So the madness that was my life has calmed. Turned over my apartment and I am back home staying with my parents, well at least for the next few days. I am alone as my father and mother are both working. Even at their age, they love it, I wonder why I didn't. I can't complain because had they not decided to give me my inheritance while they were still alive I would not be on the edge of things. I must admit that without their money and political connections I would never have made it. A capusleer is a means towards riches. Some make more in an hour than many make in a lifetime. Some get podded, killed in their pod (capsule) only to be reborn in a new medical clone in a distant star-base. Some win some lose, some break, some quit.
New Eden is big and well, hard to follow. I have been pouring over news streams, history tomes, anthropology articles, star maps, anything I can get my hands on. My eyes are tired and my mind a bit numb. I will never understand it all. But the good thing is I don't need to. I know enough to understand that when I awake in my medial clone there will be a new pilot orientation for me. I will start in a relatively protected patch of space for training. I exhale.
Tomorrow I will turn in my medical clone physical specifications and neural network profile. I will also need to choose which corporation I will apply for membership to. The corporation I chose determines which space-station will house my medical clone, basically where I will start to live. They will train me through orientation. If I so choose they will provide me with missions on which I can become rich, or lose my ship. I haven't decided on which one just yet. I really don't understand the differences, but in New Eden being a member of a corporation offers distinct advantages. Mostly though I am eager to join all capsuleer corporations. For that I will wait until I compete my orientation. I also won't mess around with the neural networks yet, the idea of remapping them when I know so little seems absurd. A curious feature of the medical clone package is the choices I have in terms of physical design. I could be male, female, fat, thin, blonde, old, young, black, white, tanned, bald, tattooed, with piercings... I have options to adjust features, tailor a nose, cheekbones, eyes, the size of my legs, arms, well the list goes on and on. This really is a new life. I have been working on my physical profile. I am tempted to go with the spirit of this rebirth and completely change things up. I have felt the power of female beauty, why not a shapely figure to go with the perfect face and bright smile. Yet somehow I just don't think a pretty face is going to save me from a pirate intent on killing me for the thrill and perhaps the spare change he can make from looting my wreck. I imagine it might be too disorienting for me to suddenly wake up in a place i've never been, in a life I can't even really imagine and look into a mirror and see a stranger. I am leaning towards having some kind of likeness to myself. It's all too much sometimes.
My neck is stiff from the tension, I rub the back of it and feel the smooth skin where a metallic hole will soon be, well not on my body but on my clone body. I will literally be plugged into my ship via a series of links running down my central nervous system. I will be able to control my ship with my mind, see out via the drone ship camera's again all with my mind. This will give me an advantage over non-capsuleers. They will not able to react as quickly, they will not be one with their ship. My humanity begins to slip. Or does it? I shake my head and try to stop the thinking.
I leave my parents house for another walk on the beach and a flood of memories pours in. I can't stop it. They are joyous ones mostly, i'll let it run for a while. Sometimes this rebirth feels a lot like death. I fight the sadness as I walk back to my parents house. I can see and hear people around me, each caught up in their own lives. I see them in ways I never have before. I am jealous for a moment but it passes. Out of many trillions only a few hundred thousand are capsuleers. I try but simply cannot properly imagine the immensity of over 5,000 solar systems and several thousand wormholes populated by only a tiny fraction of humanity and then only a sliver of them in the form capsuleers. Connecting these systems together by are a series of jump gates, and inter system travel in faster than light speed warp. More sedentary is the larger body humanity who populate only relatively few planets. I will be spending a lot of time alone in space.
Being one with my ship allows me to fly great vessels without the need for any other crew. I will be in my pod, attached to the ship, engulfed and padded in pod goo (a broth of cellular debris to help pad any trauma) and really only needing my brain while aboard. I keep this image in my head and almost shudder. How foreign. Still walking I begin to think about my skill training. What skill books and in what order should I inject them into my brain. How long will it take my brain to learn them? What implants should I add to the slots installed in my central nervous system to make my learning the most efficient. For that I need to know far more than I do now and my mind drifts to more familiar ground and the deadly Minmatar ships. How I have often dreamed of piloting them, in a few days I will. I feel a slight high. We Minmatar have a tradition with our designs honed in recent wars with the Amarr. I suppose what makes us unique from the other factions ships is our emphasis on speed and the flexibility inherent in our designs. You are never quite sure how a Minmatar ship is outfitted, and in this mystery lies an advantage. The names of ships like Rifter or Loki make my heart begin to beat more rapidly. The reality is that I really don't know anything and all this speculative thinking is largely a waste of time. My education really begins when my body dies. I look up and see my parents house and the sadness creeps in again.
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