A scream filled the small chamber that could shatter an eardrum through 15 layers of titanium steel. Tajqa sat bolt upright…or at least tried to…she got half way to the upright position and smacked her head on the bottom of the bunk above hers with a g-force that would have snapped the neck on a gorilla.
“Son of a….”
Cutting herself off, she slammed back into the thin mattress of her bunk, her right hand shooting to the area of impact. An all too familiar pain filled her head, the result of being awoken from the same scream that occurred night after night – hers.
“Can’t sleep?” queried a weary voice from the bunk above her.
“No,” replied Taj, “what about you?”
“Well fine, replied the voice from above her. Then hesitating it added “…until now.”
“Sorry Brig,” replied Tajqa sheepishly.
“That’s alright,” replied Brighde ‘Brig’ Blackwolf, “I had to get up anyway.”
“What for?” said Taj, expecting the answer.
“The two O’clock scream of course.”
Both woman laughed and lay back in the bunks attached to the dull grey walls, of the small 10 by 10 room that both women now called “home”. The other woman in this case was Brighde Blackwolf, the only other crewmember that no one else would bunk with. In Brighde’s case it was simply because she snored like a backhoe and even ear plugs wouldn’t block the tumultuous cacophony. In Tajqa’s case the ostensible reason was the two o’clock scream that occurred nearly every night as she re-experienced the moment of her last death.
“Space, her instructor used to say, is a big, scary place. But it is not so big that some sumbeotch pirate can’t hunt you down and hit you with an artillery cannon so hard your grandchildren will feel it…and do so just for the sheer, reckless, dumbfounding joy of doing so.”
Mind you it wasn’t like they required each capsuleer to go out and self detonate themselves before graduation just to get used to dying. It was, however, something you were prepared for. It started with psychological tests that were so stringent that even Freud and Yung would have had a hard time passing them. If you managed to get past the psychological tests there were myriad physical examinations designed to find reasons to eliminate potential capsuleer candidates simply because there was such as clamoring to be one. Any imperfection, no matter how slight, whether it had anything to do with actually piloting a spaceship or not, was used as an excuse to preclude applicants. In Tajqa’s case she passed both the physical and psychological examinations with ease. So readily did she fit the model capsuleer candidate, that during her interview, the Academy commander joked that it was almost as if she had studied for her psychological exam – which, of course, she had.
Given the circumstances, the first question any sane person (a definition from which Tajqa was a far cry removed…about 5 parsecs far) would ask themselves is how you cheat on an exam where the average question is “how is an ant like a tree?” Sane or not, the first option most people come up with is bribery. The thing about bribery is that it has the option of not only going wrong, but going horribly, horribly wrong. Instead of ending up behind (or more appropriately in this case inside) the controls of a spaceship your next permanent address could end up being a penal colony on an asteroid so far removed from civilization that mail is addressed simply to “where God lost his shorts”. Even worse, as anyone who has ever found themselves stepping out of a cloning vat, with a head full of a deep scan memories can tell you, Caldari authorities have a nasty way of making consecutive life sentences stick. The thought of serving 500 years on a barren rock floating at the center of a nebula on the edge of Caldari space is enough to dissuade even the most stalwart soul from this option.
The next option that occurs to those vying for the highly coveted spot of capsuleer and wanting to ensure their place among said elite is to befriend either the person giving the test or making the decisions. The turd in this particular punch bowl is that anyone whom Caldari authorities is likely to entrust with such a decision is not likely to be the sort of person who isn’t smart enough to see through such an obvious ploy. After all, the Caldari military is not likely to hand over a Rokh class battleship, costing as much as a third world country, to someone who is dumber than a box of hammers. The practical upshot of all this is a likelihood of once again ending up with a permanent address that begins with “far, far away”.
The most practical solution of all, and one that is most likely to succeed, is hacking into the computer systems where said psychological profiles are stored. The benefit of this solution is, of course, that the chances of failure or success are dependant entirely on the abilities of the person attempting the hacking. Add to the possible outcomes, the fact that Caldari authorities realize that anyone clever enough to hack a military grade code, like as not deserves a spot somewhere in the military, no matter what the outcome of physical and psychological tests…and you have what might be a winning combination. After all, despite the rather trite, and over used insistence by many individuals, the term “military intelligence” is not necessarily an oxymoron. Because, once again, if the Caldari military doesn’t entrust the decision of who gets to fly a spaceship to individuals with an intelligence quotient just above a hunk of anthropomorphic slime – they are even less likely to entrust a stupid person to fly one.
What all this means is that when time comes for the psychological exam, you know to say an ant is like a tree because they are both living. What is more, if the ink blot really does look like a pair of clown shoes, if the psychological profile is looking for people who think it looks like a particle accelerator you say so…even if it does look like a yellow ducky or pile of furry bunnies. The practical outcome of all this is the very embodiment of the old adage “be careful what you wish for – you just might get it”.
If Tajqa where to somehow step outside herself (which, oddly enough, would be possible if it weren’t for built in safety protocols inherent in the cloning process) she would have seen just how ironic the situation all was. Whether the capsuleer applicant was destined for the cold war between Caldari mega corporations, or the open conflict between the four major empires, there was a definite type that was not being sought….
The Caldari war academy was not looking for candidates that were so claustrophobic they wore sandals all the time because they otherwise felt trapped in their shoes. The ideal capsuleer would not be someone who is so autophobic they talk to themselves just so they don’t have to be alone. And they definitely don’t look for someone who never learned to swim because they don’t like water in their eyes. Anyone who possessed these particular combinations of quirks is probably the least likely person to be willing to hook up cables to their skull, seal themselves in a pod full of green goo, and launch themselves through the far reaches of space for long stretches of time. Indeed, all of this would have brought Tajqa’s entire plan to a screaming halt if it weren’t for one more aspect she possessed – a force of will that was so strong, so determined, and so stubborn that it would have made the proverbial government mule more likely to have a wild drunken weekend in New Vegas by comparison.
And so it was that Tajqa found herself with a brain full of implants, and reaction times wound so tight a jaguar would turn green with envy, flying a Stiletto class interceptor – and subsequently stepping out of a clone vat when same said interceptor was blown into tiny pieces. What is not generally known is something to which no capsuleer will admit to anyone outside their ranks. When the moment comes that the integrity of a capsule is compromised in battle, and the life signs of the capsuleer having cease, the deep scan that is transmitted to the waiting clone in a distant medical facility is intact with one minor exception and that is the moment of death. It is the unwritten code of the capsuleer community that no matter who you are, or who you work for, this information is never divulged. The reason for this would be readily apparent to anyone in New Eden who is not a capsuleer if they only knew the truth. Quite simply, capsuleers are looked upon as the rock stars of the universe. They are, thanks to cloning technology, seen as immortal, and amongst the rare few individuals able to avail themselves of such. After all, even when made possible with technology, immortality by any definition does not come cheap. Only those individuals who are able to control the wealth of worlds are able to afford the technology; whether the acquisition of that wealth is by application of lethal force, or legal business (and usually both).
Whether by mistake or divine intervention, when the download of a deep scan just happens to include the moment of death, someone like Tajqa who was generally not meant to be a capsuleer in the first place, is even less likely to be able to deal with the situation. What is likely to occur are the nightly reenactments of that death, playing across some inner screen of her consciousness, wreaking havoc on her sleep and her life.