Intergalactic Summit

Ms Jenneth,

Of course I feel the imbalance whilst performing my duties. Many times I leave vessels intact and give a warning to desist the activities that have labeled them as criminals. If the pirates are not countered they will attack and mistreat the civilian population of the Empires and it is that which I seek to stop. I take no pleasure in it, I simply perform my duties as a Hisec capsuleer.

As for the sleepers I too share your discomfort here, we do not as yet know their reasons for attacking the Empire. As yet I have seen no evidence of them attacking civilian vessels or population centres. It would seem that they are probing for weakness within the Imperial forces and this concerns me. Why are they so focused on the Empire, what have they done to draw such a response?

Also given the nature of their use of clones (in some sense at least) to project their consciousness I find myself thinking we as capsuleers may be more like them than we would care to admit.

I am certain Ms. Jenneth would never do Sojourn: Sani Sabik.

With each passing day, you become more and more of an abject failure in the eyes of your "Red God." I bet it must be difficult for you to even undock these days without getting shot at. And because you can't seem to satisfy the blood demands of your deranged mind, you're now trying to pawn the workload off on someone else?

That you would ask for help in killing Matari is a new level of failure for you.

That you would ask Aria Jenneth is a new level of stupidity.

But please, do continue. Your cries for help and relevance are endlessly amusing.

Entry Twenty-Three: Reflected Dark

I've been spending more time around baseliners while visiting the Federation than I did before.

Maybe that was a mistake, previously. I'm such a capsuleer.

What I mean by that is that I identify as and with the capsuleer class. I'll deal with baseliners while baselining, but my associates are uniformly fellow "immortals." If I'm not wearing a mask of normalcy, I keep myself safely sequestered.

I don't fraternize with my crew. I speak as little as I can with baseliners who know what I am. I don't even surround myself with baseliner bodyguards the way my antecedent did.

It's not that I'm afraid. Maybe I'm ashamed? People have good reason to fear or hate us.

Staying away from baseline contact is another habit of my predecessor's that I seem to have picked up without noticing, like wearing black. That's maybe from a different source, but it's a habit I accepted as being "mine," a personally identifying quality, a proof that I exist (even if I don't really think I do). It's something I associated with being "me" from the first time I opened a drawer in my quarters, before I even learned my own name.

Little by little, I notice that little qualities of who she was appear, also, in me. The reasons seem different, but, are they, really?

It's easy to insist that I'm a different person. But how different am I? I hold myself apart from the rest of humanity, as she did, and I do that because I recognize myself as playing a disturbing, deadly role.

If I sequester myself for such a reason, how meaningful is it for me to insist that I'm human?

Please stop feeding the bad posters. It only encourages additional responses.

In my tradition, ghosts are powerful because they are echoes: to be precise, memories, presences that represent an act, usually destructive. Such an apparition chides us, provokes a fearful response, refuses our attempts to forget or lie to ourselves. Of themselves, they do not change; but that very permanence, trapped in a location or endless repetition, changes us, the living. At best, then, I would say they force us to confront ourselves and our history. That must perforce, change us.

In some Matari cultures, the ghosts or spirits of the ancestors are far more proactive and often benign. They watch over their kin, advising them, guiding them, sometimes inspiring them. I know very little of the Caldari mystical beliefs, but I would have thought ancestral influence would be a strong belief system there too.

Ghosts are all around us. We live among them for better or ill. We ignore them at our peril.

It's really damn uncanny just how similar the Caldari and the Minmatar are, even down to the belief in ancestral spirits.

Actually, if we're talking spirit worlds, most Achur sects believe in a celestial realm that's not very different from being alive. Actually, that's one reason I have trouble taking the idea that we "really die" each time we're cloned seriously: a whole household of Aria Jenneths from various different points on my timeline is just a bizarre idea. Some of the other options (from other people's ideas of the afterlife) are just as strange.

Probably saddest of all is the idea that we're "soulless," without any spirits at all. Of course, I don't really believe in a separate, spiritual existence, but if there were such a thing, and our souls have already gone ...

... that would make me ...

No soul. No memory. Just a hollow husk full of old knowledge that kills healthier beings.

... something awful.

Something out of a horror story. I've never on my worst day felt like such a thing.

Hard to say, most of things? Probably no. But I wouldn't hide my back anymore, feeling myself an entity, taking a property of another human body. I don't know, actually. It is a bit complicated. It also makes me feel.. different from others, and I am, well, yes, not afraid, but feel shame. I know I shouldn't, but still...

I am afraid I have picked a wrong word. And I still have a lot of contradicting thoughts about the nature of clones. Maybe there is a ghost of my former clone and it haunts me, new owner of this body. Or maybe I am a ghost, who came into this world to bring mischief and vengeance on those who have angered the... well. You heard about these stories, when ghosts return to avenge for what happened to peoples while they were alive? Okay, I think I am going into wrong conversation direction now. But disregarding whomever we are, do these ghosts exist, do spirit exists, or what we think... we still use bodies and memories of dead people as our own.

As for echo, I think you might be right, since I am reflection of several clones who lived before me. I believe I obliged to them with my existence and I do what they should have done.

So you finally offed all your clones? Sweet.