Riding the Rim!
28 Nov 2017LongDistanceClara
(Real life sucks >.< Work has gotten in the way for us, so I'm off exploring on my own again! I look forward to the day UniCart data is acceptable currency at our local supermarket >.< In the meantime however...)----
Well that sucks. Hal has had to return to civilization; until we setup shop on that perfect little ELW somewhere, there's still bills to pay! So I find myself out here on my lonesome once more. Which as I mentioned in my last log is nothing new - but after having bumbled around with someone on my wing for a while, you really notice it when they're not there!
I don't mind saying I was a properly mopey thing for a bit!I carried on pretty much on autopilot, bouncing around the region just to the north-west of the core. After a while, I glanced at the galaxy map and found myself drifting north again, through the Styx and on up to the Abyss (if you're not too familiar with the galaxy, these are just "bits" between the spiral arms as you head north from the core to the "top" of the galaxy). The low stellar density in these gaps is always a bit spooky and my current mood really didn't help - until I set down for the night, turned around and saw this:
(Honestly FDev - just kudos
)Sorry in advance for yet more pop-psychology! I'm not good with words, I'll be the first to admit. I know what I think, but vocalizing that isn't really my strong suit! But when I see something so unbearably beautiful in front of me, it almost makes me tear up! All of our squabbling and hatred, pride and posturing, egos and conceit - it's all so ridiculously irrelevant >.< I know how horribly trite and cliché that sounds, but I honestly feel that!
I know I've ranted about this before - I don't go anywhere without my soapbox!
So I get that life isn't that simple - we deal with what's in front of us during our day to day and tiny irrelevancies take on gargantuan importance; but I really truly believe that if those of us so privileged as to get upset over minutiae could take a moment to sit back with a sight like this, and for one split-second not worry about what people think of us or our own self-worth - then I think we might be getting somewhere.#hippyconfirmed
Whatever. I slept better that night
And the next morning, I felt that old sense of fun return, looking forward to heading out and seeing what treat I'd come across that day! Which oddly enough wasn't really that much, although I did stumble across this toastie chappy, a big red giant in a bit of a waltz with a nearby star:
This was a lot friendlier than the L-type I came across shortly after. Nothing particularly special about this guy apart from the fact that it was very bright, it must have been so close to having a fusion core - everything was bathed in a really eerie red glow. I nipped out in the slf to take a piccy but scuttered back to the safety of the Clair fairly quickly, it was just too creepy!
(I may have screwed about in holo-me a bit to pass the time, hence the hair dye-job!
)Aside from all of this, there really wasnt anything that spectacular going on. A few more nice potential settlement candidates but always just outside of my super-picky criteria. I pinballed up to the Semotus Beacon in Oevasy so a few friends could get some postcards of one of the more remote places in the Milky Way, but once everyone had gone and I was alone again, I did something I always do on the rim and turn the nose to the void
It's both scary but also wonderful to just see that vast emptiness between galaxies; if you discount the nearby dwarf galaxies, there are literally millions of light years between us and our nearest neighbours.
We're very tiny fish in an inconceivably large ocean
I started back towards the higher density of the core and was a little taken aback when I spotted a fellow traveller on my galmap, just a few thousand light years away. We exchanged a few cagey messages - he was understandably a little concerned about meeting up with some unknown soul out here in the middle of nowhere; sixty thousand light years in an escape pod wont be a vacation! I think I managed to convince him I wasn't a threat and we finally met up on a little moon for a chat and the galactic version of a cuppa and a cookie
After trading a few exploration notes, we said our goodbyes and I headed back up and out. As I spooled up the FSD, I couldn't help thinking how crazy it was to bump into someone out here; the area I was in is a bit of a tourist destination but even so! I remember the good/bad old days of exploration, with nav computers that were on par with an abacus in terms of sophistication, and ships that had the jump ranges of a Pogo stick by comparison to today's gargantuan jump drives; and while I do think the advancements are wonderful in that more folks get to see the "good stuff" of the galaxy, I can't help ending my thoughts with this quote (and I just KNOW I'm going to get a lot of grief for this but what the hell, it seemed apt!):
"Getting awful crowded in my sky"
I know, even I grimaced at that one >.<
Take care out there, everyone! Clara signing off