#non-wow

This isn’t my body.

It’s just the generically female looking thing that I’m using right now.  It’ll exist for a few minutes, maybe a few hours, before being blown apart, or recycled.  Regardless, I see with it’s eyes, hear with it’s ears.  And when I shoulder my weapon and shoot, I’m using it’s hands.  

It’s a blasted hell of a battlefield.  Lava and black rock are the main attractions.  A magma world, and we wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t a locale of interest, in the form of a fluid router hub.  Enough interest to send DUST mercs.  Like me.  

I was born thirty two years ago out in Lonetrek, which if you ask a lot of my kirjuunen, is the ass end of the Caldari State.  I was born Ishukone.  And it’s because of them that I’m here, in this body that isn’t mine.

I can feel as much as hear the impacts as I run, a dead sprint that throws off the heavy caliber plasma being lobbed my way by virtue of reaching ground speeds the baseliner infantry manning that cannon couldn’t begin to touch, let alone sustain.  The remnants of the wall it’s mounted to defend looms ahead, and as I feel the need for a burst of strength, the body I’m using does just what I demand, regardless of the damage it does to itself in the short term.

Military grade clones aren’t like a normal human being’s flesh and blood.  It’s made for combat from the titanium skeleton to the nanite support organ system, inhuman strength, and near immunity to pain.  I get the shit shot out of me all the time.  Until I run out of medical nanites, or chunks to blow off, it means fuck all.  It has no long term life.  It isn’t meant to live at all.

They’re about to find out what it’s existence is all about.

As I reach the rubble of the wall, I don’t slow.  Bounding off scorching rocks, I leap, tucking the “assualt rifle” I’m carrying close to my chest.  Vaulting past their cover, I feel the drumming of their weapons against my dropsuits shields as I land, and whip my own around to respond in kind.

An overzied plasma rifle, firing oversized charges, the Duvolle built G75 in my hands doesn’t “fire”.  It roars.  Like everything we clone soldier sorts use, it’s not a weapon that a normal man could wield.  The flash and backblast alone would cause burns, and the recoil...  You don’t want to know.  If neither killed you, the lack of radiation sinks, meaning you get a few hundred milisieverts per shot, would take care of that in short order.

Like this body, and the dropsuit that’s grafted onto it, my weapon isn’t made to let me survive.  It exists to die, and take a hellish toll on anything around it before it does.

And the rifle does just that.  Bodies fly apart as the overpowered plasma charges find their mark, the blood and gore largely cauterized, vaporized, or hidden in the shrapnel of fragmenting body armor, equipment and molten spurts as stray charges burst on the rubble and rocks.  I don’t really watch.  I’d empathize too much if I did.  Instead I do my job.

Their weapons really aren’t much of a threat to me.  Of the five there, three are dead, one is maimed, and the last is on the ground, cowering behind the ruin of the defensive emplacement.  I leave him there.

Up ahead, the bunker containing the router opens, and the game changes.  Two and a half meters, twice over, and clad in heavy dropsuits, my ilk emerge.  One carries a BCR-23 rotary machine gun, and the other hefts a DCMA-1 forge gun, the latter more than capable of obliterating armored vehicles.  The gunner sees me, and swings his gun my way.

Nowhere for me to go, so I fire back as the machine gun howls at six thousand rounds per minute.

My shooting arm goes first.  Then a leg.  The rounds can’t quite penetrate my faceplate directly, but I feel it cracking regardless in the three seconds I have left.  Shields gone amidst the hail of fire, my breastplate comes apart, and everything beneath begins to shred.  I feel myself being blown to bits, albeit dully, as this bodies nanites struggle to achieve the impossible, and keep me fighting.

They fail.  I’m not surprised.  And my implant, forming the brain for this body, engages just as the faceplate shatters.

The stack of information is added to my consciousness.

I come to, in a Clone Recovery Unit, in a body identical to my last.  Climbing out, with the moments ago assembled dropsuit still cooling around the body it’s grafted to, I grab another G75, and head for the deployment zone.

Another day in a soldiers life.  Another dozen lives that day.

It was too hot beneath the blankets and yet I found myself shivering without them. No amount of turning off annoying lights or electronics helped the noise that circulated all around me. Drowning out the business that made the atmosphere around me so heavy with calming music did little aid. Every usual trick I knew that had helped me settle down failed me.

Perching myself on the edge of the bed the cigarette I had lit had burned halfway down with barely a single drag taken, wasting away much like myself just then. Despite the menthol taste that I so liked, I sampled nothing but ash upon my tongue. My lips remained dry no matter how many times I drug my tongue across them and my entire body seemed to ache and throb. That sick feeling that had visited me day after day lingered between my stomach and throat, indecisive if it wanted to be regurgitated or remain there. The thought of reaching out to someone occurred to me but something within myself forbade me from doing just that. Wouldn’t it be so easy to just message someone, call up a friend? I am not sure why I was stopping myself, contradicting my own will. 

