The mission patch committee has opinions

Designing a mission patch should take an afternoon. We are on week six.

The shortlist

• A sardine, heroic, looking left: rejected — looks like the tuna.
• A sardine, heroic, looking right: rejected — the tuna complained anyway.
• The tin, plain, with one star: approved unanimously, then un-approved when the star was identified as a crumb on the projector.

The committee has now reviewed forty designs and approved none of them, a record the previous patch committee held for a single afternoon.

The Commander ended the deadlock by holding up an actual tin: the label is the patch. It has always been the patch. The minutes record eleven seconds of silence, then applause.

The patch now ships on every hull, pre-applied, at zero cost. The committee remains in session about the font.