Of War and Passion

One year.

One year I joined the clone soldier program and joined one of the immortals, fighting for ideals, for ISK, for fame and sometimes just because I am good at what I do. Three years I have fought in countless battles, died countless times only to wake up again in a new body. Those countless deaths and seemingly never-ending pain involved with those deaths can take a toll on a person. It certainly has for me, and a lot of other people. People deal with these issues in different ways. Some take a break, some keep on working and endure it, some find their own methods of relaxation to wind down with between battles. But generally I have seen one habit grow generally on all clone soldier, and that is the numbing of feel. Basically, we do not care anymore.

When you think about it, it does make some sense. You are a person that is practically immortal in combat, fighting other people who are like you in battles that never seem to have any impact on the galaxy, even in Molden Heath. No matter how hard you fight, no matter how much you want to win the battle, in the end all that you have really accomplished is push back the immortal enemy to fight again another day. Eventually, you stop caring for the battles you fight. You just go in, suit up and fight for 5 to 20 minutes, and after that the enemy retreats, you get paid and you return to your quarters to queue up for another contract. You don't really think about it, you just do it like a mindless drone. Death is irrelevant now and your actions seem worthless in the grand scheme of things.

That is a dangerous habit to have, and I have already seen some people become numb because of it. They only accept contracts that have the quickest battles for the maximum reward, use cheapest gear they can get for the maximum profit. They don't communicate, help out others or try working as a team with other soldiers, they just go there, fight and then leave without ever saying a word. And honestly, I have started to suffer from the same issues, fighting has become, boring. Even in Molden Heath, where corporations can fight for a piece of their own land, actually conquering a district doesn't yield much results. You get a lot of ISK from biomassing and selling all the excess clones you create on the district, fight on the distrct at the same time every day of the week to fend off all the attackers trying to conquer that piece of land and make a little more ISK. Even the biggest corporations that control nearly everything in Molden Heath have started to become stale, rarely any fights are happening now because no one has the will to do them anymore.

How could we fix this? The easiest and most obvious answer would be to have something that actually matters and has an impact on New Eden, but that is very much easier said than done. I have read something about the things capsuleers do in space, specifically in the nullsec regions with the moon mining and extracting resources from planets to make high-value materials to construct high-end ships and modules. Sovereignty over these systems can tip the balance of power and cause entire alliances to collapse, that would be something us clone soldiers could really use to boost our will to fight if we could somehow help with these fights in a significant way.

Or if we could get a massive cannon to point at the sky and shoot capsuleers with it, that would be quite cool too.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Retirement and Uncertainties

Gallenteans,

each day I seem to like them less and less, at least when talking about the ones visiting our Intergalactic Summit. All that they seem to do is shout very obnoxious their own ideals of freedom and universal rights, and most of the time they can't even write correctly, I thought their translator implants would give them the ability for basic grammar in the very least. But that isn't the point of this day's entry, what I'm here for is to talk about a whatif scenario I was presented with. Ironically this was presented by a Gallente, so maybe their credibility was redeemed a little bit when it made me think.

The Gallentean in question babbled something about all the factions making peace and stopping all wars together and all that other utopian perfect society crap and what would we do since clone soldiers would be banned. The scenario in itself isn't really that important, but rather the question what would, I do if(or when) I am out of job? That is an interesting question indeed, and I didn't really think about it until now. What I replied was that I would fly back to my homeplanet Intaki, find some nice spot to live in on the mountainside where I could sustain myself independently and live in solitude. I was also thinking of possibly moving to an Ida temple and become an Idama eventually, the concept of rebirth in the Intaki culture has always fascinated me. Why would I want to live in solitude? Well,

I don't know exactly. Honestly, I don't really know much about why am I doing the things that I'm doing, why I accepted the invite to the clone soldier program, why I became a mercenary, why I'm even writing these entries at this very moment. I suppose I follow my instinct mostly when I make decisions, most my life has been mostly relying on my gut feeling honestly. But right now I'm thinking about how long my career as a clone soldier and a mercenary will last. A year? A decade? A century? All of this could be possible, I could burn out in just a few years and start my retirement plans early, or I could last for decades, even centuries until some freak accident occurs and my consciousness is lost somewhere to the cosmos(we are far from being immortal).

The lifespan of a clone soldier is unpredictable and very violent and brief most of the time, and I have a feeling it will be the same for me, regardless of my beliefs about the universe and my duties towards helping the efforts to secede Intaki from the Gallente Federation in a peaceful manner. It kind of saddens me to know that a clone soldier's life is deemed to be like this, but on the other hand, it's not so bad. I earn large amounts of ISK, not (yet) as much as a capsuleer, but still more than a regular baseliner would in their entire lifetime. Not only that, I have found several great friends to share our victories and losses, and I consider them a family I never had.

But I'll never know for certain, perhaps that was one of the reasons why am I in the situation where I am right now. The thrill of knowing that you could be the most renown mercenary in New Eden, and the very next moment pummel down to the bottom. Plus I've always had a thing for big guns and explosions.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Change

First proper entry to this thing, about a thing I started pondering when I was talking to a friend of mine in the emissary I had just set up. The entire conversation was about a different subject, but something she said could be boiled down to a question: "Am I the same person who I was before becoming a clone soldier?". Technically not, most of my time is spent using clones that are nothing like me and don't even have the genetic structure that would link me to those clones. But still I use my name Denak, talk the same way, act the same way, my family would still recognise me if I met them again in my leisure clone.

But am I the same person deep down? The more I think about it, the more I am uncertain. Three years ago, when I was recruited into the Immortal Soldier Program, I was impulsive, quick-tempered and generally quite aggressive and loud mouthed. Now, reserved, thoughtful, quiet when among strangers but very relaxed when with friends, some might even call me cold and ruthless when in combat and that I fight without honour. Years of conditioning and strict authority when being trained might have had something to do with that, but in my opinion it's about something else, my implant.

No, I'm not talking about the generation 1 implants that caused their users to go crazy, I'm talking about the general idea of my "immortality". While I disagree that we are anywhere close to being immortal, you can't help the feel in combat that you seem invincible when even death itself can not reach you. For some, it could make you reckless, uncaring about others and yourself and living just to get another paycheck. For me, it has made me think about the situation, why I fight for the reasons I am fighting. In the faith Ida, it is believed that death is only the beginning of the journey, that after you die you are reborn in a new body to experience life again. Only the Idama can remember their past lives, and are the ones that can break the cycle. They think that cloning is only an extension of this faith.

I do not follow Ida to all it's beliefs, but the concept of rebirth has always made me ponder. Personally, I believe that when I die in battle, I am reborn in a new body just like in Ida, only that the body which I am reborn to is predetermined. I am an experience wiser, and I am now prepared to back right back into battle.

So have I changed after being made a clone soldier? In some ways yes, on others no. I am a lot calmer now than I used to be and also more open towards other people and not so cautious. Are all the changes good? I would like to think so. I may sometimes overthink things or not think them through properly, but in the end I like the new me.

Prataya yavati, readers.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