Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Chapter Ten Beta

The Catch-Up Game

ISK Balance: 6,680,437.94

As I looked about the space enveloping me, the vacuum rated "0.5" by CONCORD and thus enforced by their presence, I sighed. I imagine the capusleer nestled within Icarus' hull sighed in a similar way - difficult as this may be while surrounded by those famed ambiotic fluids. Neatly arranged on the left edge of my screen were a multitude of dots colored from a cool, inviting blue to an agressive red - this autopilot route would be hovering in my alter-ego's mind's eye, fed into his neural net by hardwired uplink. These precisely one-hundred-and-forty jumps would either lead to my education about the elusive greater motivation behind those that dwelt in low security, or it would lead me nowhere but in circles.

And as I stood atop my mental precipice - preparing for the next (barely) controlled decent into my next great journey, only thoughts of what lay behind me came to me. I thought not of what might be ahead of me - because I frankly have no idea, other than the expectation of getting shot up a lot more - but instead of experiences and encounters from my previous feats of pan-galactic navigation that stick out in my mind. Mostly, these particular experiences occur first and foremost to me because I neglected to fit them into my narratives, and thus they come to me because I want to give them their due attention - and because I do not want to forget them.

For example, I never spoke a word of the Hobgoblin II - a Billy II, if you will - I stumbled across somewhere near a pipe into the vast expanses of 0.0.

Or the fact that in FAT-6P, I spontaneously decided to reorganize my bookmarks from this into this.

Or the couple of times I had extraordinarily overt blessings of luck - or just plain old temptation, I suppose.

Or any of the dozens of people I talked to - traded ideas and dreams with - that I never mentioned or recorded.

Or how magnificently this at-a-whim storytelling has transformed from the trials of intentional poverty to a massive thoughtscape of lucid realizations, self-awareness, cosmic insignificance, introspection, and social commentary. At least, I like to think so.

Or how poorly and briefly I've communicated thoughts that ran around in my head for days before I placed them here, and how much more rambling, overthought detail I could go into concerning each piddling smidgin of an entry.

Or how little or much can be communicated in four thousand character, and how rarely I've had to use a second post to continue my thoughts - and if that is a good or a bad thing.

Or how utterly uncertain and nebulous the entire process is, and wondering if the journey will still occupy my interest the next day - and what will happen if it doesn't.

Or how hard I would be laughed at for entertaining the thought of ever reaching the same sort of recognition Innominate Nightmare did, and wondering the extent of that shadow cast over me. And what idiotic anathema it would be to suppose a kicks-and-giggles IPO in a similar vein to his would ever amount to more than a bundle of laughs.

Or how nobody ever offered to buy me a titan. Which I am thankful for.

And before I know it, I'm in Derelik; my first destination in my new hunt - that for the low security denizen who can tell me why he or she is there.

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