Name's Dave. 29 years old, construction worker. NOT what people saw me doing when I was in grade school. They all figured I'd be a scientist, doctor, lawyer, video game maker... something. I was always the "brain". Now I drive a water truck. Why? Because all those things they expected me to do requred sacrifices they just weren't worth to me. I have no regrets. Well, ok, that's not true. I wish I had found some kind of middle ground; this blue-collar life can be so BORING sometimes.

I played Frontier: First Encounters for the first time in the mid to late '90s. I didn't like it until a bit later in my life, when I realized how much trouble the creators had gone to in order to make it lifelike. Realistic physics; weapons that are actually beams, instead of glowing slow-ass fakey bullets that you could not only see but dodge, sheeesh (take that, Freelancer.)

It could've been better though. And now I find this. A work in progress, like many others. Will you be more successful than Jades' abortive attempt at an unofficial sequel? I don't know. But I do hope so.

I'm a bit of an amateur science fiction writer. I can carefully think out technological details of sci-fi weapons (What might a tachyon beam do? How would it work? Hmm, perhaps a near-lightspeed plasma beam would achieve sufficient compression and temperature upon impact to result in nuclear fusion, causing an energy release wildly disproportionate to energy input...)

Or I can take a leap onto the wild side and come up with something hugely weird (Why did the aliens attack the asteroid colony on the fringes of the Alioth system? Well, one family had brought a jar of fireflies onto the thing, and the insects somehow emit a faint subspace signal that human technology cannot detect, but has hallucinogenic effects at interplanetary distances on this particular species that resembles a five-legged lobster with ears that look like coat sleeves, and when their passing survey ship fired on the colony they actually thought they were ordering Wallabaster eggs on their food synthesizers...)

So. If anyone should for some reason see this and decide I might have something to contribute to the story, let me know.