I snuffed out the cigarette that had nearly burned down to the filter and crawled back into bed. My hands wandered in some phantom feeling I could hold onto something close to me when I was my myself and fully aware no one would be coming home any time soon, much less appear in my bed. And yet, the tips of my digits managed to slip into the pocket of my sweater. Within I felt the smooth surface of something small, a stone? A gem. Why was there- of course. It was a gift I had been granted not too long ago. One nearly forgotten. Retrieving the precious tone, it was much too dark to truly make out it’s intricacies and still I made a good attempt to recall just exactly which hues harbored and meshed within it. How long ad it taken the earth to craft this and just whom had stolen it from her? What sort of journey had it gone through until it found it’s way into my possession and did it truly belong to me?

Just as my mind filled with so many questions the small, seemingly inconspicuous item in my grasp began to grow inexplicably warm. So warm I nearly relinquished it if it had not been for that twice occurring phantom knowledge I was meant to hold on to it. The heat it emitted spread and overtook me and my eyes pressed closed until the skin surrounding them crinkled. The sensation of falling rushed to me and i could only comprehend it as loss of balance, something that happened to me often. This was different however as everything changed.

The air smelled different, the temperature wavered to a comfortable degree and air circulated around me, completely unlike air conditioning. It took me a moment to decide if I should dare open my eyes. When I finally did, I was met with something so unearthly I fathomed I had likely left my plane of existence.

The beauty around me stunned my into silence. A thick canopy of verdant leaves allowed sparse shafts of brilliant light to pierce through. The mossy bed beneath me was softer than any bed I had ever lain in. My ears adjusted and a symphony of rustling leaves, birds and bubbling water triumphed over the ear grating static of my home. Everything around me was in harmony, blooming, growing, flourishing. Alive. 

Each blade of grass, each flower petal, each leaf had a bright soul. I suddenly felt the need to sit up and check if I wasn’t crushing some insect or bud, fearing that if I was, I had committed a horrific crime. A small, pink earth worm was sure glad to not be suffocated any longer as it was free to crawl on along when I erected myself. 

I took a deep, deep breath and let the fresh, untainted air expand my lungs to their fullest. It was a breath without pain, the first of it’s kind for as long as I could remember. I didn’t get dizzy or light headed. No... just nourished. 

I stood up and followed that persistent phantom feeling the stone imbued me with until I reached that babbling brook that had been whispering to me since I had arrived. The water was crystal clear, untarnished and sparkling. I didn’t even have to taste it to know how refreshing it would feel. I set the precious gem down on the edge of rounded and smooth stones that the water was pooling into. It was deeper than I had expected, once I peered into it’s depths. So deep in fact, I could not spot it’s bottom. Just another surprise, a pleasant one. I was overcome with a deep rooting desire to take a sip. To let the water heal my splitting lips and wash away the ashy taste on my tongue. To drink from it so deeply that it would drown out the sickness I had been carrying with me. For a moment I wondered if I deserved it, if i was worthy of such a pure gift. Had I even permission? Did I need permission? I thought to myself that it was best to indulge myself while I could, before it vanished like most everything else good in my life. 

My hands dipped beneath the rippling surface, cupping as much of it as I could and even so it sought to escape through the cracks between my fingers again and again. Desperate then I leaned forward far enough until my lips touched the pure liquid. And when it rushed past them, down my throat and into my body, everything else ceased to matter. I was overcome with a strange heaviness, one not at all suffocating. A comfortable weight that pulled me further down and fall I did.

Without fear, I began sinking into the depths until the light of the forest above the water shrunk smaller and smaller. Until it was just a drop in the distance above with glittering bubbles of air drifting past me to go to opposite way. As the little spheres sought to go up, I only longed to sink deeper. 

I didn’t need air anymore. I didn’t need light anymore. I didn’t need a steady ground beneath me or the wind in my hair. I didn’t need to hear the voices of the world any longer and instead only heard the sound of ever enveloping water that surrounded me without fail. 

I had no more worries. I had no more concerns. I wasn’t lonely or lost anymore. I wasn’t sad or panicked. I had no more fear. 

I was swallowed by something that sought to take me within as much as I sought to be within it.

I was home. And I was welcomed home. 

Bought the game last night, no serial code in almost 23 hours. Their site says it may take a ‘few’ and to contact them if it takes longer than that. I’d say 23 is more than a few hours.

submitted a ticket almost 8 hours ago, still no response. Opened another half an hour ago under a different category, still nothing.