The Voyages of the Philairone: 0 Prologue (Or when Phil acknowledged his heritage and felt the need to take a break from the Thargoid war to dedicate himself once again to space exploration)
06 Oct 2024Philairone
Early October, Year 3310Greetings Commodores,
My name is Philairone, and I am over six thousand years old.
I was born in 3,400 BC, but the colonists, the federation, and the empire believe that I am 136 years old; in 6,710 years I have accumulated enough experience to know how to falsify documents.
One day, if you like, I will tell you my story, but if I write to you today, it is for another reason:
I have Thargoid blood inside me.
I drag myself through the centuries with a body that ages very slowly. Inside me there is human DNA mixed with Thargoid DNA. This causes a sort of schizophrenia inside me and I alternate moments in which I feel like a monster, a being that has no place in a galaxy built to the measure of human beings; at times when instead I feel like a superhero, the only being in an entire universe that manages to synthesize the best of two completely different species.
It is the same characteristics that I am endowed with that make me feel this way. There is a part inside me that is pure animal instinct or (given how thargoids are considered), “vegetal instinct”. An invisible power, which allows me through the waves, to decode and influence the thoughts of those around me, but which at the same time also makes me suffer, through the constant presence of sounds in my brain. Humans would speak of Tinnitus. I constantly fight to silence this chaos of frequencies, constantly filtering the background noise in search of total silence.
Total silence is the only way to knowledge.
Total silence is the deactivation of every rational and subconscious thought.
The only moment in which I am truly free, in which I am neither thargoid nor human; because that silence is so deep that I am both and neither at the same time. Only in this state is it possible to raise one's consciousness beyond space and time, beyond the very concept of "own" and thus free oneself through a universal consciousness, without the boundaries dictated by the ego. But that is not what I want to talk to you about now.
If I am writing to you it is because I believe that the time has come to take off my mask and tell you what is happening deep inside me, I owe it to all of you commodores who have shared explorations, war and even transport and mining activities with me. This is a confession that I make for all of you, present, past and future commodores of AIR1.
Inside me there is a battle:
A part of me wants to bring justice to my origins. I perceive the time when humans were confined above the planet Earth and the thargoids lived traveling in harmony in the galaxy, the instinct therefore is to fight against humans, beings invading a territory that was not theirs, beings incapable of living in harmony, usurpers who impose their own culture of species even on those who do not want to embrace that culture, and they impose it with violence.
But the other part of me instead responds to the needs of my physical body. If I look at myself in the mirror I see myself as human. Not only friendships, but also the wide-ranging vicissitudes, the history written and lived under another perspective, human, history that I saw being born and that I still live on a terrestrial level, taking part in it. The enjoyment of discovery, of the advancement of technology, of evolution. Not only this, but also the awareness of being the victim of an unstoppable desire for enrichment. Accumulate wealth and build a fleet and a squadron that is unique and knows how to make itself respected in the galaxy.
Until 3300 I lived as a human, without ever taking sides with super powers or small factions, which in the eyes of those who travel the eons are simple temporal trifles, futile disputes destined to disappear and leave no trace. I limited myself to contributing only for the taste of the moment, without a broad-spectrum perspective. But since 3300 the situation has changed, the thargoids have returned, and my immediate instinct has been to defend humanity. Urged by many of you, squadron commodores, I have worked to offer my contribution in the war and leave my peaceful nature as an explorer to fight the thargoid forces that have returned to reclaim their territory. The arrival of the titans near the bubble made me put myself on the defensive and without thinking I threw myself into battle. Then I went down to fight on the coils... I made billions killing the Orthrus, thargoid interceptors that don't even attack. Defenseless collectors. And now I'm paying the consequences. What did I do? How could I have gone so far as to attack defenseless beings? I can't sleep anymore, I feel like an executioner of my own species. I need a break, I need to run away.
Philairone
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