Ryven had mostly healed in the days following the crash. He had awoken hours later in the field, the night air cool and damp on his skin. He was dressed adequately for the weather, clothed as he was in a jacket, short sleeved shirt, and cargo pants. His boots were also quite fitting for the occasion, strong and resilient as they were. He was also fortunate that the planet's climate was a temperate one. He had not really surveyed the planet prior to his crash, so he wasn't sure of much beyond what he could tell right away, that it was a fertile planet with a decent atmosphere, slightly on the thin side, and temperatures that would not present him much difficulty. Based on this information, he concluded it was very unlikely there were no other human inhabitants. However, he was not ready to meet any of them. For now, he needed to establish shelter and settle in. So, he had built himself a decent shack out of local timber he had felled for himself. It was nothing fancy. It had a simple mat made of reeds and grass for him to sleep on. It had dirt floors which he covered in moss to absorb the morning dew and regulate the temperature. It had a roof to keep out the rain. He had thatched it with additional tall grasses and reeds and then coated it in a layer of mud which had baked well enough to seal the roof. Outside he had built a campfire pit which he used to stay warm during the early evenings and also to cook what game he could catch. He had found a nearby lake that he could fish and the local forests contained small game which he could feed on. He had quickly adapted to surviving in this habitat. Not that I didn't have some training in this already. Life varies from planet to planet, system to system, but the basic rules apply everywhere.
Each night, while sitting by his campfire, he would converse with the strange whispering voice that spoke to him. He still did not who it was he spoke with, but the discussions had become increasingly more involved, but always they centered around the subject of justice and how best to achieve it.
So, is justice a shield then for the powerless? Or is it a sword wielded by the strong for the purpose of those wronged?
The voice replied. "Neither is sufficient without the other, is it?"
A sword without a shield is still a sword. A shield without a sword is a dish on which to serve your enemy his victory. Surely the sword is better.
"A sword or a shield without the proper purpose serve only as a bed for rust."
I see. Those who have these tools are bound by basic duty to use them. Justice, then, is both a sword and a shield, depending on the circumstance.
"You are learning. Though, knowing the proper circumstance is not something which comes quickly or easily. Justice for one may be injustice to another. How do you tell what the greater justice is? Across a vastness such as this New Eden, how does the calculation go? Where do the ripples end?"
I don't know. Will I ever know?
"Perhaps. Perhaps not. When you are ready, you will know what it is you must do."
Don't I also have a duty to my friends, my comrades, my Empress?
"Your duty to your friends, your comrades, and your Empress doe not include participating in and exacerbating further injustice does it? Also, remember the old saying about empires."
I do remember. 'An empire long united must divide. Long divided, must unite.' I don't actually know where that saying originates.
"That saying was ancient before your ancestors ever passed through the EVE gate into New Eden. Its roots are beyond recollection. Perhaps because it has always been true. It is the maxim of the dynastic cycle. All empires must eventually divide and all divided nations must eventually reunite into empires. No empire arises from nothingness. All rise from the ashes of the previous one, like an immortal Phoenix. The body dies in conflagration but the spirit is born anew in a new form. The cycle goes on. You know this. You are Caldari. You are a pragmatist. Such reality has not escaped you."
Ryven nodded unnecessarily. That is true. Though, such thoughts are seldom consolation to those caught in the conflagration. Nor does it ease the toil of those responsible for the rebirth. Human trials have always been dire for those whose lot it is to realize human ambitions.
"Human ambition is a double-edged sword. Without it, humans stagnate and wither on the vine. Yet, individual ambition also propagates injustice. One cannot fulfill ambition without crushing those caught between them and their goal."
It all seems quite hopeless.
"You're not here to save the universe. Nor to change the human condition."
Then what is my purpose? Ryven wondered. He did not receive an answer. Whatever his mission was to be, for now he must stay here, live off the land in squalor, and commune with this spirit until all became clear. How long that would be, and what toll it would take from him, was anyone's guess.
