The Three Little Piggies

I studied my face in the mirror. I still had some pod goo in my moustache. I rubbed it in and smiled. What a beautiful feeling this was: Getting out from the pod instead of that terrible clone vat. But the sweetest feeling: Thinking about the three confused capsuleers now waking up in their new clones wondering what the fuck just happened.

It had been a merciless slaughter. An act of pure evil. The three fresh capsuleers, not even graduated from their training institutions, had been peacefully mining in two frigates and a destroyer. Then suddenly their overview had showed a pilot, yours truly, painted blood red by their default HUD settings, landing right next to them.

“Hello, hello, little piggies, will you let me join the party?”

Their horror. I could still remember it from my first visits to the lawless belts of low security space. He has opened fire! What kind of ship is he in? A Firetail-something? Who is this? Why is he all red? Fuck! We are taking heavy damage! All to the battle stations! Fire at will!

“Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your spaceships up!”

The confusion was total. The inexperienced capsuleers must have been struggling with making the correct neural connections with their ships. None of them managed to do anything right. The tranquility of the isolated asteroid belt was now being ripped apart by burning projectiles and a screaming afterburner. Who is this capsuleer? Why does he do this to us?

I opened my eyes. Happy with what I saw in the mirror. A cold blooded merciless coward. Preying on the weak. The stupid. And the poor. Not the honourable pirate looking for fair fights and duels. I fled those stronger than me. I ran when the odds looked bad. I was a scavenger looking for easy prey and leftover targets.

What just happened? We are in our capsules! What the hell! He is still shooting at us!

I was their baptizer. Their saviour. Their revelation of immortality. I was death. I delivered this mind blowing experience to them all: The ice cold insta-freeze when the body meets empty space. The silence. The confusion. The blackness. And the existential fear. The horror of living through your own death. Waking up with the memories of a frozen corpse.

You may build your spaceships of rolled tungsten bricks. Then I will not come for you. Because I am not the big bad wolf. I am the lonely hyena.

I licked the last drop of pod goo from my moustache and opened up The Devil's Tattoo communications channel from my Neocom.

I'm the hyena with good looks and bad company.

That fresh out-of-the-pod feeling.

This log entry has earlier been published at the collaborative space log known as The Fighter at the Gates of Hell.

Return To Consciousness

After having blown up and leaving millions of ISK in Faction Modules floating in space, I felt tired. I was overheated and burnt out. The change of pace was good: Flying expensive was a thrill! But I was getting a reputation for dropping good and profitable loot - and it was time for a break.

I had this great reality-holoreel called “Real Life” that I wanted to plug into. It’s a story about a man living on the ancient planet known as Earth. He is a regular mortal living a quiet family life with his wife and kids. A great escape from the realities of being a scumbag Capsuleer! So, by hot-wiring some circuits in my pod, I disconnected the signals emitted to space and plugged my consciousness directly into the holoreel I had already installed in my pods in-flight entertainment system. And just like that, my pod disappeared from all directional scanners in space, and I was inside the reality of “Real Life”.

But now I am back. Plugged into reality again. My pod signaling to all that care to use their directional scanner: I am an object in space. Most likely wrapped in a cheap Rifter class frigate destined for destruction in an overheated race to death!