Capsuleer
By BCE
Title: Am I me?
words: 700+
Prompt: Soul
Synopsis: A capsuleer contemplates his souls and life.
Notes: Just popped into my head line by line over the last few days after reading some of Griselda Banks' FMA fanfic "A Hundred Ways To Say You're My Brother", and playing some EVE Online that night.
Editting is very rough...
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He doesn't remember his first death, doesn't really remember any of them, his memories continuous if jagged here and there. He supposed he could recall better if he looked through his logs, but honestly he has no interest in dragging up what are likely memories filled with panic and pain, followed by the sudden and jarring feeling of waking from a vivid nightmare. He's never forgotten the memories of waking up after dying. He's not sure how many times he's died, and he knows it should bother him when it doesn't, but he can't seem to bring himself to care either. Again, a quick look at his logs would tell him, and again he won't look.
He believes in his soul, in an afterlife, and while his memories are always there when he wakes up for the first time again, he wonders. Wonders if it's really the same soul that remembers, the same soul that looks out through new eyes to see a face in the mirror that is always the same. Because it always feels like seeing someone new. Always feels slightly off, like memories of a far too vivid dream and not reality.
He doesn't let it occupy his attention for long, quickly going to his quarters on station and fitting his next ship. He contacts an agent, accepting a mission, and boards his capsule. The neural interface absorbs all his attention, and he has little time for thoughts beyond piloting the ship which surrounds his capsule and coordinating with other capsuleers.
But in the quiet times between fighting pirates and running cargo, between attacking enemy control points and defending allied ones, his mind slips and he wonders if the next time he wakes up for the first time: will he still be himself? Or a different man who wears his face and shares his memories...
0o0o0o0
Waking up can be several things for him: a gradual, slow awakening to the world around his bed in his quarters, his senses slowly notifying him of what they perceive; the sudden, but gentle, realization that he is awake, plans for the day popping into his mind; or a sudden jerk, a gasp and clutching at bed sheets, blinking blurred vision away until he can clearly see the medical room around himself.
Sometimes, waking up is terrifying, his eyes blinded not by light but a lack thereof. His quarters dark as he scrambles at consciousness, trying to discern horrifying nightmare from quiet reality, the fading memory of being trapped in his ship as it slowly dies around him gradually being replaced by the present knowledge of being in his quarters.
0o0o0o0
He remembers the first time.
Not when his ship shattered around him, soon followed by his pod almost literally popping as rounds bigger than his body punched through shields, armor, and hull, the instant of burning and freezing before suddenly waking up in a new body. No, he remembers when a capsuleer picked up his escape pod, impressed at how well he had commanded a Caldari navy frigate against their own modified Caldari-built destroyer.
He doesn't remember their name, only that they told him he should become one of them, that his skills shouldn't be lost simply because he'd lost a fight. He'd hated that capsuleer, hated him for killing his crew and taking away friends. Hated the fact he'd accepted, going through the process of becoming a new kind of human.
At the end, he died, a calm and gentle death, slipping into a permanent sleep only to awaken in a clone pod with a view of the med-techs wheeling his old body away to be processed into material for another clone.
He'd never stopped hating that capsuleer, just like he had never stopped hating himself for become one of them and living when his crews' bodies were scattered through space. Maybe, one day, he'd let it go. For now, he buried it in the back of his mind and locked it away, his nightmares dragging it back to the surface on nights he'd once again brushed death and escaped.
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A/N: Well? Not my usual fair, but I thought it was decent enough. -shrug- You're reviews really do feed me, so tell me your reactions?
Doubt I'll continue this, but I'll see what inspires me. This might be more drabble than my Pilot's Table ficlets. lol