Ryven doused the fire and sighed along with it as steam rose from the now quenched embers. He walked the seven paces to the door to his little hut and once inside, doffed his jacket and boots before laying down on his mat. Whatever answers he was seeking, he looked forward to his dreams. In his dreams he was reunited with his friends back in the good times before he ruined everything. He wondered what they were up to as he drifted off to sleep.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Whispers in the Night
Penance
6/18
What if it were all for nothing? Ryven wondered to himself. He had left the EVE Gate, the whispering growing too frequent and too disquieting. What if removing the old Ryven had just been a futile gesture? Was he also going mad? Was he hallucinating the whispers? Ryven shook his head, trying to clear his mind. What good does it do to worry over it? What can I do about it?
He had received a reply from Kat, thanking him and attempting to explain to her reasons for resorting to torture. She didn't have to do that. It's not like I could really have told her no. His thoughts turned to her often. He never really had the opportunity to say goodbye properly when she left. I did have my own colossal mountain of shit to deal with at the time. Fuck you, Ryven. She had sort of disappeared from his life. That's why her message had been so jarring. How much have you changed, Kat? You were always a top notch fighter, but this is different. Of course, he had changed too, hadn't he? Of course I've changed. But, then again, there's no escaping the fact that this person that I am now is just a fictional person created by Dr. Tobit. I'm a parasite, an infestation that took over, like one of those parasitic fungi that invades insects and drives them mad. The anger hit him with the force of a clenched fist, straight behind his eyes. He lashed out involuntarily with his fist and struck the bulkhead. He felt one of his fingers break. Teeth clenching through the pain, he clutched his injured hand in his uninjured left hand and held it against his chest. "Fuck." He said to no one. He examined his broken finger, the third one on his right hand, checking to see how badly he had damaged it. It hurts, but it looks like a fairly minor fracture. Fuck it, it will be fine.
He sat down in his chair in his tiny quarters. The Manticore class is not a roomy vessel and his quarters were not adorned with much in the way of furnishing or decor. He had a small table, a chair, a bunk, and a few drawers to hold his belongings. The lighting was a plain dim white light that managed somehow to cast shadows in the corners, despite the room's small dimensions. There was a bottle of vodka on the table and he took a quick sip of it. The sudden warm rush of the alcohol was refreshing, so he took a longer second sip. What am I even doing out here running at a snail's pace from star to star? What am I even searching for? He listened closely, hoping there might be an answer. Then he realized how ridiculous that idea was and took another long drink from his bottle. Whatever it is, I hope I know it when I find it. If I find it. If it's even something that can be found. That would be my luck, wouldn't it? Search the goddamn cluster for something only to find it isn't even something that can be found, some fool's errand. Self-discovery is such a fucking drag.
Ryven took a last sip of his vodka and climbed into his bunk to get some rest and hopefully quiet his mind.
*********************************************************************************
The meteor began a century before as a chunk of the hull of a cargo vessel for delivery of supplies between the local planets and outposts of the system. The ship had suffered a tragedy when local pirates attacked it, immobilized it, killed the crew, and took the cargo. The chunk of hull had flown off with the force of the explosion that had breached that part of the ship. Spinning and whirling with no frictional forces, it continued on at the same speed it had been traveling. Thus its long journey began. For a century it traveled through the system, its course altered by the gravitational pulls of the other planets and moons of the system and always trapped by the gravity of the orange star at the center of the system.
Today, however, it's journey would end when it finally collided with another object in space, one not visible to the naked eye, a cloaked vessel sitting still near the edge of the system.
*********************************************************************************
Ordinarily, Ryven's ship would have been able to avoid the collision. Ordinarily, the ship would have had a full crew compliment. As it was, no one noticed the debris hurtling toward them. The four ton chunk of hull struck the Penance, overwhelmed the shields, and struck the ship's engines.
Ryven awoke with the jarring impact and the sudden cacophany of blaring alarms. He was thrown from his bunk and crashed hard onto his face on the cold metal floor. His jaw shot streaks of pain through his vision. "Fuck!"
He rushed to the capsuleer bay of the ship only to find the equipment too damaged for him to utilize it. "Fuck!" He'd have to do it the old fashioned way. He ran up to the ship's bridge. Ryven had a policy of keeping a fully functioning bridge on his ships in order to allow for this very possibility. That being said, he had not had to use it in a while. Still, he had all of Ryven's memories and he had spent decades on ships that weren't rigged for capsuleers. Of course, he had a minimal crew, no more than three people on board other than himself. He wondered how many were still functional.
