Loyalty

It is a strange thing, loyalty. When we talk about this, do we mean the loyalty of love, that stays true out of fondness, or the loyalty fear, that stays true out of dread for the consequences of acting otherwise? Loyalty out of a sense of duty? Loyalty out of business ethics?

Does it even matter from whence our loyalties arise?

Apparently so. Family: that is what PRETA considers itself nowadays, with Yishal and Myrhial in the lead and my own loyalty, oh queasy irony, in question. Loyalty out of love is painted as the only true loyalty. I wonder whether it will prove as true as they believe; love is fickle. Still, perhaps they have a point. If a culture of headstrong killers is what you have to shape, a "family" may be exactly what is called for.

I will have to watch closely how this progresses.

It is not, however, a form of loyalty I can or do share. Yishal seems all too aware that I am not a good fit for this particular approach to running a pirate gang, and she's quite correct in that. She's hardly likely to be aware of the irony of the situation: treacherous though my intentions were, I am caught in my own ill-spun web and have little choice but to prove, demonstrate, and prove again that I am a loyal minion to the Cartel.

Loyalty based in well-founded fear is enough for the Dominations, it seems, if not for PRETA. I will have to find ways of ensuring that this distinction does not become problematic, though I am beginning to wonder whether Yishal can even recognize loyalty that is not based in love.

If either of PRETA's founders ever "loved" the Ghosts, it was Kyoko, and she left us-- for love, no less.

For me, they were always a means to the end. Once, they were a means of gaining access to the Jovian technologies the Cartel is believed to possess, but the Cartel is not so sloppy with its secrets. Now, they are a means of survival, a way I can make myself useful and demonstrate my willingness to serve my masters.

Well. Hopefully, this will not become a problem: if it becomes a matter of choosing between Cartel and corporation, my path is unfortunately very clear.

Clarity

If there is one duty we have in this universe, I think it must be this: to be honest with ourselves.

I am sick of self-delusion, so sick of it that it may be making me a destructive person.

Offending Ethan was, perhaps, not the smart thing to do, but I'm running out of reasons to care. The man's vision of who and what he is swamps his understanding. He is so fixated on who he is that he cannot see what he is doing.

Putting people in a position that functions as blackmail is not exactly the same as directly blackmailing them, but it's a pride-blind fool who can't bear to see that particular similarity pointed out. So Ethan says he is done with me, done with the Accord. If he's as shallow as he acts, the feeling's pretty well mutual.

But I don't think it is. Taking his anger out on my colleagues is a pretty telling sign; not all is well inside Ethan's head, and it's not just that he's feeling insulted. It's a hopeful indicator.

But ... I've been reckless, first with Kyoko and now her husband. This is not something I'm going to be able to keep up, even if I succeed with these two. Caution is called for. Care. Thought. I need to approach my work with more than these ... whimsical mind games to correct shortcomings, however irritating.

Calling capsuleers as a class shallow and petty has usually been an understatement, but nowadays I find our blindnesses almost intollerable. What is this tendency in myself? This ... need to lance every boil I can spot, even if it happens to be on the end of Ethan Verone's nose?

It's easier when it's someone I don't actually like. It seems to be only people I've grown fond of that inspire me to knock their heads against walls until they can see truth between the stars.

Well. What will come will come.

Friendship

Suuolo ...

What sort of world do I occupy, that I should be so grateful to be flying with you once again?

Twice you've betrayed me: first for Nemesor, then for Ethan Verone and the Guristas.

The first wasn't so bad-- an impossible situation, really, a classic love triangle. We both loved him, I know. And I'm not surprised ... that you didn't tell me about you and him. The blame there falls on him, who chose between us only in the end and without ever telling me I was competing with you or with anyone.

But the second, leaving me alone to face the Cartel, knowing what I faced, what I hoped to accomplish, knowing that you and I had been a conspiracy from the beginning, and that between the two of us, you were the loyal one?

You must have known that an investigation would follow your departure, that the Dominations would want to know what had led to your defection, and how much of a security crisis they had on their hands. You must have guessed what they would find. Or were you too blind with love, yet again, to see the inevitable consequences of your actions?

