This is a very new blog, so this will be my first installment in the monthly extravaganza that is EVE Blog Banter. Hopefully the first of many to come.

Welcome to the seventh installment of the EVE Blog Banter , the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic comes to us from CrazyKinux himself, and he asks: “What 3 things haven’t you done in EVE and why? Would you be willing to try one day? Why so? Why not?”

The furrier sat in a red velvet chair next the the fireplace. It was smoking an old-fashioned tobacco pipe, and wearing an evening jacket. As I approached it looked up at me, and adjusted it’s monacle, “Ahh, Ghenna I’ve been expecting you. Sorry we had to move the place, hope it wasn’t too much trouble to find. It’s those damned Gallente script kiddies…” As he droned on I remembered how much I hated the hypernet.

Everyone knew him as fuzzy, but whatever he was, he wasn’t a furrier. Most thought he was some rogue AI, others that he was just a bored Gallente scientist somewhere in the universe. All that mattered is that he was a master of infomorph psychology, and was very good at his job.

“So, still having memory troubles are we? Yes, well that’s normal given the state of you. Let’s go easy today, yes? Just an easy exercise, yes? Let’s you tell me three things that you’ve never done. Go on,” and he sat back in the chair. I was receiving psychotherapy from a furrier with a monacle, I thought. I swallowed the irony and began.

“A battleship,” I started, “I’ve never really flown one. I mean I can pilot them, I’ve been trained. I’ve piloted them on exercises, but I’ve never actually owned one. To be honest I’ve never really wanted to. I guess it’s the crew, I guess I don’t like being responsible for other people.”

The advent of the capsule, and more recently the so called tech II technological explosion had done a great deal to reduce crew requirements on ships of all sizes. But they were still necessary, particularly for the larger ships. I was a frigate pilot, a fighter pilot. Sure, I had commanded wings of other pilots, but that was somehow different. They could fend for themselves, and they always had good clones, I saw to that personally. 

“Good, what else?” Fuzzy broke my spiral of thought, no doubt exactly where he wanted to.

“Umm, drones I guess…” I didn’t know exactly where I was going with this. “I’ve never really used drones, they scare me. I…,” I hesitated, but realized there was no point, he probably already knew what I was going to say. “I don’t like AIs, present company excluded, of course. I mean if you are an AI that is. That is…”

“Go on, don’t worry about offending me. This is about you.”

I relaxed a bit. “Well, I hate AIs. Not simple AIs, they’re just subroutines. A program. And I like Aura, I mean she’s an AI, but she’s part of me, she shares my…” another hesitation, if this had been a dogfight I’d be dead by now, “she shares my soul,” I finished. “Drones are different, soulless. But as I’m sure you’re aware, they act as if they’re sentient. The rogue ones anyway. It bothers me, it’s like a mockery of creation. Anyway, I haven’t ever used drones, though I should probably get over that.”

“Good. Let’s move on. What else have you never done?”

I considered the question for a moment. “Exploration,” I wasn’t sure where the answer had come from, “when I was young I wanted to be an explorer for the empire,” how did I know this? My memories of my childhood had been wiped out. “I joined the navy to please my family, but really I just wanted to see things, to find things.”

“Well,” the furrier sat up and adjusted his monacle, “maybe you should try that out. You seem to be pretty good at finding things. It seems you’ve found something just now, something you’d thought was lost forever. That’s very good, but that’s enough for today.”

The room melted out of existence and I was suddenly sitting in my quarters in front of my terminal. The words “Connection Closed” scrolled across the digital screen. I unplugged my neural link, and cringed. It was white hot. I put it down in the ashtray to cool and then headed back out into the corporate hangar.

I looked around for a moment. The deck crews had all left for the night. Good, I was alone. I climbed into my capsule, sealed it and drifted off into troubled dreams.