Having a chat - When the world comes... quietly crumpling down.
09 Jan 2023Alysianne
Everyone remembers the day when they first heard of it. What they were doing, how they found out, who was with them.
As if the scope of what’s happening is so unthinkable that the moment stays forever carved into our minds.
Me? I had just been running back-and-forths from Rhea to various systems under Winters’s influence. Delivering agreed-upon bulk supplies, chatting up the local governors, making small promises to consider their needs. Being the Shadow President’s friendly face in town.
Not particularly riveting work, but of crucial importance to keep the network healthy. You can never have too many favours owed to you, heh… And well, it was nice to talk to people happy to see me for once.
And so, there I was. Simpson Ring, Fan Yin system. Headed back to my ship after delivering another batch of supplies and saying hi to a couple acquaintances.
Suddenly, there was a shift in the crowd walking the street. People looking up to the large holo-screens, the ones broadcasting news. Stopping in their tracks. The thoroughfare hushed a little.
So I looked up, too. And within moments, my stomach sank, like a cold stone had been dropped into my core.
An inaudible reporter and unreadable headlines framed a literal hellscape. Caustic clouds, blaster fire, and in the distance… Two of them. Floating, untouchable above the scene like some ancient Gods of retribution. Glowing brightly against the green fog, terribly beautiful in the surface port’s dim light. As I looked, another… warped in, and the camera flickered as it fired its EMP.
The first Maelstrom had arrived at destination.
The Second Thargoid War had truly started.
That is my little story… but everyone has one. Terribly mundane perhaps, but we all think over it again and again. Struggling at how to put the feeling into words, that strange surreal feeling that permeates the moment, that makes the entire world feel so oddly detached. And so we think it over again, and again, as if we were all desperate to understand, to share, to bridge the seismic rupture we all instinctively know just happened.
They say it’s only when you lose something that you realise its full worth. I always took that as a little pessimistic: why be so bleak? It’s not impossible to appreciate good things, is it? Come now. Well. I’m part of those who say that now.
It was part of why my heart split when I saw those images. I felt just how much we had to lose. Just how much was at stake - peace, planets, cities, all the way to the smiles of the children I had just crossed in the street. All of them could be shattered.
At that moment, all the petty politicking and manoeuvring I had been hell-bent on achieving suddenly felt… empty. As if my little world of undercover power plays had come crashing down - or rather, quietly crumpled within me.
Another part of why my heart split, to be honest, was, well… I never thought it possible that us, humanity, would ever be able to stop bickering long enough to face our green Reapers. I had been personally involved in far too many feuds and shaky truces to hope, even for a moment, that we could put aside the trust issues that had started to pile up far before living memory. Sprawled in Emissary’s pilot seat an hour later, that’s why I was still staring blankly at the hangar wall.
I fully expected us to trip each other over, if not shoot each other in the back, to take advantage of this disruption and mess each other up just a little bit more than before. To commit collective suicide, essentially, with our infamous short-sightedness.
To be quite honest, I still kind of do.
But when I heard of this crazy venture Canonn had set up - explicitly aiming to succeed where the Superpowers failed… I just had to try. Reaching across the border, for once with an open hand instead of a gun.
I still don’t quite know how far we’ll manage to go, or even if this will succeed at achieving anything, but… But stars, I just had to try.
We just have to try.