A Small Loss

I... I don't know why I haven't written about this sooner, really. I suppose I was trying to pretend it didn't happen.

I was podded, a couple of weeks ago. It was the second body I lost in total, after they took my first one at the end of my training. (Well, I suppose they didn't take it, per se. But I'm not in it anymore.)

To be honest, I don't even... Quite remember how it happened. I recall the circumstances. I had headed up the Inoue system to do scan for sites to explore, but hadn't found any, and decided to head back to Malkalen to do more shipping work for Ishukone, like my father needs me to. But I wanted to leave my Heron there for later, so I went to look for a shuttle to travel back in. 

When I couldn't find any in the area that weren't ludicrously overpriced, I decided to simply fly back in my Pod. What could go wrong, really, I thought? It was high security space. No one there could attack me without being destroyed by CONCORD, nor would they have anything to gain if they did. It wasn't worth fussing over. I set my destination, activated my autopilot, brought up the Summit and some contracts to go over to keep me busy...

What system was I in? I feel like I might've gotten side tracked by something. I can't really recall the specifics.

I heard the sound of me being targed-locked, but barely even noticed. I recall a strange feeling, a brief flicker of worry and confusion, worry and profound discomfort. And then, an even odder one still. A sensation of, for a moment, being something profoundly different; Something utterly unlike anything I have ever been, in thought or form. Something I cannot understand, and only could, for that one second...

...And then I awoke in Malkalen, my forehead pressing against the cool glass, my eyes foggy, with warm fluid slowly draining below me. I stumbled out, washed myself, got dressed... Had something to eat. The food tasted different, like it did the last time, and my skin felt too soft, for a while. It was odd.

I did not believe it, I think, when it first occured. Not really. Have you ever spilled a glass, or dropped a plate of food, or something like that? And you have that brief moment, where you haven't quite processed it yet? Where you brain hasn't yet grasped the upsetting loss and shift in the status quo? And you're still thinking about how much you're going to enjoy that drink, as if nothings changed.

I make that comparison instead of a more serious one because it really didn't seem like much of an important affair, at the time. It seemed easy to move on. To forget it ever happened.


I...

I feel I've lost something. I must have.

I'd upgraded my clone far beyond anything I'd rationally need. It was a Pi grade - Certified human biomass and bone or high quality osteoplastic. It was more then fit - excessively so, even - to retain everything without any functional memory loss.

And yet, I can feel that something is gone. I do not know what. But something of myself, something very small, so small that i can't even perceive it in full, is utterly absent. And it has left behind only a cold, empty void that reaches out and chills me to my bones. When I gaze into myself, as the teachings compel one to do, to perceive the Totality- I see it. Burning. Clear as day.

I feel... False. Incomplete. A shadow. My skin does not rest on the bones as it should. Not at all.

...

I cannot ignore it.

Mister Hakatain mentioned in the Summit that the very, very best clones are grown organically, over the course of a human lifetime. They are completely natural, as much as any other person. Utterly without error, they retain the information transmitted from the burning scan flawlessly, leaving not such a copy, but an utter, pristine recreation; A perfect continuation of the self.

I still have the ISK mister Vikarion gave me for some bizarre reason. A hundred million. Foolish, needless as it may be, I will use this to purchase a contract for one of these.

I will never let this happen again. Not ever - For as long as I exist. I swear it.

Innocent Facade

(NEOCOM ERROR: Upload belated due to hardware overflow. Estimated desynch: 11 days.)

I've realized something. It's not a good realization.

Let me explain myself, first. At the risk of stating the obvious, I am not a bold person. I never have been. I don't take risks, I tend to stay in my comfort zone. I crumble quickly under... Well, any sort of pressure at all, really. I'll be the first to admit it. I am a coward; A flake, craven, whatever you want to call it.

So. Naturally, when I first became a Capsuleer, I was a nervous wreck. Almost everything about it terrified me. Sticking wires into the back of my spine and skull terrified me. Flying - Alone - into space, despite being trained to do so for months at the academy, terrified me. Not being able to feel my body terrified me. The idea that I might be attacked by pirates terrified me. Warping and Jump Gates terrified me. The prospect of bumping into other ships terrified me. The possibility of accidentally flying into the sun...

Well. You get the idea.

