Ghosts

I managed to undock from the Brutor Tribe Treasury in Rens this morning in my lovely new Rupture.
But the place, the ship, it's all beside the point.

The BTT is one of those ugly big square-ish stations.
On the left, as you face it, are the chimneys from what I'm guessing is the power plant, since I believe there are no factory facilities there.

Jets of green erupt into space and, in the manner of all things in a vacuum, shift around following their own fluid and smoke dynamics. The same brownian motion that smoke follows when rising from the surface of a hot drink. But in space it's so much slower, larger, longer lasting.

As I glanced behind me, about to engage my autopilot, I saw what I thought was a face in the smoke of the rightmost chimney.
I turned and watched the gasses vent for a while.

I didn't see another face, but those green lumps, slowly dispersing are somewhat eerie if you take notice of them.

I couldn't help but wonder what happens to the mind of someone who can no longer be cloned.
When death is final.

And, something that has worried me for longer than I care to share; what happens if the clone everyone sees, is not the original person?

Cloning is such a fantastic technology, and yet I cannot help but wonder if we are destroying who we are by using it.

What is death to us now?

I am sure Death used to be important.
I am sure it shaped civilisations.

Now, civilisations shape Death.
Death hides in the shadows, striking rarely.

What happens to the ghosts of those who have truly died?

Shock and, Indeed, Horror!

I took a trip into Amarr Sovereignty Space today.
Just a little jaunt.
I twirled some lovely pirouettes by some custom officials and grabbed a Quafe on one of the stations.

I had no illegal cargo in my hold, in fact, as I was in my slasher for a quick trip, I had no cargo in my hold whatsoever.
I had no guns on my ship, just an afterburner for speeding things up.
I didn't go in guns blazing or shout about freedom whilst in the station.
I just flew in, stopped at a station, flew around a bit, checked the market, and headed back out of Amarrian space.

And guess what.
No one stopped me.
Nothing happened.

There's a lesson in that.

Packed up and ready to be sent out

There's something to be said for Amarr efficiency on grabbing random Minmatar people and enslaving them.
Not only are they good at doing it, but they've worked out how to make it last.

I'm not talking about individual slaves and the mind control units that are used on them, I'm talking about the Minmatar as a whole.

Why us?
Why not go and grab a bunch of Gallenteans and shove mind control units on them? Pretty good workers the Gallenteans, so it's not that that's the problem.

It's a question of attitude.

Gallenteans have this amazingly deep love of freedom. Not just being free and not enslaved, you see it in their ship designs, their weapon designs, their clothing designs.
It's something different. Freedom of expression. Freedom of speech. Freedom of everything.
It's something deep inside them. And it's not at all personal.
If you stop one Gallentean from doing something they want to, the whole lot of them will come looking for a fight.
Take one Gallentean of the street and shove a mind control unit into his brain and you've got a major problem; namedly every single Gallentean out there wanting to give that single person their freedom back.
That's why the Amarrians just don't bother with Gallentean slaves. It's more trouble than it's worth.

So what about us.
I'm not saying your average Minmatar doesn't love freedom.
We do.
For ourselves.
Yeah, we'll go and fight to free slaves.
The occasional run into Amarrian space, attacks on convoys, grabbing as many slaves as we can and coming home to a hero's welcome.

It's very hit and miss though. Very underdog tactics.
Because we're not all doing it at once.
We don't fight for our freedom.

Because deep down, very deep down where we don't want to look, we're glad it isn't us that's stuck in some Amarrian dump with wires into our cerebral cortex.

We don't fight for our freedom because the ones able to fight are already free.

Republic University Records

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Name: Hiro Yuki
Date of Birth: 1981.06.18
Graduation from Republic University: 2006.06.28
Gender: Male
Race / Bloodline: Minmatar - Vherokior

Notes:

Report from Berkhel Stemer, Tutor at Republic University:

Hiro Yuki is in all aspects a model student. Good at seemingly everything he is
quiet, causes no trouble and works hard.
We know he's been approached by many factions, but doesn't seem to want to
confirm any kind of loyalty to anyone. He graduated with excellent grades and has
been doing bits of work here and there. We've been asked to keep an eye on
him; his loyalty isn't certain, but he does seem to go for a lot of jobs for the
Republic, so I'm fairly sure he's loyal to us.

However, there have recently been some reports that

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