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.