He arrived on the tiny bridge to find two crew members already trying to fight the damage. One was an older man with a scraggly reddish beard and the beginnings of a paunch. The other was a woman in her early thirties with short cropped black hair with blue tips. She looked exhausted, so, Ryven assumed she had been on watch when the ship was damaged. Ryven spoke to her first. "Hargrave, right?"
She nodded, her attention on the display in front of her.
"Status?"
She shook her head and he could see the lines of worry etched on her face. "I don't want to sound alarmist, but, I think a conservative estimate is we're royally fucked, sir."
Under different circumstances, Ryven might have chuckled. It was a shame she was probably going to be dead in the next ten minutes. Shit snowballs really fast on a ship. "What hit us?"
"I'm not sure, sir. Meteor? Looked like a chunk of debris, probably ten meters by ten meters, a lot of mass or a lot of velocity."
Ryven nodded. That made sense. "Where did it hit?"
"Port quarter, engines. We've got no maneuvering."
"Life support?"
"We're good for the moment. But, the maneuvering is a real problem." She pointed out the forward viewport. "We can't dodge that."
Ryven looked up and saw the planet rapidly filling his view. "Well, shit."
*********************************************************************************
Ryven had done everything he could to alter the Penance's attitude as it entered the planet's atmosphere. He had forced a mechanical breakdown of one of the ship's life support reservoirs and it had vented its contents out into space with enough force to alter the ship's course to a much shallower angle. He wasn't worried about the heat of the reentry, but with no chance of maneuvering in the planet's atmosphere, he needed to neutralize the angle of impact. He had managed it, but only barely. He was lucky to have pulled it off. Well, sort of. He glanced down at the mangled corpses of his two crew. He had failed them. He wondered what sort of lives they led when they weren't serving him? Had they families? Children? Unlike him, they wouldn't wake up in a new body lightyears away with only vague memories of the pain and the terror. Instead they died violently when the ship impacted and threw them forward at several hundred meters per second. He had had to pry them off of the forward bulkhead of the bridge. He still wasn't sure why he had done that.
He looked around at his surroundings. The planet was temperate, which was good. He had crash landed in a field, which also had helped. He had been saved from demise by pure luck. He had strapped himself into a chair, the same as the others. Unlike the others, though, his chair had not detached from the deck when the ship crashed. The impact had still cracked some ribs and he may have broken his clavicle. It was extremely sore, at the least, and his breathing was labored. Still, he had survived. Wait. Why is that a good thing? I'm a capsuleer. I would have woken up in a new clone light years away.
He pondered that for a moment. He heard the whispering again, but this time he could make out the words.
"It's not time to return yet." The whisper was very clear, but it seemed to be coming from outside of him, as though someone was whispering directly into his ear. "You're not ready."
I'm not ready for what? He thought to himself.
"You're not ready to take up the mission."
Mission?
"Justice."
Justice? What sort of mission is that? How the fuck am I to accomplish something as amorphous and goddamn hopeless as that?
"That's why you're not ready."
Ryven may have been dazed from the crash, but at the moment that actually made sense to him. His eyelids had gotten very heavy, after all, and it was becoming very difficult to keep upright. He plodded over to what looked like a very soft bit of ground and dropped to his knees before laying down on the soft soil in the middle of the grassy field.
His eyes closed and before he knew it, he drifted off to sleep with the sun sinking slowly on the horizon.
6/18
What if it were all for nothing? Ryven wondered to himself. He had left the EVE Gate, the whispering growing too frequent and too disquieting. What if removing the old Ryven had just been a futile gesture? Was he also going mad? Was he hallucinating the whispers? Ryven shook his head, trying to clear his mind. What good does it do to worry over it? What can I do about it?
