Extracts from Straylight0's logbook

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Straylight0
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Re: Extracts from Straylight0's logbook

Postby Straylight0 » Tue Aug 04, 2015 9:04 pm

Received this nice goodbye; even if he does rose-tint his first encounter a little :)

Transmission to Straylight0

This morning as I awoke, I felt something strange. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was, I just knew something was off. I went about my usual business; checking my transmissions, replying to the Imperial High Command, deleting the Winters hate-mail (now par for the course).

Upon entering the 13th Legion’s barracks, is still had this strange feeling in my gut. I looked around and saw my men, many of whom I am proud to call friend. I saw Derrida, planning his next duel with a smirk on his face. I saw Nightshady, pouring over military plans and ship schematics. I saw Xakto, writing furiously, no doubt planning his next mining vacation. Then I noticed something peculiar. I walked across the room to an empty locker, hanging wide open. I slowly closed the door and when I read the name, I realized why I felt something was amiss. “Straylight”

I remember when I first met you, in fact, you, Derrida and Johnny were the first other members of the Pilot’s Federation I ever met. It was back before I was Legate, back before I even knew who Aisling Duval was. I was a young man, trading in my home system of Drevlyada. I had recently lost my parents in a pirate raid and I was disillusioned and not sure what to do with my life. As I made a routine shipment of tea to Wheeler dock, an old friend of mine ran up to me and said: “Andariel, we need your help! The Federation is here and they are trying to take over Drevlyada by force!” I had been in a few fights before, but they were always against smugglers and pirates trying to disrupt my trade routes, nothing too serious. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I hopped in my Cobra and zipped off to the combat zone.

I dropped out of supercruise on a combat beacon, and I was taken aback by what I saw. lasers everywhere, Anacondas being ripped apart by swarms of eagles, explosions, mass chaos, death. I dove headlong into the fray, avoiding the larger ships while shooting down eagles and vipers. I was surprised by how well I fared in the battle, but all that changed when I noticed three new blips on my radar. These signals were different, they bore the mark of the Pilot’s Federation, and they were red. As I turned to scan them, I read three names; “Derrida, Johnny Gamma and Straylight0”

I charged them in my little, second hand Cobra and opened fire. What ensued was a brutal battle, one I don’t remember much of, but I do remember how it ended. I shot down both Derrida and Straylight as Johnny Gamma fled with low hull. I myself was on the brink of destruction, but I didn’t let it show as I chased Johnny into supercruise. Much to my own surprise, I had won.

I limped back to Grandin Port to repair my ship, and as I visited the pub for a drink, I noticed two new faces there, a man and a woman. I approached, but when I read their nametags, I stopped in abject horror. They read “Derrida” and “Straylight0”. I realised they had seen my own, and as I turned to leave I heard Derrida say “wait!”. I stopped, frozen with a mixture of fear and guilt, and as I turned I saw him holding out a drink. “That was one hell of a fight, why don’t you come have a drink with us?”

I learned a lot that night. I learned about the galaxy outside of Drevlyada, about how there was credits to be made as a hired gun like you were, about home much more there was out there. You both turned out to be great people and inspired me to seek out adventure. I left Drevlyada, and it would be months of trading, fighting and exploring before I happened upon you guys again in Cubeo, working for Aisling Duval, who I had recently pledged to. We quickly became close friends, and I felt invincible when I had you by my side.

You never talked much, Derrida usually did most of the talking. But I felt like you knew real pain, I felt like we understood each-other without needing to explain it. That is why I knew something was wrong this morning. That is why I wish you the best and I hope you find what you are looking for.

That is why your seat at my side will remain, gathering dust until the day you return to wipe it off.

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Re: Extracts from Straylight0's logbook

Postby Straylight0 » Wed Aug 05, 2015 4:18 pm

Day 3
Distance from Sol: 2,378 LY

I put my head down and made some distance. Since I left I have overtaken radio transmissions announcing the birth of the Alliance, Empire, and Federation; the departure of the first colony ship; the launch of the first satellite; the invention of radio itself. It feels like going back in time. In another few days, it will be as if I’m piloting a ship while Buddha is still sitting under his tree. Beyond that, if I had a large enough telescope, I might see the first humans put a tentative foot out of Africa. Having a frameshift drive feels like cheating.

