Twenty Years a Capsuleer

Twenty years ago I was born into New Eden as Wilhelm Arcturus.

New Eden Me

Not literally born.  A capsuleer does not begin their journey as an infant.  In my past life I was an adult and was chosen to ascend to the status of capsuleer.  I know I was chosen… but only because I have been told so by the Caldari State, which chose me.

When you ascend your past life is wiped away.  They tell you that is part of the process.  But the state also has a vested interest in you not being encumbered by familial or emotional attachments to your past.

As such, I emerged pristine, a tabula rasa, cleansed of any past.  When I rose as a capsuleer for the first time, when I entered the pod that has become such a part of me, my interface to the universe and the vehicle through which I act on that universe, my life was all before me.  That pod, in which I have now lived with for twenty standard years was the foundation from which I began my journey.

I chose a name.  I think I chose it.  Maybe my past self chose it.  Maybe the state picked it for me and simply set me up to believe I had chosen it.  But it became my name, my identity, going forward, a handle on me until I die.

If I die.

Death is a serious business, and all the more so as an essentially immortal capsuleer.  No conventional withering away into old age awaits me now. A decrepit frailty will never haunt my future.  The technology of the capsuleer is such that my consciousness is preserved, continually backed up, so that if I am killed… well, when I am killed… I am immediately reborn in a fresh body in a fresh pod, all skills and memories restored, save for that final moment of my death.

Does death hurt?  Despite having experienced it hundreds of times, I do not know.  It hurts in that I recall my mistakes, the path I took that led me to that fate.  But the actual moment of death is not recorded.  The Jove, the ancient and now reclusive race that first crafted this technology, probably guessed correctly that were death to sting too hard we might not undock again.  So they omitted that bit of data capture, erased it from the recording of our lives. When we climb back into our pods, mate with another ship, and undock to fight again we are not burdened by any after effect of our last encounter.

You would think the state would want some return on their investment, some gain for granting me this immortality.  Maybe my past self, or my family that once was, paid up front.  Maybe they are paying off my ascension still.  But the state, after expending the effort to make me what I am now, seems somewhat uncertain as to what to do with a new capsuleer.

You are, of course, imperfect, your knowledge is extremely limited, so what you can do for them is not initially very much.  Still, they let you wander off almost without a second thought.  You could just dock up in a station, tune into the various entertainments… and your connection to tri-dee video and music is exquisite… and just waste your precious gift.  There are even drugs specifically tailored for capsuleers to enhance such idleness.  And many take that path.  Most capsuleers end their trajectory almost as soon as it begins.

We speak quietly, passing various rumors of the “Jove disease” and how their pushing the boundaries of this technology led them down a path of self-destruction, how they cut themselves off from the rest of New Eden, deactivating their jump gates to remain in isolation, due to some virus run amok or other debilitating technological nightmare.  Are the rumors true, or is it just a story they tell us to keep us in line.

I wonder at times if the Jove didn’t simply perfect the digital entertainment interface to the point that they could live out interesting and fulfilling lives while never leaving their pods.  Maybe they were just sick of our petty, childish squabbles and wanted to be left alone with their vids.

But I digress.

The state explains their laissez faire attitude through the prism of the Caldari capitalistic philosophy, a form of social Darwinism that expects success from a few, idolizes the pyramid of power where the highest achievers end up at the top.  The cult of the meritocracy reigns supreme.  But this is a post facto rationalization, an attempt to make reality fit their empty philosophy.  Of this I am sure.

I am sure because, being let off the leash, we end up interacting with capsuleers from the other empires, and each has a version of this tale built up around their own base philosophy.  For the Gallente it is wrapped in the fetishistic belief in individual freedom.  The Amarr have a religious vision built into their view, the spirit of the creator being allowed to move through each capsuleer in its own way.  The Minmatar say that the struggle to be free is in all of their people.

I suspect that the reality is that they simply do not know what to do with us once they create us as capsuleers, that there was no plan, merely an arms race to create as many capsuleers as they could, to take volunteers and put them through the process lest they find themselves behind.

I say this because once they have us and have given us some very rudimentary training, we are left on our own to find our path forward.

Sure, they have things for us to do, and more things now than when I was created as a capsuleer.  There are missions available.  You can be the enforcer of corporate policy, putting little people, the mortals, in their place… generally meaning death… if they step out of line.  There is little inhibition when it comes to killing for the corporations.  You gain standing with the corporation and the empire and even CONCORD, the police force of the empires, for killing those whom have been declared beyond the protection of society.

But most of these are so beneath the abilities of an immortal capsuleer that enforcement become tedious, a mere matter of eliminating some designated targets on your overview without a thought to the reason or implications.  It simply becomes easier not to read the details, to just go where you’re told and eliminate whatever problem has been indicated.

You can also go down the path towards resource harvesting and industry.  You have the ability to out match the corporations that gave you this life at their own game.  But mere capitalist greed, while it can fund your ambitions, still feels like an unfulfilling path, a routine unlikely to use all the abilities you have been given.