He had received a reply from Kat, thanking him and attempting to explain to her reasons for resorting to torture. She didn't have to do that. It's not like I could really have told her no. His thoughts turned to her often. He never really had the opportunity to say goodbye properly when she left. I did have my own colossal mountain of shit to deal with at the time. Fuck you, Ryven. She had sort of disappeared from his life. That's why her message had been so jarring. How much have you changed, Kat? You were always a top notch fighter, but this is different. Of course, he had changed too, hadn't he? Of course I've changed. But, then again, there's no escaping the fact that this person that I am now is just a fictional person created by Dr. Tobit. I'm a parasite, an infestation that took over, like one of those parasitic fungi that invades insects and drives them mad. The anger hit him with the force of a clenched fist, straight behind his eyes. He lashed out involuntarily with his fist and struck the bulkhead. He felt one of his fingers break. Teeth clenching through the pain, he clutched his injured hand in his uninjured left hand and held it against his chest. "Fuck." He said to no one. He examined his broken finger, the third one on his right hand, checking to see how badly he had damaged it. It hurts, but it looks like a fairly minor fracture. Fuck it, it will be fine.
He sat down in his chair in his tiny quarters. The Manticore class is not a roomy vessel and his quarters were not adorned with much in the way of furnishing or decor. He had a small table, a chair, a bunk, and a few drawers to hold his belongings. The lighting was a plain dim white light that managed somehow to cast shadows in the corners, despite the room's small dimensions. There was a bottle of vodka on the table and he took a quick sip of it. The sudden warm rush of the alcohol was refreshing, so he took a longer second sip. What am I even doing out here running at a snail's pace from star to star? What am I even searching for? He listened closely, hoping there might be an answer. Then he realized how ridiculous that idea was and took another long drink from his bottle. Whatever it is, I hope I know it when I find it. If I find it. If it's even something that can be found. That would be my luck, wouldn't it? Search the goddamn cluster for something only to find it isn't even something that can be found, some fool's errand. Self-discovery is such a fucking drag.
Ryven took a last sip of his vodka and climbed into his bunk to get some rest and hopefully quiet his mind.
*********************************************************************************
The meteor began a century before as a chunk of the hull of a cargo vessel for delivery of supplies between the local planets and outposts of the system. The ship had suffered a tragedy when local pirates attacked it, immobilized it, killed the crew, and took the cargo. The chunk of hull had flown off with the force of the explosion that had breached that part of the ship. Spinning and whirling with no frictional forces, it continued on at the same speed it had been traveling. Thus its long journey began. For a century it traveled through the system, its course altered by the gravitational pulls of the other planets and moons of the system and always trapped by the gravity of the orange star at the center of the system.
Today, however, it's journey would end when it finally collided with another object in space, one not visible to the naked eye, a cloaked vessel sitting still near the edge of the system.
*********************************************************************************
Ordinarily, Ryven's ship would have been able to avoid the collision. Ordinarily, the ship would have had a full crew compliment. As it was, no one noticed the debris hurtling toward them. The four ton chunk of hull struck the Penance, overwhelmed the shields, and struck the ship's engines.
Ryven awoke with the jarring impact and the sudden cacophany of blaring alarms. He was thrown from his bunk and crashed hard onto his face on the cold metal floor. His jaw shot streaks of pain through his vision. "Fuck!"
He rushed to the capsuleer bay of the ship only to find the equipment too damaged for him to utilize it. "Fuck!" He'd have to do it the old fashioned way. He ran up to the ship's bridge. Ryven had a policy of keeping a fully functioning bridge on his ships in order to allow for this very possibility. That being said, he had not had to use it in a while. Still, he had all of Ryven's memories and he had spent decades on ships that weren't rigged for capsuleers. Of course, he had a minimal crew, no more than three people on board other than himself. He wondered how many were still functional.
He arrived on the tiny bridge to find two crew members already trying to fight the damage. One was an older man with a scraggly reddish beard and the beginnings of a paunch. The other was a woman in her early thirties with short cropped black hair with blue tips. She looked exhausted, so, Ryven assumed she had been on watch when the ship was damaged. Ryven spoke to her first. "Hargrave, right?"
She nodded, her attention on the display in front of her.
"Status?"
She shook her head and he could see the lines of worry etched on her face. "I don't want to sound alarmist, but, I think a conservative estimate is we're royally fucked, sir."
