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EVE Fiction

 
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[Short story] Electric Sheep

Author
Jace Errata
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#1 - 2013-06-05 16:58:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Jace Errata
Do I want to stop thinking?
That was the question, wasn't it?
Amadene sil Vanir, third officer of the Caldari colony starship Shiigeru, pondered that question as she stared at the metal box that would put her in a dreamless sleep for the five hundred years (and half that number in light-years) to the ship's destination.
What am I thinking about now?
Reefersleep, deep cold, cryo; the process has had many names over the years. Many appearances too – a simple bed, or a glass capsule, or a metal box. The purpose is the same though. A high-tech coffin so you can live forever.
What if I don't start thinking again?
The ship nudged her mind, questioning. She reassured it, and again contemplated the coffin. Sleep for a nothingth of a second, or wake for half a thousand years? Hardly an alternative, but...
Will I know if the coffin fails?
An electronic voice echoed through the sleeper bay – the starship's ESSENCE computer, announcing five minutes to acceleration. Barely enough time to go under before the engines fired and crushed her against the aft bulkhead.
You don't dream, do you?
Amadene pulled herself together, slipped on the sensor harness, and climbed into the coffin. The blank grey lid closed with a whirr, and everything went dark and cold.

Shiigeru tore through space at 150,000 kilometres per second, a trail of glowing exhaust reaching out behind it towards the receding sun of Luminaire. Five hundred years later, the sleeper ship would reach the distant star Jita, and found what would become one of the most important colonies of the newborn Caldari State.


Amadene didn't dream.






Note: a bit of division tells me the ship's speed is correct for that distance and time. However, I do not know if the distance from Luminaire to Jita really is 250LY.

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One day they woke me up so I could live forever

It's such a shame the same will never happen to you

Eija-Riitta Veitonen
State War Academy
Caldari State
#2 - 2013-06-05 20:59:26 UTC  |  Edited by: Eija-Riitta Veitonen
According to my distance calculator script:
Quote:
Distance between 'luminaire' and 'jita' is 11.2851 ly.
Jace Errata
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#3 - 2013-06-05 22:14:44 UTC
Eija-Riitta Veitonen wrote:
According to my distance calculator script:
Quote:
Distance between 'luminaire' and 'jita' is 11.2851 ly.

Well then. Mmmrrmrm I'm not sure how to fix this. I have to reconcile three parts of the lore:
1. Early colony ships had warp drive, albeit primitive (150,000km/s seems appropriate)
2. Early colony ships took hundreds of years to arrive
3. Stars in New Eden are really, really close together.

I guess I could change the star to something further away, and the time a bit shorter, but it still needs to be a pretty long way and be a Caldari system.

tweeten

One day they woke me up so I could live forever

It's such a shame the same will never happen to you

Eija-Riitta Veitonen
State War Academy
Caldari State
#4 - 2013-06-06 03:12:25 UTC
As far as i remember colony and/or seed ships only took some decades to arrive to other systems, not hundreds.
Kalanaja
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#5 - 2013-06-07 00:28:28 UTC
Terran ships had warp drive capability which is why it didn't take them hundreds of years to get anywhere. By that same token warp drive is fast, but you would still need quite a bit of time to get between systems, plus having to stop for recharges in between warps.
Kalanaja
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2013-06-07 00:30:20 UTC
Jace Errata wrote:
Eija-Riitta Veitonen wrote:
According to my distance calculator script:
Quote:
Distance between 'luminaire' and 'jita' is 11.2851 ly.

Well then. Mmmrrmrm I'm not sure how to fix this. I have to reconcile three parts of the lore:
1. Early colony ships had warp drive, albeit primitive (150,000km/s seems appropriate)
2. Early colony ships took hundreds of years to arrive
3. Stars in New Eden are really, really close together.

I guess I could change the star to something further away, and the time a bit shorter, but it still needs to be a pretty long way and be a Caldari system.



It wasn't until much later that the Caldari colonized Jita. Guessing it would have been before the war itself as the Caldari were colonizing systems without the Gallente knowing it and then stumbling upon that fact later. That was part of the cause for the Gallente-Caldari War.
Jace Errata
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#7 - 2013-06-07 02:03:14 UTC
Eija-Riitta Veitonen wrote:
As far as i remember colony and/or seed ships only took some decades to arrive to other systems, not hundreds.

I'm sort of basing this on chronicles like Old Man Star, where the guy took so long to make the trip that by the time he got there, faster ships were close to arriving too. I know his ship was damaged, but still.

Kalanaja wrote:
Terran ships had warp drive capability which is why it didn't take them hundreds of years to get anywhere. By that same token warp drive is fast, but you would still need quite a bit of time to get between systems, plus having to stop for recharges in between warps.