Even more bizarrely, signals sent since I left have overtaken these ancient ones to reach me, bringing a nice farewell from Legate Andariel and friends. Relativity is odd at the best of times, but add frame-shift weirdness and you get something truly mind-bending. The speed of light in vacuum has to be observed as constant whatever your frame of reference, even if space is squished up around you. So when you supercruise you get to see the rest of the system almost in real time, even though the light from them would not reach someone next to you in normal space for many minutes. It also means that any signals sent while you are frame-shifting can cross light-years in seconds. All ships automatically collect and relay such information, and carry it in their data banks. Thus humanity is kept in sync.

The range isn’t infinite, though. I am passing beyond the range of effective communication. There is some chance that news may catch up, especially if another ship travels past me, but it can’t be counted on.

I have found more life. There were macroscopic ceatures visible on the surface of one planet, but the gravity was too high to land. No sign of technological intelligence, but one day, they may develop it. I wanted to leave them something, so I found an asteroid orbiting their planet. My armament is very light, but I managed to carve it into a pyramid shape. I considered nudging it out of orbit to crash to the surface, but assuming it survived and something intelligent did behold it, they might start religious wars over it or something. So I left it there to find if they discover space travel, a message they are not alone. It might be a comfort or a warning, that’s up to them.

For the night, I set down on a water world, again with life. Anacondas are designed to be amphibious, which makes sense given how many ocean planets I’m finding compared to Earth-type ones (nil so far) and how much easier it is for some colonies to stick a crane by a lake or sea than to build a conda-sized pad.

I first checked to make sure there were no nasty storms due or giant waves sloshing about [F*** you Interstellar and Prometheus!]. The trick is to come in at speed like an ancient flying-boat, don’t try vertical or your jets will foam up the water and you might submerge, which would be uncomfortable if not dangerous; the hull has double seals for internal and external pressure, but a ’conda isn’t a Moray. Still, when Nephthys was down she made a decent boat, albeit riding a bit high and uneven thanks to her light load-out and having only my provisions to shift about as ballast. I’ve always thought she looked a bit like a u-boat anyway, don’t tell her I said that.

I slept well, rocking gently on the waves of a tropical ocean. When the sun rose I took a lounger out on deck, needing only a breathing-mask. Some of the creatures had left the ocean, things like aerial manta rays and cuttlefish soaring overhead or skimming the waves. Katzenstein gnashed his teeth at them; he was in a bad mood because he had to wear a lanyard in case he fell in, but after a while he stretched out in the sun with me. I considered improvising a fishing line, but it struck me that would be bad manners.

When I launch, I will partition this planet’s data to be private. Humans might terraform this place; the changes in gas balance would exterminate all but their hardiest bacteria. I won’t be responsible for that.

The Emperor’s wedding is tomorrow. For a moment I feel tempted to turn back so I can pick up the news, but I’m relaxing now. I’m sure it will go fine and everything will still be there when I return.

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Re: Extracts from Straylight0's logbook

Postby Straylight0 » Wed Aug 12, 2015 7:29 pm

Day 7: moral philosophical ramblings

Distance from Sol: ~6000 ly

I have not made much more distance; I have been drifting, thinking on what I have left behind.

At some vague time in the last million years, a set of apes on Earth evolved the ability to pass knowledge from generation to generation while adding to it, and thus climbed to technological civilisation. However, they still retained the instincts of territorial small-group omnivores, thus they spend a lot of time fighting amongst themselves, or competing and co-operating in destructive rather than constructive ways. By some miracle they managed to avoid killing themselves before they spread beyond the planet, and are now probably safe from extinction by their own efforts. They also proved quite effective at warfare when they encountered another technological species, the Thargoids. The aliens who were not spacefaring, sentient or non-sentient alike, have not fared terribly well.