Most of all, though, other Capsuleers terrified me. I'm going to write this down again because I can sometimes almost forget, even after a few months: Normal people... Baseliners, rather... Are terrified of Capsuleers, and rightly so. And when I was myself, so was I. 

I still remember the first time I signed into the Summit, my license still warm from the proverbial press, at the recommendation from my first agent, telling me it would help me to learn to talk with "others of my kind." The thought of interacting with people who held such tremendous power at their fingertips - people who could single handedly tear apart whole colonies, defense fleets and all, alone -  made we want to run for the hills. And when I saw what they were like, that is, bizarrely immature, petty, and oblivious of themselves... Well, that made it even worse.

I acted a fool. I stuttered, I cowered, I broke into outbursts when something offended me. It was sad. Pathetic, even. I forgot the teachings, and allowed my heart to be ruled by nothing but fear.

In time, though, most of those fears abated, and what was previously horrifyingly unimaginable to me has become (though still somewhat objectively disturbing) routine. I am not so afraid of flying. And I am no so afraid of my... "Kin", anymore, except in the most extreme of circumstances, when they present an actual real risk of attacking me physically. I can, for better or worse, share company with them with only moderate discomfort.

But what I've realized (or perhaps always known, and only just had to courage to consider) is that, yet, I still find myself playing the part.

Why? ...I suppose, in truth, it's nothing more then a means of protecting myself. 

Perhaps I feel that it makes others pity me, and that this grants me some measure of safety from them; That they would be reluctant to strike down something so weak, so powerless, so much less then what they are, as even the most hardened murderer would hesitate to strike down a child.

But I know this to be provably false. Though there have been rare acts of kindness and compassion, in general, capsleers care little for those beneath them, if they even recognize them as existing at all. And in fact I have suffered from such a perception, in the form of threats, hate, outright assault - It does nothing for me in this regard then make me appear a plump hare in a garden full of very, very hungry foxes.

So what is the true reason? The answer is obvious. For myself, of course.

Because it helps me to... Still feel apart, from them. It helps this world, the world of Capsuleers, of maddened war and death amongst the stars, feel alien. It helps me feel like a newcomer to it all, still, even though that status is fading. It keeps me from fitting in, and that pleases me. It pleases me too much.

By the Creator, why do I feel the need to do this? To harm myself so, by embracing such self-deception? I should not need to embark on such ridiculousness to convince myself of my separation. I know in my heart that I am different. I'm not like them - Not at all. My heart isn't filled with hate, filled with a desire for blood and death, or worse yet, simply the cold and hollow apathy of the void. I do not lust for wealth, for power, only for knowledge and understanding. 

Yet... It seems so easy, to forget this, at times. To talk as they do, to mimic their thoughts and words, like some household bird-No. Not like a bird. Like a child, desperately trying to elevate itself through emulation and imitation.

It is foolish. I am foolish.

Out Of Place

I... Should write about politics. Politics is easy.

The trouble in the State is getting worse. The attacks on planetary targets are continuing, and most sources are now reporting that they're going for military targets. Lots of pirate factions are getting involved. The Executor is throwing around his power like never before, scorning the CPD and CEP's judgment. I've heard from other pilots that he's gone mad. It's almost starting to look at though he might be deposed.

Father is, as one could expect, thrilled, on account of it being the Provist uprising that essentially killed his career and credibility. (Well, and perhaps some of his own more... Harsh decisions, but it is not right for one to question their parents such.) I delivered the news to him myself, since I had picked it up well before it started to become widespread by listening in to Capsuleer gossip. Within minutes, he was talking about getting in contact with some of his old associates in the corporation and perhaps seeking a means to wiggle his way back into the structure, and of course going on about the the Executor was finally "Getting what he gave" for almost destroying my family. 

It'll be funny if it ends up panning out in such a manner that my family can return from it's relative social exile, in the sense that it will mean there was no need for me ever to become a Capsuleer to repair our reputation at all. (And I mean "funny" in the least funny was possible, here.) My father asked about my progress in that regard as well, of course, which I informed him was coming along.

I'm still not sure how to feel about the whole thing, myself. I mean, I make no secret of the fact that I hold extreme distaste for Heth. (Well, no secret of it in private, at least.) The man is a racist thug, yet he's essentially Emperor of the State, at the moment. Never mind the fact that a concept like that shouldn't even exist. And in more personal sense, his actions did make life very hard for me, for a few years. 