They found me out, of course. If they suspected before, now they know for certain. They've never said anything of it, never showed their hand so blantantly; they haven't needed to, because my own investigation revealed what they had learned-- that, and the Dark Angels watching over my clones.

Twice it's been now ... so what is it that I am setting myself up for, now that I have no choice but to serve the Cartel body and soul? If the pattern of escalation continues, the next act should involve turning me over to IzzyChan, all anaesthetized and prepped for surgery.

But it's not as though you've ever acted out of malice. Your every treachery has been from a single motive, and I suppose I should never be surprised when love proves stronger than friendship. And you could have done far worse to me, had you chosen to do so.

What is there that we will not do for love.... Is there a choice you've made that I would not have made in your place?

If I have any real reason to hate you, it's for being so much more fortunate than I. The fool's dream I came here to chase, visions of Jovian artifacts dancing in my head, is gone. The laboratories are closed to me and mine. I've not been able to confirm the existence of even a single artifact. Not one! Despite the hundreds, the thousands, that must exist.

The Exodus Project is all but dead, along with the hopes I had for it. The Sleepers' arrival has changed so much: changed, perhaps forever, the relative place of the capsuleer in this society, perhaps even eliminating the problem I hoped the Project would resolve. It's brought fullerene technologies, a flood of artifacts-- and the Sleepers field self-sustaining, unmanned ships, suuolo!

The necessities of Exodus, all wrapped in a single boggling windfall of opportunity, death, and chaos.

Everything I hoped for, every gift I was hunting for in the Cartel, is right there on the other side of a wormhole, and I am trapped in a web that it turns out I never needed to enter. I had no way of knowing, of course, no way of predicting.

So, I suppose, do the gods keep themselves amused.

You lie, safe and warm, in the arms of a man who adores you. I lie my head off to PRETA about the endless meetings I have to attend-- meetings held not with the Dominations, but with my pathetic little circle of agents, learning in ever more intimate detail how thoroughly the Cartel has hemmed us in.

You enjoy gifts only a multibillionaire pirate prince can grant. The Cartel's iron collar snaps into place around my neck.

You are made a queen; I, a slave.

But ... I have missed talking, and flying, with you.

You've always been a friend. A good friend.

... for which reason, I write these thoughts in a journal no one will read while I still live, excepting perhaps my Dominations masters; I no longer care what they know. Some messages are better left unsent.

It's so very good to be back in your company, suuolo.

Yours,

Aria

Shadow Puppets

It's been some time since been able to muster the will to write here.

My cousin has left the world of the living to become a shadow puppet, like the rest of us, an image of his past life reflected in an artificial body that dances on Jovian strings. I tried to make it as painful as I was able-- slashed his innards to ribbons, made a mess of his intestinal tract. I hoped he would take the hint.

Why did I ever think that was wise? He didn't listen. I knew from the outset that he wasn't going to listen, wasn't going to go home-- wasn't going to rejoin the human world if I would not. All the pain I inflicted on him came to pointless cruelty.

It's enough. I'm done trying to match my soul to a body that will never be properly mine, full of hand-me-down parts and artifice. The crescents are back in storage. I don't know that I'll bring them out again, however long my existence is, now. They've done all the damage they're entitled to.

My body, as well, so well-tuned, so able, after all the work I put into training it. I find myself looking forward to starving the ghastly thing.

Surpass all this-- let go of who I was-- that is what I must do: embrace the creature the Jove presented us their gifts in order to see. I'm tired of seeking unity with what I used to be, of echoing myself again and again, of touching what I used to be-- of destroying what I used to love. So tired.

What I was before, I cannot be again. This I must recognize, once and for all.

The answer dances past my fingertips as I browse the markets, buried in the dance of commerce: core structure, subsystems, millions upon millions of ISK in expenditures on bits and pieces, waiting for my means and my will to coincide.

None of the ships to which I'm accustomed to are, in the end, worthy of the technology the Jove gave to us. From ramshackle Matari vessels struggling by on ladar and archaic autocannon to even the most intricate Caldari systems-- there's not one of them that so much as approaches the full potential of the Jovian Wetgrave. In our childish hands these pods have never known anything like the technologies they were designed to interface with-- not until the Sleepers and their fullerenes.

