Alone, yet not mad

Author: Lex Declare

Original post: https://forums.eveonline.com/t/yc-122-newcwc-alone-yet-not-mad/234546

Entry for YC122 New Eden Capsuleer’s Writing Contest in the Prose category.

"We spend so much time swallowed in electronic sensors that we… as least I don’t know what it feels like to physically feel a touch."

The harsh rasping sound of a low limit capacitor warning grated on his nerves, dragging him out of his relapse into the depths of personal thought. Sleep cycle commencing. He wasn’t tired… but he had to sleep.

"That’s not right… we feel more then we realize. Each ship is an extension of our own being, physical, emotional. Its sensors are our sensors…"

He’d been waging this war in his own mind arguing with himself much like a deranged mad man lost in the warp… Well technically…

“No Technically… And I’m not mad.”

Well, that’s to be determined at a later date at time… all capsuleers were a little mad supposedly. The sudden lack of sound made him open his eyes and check the exterior sensors then the interior. All was optimal and functioning within comfortable perimeters so he “closed” his eyes again and let the capsule drift.

There was something to the vast open dark world that surrounded him that called as sirens once did to the sailors of old. Pulling and teasing until all is lost as the ship bashes and batters itself against the rocks hidden just below the waves.

Where does one go when they are alone? Drifting and lost within the depths of space, the darkness enveloping them until the smallest pinprick of light brings such overwhelming joy.

The soft beep of a comms channel activating brings him back from the depths of his dark mind. A broken discussion being had in The Summit, the information half garbled by the distance it had traveled.

“You don’t realize how vast the world is till you understand what it truly means to be alone.”

Oh sure he was never truly alone… a ship, sometimes full of crew, surrounding him with tons of metal and material, an AI with her monotone syllables whispering into the dark recesses of space status updates. Comm channels were available at a thought, all filled with other Capsuleers discussing everything from the latest drink trend to religious debates.

“Do the stars feel lonely?”

His mind wandered yet again to that thought that single pinprick of light sitting in a vast dark enveloping embrace of cold space. A beacon of light so bright that it was visible from miles and miles away, Years if you wanted to get technical about it because likely… he was witnessing the birth of a star.

And he floated there in his dark capsule.

Docking Request Accepted, AutoPilot disengaged.

Drug back from his dark abyss as the ship docked at yet another station…

Materials, personnel, objects, and people transferred and shifted, shifted and transferred, he didn’t even feel like disengaging from the ship so he didn’t. The loud shift and pop and ping of metal cooling in space, the hum and vibration of the station’s life as it flowed around the behemoth ship filled his electronic senses to the overflow.

“Noise all around yet… nothing to listen to.”

Repetition and procedure… constant and always, always surrounded by something, but always solitary.

Is it strange how he felt that the old adage of no one can hear your screams in space really wasn’t truthful? They could be heard… at least Capsuleers heard them… and felt them with every hammer blow impact on the ship. Were they supposed to? Who knows. He didn’t know, he just knew he felt it… and heard them. Until he didn’t anymore.

True space was silent. A cold vast nothing void of light, sound, air. Just there… but was it truly there? If it held nothing was it something?

Some would argue that God, or Gods or some divinity had created everything, but how do you create something out of nothing. Yet was the light… that small pinprick of light growing brighter?

And he floated still in that capsule… surrounded by the cold embrace of sense depriving space. Drifting as was the want of anything in nothing, just to drift.

Until there was no light. There was no sound.

He opened his eyes slowly and lifted his head off the pillow… how long had he been back? He never could really tell after waking up. He’d lost count of how many years he’d floated out there in that dark depths lost to everything but his own thoughts.

And now, back surrounded by objects, people, things, light… even a little warmth. Yet he still felt.

Alone.

“At least I’m not mad.”