Providence – Part 6
I had a friend come to me with an interesting situation. He been working his butt to the bone to become a streamer, but today he didn’t think he’d be able to stream at the quality he wanted. Of late he’s been hitting the social bricks, doing all he can to create a professional setting and tone for his work. Generally speaking he’s made a real consistent effort to have this become “A Thing” for himself. He’s been doing amazing with it, and I’ve tried my best to be supportive of his desires.
As I said though, he wasn’t feeling well. He stated that he wanted to push back the stream to another (non-scheduled) time, but I felt that he should push forward despite being unwell. I stated that it was more important for him to demonstrate consistency and professional dedication to stated stream times and being a reliable content creator than it was for him to be his normal engaging self on the stream. It was my opinion that it was better for him to be present, to be honest about why the stream wasn’t 100%, and to try and take a more honest and engaging stance as opposed to his normal high energy. I’m not entirely sure that’s the correct stance, but in sharing my thoughts with him, I came to a stark realization.
I haven’t been doing that. I haven’t met the goals and expectations I laid down in my first post on the revamped and relaunched Quill. I had not been taking my own advice, practically this entire time.
The way this realization came to light was almost as harsh as the realization itself. My long time friend of nearly fifteen years, someone whose work and opinion I trust more than my own, brushed me off. I don’t think my advice hit home at all, or if it did, it was almost immediately dismissed as inconsequential.
That was a watershed moment for me. For the longest time, it felt like my advice among my friends was listened to with care. That the things I had to say were both wanted and needed by those hearing it. To encounter a situation where someone I know and love, who is attempting to make a life for themselves in a creative field, treats what I have to say as something of little value was eye opening. They are aware that the last two years of my life has been nothing but me doing everything I can think of to make creation my livelihood. That moment made me acutely aware that I’ve lost a lot of things during the struggles of the last year. And it wasn’t just time or money as I languished in the land of the jobless. I think I’ve lost a lot of the respect and camaraderie that I once took so much for granted, and to be confronted with the first fruits of that bitter harvest was jarring.
Here’s the thing: I don’t blame him. I haven’t made nearly enough progress with my career for my advice to carry appropriate weight. I don’t think he was wrong to ignore me.
The only thing I can do to rectify the situation is to write for all I am worth. More specifically, to both write and edit with purpose. I can’t undo the sins of my past, and no matter how much they may weigh upon my mind, all I can do to rectify them is try my utmost moving forward.
I won’t be perfect. I can’t say that I’ll never miss another post or another opportunity, but I think that going forward I will remember this moment for what it was.
A wake up call.
Providence – Part 6
Janet and Octiva had lost all sense of time under the influence of so much sherry. Octiva was fiery cheeked and bent over the desk conspiratorially, regaling her daughter with tales of her own time spent in the underground illegal racing circuit and the world of inter-Clan espionage. It was the bane of all Hinshiro’s: the love of adventure and addiction to adrenaline. Octiva had set several records which were still unmatched, her name etched into the ethos and legends which haunt the tracks and managers to this day.
Octiva was in the thick of her story, one of brash racing and conquest both domestic and domestic. While Janet did not share her mothers love of men, she appreciated the swagger her mother carried with her through every aspect of her life. Even as the head of Clan Inoue, she had a charisma that would not be denied. Octiva was also an animated storyteller: her face and gestures were a map all could read, and she sucked you in as surely as any black hole. Janet eased a little more into the obscene comfort of the office chair, her feet once more upon the prized desk. Her mother had not noticed the offending feet, too far gone in stories of days gone by and of races won and men entranced. A story of intrigue and guile as she had carried out the duties passed down to her eldest daughter. There hadn’t been a need for Octiva’s personal craft to carry more than a standard defensive system, so Janet had never really had the chance to match her mother’s racing records with her own, more sinister ship. It didn’t bother her, however. Janet simply lived in the time that she had been given as fully as possible. That was all the record she needed.
A wave of sound and fury slammed into the Clan Inoue office complex with the brutal clarity of a Titan’s slap. The building shook, furniture tumbling about within Octiva’s private office. Janet and Octiva were both thrown from their chairs into the desk, clinging to it for safety as the hologram surface activated once more. A exact miniature replica of the Clan Inoue habitation shelf appeared, complete with the barely visible forceshell which surrounded it. The forceshell, a thousand-fold thick overlapping barrier maintained by enough energy to make a star jealous, showed indentations like a handful of rocks had been thrown at wax. Janet frowned down at the display, bothered by the state of the shell. Forces of unimaginable power had rocketed into them, denting the semi-malleable energy constructs in the process. They were regaining their old shape as the pair watched, but the fact that they could even be dented at all given their interwoven strength and the thousands of power plants and redundancies supporting them was enough to make Octiva blanch. It was another reason war was so infrequent among the Clans: breaching any one of the structures created by Clan Inoue’s ingenuity was a fools errand. You could never pour enough firepower into the forceshell to land any lasting damage before the collective fist of the Human Enclave’s Armada would arrive and smash you like an egg on an anvil. It had been tried before, and the results had become the main cautionary tales taught in all Clan schools and the Enclave military academies. No one would be so foolish. No one.