The empires of late have been attempting to push capsuleers into their own wars, to entice them with rewards to go out into the contested regions of space and battle the other empires in a series of see-saw campaigns that seem as much imperial ambition as busy work to keep capsuleers focused and engaged lest they get up to trouble.

Much of what goes on seems geared simply to keep us in line.  We must do their work to earn their ISK to buy their ships and inject their skills to continue to do their work and earn their ISK.  It also feeds the treadmill of capsuleer creation.  If the Gallente show a surge in capsuleers, then the Caldari must keep up.

Some… many as time moves on… see through this and either refuse to undock, sitting idle in a station for however long we last as capsuleers… our immortality is theoretical so far… or reject the system the empires try to hem us into and go pirate or side with factions fighting the empires or, like myself, flee beyond the reach of the empires and their CONCORD enforcers, to zero security space.

Even the name… zero security… places it within the structure of the empires.

We flee out there, away from the rules to create our own societies, our own empires.  We build up our own structures and fight our own wars and create and destroy at a rate that makes the so-called civilized areas of space seem frozen in amber.

We are the empires running ahead at high speed, rising and falling, fighting wars, building ships, harvesting resources, and creating our own stories and narratives.  Such mighty fleets clash in our space that at times it can make one question why we don’t turn inward and conquer the empires themselves.

Why the empires tolerate us is unclear.  They say it is because they are locked in their own inwardly focused struggle or that our actions buffer them from the pirate factions like the Gurristas and Sansha’s Nation.  Could they turn outward and conquer us?  Could we turn inward and conquer them?  Would either action be of benefit to anybody?

At least for the Caldari, the reasoning is probably much more simple.  Our wars and petty empires require a supply chain from empire space, a supply chain from the main trading hub in Jita.  Few grow poor supplying the needs of war.  And the state itself grows fat on the taxes and fees that our conflicts generate.

The other empires and their lesser trade hubs benefit as well, though none can match the rapacious maw of Jita, the Caldari mercantile beast unleashed.  It became such a power that the other empires, through the CONCORD proxies, have started to try and take control of the gem that is Jita.  But whoever controls it and gets the spoils, we still go there to buy.

And we not only buy supplies out of Jita and Amarr and Hek and Dodixie, but we turn around and haul in goods to sell as well.  The corporate lords who control the Caldari State from their boardrooms must be pleased with their pet Tibus Heth.  Their figurehead leader has managed to maintain a tax revenue scheme that has enriched them all beyond the dreams of even the most elite capsuleers.

So much for the free will and independence of the ring of null sec alliances.  We are handy to have around when the Drifters or the Triglavians show up.  Then we’re hailed as heroes.  But when the danger has passed we are once again prodded into conflict, lest the shareholder value diminish.

Still, that is the view of a capsuleer of 20 years.  When I was younger, when New Eden was fresh to me, when my skills were as yet untapped and I was looking for purpose in space beyond the transparent and mundane machinations of the greedy empires, null sec did seem like an adventure.

I went out, naive still, and fought for my corporation and alliance.  I formed up with hundreds and even thousands of other capsuleers and flew off to war.  I witnessed epic battles, helped conquer vast regions of space, held the line in desperate fights against overwhelming odds, and fell back in retreat as fate, who had favored us one day, withheld its support on another.

I have fought in nearly every region of space, moved back and forth across now familiar systems in pursuit of, or fleeing from, the same foes.  The names sometimes change.  A corporation or even an alliance might change sides now and then.

But the face of the null sec empires changes very slowly, with the same entities remaining, maybe in one region for a while, then off to another later on.  We are not claiming space or fighting for independence, we’re on a treadmill of exploitation.

The exultation of victory and achievement in battle has been diminished for me.  I have more in common with the fleet members of our foes than with the leadership of any alliance and coalition.  I go out to fight still, but it is more a search to find what once motivated me rather than the lust for conquest or victory.

And what else is there to do?  Some will point to wormhole space as a frontier free from the empires, but that is as much self-deception as the null sec point of view.  They are still tied to the trading hubs, their raw materials and loot from sleepers and what not feeding the might of the empires in the end.

Likewise there is Pochven, where some of the most keen have gone.  And maybe they are keeping the Triglavians at bay… or maybe they are just another unwitting arm of the empires, there to extract wealth and bring it back to Jita.

In the end you can pound your chest and declare your independence and run around with a negative ten security status, but you are still a prisoner of the system.  Your freedom is self-deception.  The web of commerce and taxation that the empires have woven about New Eden still keeps you in line.

A conspiratorial mind might think there was some shadowy mysterious group behind the scenes manipulating the whole thing to keep us engaged and toiling for the empires in our own way.  But I am not much for the whole “what if I am just a brain in a jar and all of this is a simulation” theories.  What would I do differently either way?

So I undock and maybe I am doing it for myself and my fellow capsuleers, or maybe I am just being manipulated by the empires.  It still beats staying in my quarters watching vids.  For now.

What is on Space TV today?

Maybe not forever though.  Immortality… turns out to be tiresome in the end… and there are so many vids and so much music out there to experience.