But I'm really worried about all the things that could happen. What if people I know get hurt? What if it ends in civil war? What if the Executor gets desperate, and has the fleet in Luminaire burn Gallente Prime to dust, or something equally hysterically destructive?

Gods, I don't even want to think about it. Why am I thinking about it? I don't even know why I am. It's not as if it's any of my business - I'm barely even a citizen of the State. I've spent most of my life on a planet nothing like the rest of it that most ethnic Caldari would likely consider a backwater.

I tried to play at being politically minded in the Heiian College the other day, but I felt disingenuous even as I was doing so. Saying things like, "The only thing we have is our technological edge", or, "The economy can't sustain another massive downturn". Hah. I felt more and more ludicrous the more serious I attempted to sound. Who on earth was I trying to fool? I don't know anything. And even if I did, I'm not anywhere near important enough to change anything. Everything I said was a petulant and childish observation, said only in the interests in self affirmation and a desire to feel equal amongst "peers".

Like I was just a child in the schoolyard, trying to fit in. 

...Speaking of which, I guess, I've decided to attend Silas Vitalia's party, out of some likely horrendously misguided desire to befriend more Capsuleers. Though I still remember mister Shutaqs... Unfortunate account of the last event she held (The one where he set himself on fire in protest of her conversion), I do not fear too much for my safety, since so many others will be here. 

And though she was cruel when we met - And likely still is, in intent - Miss Vitalia has been oddly kind to me lately. So she's likely to not rip out my still-beating heart, or anything of that sort.  

...Well, at the very least, it's unlikely. I'll have my softclone updated, just in case.

Though I've already been doing that every night. I'm probably getting a little paranoid.

Decay

I had another strange dream, tonight. This one was a little more coherent, though equally offputting, I think. I awake in my bed, on Saisio. It is as if it is any other day. The gentle morning sunlight pours generously through the window, it's timid, yet resolute warmth spreading over my body. The birds sing softly in the trees, which expand endlessly over the hills and mountains, their snowy tipped peaks reaching aspirationally for the heavens. Blossoms weave between each other in the soft, spring wind... I rise, and for a moment, something feels wrong. The bones my heels seem to push too harshly downward into the flesh, and for a fleeting instant, I feel a foul, bitter sickness deep in my belly, and the stirring of bile rising in my throat. But in an instant, it is gone, as if it was never there. I feel perfect, wonderful, utterly rested, and somehow very clean. Like a child. I stretch my arms and legs, finding no measure of the aches and pains I am used to, my form seeming utterly weightless. I toss aside my pajamas and throw on some proper clothes, taking a quick swig from a glass of water by my bedside. It tastes fresh and rich, like from a spring. Feeling eager to go out and enjoy the day, I practically rush out the door and hop quickly down the stairs, feeling full of energy. The house is very, very quiet, and empty - More so then it would ever be in reality - But in the dream, I do not notice this, for whatever reason. I slip into a pair of boots lying where I usually leave them, and head out into the garden. I smile, my heart light as a feather. I smell flowers and fresh grass. Everything seems ideal. I walk through our garden and out onto the pathway to the town below, a skip in my step. The wind blows in my hair. All is as it ought to be. I almost want to sing, like something out of a really bad holovid. Have you ever had those moments where you feel furious at dream? Where it is so perfect, so much kinder then reality, and suddenly it is snatched away from you, like a child robbed of a gift she has just been given? Suddenly, without warning, something changes, and everything is now very wrong. I feel frail, weak. There is a coldness in the back of my head, and I smell something out of place. A sickly sweet, foul and bitter rot. I try to catch my breath, but there is some manner of fluid in my throat, and I can only take short, sharp gasps. I look down... ...And see my legs, which I suddenly realize I cannot feel, twist and snap, making a horrible creaking moan as they do. The flesh on them rends, blood splattering all over the ground. Shards and warped splinters of osteoplastic, their reflective surfaces glimmering in the sun, scatter over the street below like tiny jewels, artificial marrow oozing out of them, becoming black and fetid as it does. I fall. I try to reach out with my arms and stop myself, but they shatter, as well. I attempt to howl in agony; My entire jaw dislocates and falls loose, the "bone" crumbling into dust and the flesh sliding off eagerly, metamorphosing into a dismal red slush , reduced to raw biomass. In horror, I plummet downward, my head striking the earth with the most awful of wet crunches. I feel my innards drain out of my chest, organs falling from my stomach and popping absurdly, like balloons. My eyes become grey and lifeless, my own mind rotting as I still dwell within it. My skull collapses in on itself... But I feel nothing. At some point, I simply... Left? I seem to drift, formless, from my body. I watch it below me, slowly reducing itself back to it's base components; Decaying until nothing is left but foul, black liquid and bitter dust, in a puddle around my clothes. I feel cold, exposed in a manner worse then I have ever felt. I feel free from all bonds, but unable to exercise it, whatever remains of me now seemingly paralyzed. As the dream ends, I am carried away by the wind, unable to do anything but accept it my fate. My home, and all that which is known to me, falls further and further into the horizon. I think I'm going to start sleeping less.

