[NEW ERA] Personal Log #101 - 27 NOV 3310
27 Nov 2024Kaparov
Starting DISCOVERY.LOG...[OK] Started DISCOVERY.LOG.
Connecting to FALCON I:BLACKBOX...
[OK] Connected to FALCON I:BLACKBOX.
Writing to CMDR.KAPAROV.101...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's been awhile, huh? Reviewing the blackbox, something like five years.
...
Five. Years.
Christ.
When you're a child, you can't wait for the hours to pass. You watch the clock and wait for recess, lunch, the final bell or quarter until the day's end. You start your Mondays counting those remaining eight-hour blocks 'til the next big break or, God forbid, the weekend if that's the best thing you have to look forward to.
At the end of all those weeks and months, the end of all those years, you're "grown." Lucky enough, you're "accomplished" and slipped onto the next conveyor belt of life.
You ever think back to when you were first sentient? A friend of mine says he doesn't have memory of anything before ten years. This guy at Low said he didn't have a thought in his head before he was fifteen. What's that add up to, then? You're eighteen, maybe sixteen if you're trundling slow and droppin' out, maybe sixteen if you're racing along and skippin' stones. That's when you're free to choose.
One man's three years sentient and onto soldiering, the other's eight years in and into astroneering. "Alive" for less than half your own life and expected to choose what side you're dedicated to from there on out.
...
I think my first batch of memories come from when I was about eight. My dad would take me into a little workshop, hangar-side, where he'd gather manuals and ship parts. We'd look'em over real slow-like until I got old enough to spot a dent needing pounded out or corrosion on a board. That point, he'd pass it to me and I'd pass it back, pass it to me and I'd pass it back. Onto the next chunk of metal or silicon.
All that to say: Jesus. I'm grown now. Old, by some people's standards. I don't look to weekends or recess, I nap in concourses between wars and wake up in sweats; I doze off in cockpits and wonder whether it's day or night on Sol, day or night on Achenar, day or night for that workshop on Synteini A 2, from all those years ago.
I wonder long enough, tired enough, I wonder if it's even sane to wonder so hard, so much, about whether we were meant to fly heaps of steel- pockets of atmosphere- in the empty between worlds. I wonder how long we can get by without knowing the time of day or in knowing that there is no time of day at all. Not for us.
I'm sure there's plenty of other Commanders who think about how the days and nights blend so seamlessly. Quarters, blocks, evenings, weeks: they're all relative. In the end, it's just time awake versus time asleep. Our line of work, it gets easier and easier to make it less sleep and more wake with narcos and stims, too. Never know, really, what you're getting- just know that it works. That you're up now and will be for the next eight to twenty-four hours.
Whatever those are.
...
I've told myself that I'm making this entry to take one of those much-needed breaks but I'm not so sure this counts. The crew's been pretty hot on Idini's ass in Tiraon, pretty rough on those Chuj-folk who rolled into 4 Camelo. The wars for the OSLM have been so constant that my copilot took her earnings and ran. Can't even blame her.
I don't know what's next. Think I've got another eight hours 'til a friend of mine can clear my shit with the General Corp. over at Hippalus. I could spend that time at the bar, spend it in supercruise, spend it fighting. Sneaking. Killing.
God...
...
Kids, no matter what they tell you: don't grow into this line of work. They'll tell you where to go but they won't know what's there; they'll tell you what's yours but not who it comes from. They'll puff you up just to pick at your heels like jackals 'til you're raw in heart, mind, and flesh.
I bide my time, now, to forget how much I yearn for days spent waiting on bells and staring at dents in steel and breaks on silicon. Funny, huh?
'Til next time. Kaparov out.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written to CMDR.KAPAROV.101.
Opening telecomms to 4 CAMELOPARDALIS:LOW STATION...
Disconnecting from FALCON I:BLACKBOX...
[OK] Telecomms connected to 4 CAMELOPARDALIS:LOW STATION.
[OK] Disconnected from FALCON I:BLACKBOX.
Stopping DISCOVERY.LOG...
[OK] Stopped DISCOVERY.LOG.