If the above name reads the same as that of your home world, it's because your translator is being overzealous. I wrote the name of my home world, but in the interests of it not appearing as 'Dirt' when you read it, your translator has likely changed it to be the same as your home world. There is rationale behind this, namely that you'll identify better with the entity writing to you if it sounds like you're from the same place, nevermind the fact that you're a bipedal mass of meat and water and it's an amorphous collection of silicon. So if you hear me talk about Earth, realize it's my homeworld, not necessarily yours.
It's in exile anyway, and yours probably isn't, so that should make it easier.
If you've leapt to the conclusion that it was my species that blew up the Yotia system and was therefore doomed to be forever without a homeworld, congratulations! So yes, I, by virtue of being a member of said species, must be one of sentient life's greatest monsters. Let's all kill and maim me, as my kind should not be allowed to walk among civilized beings!
Now that we've got the obligatory species-bashing out of the way, I'll continue.
Earth-in-Exile isn't a planet, of course. It's a fleet of colony ships, all interconnected. There were a whole lot of us when the whole Yotia incident occurred, though our numbers have dwindled somewhat since then. Enough people, though, that we couldn't all fit on one colony ship. When we were first exiled, before we actually left our home, a great deal of work was done refitting the ships to handle live people. Very very few species have generational colony ships that people are meant to live on anymore, most relegate their travelers to dark-sleep, so our new habitat required the reinvention of several key technologies. For the most part, my people are content to stay on the ships - I think some of the instinct to explore was burnt out of us after the exile. Why explore, after all, when we're already adrift in space without a home?
Some of us, myself included, take that as a good reason to explore. We're used to being planetless; space itself is more our home now. It's not as though we're going to stop being adrift anytime soon so even in the worst of cases nothing's going to change. We've got a greater number of freelance pilots, proportionally, than we did in the past, but space is a big place and there aren't that many of us left, so I hardly ever run into anyone I know. Until, like we all do, I come back home.
For those of us who venture out, we do it with somewhat of a feeling of responsibility for the rest of the colony. I know it sounds very much unlike me, but I'm planning to use a great deal of the money my happy green translator light's going to award me to improve living conditions back here. Most of the kids growing up in exile are techies like me; you have to be if you want to keep the place running. They don't need my expertise, though, they need my funding.
Even if I wanted to retire and stay behind to maintain the place, I wouldn't fit in. At least not with this upcoming generation. For a lot of the kids, the colony ships are all the home they've ever known. Old farts like me, though, we remember what it was like to have a planet all our own.
We miss it.
Pining for the past, though, is unlikely to resurrect it, so I'm going to put this particular line of thought from my mind and concentrate, instead, on summing up my current visit home.
This part of the journal is being entered from my house. The design of the colony ship I call home was essentially a refit of the sleeper ships, so the word 'house' is a misnomer. It's more like crew quarters, except roomier than those on board my ship. A few of the other ships were of the huge cylindrical variety; ones which actually had real houses in them, real land and trees and atmosphere that wasn't pumped through recyclers. It was an enormous waste of space, but then again there was no shortage of that where we were. I could have bought myself a house on one of those if I'd kept enough money, but every time I visit here I leave poorer. Not just financially, either. Seeing what's happened to my species... it takes something from me.
Checking in was a simple affair; with the general population slowly shrinking, there was more than enough room aboard the ships, and so my old place hadn't been reassigned to anyone. It was just as I'd left it, in fact, except quite a bit dustier. I busied myself with cleaning up because I felt I had to. What I really wanted to do was walk around, see what had changed. It'd been a few years since my last visit and for me that wasn't that long a time. Most pilots who leave from this place come back once a decade, if that often. Still, for all that we never saw each other, we were a close-knit bunch. I'd queried the colony computer about which pilots were in port now, and I knew each and every one of them. I also knew where I could meet them, and I didn't need the computer to tell me that: The bar.
"The Sleeper", to be specific. It wasn't on the ship I was currently staying in, but since the ships had long ago been rendered immobile and interconnected, it would be a rather trivial matter for me to get from one to the other. I left as soon as I could rationalize doing so.
The neighborhood seemed the same, but all neighborhoods looked like this one aboard my homeship. The people looked the same, mainly. The above-thirty group tended to recognize me, and I'd get respectful nods or waves or looks full of daggers depending on who'd spotted me. The kids didn't know me at all and so regarded me with the dull disinterest of teenagers prepared to, if necessary, completely ignore anything I said. Unlike the adults they were used to, though, I wasn't planning to say a word to them.
There was a quick transport shuttle - the mass transit sort of shuttle, not the interplanetary sort - which rocketed me and a few others along the tube which connected the homeship to the host of The Sleeper. I did my best not to say anything on the ride, but I got more than a few looks. People in my neighborhood knew me specifically, but even to people who weren't acquainted with me I was easily recognizable. I was a pilot, after all, and we were a rare and dying breed. Thankfully nobody tried to start up conversation. It'd either be people begging for stories of the outside, all of which would depress them, or it'd be recrimination for leaving the habitat at all, instead of staying behind to help. I was in the mood for neither.