Stray Kite

I feel a little lonely, sometimes. Well, quite often, really.

I hope that doesn't make me weak. Though it probably does.

I don't really have a good reason for it. It is not as if I don't have many friends and family who care about me back on the homeworld, or that other Capsuleers are utterly unwilling to speak with me. Many even treat me with more kindness then I likely deserve.

However, I... I confess that I often feel quite lost, in spite of this. Filled to the brim with worries, discontent, fears, such that they overflow and make me act a fool... Without anyone to whom I can relate, to whom I can trust in.

This world that I have entered, when these implants where placed in the back of my skull, is still very much alien to me. And I have never been good with change, not since the days where I would spend the first week of every school I transferred to skulking about during the day and weeping to myself in disgust of my failure to make friends at night. Many things about it make me very afraid, Things that I can do, that I am expected to do... It is all a little too much. No. More then a little.

And more then that, space itself, when I am out and alone, fills me with a deep and profound sense of solitude. The sheer vastness of it, the lack of any sense of scale save for that which is maddening, and utter absence of, well, anything, save for the light of distant stars.

Sometimes, when I am alone, so divorced from life as I have always known it, I feel a terrible feeling pouring into me, a gentle whisper flowing into my soul. That everything else is but a small and trivial thing, easily forgotten, and that this world - this vast and empty wasteland, without life, without laws, without all the little things that humanity has slowly built itself in both physical and mental terms over the years - is what it utterly true. What is utterly, totally real.

It is almost like she mentioned to me, back when... Well, that's something to think about for another time, I think.

The point is, it has left me feeling ungrounded, like a stray kite blowing in the wind. I am filled with questions that demand answers, and when the mind cannot find others from which it might receive them, it tends to try to answer them itself, in the worst of all ways. Constantly questioning, comparing, without any context of rationality and reason. Breaking down it's own framework until nothing seems indisputably true, any longer.

Gods and spirits, I just read over what I wrote, and it barely even made sense. What am I doing?

The point is that I have no one to whom I can relate to. My friends and family - Kind, yes, but they could not hope to understand any of this. Other Capsuleers... Most of them are as alien to me as anything else in this life. None think as I do, seeming to operate on a level I cannot even comprehend. The few that act truly like normal people seem largely disinterested in me, absorbed in their own, more important affairs, that I could not imagine how to penetrate.

And the few that reached out to me when I first became a Capsuleer, that seemed genuinely caring, have vanished without a trace, died, or in one case, simply forgotten me.

Perhaps even they only cared out of pity. And pity is much harder to garner with a 6 month old license then a fresh one, I think.

I do not know what to do, at times. I truly don't. There seems nowhere I can go, none to whom I feel right reaching out to. Perhaps I would have been better off staying where I was, in spite of my fathers wishes, and the... Call, I felt, to do so. I feel trapped, caught between being a Capsuleer, immortal, fearless and driven, and simply a normal person. The person who I have always been.

Spirits, when did I become wont to complain so much?

I don't even know what my problem is. I just need to focus, and think positively. Forget all this nonsense...

I really ought to lie down.

Denial

I mentioned a conversation I had on the Summit. I suppose I should probably go into it. Like I mentioned earlier, this sort of pertains to the thoughts I was having a few days ago, about how being a pod pilot makes everything you do have so much more of an impact, or something.

I was speaking to a few people - A DUST Operative, a very old Caldari pilot, and a some others - about how Capsuleers behave. (Well, actually, this was at tail end of a spectacularly and frustratingly long dialogue about who has more freedoms between Capsuleers and the Mercenaries (For reference, I was arguing for the ones who can fly), but that's a story for another time.) We were talking about how most of the people there seemed ludicrously laid back, casual, and unintellectual considering their occupation and the amount of power they have, and how bizarrely Capsuleers behave in general, when I suddenly realized something.

