Solvei's Letter Home — Week 14
Written from the Svalfjell Ridge mess hall in the second week of October 2138, by Trainee Solvei Bjørnstad of Cohort 12, to her father in Tromsø. The letter was returned to the family with her personal effects four weeks later, on the standard ISNI form. It carries the kind of texture an incident report does not.
Pappa —
They've put me on the harmonic chamber rota again next week. Three slots, Chamber 4-B. I keep getting it because I'm the only one in the cohort who didn't shake the first time. That's what Tolfsen says. He says it like it's a compliment. Idris says it like it's a thing he is worried about and won't tell me he is worried about.
The mess is loud tonight. Someone has put the bridge-fail simulation on the wall screen and four of the boys are arguing about whether you could have caught it earlier. You could have. None of them want to be the one who says so.
I am writing because I forgot to tell you on the call: the boots fit. The ones you got from the Reidar yard. Tell mamma. I have walked the ridge in them and they are warm and they do not leak. Whoever wears them next is going to be lucky.
They moved Cohort 12 up the curriculum two weeks. They will not say why. Idris says it is because the institute has been told it can not keep being slow. I do not know who has told the institute that. I do not think Idris does either. He says we will know in seven months and not until.
Pappa, the chamber is going to be fine. I want you to know I think it is going to be fine. There is nothing wrong with the chamber that the instructors have not seen before. I know the report after the Cohort 8 thing said the same thing and the report after Cohort 6 said the same thing and I am writing this anyway because I want you to read it and know that I have thought about it. I have. I am still here. The boots fit.
Tell mamma the Sunday call next week will be later. Idris says we have a long calibration run that morning. I am going to do well on it. I always do.
Love —
Solvei
P.S. — They gave us extra cocoa rations because of the cold. I am keeping mine. Do not tell mamma.
The chamber incident report records Trainee Bjørnstad's pre-incident assessments in the upper third of cohort. The letter records something else.