Living Forever

[thk13421]

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I am not a man of words. Never have been. But there are things that need to be written; that can't just be spoken to the cold emptiness of space.

I used to think that the people who talked fancily about "the cold emptiness of space" were asshats. Of course space isn't empty; there's planets and spaceships and tradelanes and stuff. Anyone who thought space was empty was going to be in for a mean surprise the first time they got jumped by some Liberty rogues in California, or unioners in Frankfurt, or smashed themselves to pieces in some forsaken asteroid belt in the omegas.

Empty. Ha.

But I've been hauling freight for a while now, and I've started to really feel the cold. When you're hauling back and forth from Augsburg to New London to Trafalgar to Newark, you don't really have time to stop and make friends, and it turns out that 600 crates of cigars make for pretty poor conversation. The weird Wrongness of the color of Jumpspace. The lazy thud of Tradelanes, over and over again. Hell, after a while, the sound of your own cruise drive starts to drive you crazy, until you're just about ready to see if you could open the airlock and make the jump all the way to the next station before your blood boils out your ears.

A few days ago, I talked to an AI. At least, I think that's what it was. Ship wasn't like any I've ever seen before, covered from front to back in weapons that could cut a cruiser in half without going to half power. It talked funny, too. Asked me what cigars were. I told him. He asked, "Why do humans kill themselves this way?" Thought about it for a long time. I told him that it's because we're all dying, slowly. Life is a terminal illness. Who can say why some people aren't content to wait.

This got him all sorts of angry. He asked me, "Why do humans kill and die for things they cannot hope to keep?"

I didn't have an answer for him then. Even now, I'm not so sure.

Some folks have family, friends. People who they would happily die for, if doing so helps them along. And some folks have causes, ideals, dreams, nations, companies and movements, for which they'll do the same. I can boast no such thing. I may pile up all sorts of money in my travels, but if I get myself killed... what did it mean? If a pirate ganks me next time I jump into a tradelane, will it make that much of a difference? Will it be that much of a difference if it happens in 20 years, when I'm older, grayer, but still grinding my my through sirius, one system to the next?

That's why I'm starting this log. Words, I think, live forever. And that may just be enough for me.

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