I don't consider myself a Capsuleer. Even though I am one. And have been. For months.

Why is this?

I talk to Capsuleers more then baseliners, as of late. I spend hours a day communing idly on the Summit and other channels, conversing with a couple over mail, and even occasionally bantering with some of the ones lurking about the system I'm in. (Better to know the sharks before they try to swallow you, right?) And, of course, I spend most of my time doing Capsuleer things, usually in-pod. In fact, I'd estimate that at this point I'm in the blasted thing for the better part of my waking life. It is the obvious reality.

Yet... I still do not count myself amongst their ranks, in spite of it. Despite my involvement, I feel like an observer, not a participant. Very close to their world, yes - To the point of pushing my hands and face against the glass, like a curious child immaturely peeking into the business of her elders - But still, utterly, in my own. In the one belonging to the rest of humanity.

I suppose the reason for this is that I simply cannot believe it. Though I know I am one, part of my brain simply refuses to accept it - Considers it so impossibly absurd that I could have risen to to such a level, as I spoke the other day. To possess such incredible power and wealth...

...No, that's not the reason. It might be a part of it, but it isn't the one that really matters.

I was about 15 - Give or take, I can't quite recall - When Capsuleers, in the modern definition of the term, first began to emerge. I already knew a fair bit about the technology (My uncle was a Capsuleer before they developed the cloning tech properly, and managed to last a couple years before getting killed) but still, the whole affair was... Bizzare. Chilling. I remember seeing the entire thing unfold from the perspective of a normal, if somewhat well-off and thus more easily privvy to cluster wide news, person. The first reliable cloning tech being perfected. The early stories of them devastating whole fleets by themselves. The tremendous booms of wealth as their efforts began to flow back in the State.

 And shortly following, the accounts of the first few turning to piracy, then more, and then entire alliances of outlaws being formed, carving empires for themselves amongst distant stars... The tales of bloodshed on such a scale that it would make Omir himself blush, perhaps.

All while I lived as any other teenager did, more or less, keeping to myself and studying the teachings of the sect, idling my days away without true care for such matters. They seemed, and were, impossibly distant from me. As far and untouchable as the most distant and fleeting of lights in the heavens. ...Yet just as terrifying, were they ever to be close.

 I talked to Silias Vitalia today - The blooder woman who holds parties for people more important then I am, if I remember - And she spoke of how it is the nature of our kind to kill. She mentioned "Bodycount", casually, and said that such is not a result of Capsuleer Dementia. It is simply how we are. How we should be. That I should embrace this nature, just as a bird should fall from the nest to test it's wings. As if it was something inherent. Obviously inherent.

It is not just her, either. Everywhere I look, I am reminded that this is how Capsuleers are, as surely as the fish swim and the clouds crawl across the sky. The mercenary I talked about earlier (I can't recall his name, for some blasted reason) called me - Well, called us - "Gods of destruction". At the time, I thought it was absurd. Melodramatic. To the point it must've been a joke. And it hurt me, more then it should have.

...But, in truth, a few years past, I would likely have called myself the same, in perhaps only slightly kinder terms. Without a hint of irony, and with a great deal of resentment.

I do not see myself as a Capsuleer because I do not truly accept what it entails, what everyone knows it to entail. The power, the fear... The death, on a scale so massive that I cannot comprehend it on an emotional level at all. The callous disregard for life and the affairs of lesser beings, if not from ill intent, then from simple ignorance of their own actions.

I don't want to think of myself of that. I cannot be that. I may have killed, but I have done so only in self defense, doing everything I can to avoid combat. And I have counted every life I have been forced to take... Around 860, at last count... So that I do not succumb to the cognitive dissonance that seems to plague all pilots. So that I do not become as they are. What they are.

I am different to them. All of them. I know I am.

Or am I simply in denial? It's not as if I'm somehow obligated to keep doing this. I've almost accomplished what I set out to do, what my father asked of me. And I have seen much of the stars, enough to satisfy anyones sense of wonder and curiosity. People pointed out - If I was truly sickened by this life, I could simply stop. I would stop, rather.

Would I not?