The Tengu dances just out of reach, inferfacing on a level I never knew was even possible until I acquired the training softs, unity of such an absolute degree that forcible severance from the craft causes debilitating shock...!

What I wouldn't give to unite with such a vessel, to take one more step towards becoming what we were made to become, one more step towards escaping from this crysalis.

I know I must be patient. This is far from the final step, and there will be so much to be done and survived. Jude, at least, is here, a feature of my present, of this transitional state, not of the past, not of poor, dead Aria, but of this existence between worlds. That will help.

Strength and support, friendship and that strange, weighty loyalty he carries. And love, perhaps, in time. I can't assume anything; he has his own demons to face, but we can at the least aid one another.

That will help a great deal.

Grandfather ...

I've never apologized to you. Why this is, why I haven't been able to bring myself to simply say, "I'm sorry," has haunted me as much as the act itself. It was stupid, what I did, perhaps the single stupidest thing I've ever done, and in a life that contains Nemesor, that's saying something. I regret having done it.

Jonny seems to think that's the same as being sorry. Well, it's not.

I was smiling, you know, when I broke your neck. Maybe you couldn't tell, but I was. And I'm still smiling now, thinking about it. What a complete surprise it must have been. It was a surprise to me, too; I never realized, I guess, how much I hated you.

In retrospect, it makes so much sense. You disowned your own daughter for marrying for love, marrying an outsider, against your wishes. You cut her and Father off from the family; and maybe that would have been all right if you had been wrong about him. But you weren't. Sarth Jenneth was a clod, a drunk, a wife-beater, and eventually a murderer.

How angry you must have been with her, to cut her off from her family and leave her alone with a man like that.

You left her with him, and she died. You left me with him, too, and even after Mother was dead, you left me to the State apparatus, the creche system, a full year.

What a difficult year that must have been for all of us. I can only guess how you must have agonized over the question of bringing a disowned half-blood granddaughter back into the family, of lifting your ban on Mother in order to recognize me.

And what a virtuous paragon you must have felt yourself to be, taking an embarrassing little half-bred moppet like me into your home, the living proof of your daughter's foolishness and your own failure to properly control your children. How can I be anything but grateful to you, who instructed me in our faith, who gave me a home where I was unwelcome, who paid for my education at an endless series of girls' schools that kept me conveniently out of sight? Who paid tuition at the State War Academy for a naive child desperate to prove herself to be something worthwhile?

How could I be anything but grateful for all you did for me? All of the love you gave? All those individual, precious steps that made possible my not-so-glorious death and reincarnation into a body made of osteoplastic and animal carcases?

Well. I can afford a better grade of clone, now. And look-- it's not so bad; Jihun's here, your grandson, come to avenge you, tracing my path like a good detective following in the footsteps of a killer.

He wants me to "do the right thing." What that is, I don't even pretend to know-- kill myself, I suppose. But I'm far from doing that. I fight him in only a few days. It'll be like one of the legendary honor-duels of old.

Little Jihun-- you remember him, don't you? The little boy who could never sit still for more than five minutes no matter how many times you whacked him with your rod? The young monk who got so bored with katas that he started looking for excuses to help out in the kitchen rather than do his morning exercises? And now he's going to use those skills you taught him, and he's going to make you proud.

I'm going to kill him. And more than that, I'm going to make sure his consciousness survives the process. I'm going to make him just like me. Well-- not just. Low-grade clones are made of the rawest of raw materials, nutrient broth vat-grown tissues and miscellaneous reprocessed organics, a body with more preservatives in it than a military field ration. I'm going to put him in one of those, and better still, he knows it. He just seems to think maybe I'm going to lose my nerve.

I won't. I promise. I will gut him like one of those gasping fish at the market, and I'll make sure he remembers it. Just for you.

And maybe one of these days, I'll be able to quench this anger enough to feel sorry for what I've done, to you, to him, to all of us. But not today, and not tomorrow-- nor the day, a few days from now, when I kill your grandson.

For you, Grandpapa.