Octiva slapped another of the nearly invisible wall panels which lined her office, and a discreet rack of refresher patches appeared. She threw one at her daughter while at the same time she stuck the small dermal adhesive onto her own arm. The patches were a combination of high-powered hangover cure, adrenaline, mental stimulants, and mood stabilizers. They were a catch all for severe emergencies to allow for maximum mental and physical functionality. The cost for the boost was ruinous once they wore off after a few hours, but Janet didn’t waste a moment before she slapped her own arm exactly as her mother had. For a few seconds, both women simply tried to breathe, shaking their heads and letting out the occasional groan as the patches did their job.
Recovering first, Octiva flew into action. Before Janet managed her own recovery, Octiva worked her desk like the most skilled concert pianist worked their piano. She was on ten simultaneous phone calls with vital members of the Clan, all of whom showed the same slightly dilated pupils and flush skin Octiva sported. There were a dozen readouts and communications from the computers which oversaw the shelf’s systems. Janet knew that her job in the crisis was to be a highly mobile set of eyes and ears for Octiva outside of the forceshell surrounding the Complex. It would be a dangerous job, but she was both the most skilled for such a mission and the only one in possession of a miniature capital ship suited for suicide recon missions. Her mother saw Janet heading towards the door and she nodded with a smile showing her appreciation and respect for Janet’s decision. Janet flashed her most rakish grin in return, and dashed through the cleverly concealed doorway.
She practically flew down the stairwell, taking them four or five at a time with small leaping bounds full of barely contained energy. She whooshed into the secure dock, sprinted up the cutters ramp and into her cockpit, and was half-way through her pre-flight check before she gained her chair. She took extra care with her power readouts and system diagnostics panel. Her primary and secondary reactors both showed in the green, but she had been forced to create and crash her own door after the Clan Thompson mission. That kind of power output had taken a toll. She couldn’t risk pushing them much further, otherwise she would get a nasty surprise in the form of systemic failure in one or both. Such knowledge was cold comfort when she was about to rocket around whatever had managed to not only overwhelm the branch exit without any warning, but had also managed to pockmark a shelf forceshell like it had been made of so much paper.
She burst from the complex, careening towards the shell exit nearest the branch defenses. She fired a com with her emergency override codes and the most recent security phrase directly into the gates computer systems, bypassing any call-and-answer issues with the guards. There were some startled oaths, but Janet couldn’t be bothered with protecting their feelings at the moment. She was far more concerned with doing everything she could to shield their lives. She made it out of the gate, just barely missing them as they opened at their usual sedate pace. She shot back a com signal for them to begin closing well before they had finished opening. Clan Inoue’s citizenry secured, Janet rushed to make contact with the enemy.
She pushed the cutter to the edge of acceptable risk as she sped towards the branch exit. The sight which met her eyes made her eyebrows try to climb all the way to her scalp and her jaw drop open.
It couldn’t be. It simply couldn’t be.
The branch exit and attendant structures were completely intact. Not a single layer of forceshell, nor one of the juggernauts spread about, or any of the myriad of ships buzzing inside or outside the exit security systems showed signs of a disturbance, let alone an attack.
The thing which had bothered her about the miniature display in her mothers office came rushing back to her. The damage to the forceshell had been on the wrong side of the shelf. Whatever had assaulted the shelf was already in the system with them, and whatever it was had done so without using the branch exit.
Physics didn’t even cover that possibility. Faster than light travel was impossible. Relativity was a proven fact, a bedrock of the modern understandings of physics. Any attempts to circumnavigate it had been met with utter failure no matter what approach was taken. The only workaround had been the accidental discovery of the doors and how to break through them safely. Tube travel was the only game in town, and while you could create and destroy a door, that was a one way ticket. You could go in, but the only way out was to use a branch exit. That was it. All roads led to Rome, but leaving Rome was another story.
With mounting horror, Janet banked the cutter at breakneck speed, zipping away from the branch exit. She thundered past the shelf, splashing a com in the general direction of the main office complex in the hopes her mother would receive it, and raced towards whatever was obviously there but had no right to be.
She flew for several lifetimes, moving at nearly a quarter the speed of light as she went. Every planetary body which arrived garnered instant suspicion and study. She was already moving recklessly fast, and while every nerve end screamed for her to go faster, she couldn’t take the risk. Nearly half an hour of travel brought her to the closest planetoid to the shelf. It was a large one, comparable to Sol’s Uranus in size, but something was wrong, something was very wrong. There was a shining silver disc occupying a spot on the equator of the planet where there should’ve been empty land. Janet rounded the planet, trying to get a sideways look at whatever the disc was. As she did, however, all thoughts of trying to identify the disc vanished.
Janet began swearing. It wasn’t her normal string of invectives either; the words which escaped in that moment took the form of a profanity-laced prayer.
An entire fleet of vessels lay just around the curve of the enormous planet, hiding within it’s shadow.
None of them looked like they had been designed by human hands.
To be continued…
Panicfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