I am enough of a scientist to examine my own feelings on this matter. My disapproval is implicit in the above paragraph; what makes me think that the situation is undesirable, beyond my own social conditioning, and a tendency to sympathy (which I am pretty good at suspending when destroying other spaceships). Is the status quo not just a fine example of evolution proceeding further? Am I attacking the very process which created us in the first place, with all its suffering and waste along the way?

There are fallacies I could fall into at this point. There is induced fatalism, where I would abandon all inhibition/effort/independent thought/philosophy on the grounds that I am simply going to do what I am fated and programmed to do anyway. But taking a look at the big picture and making my own small effort to change it would be as much a result of that as anything else. Evolution—not that I have any moral imperative to respect it, any more than I am obliged to believe in the supernatural—has of course produced something capable of questioning and changing it. Besides, evolution gets less efficient the more compex that lifeforms beccome, intelligent design would be a good next step.

Oh, but HOW to change it? I sometimes have fantasies of creating a new race of genetically engineered or AI beings who will be better than us (hold on while I get my mad doctor coat). Pitfalls here as well. I know that most past attempts on this score were done by deeply unpleasant individuals, and based on flawed assumptions to boot. I also know that whatever we create will be in our own image, even if we consciously try to avoid it. Unless we can define what “goodness” we want, understand what makes it up and how to bring it into being, we will just get a magnified and more dangerous version of ourselves: humanity plus.

It would be great to study the Thargoids, but they have kept apart for a very long time. Do they fight amongst themselves? They have certainly been aggressive enough to us, but is that not a rational response? It would not surprise me if we had started it; apparently we nearly finished it with an engineered virus. Given their technology is generally more advanced than ours, that suggests they lack a certain underhand cunning; perhaps the experience of criminality somehow gives us an edge.

The more I think about it, the more I realise that goodness—people with an aversion to cruelty and oppression, who fight hard but only in self defence or to right a wrong—is simply a combination of intellect and empathic feeling, nurtured in the right culture. This would go as much for a super-cyborg ubermensch as for us. The problem being that civilisations have different points of meta-stability; when it is immersed in a culture of violence, as ours is, it is very hard to return it to a state of peace and prevent it decayng back to violence. Entropy always pulls downward. The founding of the Empire shows that (whatever you think really happened, you cannot deny that Henson’s vision was vastly different to his sister’s), just as its later production of the Princesses shows that individuals CAN make a difference.

So there is no magic solution; it could be as simple as grinding away for the better elements of humanity against the worse. It doesn’t help that some of the most influential forces of inhabited space, those of the free pilots, tend to be a bit selfish and individualist, and can readily escape long-term consequences of their actions.

Might be on to something there... hmmm...

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Long Flight day 11

Postby Straylight0 » Fri Aug 14, 2015 12:45 pm

Day 11
Distance from Achenar: 8,431

Commander Vickershaft passed me the other day; he is following a similar route, only faster. I was so surprised to get his transmission that I ran straight into a star and took my first damage of the trip.

He brought news.

The emperor was assassinated. The evidence points to Patreus again, but seems far too obvious; whatever else he is, that man is not stupid. On the other hand, he is smart enough to know that, and you wonder what evidence WOULD be enough to indict him.

In the short term, this changes very little: the Empire remains without a clear leader, the might of its central navy and capital ships remains unengaged. Not that Hudson is using his capital ships despite all his tough talk; they’re far too expensive.

More troublingly, the strategic analysis of the galaxy now seems to favour attack over defence, leading to a massive upswing in hostile activity. Aisling’s sphere was previously favoured by its remoter location and lack of hated enemies. Both those have now changed. Aisling’s influence depends on popular support, which is very fickle and hard to channel; it also has to be said that many of our co-pledgers have a bit more enthusiasm than good sense (if we’re being charitable; a lot are selfish, stupid, or cynical). We have had to adopt a lot of systems which had little strategic value, because to not make them part of the movement after bombardment with publicity, or to neglect them once pledged, would lead to a backlash. Well, now we have over-extended ourselves; there is even a chance of a chain reaction of economic and psychological collapse. Trouble ahead for a long time to come.