Your granddaughter,

-Aria

Husk

Two days ago, a new set of implants arrived in my hands, along with their former owner. The latter I'll have to return, and I couldn't really use her, anyway; her skeleton's entirely original bone-- an original human corpse, now with a few extra holes in her head.

I think she may be the first person I've killed as a favor-- well, by her own request, anyway. Apparently she'd been reading my writings and started to identify herself as an infomorph while still having her original human body.

It's hard to know whether to feel guiltily responsible or whether to take pride in it. The responsible side ended up costing me-- though that's also why I'll be keeping this set. 96 million ISK....

Gods and spirits, if she'd tried to get me to agree to replace her implants in advance, there's no possible way I would have agreed to it. But somehow, with her death at my hands a thing accomplished and the corpse at my fingertips, the bargain seemed more worthwhile. The poor creature doesn't seem to consider the violation I negotiated a significant one; I wonder a little whether that will last.

Are our shells really so meaningless? Lacking large portions of skull certainly makes the corpse less picturesque, and I've no intention of softening the blow, if such it is, by prettying it up when I return it to her. She's learned a lot, but I can't help feel that there's something of the gravity of what she has done that's slipped by her.

In the end, what I have to teach is only a facet. We are human, and we are not human, and to conform with what I said we were, she asked me to kill what she was.

What lasting good can come of this, I can't begin to know-- but I obliged, even so. And yes, I'd do so again-- even counting the reimbursement, come to that.

The implants are beautiful, a complete set of standard-quality implants averaging 20 or so million ISK each, new. The beetles will have finished cleaning them by now; they'll be waiting for me when I return to Tzvi.

It's a pity there's no osteoplastic to work with, but for a first piece I can't complain too much. They came off of someone's first real death, after all, and there's a curious sort of purity in that.

It's like having captured a baby's first step.

... Worth every kredit.

Thoughts

It has been a long time since I trusted one of these. Bad experiences tend to stay with one, humiliation more than most. But I need a place to lay my thoughts out, and the Dominations, at least, have stronger security in place.

Hopefully this will be of some help to me-- or to whoever comes after me, if it comes to that. Hopefully in six months there will still be someone left alive to take an interest.

My head's such a muddle, and while I can't blame the Sleepers for all of it, I can certainly blame them for a lot. Mostly, I blame them for turning so blasted quickly from a potential threat into a real one.

It's maddening. We find a ruined civilization on the level of the Jove, one that makes Curse look like a picked-over archeological tourist trap, and it turns out that not only is somebody still home, but that somebody may very well be capable of wiping us all out. But gods, the technologies!

We're producing symbiotic ships, ships that actually take the capsuleer link to its next logical step, intertwining the capsuleer's mind with that of the ship so far that there's a mnemoic backlash if the ship goes up with the capsuleer still inside! We can do this, now! ... It's the sort of thing I've dreamed about.

And, we may pay for it with our entire civilization.

For the record, I am really, truly sick of all the gods-blasted optimists. "Oh, don't worry, they'll stick to their ruins." Sure they will. Sure they didn't; we now have reports, with images, of Sleeper drones active in known space and maybe cooperating with the Rogue Drones.

So now it's, "Don't worry; they won't do anything horrific to us. And we're stronger than they are. And besides, it's all our fault for stirring them up to begin with." As if that actually mattered anymore.

There are two real questions here. First, is the Sleeper civilization actually dead? On this, no data, or very little. Second, are there actually as many Sleeper drones as it seems like there are? Because if there is anywhere close to a full Empire navy's worth, we are all in a very great deal of trouble.

... Which puts most of my plans into a blasted lot of turmoil. It's all just moving too fast. There are no set patterns for me to work with, nothing concrete to interpret from. I can't begin to guess where we'll be in six months, much less forty years.

Chaos. I'm accustomed to the Jovians as the primary unknown, and they're hardly ever really active. Well-- unless we learn a great deal very quickly about the Sleepers and the wormholes, that may be a feeling I'll have to get used to.

I guess for now, it's best to think mostly of the day to day. Jude has invited me to dinner, much to my surprise. It's taken him long enough, really. We still have to find a good time for it, which may be difficult, and I don't want to put him off.

And if we're all dead the next day, there won't have been anything better we could have been doing than that.