Explorer's Log: First Flight

[Proselyte]

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ENTRY 010 – ERROR: LOCATION UNKNOWN

"I've learned much. Much more than I wanted to know. Many answers, but so many more questions."

"That's definitely not somethin' you want to say after a test flight. After I arrived in the system, I felt that familiar calling pulling at me again, which was starting to feel almost... comfortable. The ship's sensors were picking something up too by this point, but it was spotty, indecipherable. I was hearing it loud and clear, though, almost like music..."

"The system had extremely high levels of background radiation, and I was having no luck finding a way out. I either approach or my rad-shielding slowly degrades and I cash my last check. The source was this bizarre station, with a similar make to the jump gate that led me here. I was worried about whether I could even dock, but as if it had known, it guided me inside."

"It was even stranger within the interior. The corridors of the station seemed to bend and shift if you blinked or looked away, and so much was impassable, blocked off by these force shields. I was expecting the unexpected, scared skinless as I was, but what I didn't expect to find was other people."

"They welcomed me, and said I was hearing the same beckoning that they had heard, though some were surprised when I told them how intense it was. For some of these pilgrims, from all across Sirius, it took them living their whole lives in space to eventually hear this station reach out to them, calling them to a new way of life - I'd barely been in space for over a year. In that moment, I felt like I had actually been hearing it my whole life."

"Some humans, they said, possessed a mind that was particularly attuned to the way those that were 'here before us' would perceive and communicate. It was no wonder, they said, that I was pulled here like I was, though it's oddly a rare occurrence. This all sounded like insanity to me, but I didn't know how to answer to it - what could I say? It was better than my explanation of suddenly losing my marbles."

"Instead, I asked what they meant about those 'here before us'. And they told me. About the Nomads. About humanity's great theft, our fruitless resistance, the dark tragedy we wreak on each other and how unworthy we've been to inherit what we have here, in Sirius. This place, they said, was a place to escape that, and to soon embrace something new entirely. I would understand, soon, if I stayed."

"It felt so right to see where this was going, but I couldn't shake the memory of what I felt in Inverness: that indiscriminate anger and hatred. It gave me some pause, knowing the people here were identifying with that. I think I should be damn glad that it did, or I don't think I'd have ever left that place."

"I told them that whatever this was, I clearly wasn't ready for it, and they were surprisingly understanding, even guaranteeing that I would be able to leave the system. One of them though, an older man, passed me a haunting comment as we parted: that the more of humanity I saw across the stars, the more I would want to return."

"I'll be keeping this little excursion to myself for a long time, I think. But I know that I would very much like to prove him wrong."

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