The ship in the story is an early Caldari ship, not a Terran ship. It still has warp drive capability, but it's very primitive (hence 150,000km/s rather than the 6+ AU/s our ships can do now).

Kalanaja wrote:
It wasn't until much later that the Caldari colonized Jita. Guessing it would have been before the war itself as the Caldari were colonizing systems without the Gallente knowing it and then stumbling upon that fact later. That was part of the cause for the Gallente-Caldari War.

Can you provide a source for this, please? I don't doubt you, I'd just like to know.

I'd also like to point out that I picked Jita just for somewhere recognizable to aim the ship at. I didn't have access to EVE while I was writing the story, so I couldn't check the map for something further away.

tweeten

One day they woke me up so I could live forever

It's such a shame the same will never happen to you

Eija-Riitta Veitonen
State War Academy
Caldari State
#8 - 2013-06-07 03:44:34 UTC
Jace Errata wrote:
I'm sort of basing this on chronicles like Old Man Star, where the guy took so long to make the trip that by the time he got there, faster ships were close to arriving too. I know his ship was damaged, but still.

His ship was severely damaged: Estimated travel time was only a few minutes. Instead it arrived (...) 44 years behind schedule (...). And the distance was(...) 12 light years (...). Yes, nitpicking is what i do best, sorry.

Jace Errata wrote:
The ship in the story is an early Caldari ship, not a Terran ship. It still has warp drive capability, but it's very primitive (hence 150,000km/s rather than the 6+ AU/s our ships can do now).

You've missed out on a very important part of the chronicle then:
Quote:
Interstellar jump drive technology is fairly new. Until it came along, the only way for the empires to expand their territory was to send a ship to a solar system to build a stargate. The fastest versions of these construction ships managed a speed of ca. 30% of the speed of light. At this speed a system 10 light-years away could be reached in 33 years, or there about. The crew of the construction ships was put into cryogenic stasis for the duration of the trip, only to be revived once the destination was neared.

That'd be 89938 km/s, thus Jita from Luminaire would be reached in some 40 years at that speed, give or take.

Jace Errata wrote:
Kalanaja wrote:
It wasn't until much later that the Caldari colonized Jita. Guessing it would have been before the war itself as the Caldari were colonizing systems without the Gallente knowing it and then stumbling upon that fact later. That was part of the cause for the Gallente-Caldari War.

Can you provide a source for this, please? I don't doubt you, I'd just like to know.

I'd also like to point out that I picked Jita just for somewhere recognizable to aim the ship at. I didn't have access to EVE while I was writing the story, so I couldn't check the map for something further away.

This may become an interesting story if you get the numbers straight (EVE is a game full of geeks, and geeks hate shady nombers) and enlargen it a bit. I like the name, you totally didn't steal the idea from one of the nearby threads on this very forum, did you?
Also here's a bonus linky you were asking for.
Jace Errata
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#9 - 2013-06-09 01:31:13 UTC
Eija-Riitta Veitonen wrote:

His ship was severely damaged: Estimated travel time was only a few minutes. Instead it arrived (...) 44 years behind schedule (...). And the distance was(...) 12 light years (...). Yes, nitpicking is what i do best, sorry.

You've missed out on a very important part of the chronicle then:
Quote:
Interstellar jump drive technology is fairly new. Until it came along, the only way for the empires to expand their territory was to send a ship to a solar system to build a stargate. The fastest versions of these construction ships managed a speed of ca. 30% of the speed of light. At this speed a system 10 light-years away could be reached in 33 years, or there about. The crew of the construction ships was put into cryogenic stasis for the duration of the trip, only to be revived once the destination was neared.

That'd be 89938 km/s, thus Jita from Luminaire would be reached in some 40 years at that speed, give or take.

In my defence, I wrote this at college and couldn't access any EVE sites because of ~filtering~ (they'll allow Facebook through but not anything remotely related to games). I'll make a few alterations to the story. Ideally I'd like to keep a fairly long journey time, for the psychological effect, but we'll see how it goes.
Quote:
This may become an interesting story if you get the numbers straight (EVE is a game full of geeks, and geeks hate shady nombers) and enlargen it a bit. I like the name, you totally didn't steal the idea from one of the nearby threads on this very forum, did you?
Also here's a bonus linky you were asking for.

You know, I read that thread pretty much right after posting this and was all "dammit now they'll think I was referring to that".

As for enlarging the story, I don't know...it's more a sort of "now you're thinking about that too, aren't you?" story than anything else, there isn't really much else I can add to it. To be completely honest, I started off not writing it for EVE at all; it was set in a generic universe on a ship called the Heavier Than Thou. I only changed it to being set in New Eden after someone else said it would be a good match.

tweeten

One day they woke me up so I could live forever

It's such a shame the same will never happen to you