The most difficult things about Patrick’s new life were the psychological; missing his family and friends, his dog, even his job. He was also afraid of what living for thousands of years would be like; who would he be after such a long time? Would he even remember the things that were important to him? He wasn’t sure what the future would bring, but he knew that he didn’t want to forget his past. Patrick decided to write letters to the people who were important to him. There was no chance that they would ever be received, but Patrick felt that writing them would help him remain connected to them.

  A couple of days ago he had written a cliff notes version of everything that had happened since his kidnapping. He would pretend that the summary would be at the start of each letter instead of repeating it each time. He decided to write the first actual letter to Anna, his oldest daughter.

  Dear Anna,

  I hope you have been doing well, I imagine that it has been challenging for you to handle all the questions and concerns your second graders must have. Hopefully none of them were directly affected by Sol’s visit to Earth. Quite the challenge in your first year of teaching. I’m sure that you did great though, and hopefully everything is mostly back to normal now. I imagine the political landscape was shuffled around, but your kids wouldn’t see that. Although who knows what weird content the influencers made of everything.

  One thing you would be surprised about is that I’m the designated cook for our small group of four. Yes, I really am your father. I didn’t choose to be the cook, the administration just assigned the role to me. It won’t surprise you that I would have preferred any of the other roles instead, but it is what it is. The food here is fairly basic, focused more on nutrition and shelf-life than taste. I actually don’t mind the cooking detail, I just never enjoyed spending as much time on it as you do. And don’t feel sorry for my teammates, the recipes are fairly rigid, so I am adding enough seasoning and following all of the directions.

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  All of the recruits are like me and from Earth. Amongst ourselves we usually refer to the local food using whatever it is closest to back home. We haven’t had anything too strange or disgusting. Some of the people have complained about the food, but some people would complain about anything.

  Talking about complaints, the weather on this planet is always raining or drizzling. Theoretically it has to do with the magic that this world has. Although everyone complained about it for the first week that we were here, most people have stopped complaining. After just a couple of weeks I hardly think about the rain. It is amazing how quickly people adapt to new things. I think I am adapting ok, there is so much new, I have to just think about just what is in front of me. I am going to miss your cooking. Even though I am doing it as part of my job now I will never have the passion for it that you do. We haven’t had much for deserts here, certainly nothing like your home made brownies or bread.

  I’ve been stuck here for a few minutes not sure what to say. There is so much, it is hard to know what to put down, but I will write you again when I can. I need to get ready for tomorrow, we are hunting a sofa sized monster tomorrow. Don’t worry the trainers have been taking good care of us, pushing us, but making sure we can succeed. Kinda like a second grade teacher. :)

  I love you and miss you,

  Dad