Under different circumstances, Ryven might have chuckled. It was a shame she was probably going to be dead in the next ten minutes. Shit snowballs really fast on a ship. "What hit us?"
"I'm not sure, sir. Meteor? Looked like a chunk of debris, probably ten meters by ten meters, a lot of mass or a lot of velocity."
Ryven nodded. That made sense. "Where did it hit?"
"Port quarter, engines. We've got no maneuvering."
"Life support?"
"We're good for the moment. But, the maneuvering is a real problem." She pointed out the forward viewport. "We can't dodge that."
Ryven looked up and saw the planet rapidly filling his view. "Well, shit."
*********************************************************************************
Ryven had done everything he could to alter the Penance's attitude as it entered the planet's atmosphere. He had forced a mechanical breakdown of one of the ship's life support reservoirs and it had vented its contents out into space with enough force to alter the ship's course to a much shallower angle. He wasn't worried about the heat of the reentry, but with no chance of maneuvering in the planet's atmosphere, he needed to neutralize the angle of impact. He had managed it, but only barely. He was lucky to have pulled it off. Well, sort of. He glanced down at the mangled corpses of his two crew. He had failed them. He wondered what sort of lives they led when they weren't serving him? Had they families? Children? Unlike him, they wouldn't wake up in a new body lightyears away with only vague memories of the pain and the terror. Instead they died violently when the ship impacted and threw them forward at several hundred meters per second. He had had to pry them off of the forward bulkhead of the bridge. He still wasn't sure why he had done that.
He looked around at his surroundings. The planet was temperate, which was good. He had crash landed in a field, which also had helped. He had been saved from demise by pure luck. He had strapped himself into a chair, the same as the others. Unlike the others, though, his chair had not detached from the deck when the ship crashed. The impact had still cracked some ribs and he may have broken his clavicle. It was extremely sore, at the least, and his breathing was labored. Still, he had survived. Wait. Why is that a good thing? I'm a capsuleer. I would have woken up in a new clone light years away.
He pondered that for a moment. He heard the whispering again, but this time he could make out the words.
"It's not time to return yet." The whisper was very clear, but it seemed to be coming from outside of him, as though someone was whispering directly into his ear. "You're not ready."
I'm not ready for what? He thought to himself.
"You're not ready to take up the mission."
Mission?
"Justice."
Justice? What sort of mission is that? How the fuck am I to accomplish something as amorphous and goddamn hopeless as that?
"That's why you're not ready."
Ryven may have been dazed from the crash, but at the moment that actually made sense to him. His eyelids had gotten very heavy, after all, and it was becoming very difficult to keep upright. He plodded over to what looked like a very soft bit of ground and dropped to his knees before laying down on the soft soil in the middle of the grassy field.
His eyes closed and before he knew it, he drifted off to sleep with the sun sinking slowly on the horizon.
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Easier in the Abstract
Everything is simpler in the abstract. Anyone can say, "It is always better to be honest." Of course, that sounds good, and definitely honesty seems the best policy if one does not think more than perhaps one step ahead. However, given minimal time a person can hypothesize any number of situations where honesty is actually a shitty idea. Justice, Ryven considered, was indeed an easier ideal in the abstract than it was in the concrete. He was faced with a conundrum, a dilemma from which no clear solution could be readily contrived.
His newfound morning routine of exercises followed by prolonged meditation had been interrupted by a shrill alarm from his neocom. He had received a message, short, terse, and familiar, from someone he had not expected. Kat. The message was not a warm one. It was direct and to the point, which told Ryven it was definitely authentic. Kat had always been rather quick to get to the point, never miring herself in unnecessary banality. Simply put, Kat needed something from him, something that she knew he had: his sadism.