It only took a few minutes to reach the new ship. I got my bearings together and walked a route that, despite not having tread upon it in years, I remembered perfectly. Contrary to the fact that alcohol tends to erase brain cells, it seems to work surprisingly well for imprinting things upon them as well. Specifically, things like how to get more alcohol.
"Ledford!" the jubilant and more than a little intoxicated cry came up as soon as I entered the bar.
I couldn't resist giving them a smart-ass "As you were" before I sat down. They all recognized me, though I only knew a couple by sight. I'd dealt with all of them, of course. This would be an excellent opportunity for me to put names and faces together, and then drink until they'd become decoupled again.
Two things to note here: I'm not one of those pilots who's always drunk, those who live on some drug or another to get through the days. I do, however, drink on important occasions. Secondly, this was an important occasion. I ordered an Exile special, which was a drink native to the planet we used to have. It was made from a fermentation process on a plant which had resisted all efforts at transplantation. There was a finite amount of the stuff left, and though the Yotians continued to export it, we naturally considered that to be of lesser quality than the real thing. Therefore the real thing was considerably expensive.
"When the hell did you get so rich?" one of the less inebriated captains asked me. He meant it to sound as though he were joking, but I could tell he somewhat irate at me. Probably thought I didn't come by home often enough. I had a mother, guys, okay? I don't need a surrogate.
By way of response, I held up the translator box. The happy green light beamed out toward them, and there was a respectful pause in the conversation while the rest of the bar took in the spectacle. Shortly thereafter, the entire place was in an uproar, demanding the story.
I told them, of course. You might be able to tell at this point that I like telling a story or two. Must be my age; our species grows loquacious in our later years. Still, they hung on every word. I told it pretty much like I told it here, only I didn't mention the Ulix. For one thing, that would have invited a lot of questions that I didn't want asked and weren't comfortable with the answers with. Similarly, I didn't mention the Resonator or my bizarre dreams. Instead, I concocted a story about being Lost In Space, which is one of the many unreasonable fears of a ship pilot. There are a number of sentient species in the universe, and each and every one of them got to that state by being able to survive. Given the opportunity, they've expanded their reach pretty far from their own planet. That being said, however, there are places that nobody's been. Space is big, after all. It's possible that with the help of a little navigator computer malfunction a captain like myself could end up out of range of any navigational aides and be forced to somehow find his way back. This is extremely unlikely though; if even one percent of nav computers were susceptible to that sort of malfunction, billions of starships would go missing. Nevertheless, in the story the Ulix became some fallen civilization that had never met up with the rest of the universe (but still had Lanes, I had to get Lane Ledford in there somehow) and my harrowing escape was caused by me grave robbing. Close enough to the truth, I figured.
People entered the bar during my story, but nobody left. The more recent additions could be heard whispering to friends in the back in an attempt to catch up on the story. The first drink I ordered was the only one I had to pay for. I left that night feeling rather tipsy and with that good feeling only telling an entertaining story at a bar can give you. I was so tipsy, in fact, that I almost went to bed without checking my room for messages. Almost. Had I done so, I'd be writing this entry tomorrow instead of trying to type it in right now. If there's anything worse than kludging entries up on a panel, it's trying to do so while intoxicated. Still, I needed the time to think and writing the day's events up has a way of clearing my mind.
Katie Simmond was on board, it turns out. My lone message upon my return from the bar - at least, the only message I cared about - was from her. She'd gotten in the day after my arrival, and after I'd done my query to find out who was here, or else I'd have likely sent something her way first. I'd been at the bar while her message was sent. It was simple and short: "Nice to see you again."
In this context, she meant that it would be nice to see me again. That we'd go meet somewhere went without saying; she wasn't asking to see me so much as saying she looked forward to it. If I'd left her a message, it'd have likely been those exact words. Yes, you, genius that you are, have already figured out what I'm going to mention here, which is that we've been quite involved over the course of the years.
There's a few spaceborne marriages, in fact most pilots tend to marry other pilots, but in those cases the two tend to stay together afterward. I mean this in the sense that they sell off one or both of the ships and go into the freelance business as partners. It's sweet, and there's no way in hell something like that could ever work between myself and Katie. The two of us are entirely insane in too many different ways; my Random button being a perfect example. She wouldn't even have one; her entire trade route has to have been planned out far in advance, her next job was decided four contracts ago. Randomness doesn't exist for her.
There's no animosity between us, though. No sense of what could have been; we tried it, found out it didn't work, and went on our way. Still, it was nice to see her again. If things were different... hell, "If things were different" was practically our mantra. We couldn't have a conversation, it seemed, where the damn phrase wouldn't appear at one point or another. There's just a warmth. The same kind of feeling I get from coming home. It always seems that she manages to appear back in exile at the same time I do, within a few days. Granted, there's times where I haven't seen her and there's times where I run into her on every contract, still part of feeling like I was home when I was here was having her around.
If it seems like I think about her a lot, it's because I was. I stayed up writing this partially because I needed to get it down before the drink, the sleep, and the hangover I was due for tomorrow dulled my memory, but more because I wanted to get down my feelings in writing.
Now that my fingers ache from typing and my head's starting to follow suit, I think I'm going to head into bed and get as much sleep as I can, thus having the hangover's effects experienced mainly while I'm not awake to feel them. Wish me luck.