by wickedwisdom66Where do I start?
Scholars of old used to write and preach about the world and how the philosophies of their time affected everyone or everything around them, but I, the Commander of the starship Lucid Dream, can not do that. I don’t live in, or even on, a single world. My home is the blackness between the stars in the airless void of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Out here, philosophical interpretations dominate and punish the weary mind. They latch on with icy talons, turning the most sensible pilot into a hopeless daydreamer. They bend and warp your thoughts to the breaking point, leaving the lucky ones only inches away from the edge of sanity while pitching the unlucky completely over.
But the real danger is not anything you can see or touch. It is as intangible as it is uncontrollable. It’s a threat hidden in the darkness between the physical—a child of nothing but the ruler of everything. Out here, time is the enemy.
Even now, I can’t help but wonder if my mind has fallen over that edge or how precariously close I stand to it. Even as I write in this log, I have to laugh at the simple truth that, if not for the muted lights of my Krait Phantom or the sound of Galnet News playing in the background, I would indeed have fallen into the abyss by now because I am over one hundred light years into this system, with another two hundred to go before I reach the first planet. The Lucid Dream is fast, but deep in the nothing, it doesn’t seem fast enough.
In moments like this, I question my designs to become an explorer of the unknown. I naively thought the lure of discovering what no human has ever seen would be a shield against the madness one finds when staring out an empty viewport. Now is when I miss the chaos of occupied space. Now is when I miss the Bubble.
But it’s that chaos that helped push me to this moment. All the unprovoked, random acts of violence from those who care nothing for the right or wrong of things made the answer to whether I should have left on this venture more than obvious. I’d rather crash into a moon at supercruise speeds than suffer my death at the hand of some random, trigger-happy pilot.
Yet now, when I’m finally far enough away that an attack is improbable, I find myself almost wishing for the chance to outfly a pirate’s interdiction field. Or, as my riskier side will sometimes do, submit to the pull and space the scum with guns blazing.
It’s strangely unfortunate a scenario like that is so unlikely to play out this far out. All I have to look forward to now is the empty space between here and there. And it’s the “there” that drives me to keep going.
My initial scan of the system revealed the presence of seven planetary bodies and showed that one had five different biological signals on its surface. That, first and foremost, is the reason I am here. The true goal behind this entire mission. Out here, somewhere, is an alien lifeform that will bring an end to my greatest unsolved mystery.
I know it deep down.
I must believe.
To be continued…