Why this exists

Someone needed to write things down. Nobody else was going to.

I started this log after we had been in Earth's orbit for a little over a year. By that point we had conducted enough research expeditions to produce a small archive of field tapes, and it had become clear the captain was not going to document anything themself. The captain has a memory measured in epochs and considers note-takin' beneath them. When asked, last month, what year the Gukkimukk first entered this solar system, the captain replied "a recent one," and then looked out the viewport for forty minutes.

Brain cannot be trusted with records. Brain writes things down correctly approximately forty percent of the time. The other sixty percent, we get documents titled things like IMPROTANT PLEAS READ that describe events which did not occur.

T.O.I.L.E.T. keeps its own records. Those records are not accessible. I have tried. I have stopped trying.

So — this. The log. Started by me, maintained by me, occasionally contributed to by whoever remembers it exists. The research tapes included later in this volume predate the log itself; I have transcribed a selection from the archive for inclusion here. The rest are newer.

If you are readin' this, you are either a future member of the crew, a Very Important visitor we failed to stop at the airlock, or an earthling who acquired it through channels I would prefer not to know about. In any case: welcome. Try to put things back where you found them.