<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, it 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. He'd come to see the human who was making a run at top rank in Amakakt 
at APSWAK. Those were the salad days of blissful denial, when, somehow, the 
Rlaan-Aera conflict that was boiling over next to us kept us calm and cool 
behind the razor-drawn wall of political detachment from the years of slaughter 
that were to come. Diversions like Amakakt were even more important then; we all 
had a fair idea of what it would mean when war galloped across our borders, but 
we knew the odds were against it happening before our tours were up. It wasn't a 
denial born of callousness to our younger brethren who would find themselves in 
the positions we'd vacated in relative safety - we just couldn't spend a decade 
or so brooding, waiting for the nigh-inevitable. The Andolian spirit of counter-
empirical-tainted optimism has always saturated the Protectorate, even if I 
could never embrace it the way he did, but much as I'd like to, I can't blame 
that or them, or anything so simple for his fate, even if blame had ever been 
something I desired. No, for Lauktk, a society smothered in optimism was a boon; 
it fueled the infectious energy intrinsic to his demeanor, intrinsic to his 
existence. He was irrepressible and genuinely funny - even the Purth thought so 
- I liked him right from the start. We were friends right up until we completed 
our stint at the academy and shipped out - good friends, even if our different 
specializations meant we didn't see each other all that often.

"When we found we'd be serving together on the same ship, we both were 
surprised. When we found out that he'd actually be my flight mechanic, I was... 
I felt comforted somehow, to know that the person upon whom my safety in some 
large part depended on was someone I knew beyond the casual connections provided 
by our links. It was a fairly small crew, and most of us were there for several 
years, so we all got to know each other more than most Andolian flat mates, but 
the social structure is never flat - there are always some people you click with 
more than others.  The details are both too many to recount and too meaningless 
without context, but by the end of that tour, we were brothers in all but birth. 
We'd been through... we'd been through a lot together - you'll just have to 
trust me that it's less cliche than classified." He pauses, asking some question 
of himself that remains unspoken, and, the question seemingly answered, he 
continues.

"Mai, my sister - that was always a disappointment for her.  It wasn't that she 
was jealous that Lauktk and I were close, or had gone on 'adventures' together, 
it was that we couldn't share them with her. To not be able to share some of the 
most formative moments of the friendship between two people, both of whom she 
held dear - as a link-phile, not being able to share like that, it never sat 
right with her. She could understand it, rationalize it, accept it in the higher 
regions of her mind, but she could never be comfortable with it. She longed for 
the day when enough would be declassified that the three of us could go out to 
the cabin and just spend a few days reveling in freedom from the secrets we'd 
been carrying.  You can't wear a link and like secrets, it doesn't work that 
way.  Even carrying the small ones entrusted to one such as myself, I gained 
great respect for the burdens that high command places upon itself. But she 
never had that load to bear. She only got to see it second hand, feeling the 
locks and filters in our minds that precluded us from divulging, whose presence 
trespassed upon her familiarity with each of us.  The cabin, the three of us - 
that'll never happen now - and even if the locks all cleared today, whatever 
tales I spin can never truly be his story." He stares directly at the barkeep. 
"But as it is, with secrets unreleased, I am crippled in my ability to even 
relate the experiences comprising our time together. At least Mai has her other 
two bond-mates to help her through this. I... I have only the ship, as fresh 
recovered from her time as an invalid as I mine."

His head lowers and an aura of tired resignation encroaches upon his face. 
"There's a certain chill sometimes, when I can't escape pondering past, present, 
and the difference between them.  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 passenger seats, as I sit 
here staring at two untouched drinks - 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 fly." His tone now shifts, 
with nostalgia being overshadowed by pained cynicism. "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 from nightmares to find myself still sane?" He extends his arm, grasping 
the water in front of him, and drains half the vessel before gingerly 
relinquishing his possession of the glass, his thirst and anger temporarily 
quenched, one more thoroughly than the other. He continues, more calmly than 
before, "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."

Glimmers of genuine physical exhaustion begin to work their way upon his face, 
upon his previously impeccable posture. He leans forward, right arm upon the 
bar, supporting his furrowed brow with his right hand, his splayed fingers 
covering half his face. "However, even beyond the shallow realm of self-pity, 
once you've felt the inexorable grind of the universe's apathy ... it's hard to 
see much 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 idiosyncratic conception of nobility? Hell, one could give up on 
humanity and go live with the Shmrn, the Uln, or the Rlaan-Briin. Despite every 
oath I've sworn, for all that I do care about the Protectorate, I've never been 
able to believe - not the way he could. Not in a way that mattered.

"When I was a child, the dreams of my parents and their bond-set sustained me." 
He smirks. "Those who didn't know better would think it bizarre to be sustained 
by Klk'k dreams, given that they don't have the whole unconscious labyrinth 
experience during sleep cycles that humans do.  There isn't a word for such 
things in any of the native languages - no, the Klk'k dream is the daydream, the 
fantasy, the meanderings of desires projected onto unfolding futures. Strong 
dreams that one can feast on.  As I grew older, the dreams of the societies I 
lived in sustained me, and when I met Lauktk, his dream consumed me. Now I guess 
I have to make my own... but, as crazy as it sounds, I feel the need to finish 
his somehow, and without him... I don't know what that even means, and even less 
how I'm going to do it. Indeed, as clouded as any future seems right now, maybe 
I shouldn't be surprised the only dreams I find myself capable of having are 
nightmares."

He is silent for a few moments, perhaps reliving some fragment of a nightmare, 
perhaps preparing his next utterance, perhaps both.  His face, as still as 
carved granite and shadowed behind his hand, is impossible for the barkeep to 
read. Returning once again to the realm of motion, he chuckles briefly, in a 
despondent fashion, and sighs. For the first time, the motions of his breathing 
edge into the realm of mundane perception. He rallies his voice one last time, 
too tired for any emotion born of anger to dominate his speech.

"Now, I bet you think this is all just a facade. I bet you think it's revenge, 
or anger, or some such that motivates me: that I rage inside with a desire to 
kill the Luddites who assaulted us, who drove us down, who forced me to crash-
land, whose actions resulted in Lauktk's" he falters ever so slightly, "death. I 
felt that briefly then, but I feel almost nothing about them now - they aren't 
important enough to warrant personal hatred. 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." He turns his gaze up again, letting his fingers fall 
away from his eyes, to rest once more on the bar. "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" he glances at the still 
untouched ale "not having a drink at your bar and ... flying a dead man's ship."

[The man finishes his water and leaves, each step clearly a source of pain from 
injuries not yet entirely healed.]
