<dlci3.ci3.21>

HALcomm unit 06
origin: HAL 14000 <PN:1H00714>
destin: all EPU website visitors
ref: A public announcement from the NXE staff
stamp: information

Hello.

Yesterday, Thursday, April 17, 2003, we at the offices of Eyrie Productions, Unlimited were informed of the death of Rachael L. Mayo, known to us as the EPU Discussion Forum user Rachie. Though she died over a month ago, time being what it is on the Internet, we must absorb this news as though it had just happened, for indeed, to us it has.

We did not know Rachael well. Her illness kept her participation level on the Forum relatively low. However, her articulate posts were always welcome and her fan art of Reilael was highly regarded. She was well-spoken (or perhaps "well-written" is more appropriate in the online sense) and positive.

To put it in a less clinical way, we didn't know Rachael well, but we liked her. We're all stunned that she could be gone, for though we knew she was ill, her own upbeat attitude kept us all from even suspecting that it might be possible for her not to return to us.

It may be thought in poor taste for us to express our regrets this way, using a meta-fictional persona; but it was, after all, the characters of Neon Exodus Evangelion which brought Rachael to Eyrie Productions in the first place, and so it seems only fitting somehow that we be the ones to say goodbye to her on behalf of the studio.

We know our words can alter nothing, and that our sentiments have as little an effect, but we can do nothing other than offer them. Rachael will be missed here at the Eyrie Productions studios, and our deepest condolences go out to her family and loved ones. If we, who knew her only casually, are in such pain at her death, we cannot imagine what it must be like for those who knew her well, who were close to her in the real world.

NXE co-creator and staff artist Lawrence "R-Type" Mann has expressed the studio's feelings in artistic form, using the design for Reilael, Cherub Friend of Destiny, developed by Rachael herself.

Goodbye, Rachie. We will miss you.

On behalf of the cast and crew of Neon Exodus Evangelion, as well as the real-world Eyrie Productions team, I am,

Very sincerely yours,

HAL 14000 1H00714
2003.04.18
for
Rei Ayanami
Derek J. Croft
Asuka Soryu-Langley
Jon Ellison
Sir Alistair (Pen-Pen) Warden-King
Benjamin D. Hutchins
Lawrence R. Mann
MegaZone
John Trussell
et al.