But, I put that behind me. Ryven pored over the words, few that they were, finding their meaning to be clear. "I need your advice on how to get information from someone." If you send a message to a librarian, they'll tell you to read a book. If you send a message to a doctor, they'll tell you what medicine to take. If you send a message to someone like Ryven, there's a particular kind of answer you are looking for. Or at least, that was the old Ryven. So I am called upon to cause yet more injustice. But, can I? Ryven stared out the main viewport of the Penance at the glowing expanse of ethereal wisps of gas and dust that formed a nebula many light years across. He gazed at it, something tickling the back of his consciousness. He studied it's haunting sickly green length from one end to the other, seeing the mottling of brown and yellow shades twining through it. It was a truly majestic sight. He remembered his earliest studies in astronomy. The particles in a nebula are actually miles apart from one another. Were a person to actually be within the nebula, they would not realize it because it can only be seen from light years away. The particles are that small and that far apart.
Holy shit. That's it, isn't it? Ryven's thoughts scaled from the macro to the micro. Patterns are repeated at all scales of existence. The same shapes and forms that exist in the cosmos are mirrored in the patterns and shapes found in the microcosms found under the most intense magnification. What mattered was the scale at which they were viewed! Of course torture is an injustice when seen apart from its context. However, what is the context? Kat didn't say what the information was or who the poor holder of that information happened to be. The information might be vital. The person might deserve the pain they receive. The injustice done to him might actually be justice for things that the person had done or would soon do. Justice needed to be seen not as the individual particular acts, but rather as the nebulous aggregate of many millions of acts. Or perhaps even a smaller subset of acts. The trick was the scale at which it was analyzed.
But, there's another reason, too, isn't there? He thought to himself. He hadn't really wanted to think about it. I wronged Kat. I wronged her repeatedly. I hurt her. I neglected her. I treated her unjustly. I owe her this. Self-sacrifice.
He stared back out into the vastness. Trillions upon trillions of people, all of them in the abstract. None were visible. None tangible. He was alone. Who we really are is who we are when we're alone. The real us, devoid of masks, devoid of pretense. The only expectations we must live up to when we are truly alone are the ones we set for ourselves. This is the most naked I may ever be. Have I shown my true colors right here? Is this all I can ever be? A killer? A sadist? A butcher? She didn't contact you so you could tell her to "ask nicely." She contacted you because she wants to get information in the sort of way where you need a mop afterward. The sort of way where you don't get to make a follow-up appointment. If I answer her, I'm condemning a man to death in a violent, excruciating, prolonged, and absolutely brutal fashion. If I don't help her, then I have failed her again. He looked out into the void again. As always, he found only himself and he knew what he must do.
He began to write a reply, his hand trembling as he did.
Some things are easier in the abstract.
His newfound morning routine of exercises followed by prolonged meditation had been interrupted by a shrill alarm from his neocom. He had received a message, short, terse, and familiar, from someone he had not expected. Kat. The message was not a warm one. It was direct and to the point, which told Ryven it was definitely authentic. Kat had always been rather quick to get to the point, never miring herself in unnecessary banality. Simply put, Kat needed something from him, something that she knew he had: his sadism.
But, I put that behind me. Ryven pored over the words, few that they were, finding their meaning to be clear. "I need your advice on how to get information from someone." If you send a message to a librarian, they'll tell you to read a book. If you send a message to a doctor, they'll tell you what medicine to take. If you send a message to someone like Ryven, there's a particular kind of answer you are looking for. Or at least, that was the old Ryven. So I am called upon to cause yet more injustice. But, can I? Ryven stared out the main viewport of the Penance at the glowing expanse of ethereal wisps of gas and dust that formed a nebula many light years across. He gazed at it, something tickling the back of his consciousness. He studied it's haunting sickly green length from one end to the other, seeing the mottling of brown and yellow shades twining through it. It was a truly majestic sight. He remembered his earliest studies in astronomy. The particles in a nebula are actually miles apart from one another. Were a person to actually be within the nebula, they would not realize it because it can only be seen from light years away. The particles are that small and that far apart.
Holy shit. That's it, isn't it? Ryven's thoughts scaled from the macro to the micro. Patterns are repeated at all scales of existence. The same shapes and forms that exist in the cosmos are mirrored in the patterns and shapes found in the microcosms found under the most intense magnification. What mattered was the scale at which they were viewed! Of course torture is an injustice when seen apart from its context. However, what is the context? Kat didn't say what the information was or who the poor holder of that information happened to be. The information might be vital. The person might deserve the pain they receive. The injustice done to him might actually be justice for things that the person had done or would soon do. Justice needed to be seen not as the individual particular acts, but rather as the nebulous aggregate of many millions of acts. Or perhaps even a smaller subset of acts. The trick was the scale at which it was analyzed.
