Why We Do It
22 May 2023Taneth
Day 10 | 12,341LY from Sol | Formidine Rift | Groevsky RegionThis expedition has barely begun, and already my breath has been taken away more than once. A few nights ago I arrived at Altera's Eye. After the several seconds where the remains of my lunch threatened to become the remains of my cockpit, due to the effects of coming out at a black hole completely encapsulated inside a planetary nebula, I was absolutely stunned with the beauty of the place. Black holes are notoriously impossible to get a good look at, but something about the way it warped the space inside that nebula... there just aren't words.
I headed from there over to a neighboring system where my computer said there was a tourist megaship. The view from there was equally incredible, but what I hadn't expected was the beacon I found on one of the moons of that system. Standing on a rock while seeing half of the nebula... it felt like a portal to another universe. Maybe it is.
Last night I began entering about the halfway mark of where the Formidine Rift splits the Perseus and Outer arms. I don't think I was fully prepared for how dark it gets there. I spoke in an earlier log about how it felt reaching near the bottom of the galactic plane, but something about the Rift just... well, I entered a system which had incomplete mapping data and decided to finish it out, and let me just say being completely surrounded by the black void of space... well it hits differently. I'll just say that.
I could fall asleep there and never wake up.
Wait... why did I write that? That's crazy. I promised myself I would leave these logs alone and not do a bunch of editing, but that last bit was macabre. Ignore it. I'm fine.
I made it to the interior edges of the Outer Arm this morning and plan to continue on to my first DSSA stop. Seems like the galaxy got a bit smaller since they were deployed... I'm out deep but it still feels like I'm heading towards some semblance of civilization, albeit a relatively small one. Do folks live on those carriers? Are kids born there? Surely not! One would go crazy, right?
I sure hope I'm not flying directly into the jaws of something terrible.