was so close. When he opens his eyes again, he looks to the screen once more.

He watches now, eyes peeled, waiting for the counter to finally tick over.

He knows that he’ll continue to update the system going forwards. After all, he still plans to do further research. He’ll still be involved with surveys in the future. And all of the information that he collects, he will sort, categorise, and upload, free for anyone else to use as needed.

The seconds feel like they stretch out for an eternity. Until finally…

Written by Aric S.