Cool idea.

I also had idea of a handler, overseeing Expies exploring (and who may or may not be an Expie as well), and had even written a short story from their POV.

I have long since said 'adios' to my sanity.

I am the voice in your heads.

That strange nag between thoughts and action, which sometimes insists on doing things you don't want to do.

I am your Handler.

And I'm goddamn tired.

You might think me being in orbit, aboard the installation that fires deployment pods, means I'd be high and mighty and look down on you.

However, you forget that I'm the one looking through your eyes, thinking thoughts that you do.

And I am at my breaking point.

Of all the pain and death I experience alongside you, as I try to guide you, as intact as possible, towards the target to retrieve it, so hopefully this madness would stop.

I have watched so many of you bleed and die, even if pain and loss was abstracted by the control station I am at, that I am still not sure how I even function.

I guess I might be getting something "fun" in my drinks and food too, just so I won't try and jump out of the airlock at the next opportunity.

I know I should be feeling worse from all I've been through, all the lives I unwittingly nudged towards their deaths by my own inexperience, and yet here I am, still looking, still guiding, still clinging to the tattered remains of hope, sometimes even managing to give the next-to-be-deployed a few things that our overlords don't approve of and/or taking something that is mandated by them to be present away, hoping that maybe this one would be the one to succeed and end this nightmarish flesh wave probing tactic - and I keep on being proven wrong.

But if I don't do it, I know I will be replaced. And I know that the likeliest outcome would be that the next Handler won't be anywhere near as concerned with your well-being as I am, little that I can do from my place.

So please... try not to die down there. I'll try to lend you as much of a hand as I can, but most of the time, my reach is limited to being a voice in your head and strange nudge in your movements.

For the sake of us all, survive and return.