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.