<A Dead Man's Ship>
[A quiet shape is sitting towards the end of a not particularly crowded bar. 
There is a quiet hum of lazy activity, and the bar is swaddled in the awkward 
grays of artificial twilight. Despite an odd hue to its skin, perhaps the legacy 
of a Shaper ancestor or the enduring design of some gene-smith's art, he is 
clearly human, and clearly lost in thought. Two glasses sit in front of him, one 
an offworld ale, eerily beautiful in the subtlety of its contrasts with those of 
Terra, the other a glass of ice water thinly disguised with a mint leaf. Both 
glasses are untouched, both literally and figuratively, while the man stares 
somehow both at and through them all at once, as if trying to will them to 
complete the act of drinking on their own, or demanding that they return his 
gaze with submission. The vaguely confused motions of the barkeep, unsure now of 
how to serve him, break his brief trance. The man's shape, the complete 
discipline of his stillness only apparent with the liquid nature of his motion, 
twists to direct his dark eyes up and across the marble slab, fixing restless on 
the earnest host. A slight curl appears at the edge of the man's lips. The 
glimmer of a compassionate smile, a subtle smirk born of hubris, or the joy of a 
man rescued from his own mind, the expression is enigmatic, unrevealing, and 
ephemeral. The mouth opens again and he begins to speak, directing his monologue 
towards the barkeep, although it is not clear that the audience he craves 
includes anyone beyond himself.]

"It was a deci-year ago today  well, day/night cycles being skewed "

A momentary pause as he breathes while consulting his data-link.

"No, still today."

He smiles genuinely at the barkeep now, but it quickly melts as his face returns 
to a more melancholy expression. In a tone laced with moments of nostalgia and 
of emptiness, he continues.

"It was a deci-year ago today. We were in a bar, a lot like this one,  in the 
spaceport district outside the capital on Ktah  maybe a little busier." He 
looks down at the two glasses. "Same drinks. Always the same drinks. He  Lauktk 
 he wouldn't ever order anything else. Said that he and his ancestors had been 
drinking this brew and its ancestors since back when the monkey-boys had been 
kind enough to relegate themselves to one planet. Said that if the flavor has 
never been quite the same since the Lightbearers nuked some of the best crop-
land into oblivion, then at least it makes clear that, in comparison to meeting 
humanity, drinking Oolak'kl is not too bad for one's health. I... well, with my 
metabolism  there's never been much point in alcohol consumption, at least not 
in such small quantities." He glances briefly at the contrasting colors of his 
hand and the bar. "I can't speak for what the flavor may have once been, but I 
must admit I find the current one equally unappealing everywhere I've tried it. 
Admittedly, and this is no offense to your fine establishment, shipping costs 
being what they are, I can't say the price is the same off Ktah as on." He looks 
down towards the one empty barstool to his left and slows slightly. "But that 
doesn't really matter now does it? It doesn't really matter at all.

"He'd taken me out to celebrate. In a few hours, he'd be living his dream. The 
deed transfer had finalized, launch inspections had passed - he had a ship. 
After years of mucking around with ships that only came to him in sickness and 
left his hands the moment he had restored them to vibrant health, he had a ship 
all his own." His demeanor intensifies. "You can't know what it meant to him  
his family had been sailors, captains, explorers, and merchants since the Klk'k 
age of sail. His own ship  it wasn't just a dream, it was a birthright delayed 
only by economics and circumstance. It wasn't about money - he was a starship 
mechanic working for the Protectorate at the Ktah shipyards, I'd gone back to 
the academy and was working as a flight instructor  it wasn't about acquiring 
some status symbol  he put every credit he'd saved into that ship. It was about 
freedom, his freedom to sail a new sort of sea, and I was going to help him. I 
was going to helm that ship wherever his freedom took him. Even I can't claim to 
know what it really meant to him, and I knew him as well as any man could. He 
was my brother in arms. He was a bond-mate to my sister  I remember the first 
time I introduced..." His words trail off beneath a frigid gust of mental 
anguish. "I haven't been able to see her in person yet  yes of course I've 
messaged, but you see  you have to understand I couldn't leave, I couldn't... 
the dream is still here... you have to understand, if I could have..."

The loss of composure ends even more abruptly than it began, emotions submitting 
again to a mind well practiced in the arts of control. "We met during our 
UniServe.

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<text below this line has yet to be incorporated>

"There's a certain chill sometimes, when I can't escape remembering it.  When my 
hands brush across the weld lines that make the paint cringe in the subtle 
dismay of a suture, when I see adverts for a new jump drive, when some phantom 
process in my brain convinces me I can still smell the kt'tothan leather that no 
longer covers the cabin seats, as I sit here staring at a half empty stein - I 
cannot outrun reality, and I am left with the knowledge that I pilot a dead 
man's ship.  This cold clings to one's skin, like some sort of shrink-wrapped 
leprosy, and I can't help but wonder if it's going to follow me to every ship 
that I'll ever run.  For I can't stop being a pilot - she beckons, you see; the 
cold vacuum of space moves her lifeless arm, and I am compelled to join the 
legions of ships that, mastless, sail upon her.  Days at a time, scant body-
lengths away from her condemning kiss - and there he'll be - a ghost from selves 
by then long past, waiting for me to join him.  How many times can I refuse 
before I am forced to fold?  How many times can I wake to find myself still 
sane?  Far more, I hope, than my melodramatic flares would lead you to believe.  
I've no urge to dive into those sunless depths.  Happy or no, I have it better 
than many, no worse than most. After all, I was raised by Klk'k; I've had more 
than enough time to outgrow pitying myself merely for being human.

