Dear Kelly Chambers …

Kelly Chambers Mass Effect

Tomorrow should be a day of celebration for you and I. Me taking on the Reaper hoard with gusto in a last-ditch effort to save humanity, and you telling me I have new emails as I plot the Normandy's flight path to some dangerous star system. It should be a day we face together, side by side. Unfortunately, things didn't turn out that way, did they? I'll still be fighting the good fight, of course: gathering squadmates, upgrading my weapons, fine-tuning my biotic abilities. But you … you won't be with me. Look, I'm sorry, okay? But how was I to know that cleaning up those last few side missions before entering the Omega 4 relay was going to cost you your life? I was just doing what every damn RPG in forever has taught me I should do! It was BioWare's fault for tricking me!

Except we both know it wasn't. It was my fault. And no matter how many geth troopers I blast a hole through, it's never enough to ease the pain of you not being here. I miss you, Kelly. Who knows how things could have turned out had different decisions been made, had I acted sooner. But I suppose what's past is past. I'll be thinking about you tomorrow … and always.

Love,

Bob's Commander Shepard

Author: Robert Brian Taylor

Robert Brian Taylor is a writer and journalist living in Pittsburgh, PA. Throughout his career, his work has appeared in an eclectic combination of newspapers, magazines, books and websites. He wrote the short film "Uninvited Guests," which screened at the Oaks Theater as part of the 2019 Pittsburgh 48 Hour Film Project. His fiction has been featured at Shotgun Honey, and his short-film script "Dig" was named an official selection of the 2017 Carnegie Screenwriters Script and Screen Festival. He is an editor and writer for Collider and contributes regularly to Mt. Lebanon Magazine. Taylor also often writes and podcasts about film and TV at his own site, Cult Spark. You can find him online at rbtwrites.com and on Twitter @robertbtaylor.