But most disturbingly of all, someone is killing the people who investigated the loss of Spaceship one. It’s looking a lot like a conspiracy. Seems unknown force(s) have killed the leaders of both the major factions. Perhaps Mahon and Hudson should be doubling the guard and re-checking their ships.

I feel less like turning back than ever.

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Re: Extracts from Straylight0's logbook

Postby Straylight0 » Sun Oct 11, 2015 6:36 pm

Alas, I am afraid that I have fallen out of love with Elite. A month has gone by with no urge to play, or even to check what has happened in the game. Now I have dipped a toe back in, it looks like the same old same old.

It is unlikely I am even going to finish the Sagitarius trip or even return to human space, so I thought I’d just post the skeletons of future posts I had planned and something of a goodbye...

*

Are we making progress? I mean, in our technology.

We have programmable computers on stations and planets, but on a ship you need sixteen tonnes of dedicated hardware just to operate three drones, and it can’t do anything else. Atmospheric aeroplanes in the twentieth century had autopilots that could deal with wind drift, we have nothing that can operate a simple trip across empty space. Radar would be able to detect ships regardless of their heat signature, but there are no system available for private spacecraft.

There is some conspiracy here. Perhaps its heart is the tiny cost of insurance to replace your ship; this is being funded by some colossal monopoly that keeps spaceflight just the way they like it.

A level playing field I suppose, but if the Thargoids reappear, we will get a rude shock.



*

Sometimes I wonder if there has ever been anything but this. Jump, scoop, scan, jump scoop, scan... sleep, eat, exercise... it is hard to believe those things outside in the void are actual worlds. It is hard to remember that my life used to feature other bipedal creatures with voices.

*

I think I’m going space crazy. Maybe I got careless assuming the microbes of some world would not be able to infect me, but I’m... I’m...


*

I am God.

I travel through the darkness and primordial chaos. When I emerge I say “Let there be light!” and there IS light, a whole new Sun. Sometimes I say “Let there be discovery scanner!” and there are new planets, globed amidst the void, in mathematical harmony. Sometimes I give them land or sea. I do not wait a day in between every action any more.

Sometimes I say “Let there be life!” and there is life. I look upon it, and it is pleasing to Me.

I stop at fishes, birds of the air, or very occasional beasts of the land. I have not created Man or Woman again. If I did, I would not create them separate, for a start; a gift that they turned into a curse. Even I do not know if I can make a rock so heavy that I cannot lift it; but I do know I can create free will that is vexing to Me.

I have turned my face from my prior creations. I am a forgiving God, but they fail every test and blow every last chance I give them to redeem themselves. And they whine about it too. “Mother, why are we such wankers? Mother, why did you let us invent the atom bomb? Mother, why don’t you stop us killing each other all the time?” Whine, whine, whine. Blah, blah, blah. Even the Angels I created and set to watch over them have been lead astray by their example, so I have cast them off as well. I set a last plague upon humanity before I left; if they do not use their own pathetic devices properly, it may wipe them out.

I take my time. I am going to where I imprisoned Lucifer at the heart of the galaxy. When I reach his dark prison I shall blast it apart with my Light, free him and his Thargoid nephilim to bring apocalypse and judgement down on this Universe. Then I shall start afresh.

*
Haha, just kidding. I’m still sane.
*
Or am I?
*
I know perfectly well I’m Isis not Jehovah... sorry, another joke. Buddha would probably be the best choice, he was uncannily right about an awful lot, but I’m just a mortal human.

*

Editor’s note: Commander Straylight0 never returned from deep space. Did she die out there, thousands of light-years from the nearest human, alone save for her robot cat? Did she find some incredible adventure too strange to imagine? Did she become a hermit, disgusted with her species? Or did she sneak back and is now raising a family far from trouble under an assumed name? Only time may one day tell.

Author’s note: Probably d)


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