"But the malaise, the facts that birthed it, they do beg the question: where did 
all the golden futures go that we were promised?  Where are the bright tomorrows 
that we dreamt of nearly a millennium ago,  before we walked among the stars?  
Space is dark, but one knows we have brought our own shadows with us.  War.  
Avarice.  Deceit.  Would we have been any better off to have left them behind, 
or would we have suffered for the loss of our most practiced skills?  Or, more 
likely, we did attempt to leave them behind and failed in a traditionally 
miserable fashion.  Perhaps the universe is cruel that way, and the ancient 
philosophers were more wrong than they could imagine; perhaps it is not void 
that nature revolts against, but perfection. 

"Maybe that's why all the older races are gone.  They wandered around and built 
bigger and fancier toys and built bigger and more wondrous monuments to their 
own advancement, but couldn't escape their own imperfections.  But what then?  
Did they, like bickering Greek gods, manage to cast each other off of Olympus?  
Did they decide to exalt that which they could not overcome and crumble in a 
burst of self-destructive decadence? Maybe they just packed up their toys, 
cried, and left in disgust to find a playground with better programmed nanny-
bots, running screaming from the meaninglessness of it all. No - they didn't 
even pack up their toys.  They left us that lovely nano-plague that killed 
billions and regressed or silenced whole disciplines of science and technology. 

"Once you've felt the inexorable grind of the universe's apathy ... you can't 
bring yourself to believe in meaning.  You can't find a way to convince me that 
there's any particular reason that I'm sitting here talking instead of him.  
Fate has no weavers, only the mad spider of chance and the ever-spinning spindle 
of time.  Underneath it all we're not even pawns - pawns can become knights or 
queens - we're nameless particles in some sick, twisted Brownian motion 
colliding every now and again with each other and changing.  We dream up gods to 
play with us, if only so we can pretend to be pawns. We sup on hubris so that we 
can aspire to have names.  It is only a question of which dish we choose to 
partake of. Do we follow the Shapers and seek to assault the glass ceiling of 
perfection without even the knowledge as to what that would mean?  Do we cloak 
ourselves with the counter-empirical idealism of the Andolians, believing that 
all problems can be solved, and that our ability to solve will progress 
indefinitely?  One could retreat to the scared futility of the Purist's status 
quo, or, joining the Unadorned or the Mechanists, give up the pretense of 
desiring to be human.  Is there any solace in the Merchants' proud valuing of 
wealth or the High-Born's pride in their twisted conception of nobility?  I've 
chosen none of these, but I can see the appeal.  Belief in the future, or even 
the present or past, gives you somewhere to hide from the knowledge that tending 
an algae vat that runs itself so that miners overseeing excavation-droids 
that happily run themselves can eat tasteless green wafers with a company logo 
stamped onto them isn't something that's going to make any sizeable portion of 
the universe give a teiktha's ass.

"I'll live, not because there is any reason to, but because I'm alive and 
there's no reason not to be. I have seen space in all her naked glory, and she 
has beckoned me to make her my home. I worked for three months at dockside jobs 
to pay for all the repairs the insurance wouldn't cover, to pay off the medical 
bills - I'm honestly surprised either I or that ship are in mobile condition 
after how I had to land it - if I were capable of giving up, I would have done 
it a long time ago.

"Now, I bet you think this is all just a facade.  I bet you think it's revenge, 
or anger, or somesuch that motivates me: that I rage inside with a desire to 
kill the Luddites who killed my friend.  I felt that briefly then, but I feel 
almost nothing now.  Pirates, the ISO, the Luddites, even the Aera - they're 
all just dancing to the blood rhythms that cause every cell in their bodies to 
join in a choral chant of 'Stay alive! Stay alive!' I can't really blame them 
for it, even if they'll probably blame me if I take the lead in the dance and 
reciprocate their violence. Pity really.  Things would be so much more pleasant 
if we could learn to not step on each others' toes, or claws as the case may be.  
Don't think I don't mourn my friend.  It's just that the blackness of an 
executioner's mask doesn't make it fit for mourning clothes.  If I see the 
Luddites that killed him ... I'll probably try to kill them, but for the reason 
that they'll be trying to kill me.  Here's my advice, Mr. Robo-barkeep: don't 
hold grudges, don't look for comforting answers and don't wait for magic wands.  
The first can only hold you back, the second are never what you want them to be, 
and the third are always being held by something that's going to turn you into a 
toad if you aren't careful.  Feel free to take it with a few grains of salt 
though. I'm not anyone qualified to pontificate - me, I'm just someone having a 
drink at your bar and ... flying a dead man's ship."

[Human leaves.  Fade to black]