But, there's another reason, too, isn't there? He thought to himself. He hadn't really wanted to think about it. I wronged Kat. I wronged her repeatedly. I hurt her. I neglected her. I treated her unjustly. I owe her this. Self-sacrifice.
He stared back out into the vastness. Trillions upon trillions of people, all of them in the abstract. None were visible. None tangible. He was alone. Who we really are is who we are when we're alone. The real us, devoid of masks, devoid of pretense. The only expectations we must live up to when we are truly alone are the ones we set for ourselves. This is the most naked I may ever be. Have I shown my true colors right here? Is this all I can ever be? A killer? A sadist? A butcher? She didn't contact you so you could tell her to "ask nicely." She contacted you because she wants to get information in the sort of way where you need a mop afterward. The sort of way where you don't get to make a follow-up appointment. If I answer her, I'm condemning a man to death in a violent, excruciating, prolonged, and absolutely brutal fashion. If I don't help her, then I have failed her again. He looked out into the void again. As always, he found only himself and he knew what he must do.
He began to write a reply, his hand trembling as he did.
Some things are easier in the abstract.
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Ronin
EVE Gate - Genesis Region
0917 6/9
Ryven's Manticore Penance
The massive wormhole took up the majority of Ryven's field of vision. In the back of his mind, he knew that many people journeyed to the EVE gate as a sort of pilgrimage. He wondered, when they stare at it, what do they see? What words does it speak to them? What revelations do they receive?
Staring out at the slowly swirling mass of light, chaotic yet somehow simultaneously serene, he saw humanity's past, but also its future. The EVE gate was a singularity. It was the point at which all things converge. All of New Eden came from this massive rip in spacetime. Inevitably, one day they must also return through it. This region was named Genesis, but it might also one day be named Exodus. Still, such thoughts were vanities that he could ill afford. He didn't come here to ponder the EVE gate, no matter how it whispered to him in his dreams. No. He came here because he was looking for something. Solace, maybe? Redemption? A vision? Was he every bit as much a pilgrim as so many others? He knew from his time as the other Ryven that he, at least one version of him, had been here before a few years back. As with most cosmic phenomena, it seemed unchanged by the passage of time. Of course, until very recently, a human lifespan was nothing in the cosmic timeline. The capsuleer changed that, or at least had the potential to change that.
Weariness washed over him at that thought. That was the part that no capsuleer ever really was prepared for: the knowledge that they might honestly live for millennia, or even more potentially.
How could a human mind grasp that? What sort of horrors might such a lifespan wreak upon a human psyche? How much accrued guilt and remorse might one person be able to stand? Perhaps that explained the widespread sociopathy he saw in many of his fellow capsuleers. The sociopath wasn't concerned with such matters. In a way, the sociopath might be the next phase of human psychological evolution.
He laughed to himself. How pointless is that thinking? I only just became ME for the first time in a decade, and maybe even for the first time ever. I'm still not even sure to what extent I am Ryven Krennel, or Haijikioten, or whatever. This persona was invented by some dead scientist as an experiment. The real Ryven, asshole that he was, is gone. Well, mostly. Leela still has him stored on some disk somewhere. And I thought I had it bad.
The truth of the matter was that everything in Ryven's life had basically gone awry. He was a new personality in an old body with a lot of history. His corp, his mission, his friends, all of them had left to go out into null-security space on the fringes and he wasn't ready to make that leap. Missionless, listless, lonely, and unsure of himself, he had hopped into his manticore with a skeleton crew and set off on a random course, drifting from system to system, meditating, thinking, and avoiding human contact. At least, that had been the case at first. He had made a few stops on small planets far from anyone who would know him. He would sit quietly in a bar and watch and listen. He was beginning to get a sense of who he was. Most importantly, he had discovered a certain righteous rage in himself. Everywhere he looked, he saw injustices. Justice was what was missing in New Eden. Sure, there were laws, but the laws were easily evaded and circumvented, for such laws came with meager enforcement the further one got from the central systems. Out on the fringe, the only flavor of justice was revenge. Revenge was a poor substitute for real justice. Real justice was not only retributive, but restorative. Real justice sought to make the wounded whole again. The old Ryven was not interested in justice. The old Ryven was driven only by rage, rage and desire. He rolled that word around on the tip of his tongue. There's some bitterness there. Old loves die hard, it would seem. I don't imagine I'll be seeing her again anytime soon. Even if I did, what would I say?
