Intergalactic Summit

Oh, Maker. Please tell me you have at least some executive control. I have no doubt as to your being a dutiful and loyal citizen, but I don't know how closely you read contracts...

Ohmigosh. Now I understand why that poster in the creche is familiar! You and Desiderya-haani are very popular with a small group of seven year olds here, it seems. Maybe you will meet them next time you are here! It would certainly make their day.

Wait, she holds rights to the digital pictures from the underwear shoot? That sucks.

Fred is correct, and I can say, also that even though I have done so much for baseliners, they still hate me. I've donated to their charities, I've killed thousands of pirates, I take care of unreputable individuals in high sec, and I fight the Gallente and Minmatar milita, all to help and protect them, yet they still hate me for it. It's no real secret. I literally refuse to have children, just for this reason. If things change, then maybe, but I doubt they will anytime soon.

Speaking theoretically, if I had children, I'd do everything I could to protect them, and be with them. Maybe not bodyguards, until things started to get tense, then I'd just hire a clone soldier. Overkill, but that's really the only kill. My job isn't the best for raising children, though, and I admit that, and I'd really say for others to follow that rule, also, unless they can be with their family a lot.

Oh, and I'd love it if you'd forward that software to me, Fred, it'd be a great help.

Digital image clauses is just part of an indentured work contract standard in the State I would believe. As an employee of a company you are also nominally a representative of that company and ones public profile can also be a commodity to be used in the interests of a company.

As for the original question posed in this communique. I was a mother until recently, and only chose to become a capsuleer when I deemed my children to be of a sufficient age that I could release them from my care. They are orphans in the care of Kaalakiota and the State now. If they survive their years of training in their present corporate-military youth brigade, they can return to me as men and we shall discuss it then if we are to resume our obligations to each other as Family.

I certainly would not decide upon continuing my career as a capsuleer if I did not recognize that embarking my children upon the same path as I once walked to be a necessary sacrifice on my own part. They will perhaps despise me, as I once despised my own parents, for the decision I have made. I am sure however, they will mature as I have and recognize that it is sometimes better to be strengthened with the proper virtues instilled on the parade grounds when you are young, than to be weakened later in life spoiled by too much love and affection as a child.

Oh my, I have to admit I chuckled when I am attributed supernatural powers as a "witch" that can control other people's minds now by Diana Kim.

Hmm.

Maybe so much of Kim's angst towards me stems from her fears of my mind control powers?

If you consider an ability for a dubious citizen to ignore proper military conduct and behave like a gallentean sellgirl as a supernatural power, then yes. And if she can influence others (as her subordinates, who were unlucky enough to get as a superior... akhem... "officer" such filth) with this pro-gallentean filth, then yes, there is a reason for fear.

If you turn others towards path of gallente... well, you are no longer filth.
You are a threat.
Threat deserve greater attention than filth.

I don't see Isis as a threatening personality here, I think - if anything - she is trying to ward some of you from the dark forces that she perceives other capsuleers to be.

I'll admit she has given her warning clumsily, but I don't see malice in her intentions and I think some people have chosen to be personally offended where there is no cause.

For the OP in regards to having children:

I have chosen for voluntary sterilisation on all of my currently active clones.

Again, this choice was wholly voluntary, and for personal reasons. I am an Informorph, and though I have not abandoned my humanity, I will not deny my truth either - those who do try to deny their Capsuleer nature it may find themselves living a hollow parody of an old life in which they no longer properly fit; feeling their actions seem more like puppetry or a disassociated episode than true experience.

I am a sacrifice to my God, my King, and my Empress, these are choices that I made gladly for the preservation of both Kingdom and Empire. Therefore I live as a capsuleer is to live, as I was trained, and to the fullest I am able.

This is not a matter of an emotional struggle dealing with raising mortal children while afflicted with some imagined immortality - that 'struggle' truly is imagined. We are not immortal - it is simply very hard to keep us 'dead' unless we choose to do so. Even still every time our pod is breached we are rolling dice on that 0.3% burn transfer failure.

And if a life 'long lived' is a great concern, I would think that any Empyrean with a half functioning implant would simply pay to have their families become empyreans as well upon adulthood; this imagined heartache of watching one's children's die of old age while they stay young is merely the beginning of a panicked thought process that oddly isn't taken to the end conclusion.

Therefore, my reasonings are not selfish ones -- what I would have to experience in the process, how I would feel about it.

Remain aware that when you speak to the comparatively very tiny population of New Eden's Pilots who discuss their humanist traits here in the Intergalactic Summit, there are hundreds of thousands of Capsuleers who no longer consider these traits vital, or even important - be it madness, or simply an evolution in the psychological paradigm between baseliner and Capsuleer. Those of us who cling to their homes, factions, families, and societies we engaged in pre-graduation are a terrifyingly small minority in a world flooded with the madmen (and women) Capsuleers - the ones who cause the average baseliner to quake in terror when we are even simply mentioned in conversation. The void is terrifying and filed with darkness, and much of it resides in the hearts of Capsuleers.

We are a shining, deadly crown; a biological fitting to a starship that was against all odds allowed to retain his or her free will - for good, or for ill. We spill the bodies of thousands of crews into space daily and give no thought to their names, their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams - or if we do, we risk the chance of going truly mad until we no longer do give it thought.

Even the humble industrialist miner has blood on their hands; we casually listen to audio-feeds or chatter of corporate voicecomms as our drones dismantle pirates who enter our asteroid belts - we barely glance up at their wrecks.

Yes, we can have children.

But be sure that you know 'exactly why'. Be sure that with what you have taken, that you deserve to be given anything. Be sure that the sins of the parents shall not rest on the shoulders of the children - which, in this cluster, is a common practice. Be sure that as an empyrean who can afford nearly everything, that you are not deeply underestimating the cost of bringing a child into your world.

It's possible - and lets be realistic, anyone willing to go into space is willing to take a very large risk. I'd wager our crew could be considered more brave - or foolish - than ourselves. But these are different weights and measures.

Did the ability to survive into the next winter turn us into monsters? It's possible -- depending on what one defines a monster as. All in all the word ends up rather subjective really when it's not being applied to a mythical or imagined being that a single group assigns ass a definition to a single (or multiple) beings or creatures.

At the end of the day, this will boil down into an argument based on each person's upbringing as to whether it is right or wrong, how their individual nations treat capsuleers, etcetera - but the truth of it is unless you plan to retire from space or live as a distant parent or place the child in a creche until such children reach adulthood, it will be dangerous. Of course, it is a danger any one can be willing to take based on circumstances. "Risktaking" is actually a very broad field. If we lived with eternal fear of the unknown every day we'd fear to open our eyes for what nightmares could be in front of us.

Regardless of what any of us think as individuals, in the OP's case, it is a decision they need to make based on the truths around them. I doubt any pirate pilot will acknowledge and cease to fire on a vessel sporting a 'baby on board' glyph like you see on some ground transports across the cluster.

I may have come off as a bit more grim than I usually am, but I am a firm believer that a child's feet should be either on the ground or on a station deck.