He shook his head to clear those thoughts. He would see her again. It was inevitable. But, not until he was ready. Not until he also was made whole.
0917 6/9
Ryven's Manticore Penance
The massive wormhole took up the majority of Ryven's field of vision. In the back of his mind, he knew that many people journeyed to the EVE gate as a sort of pilgrimage. He wondered, when they stare at it, what do they see? What words does it speak to them? What revelations do they receive?
Staring out at the slowly swirling mass of light, chaotic yet somehow simultaneously serene, he saw humanity's past, but also its future. The EVE gate was a singularity. It was the point at which all things converge. All of New Eden came from this massive rip in spacetime. Inevitably, one day they must also return through it. This region was named Genesis, but it might also one day be named Exodus. Still, such thoughts were vanities that he could ill afford. He didn't come here to ponder the EVE gate, no matter how it whispered to him in his dreams. No. He came here because he was looking for something. Solace, maybe? Redemption? A vision? Was he every bit as much a pilgrim as so many others? He knew from his time as the other Ryven that he, at least one version of him, had been here before a few years back. As with most cosmic phenomena, it seemed unchanged by the passage of time. Of course, until very recently, a human lifespan was nothing in the cosmic timeline. The capsuleer changed that, or at least had the potential to change that.
Weariness washed over him at that thought. That was the part that no capsuleer ever really was prepared for: the knowledge that they might honestly live for millennia, or even more potentially.
How could a human mind grasp that? What sort of horrors might such a lifespan wreak upon a human psyche? How much accrued guilt and remorse might one person be able to stand? Perhaps that explained the widespread sociopathy he saw in many of his fellow capsuleers. The sociopath wasn't concerned with such matters. In a way, the sociopath might be the next phase of human psychological evolution.
He laughed to himself. How pointless is that thinking? I only just became ME for the first time in a decade, and maybe even for the first time ever. I'm still not even sure to what extent I am Ryven Krennel, or Haijikioten, or whatever. This persona was invented by some dead scientist as an experiment. The real Ryven, asshole that he was, is gone. Well, mostly. Leela still has him stored on some disk somewhere. And I thought I had it bad.
The truth of the matter was that everything in Ryven's life had basically gone awry. He was a new personality in an old body with a lot of history. His corp, his mission, his friends, all of them had left to go out into null-security space on the fringes and he wasn't ready to make that leap. Missionless, listless, lonely, and unsure of himself, he had hopped into his manticore with a skeleton crew and set off on a random course, drifting from system to system, meditating, thinking, and avoiding human contact. At least, that had been the case at first. He had made a few stops on small planets far from anyone who would know him. He would sit quietly in a bar and watch and listen. He was beginning to get a sense of who he was. Most importantly, he had discovered a certain righteous rage in himself. Everywhere he looked, he saw injustices. Justice was what was missing in New Eden. Sure, there were laws, but the laws were easily evaded and circumvented, for such laws came with meager enforcement the further one got from the central systems. Out on the fringe, the only flavor of justice was revenge. Revenge was a poor substitute for real justice. Real justice was not only retributive, but restorative. Real justice sought to make the wounded whole again. The old Ryven was not interested in justice. The old Ryven was driven only by rage, rage and desire. He rolled that word around on the tip of his tongue. There's some bitterness there. Old loves die hard, it would seem. I don't imagine I'll be seeing her again anytime soon. Even if I did, what would I say?
He shook his head to clear those thoughts. He would see her again. It was inevitable. But, not until he was ready. Not until he also was made whole.
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