Teddy’s New Rules

Report, Session Four: May 26, 2007

So, what now?

I own my own ship.

I made Captain.

I may have inadvertently joined the Kilroys.

I’ve visited Nowhere and consulted the gargoyle.

All before I hit twenty-five, let alone my original target of thirty.

 

I’ve also survived contact with a symbiot infestation, not that I’d rate it on a list of ‘pluses’. In fact, I’ve a sneaking suspicion that my better nature was not operating at all when I insisted we go after that ship. Seriously, do I have a death wish? A sensible man would have coped with not knowing, and let the Brothers blow the Jakovians out of the sky. To hell with duty.

When did I get a list of things more important to me than my own life?

 

When I close my eyes, I can see that vast white nothing that the gargoyle showed me. Empty from horizon to horizon, then slowly populating with the scant few people important to me. Is that me: my goals and wants and needs? A endless nothingness driven by others? Don’t I have any drives of my own anymore? Did I ever?

 

On the bridge of that infested ship there was a pilot. He was riddled with infection, yet he still had enough of himself to speak. “I’m still me,” was all he had time to say before the bullet curdled his brains.

 

I have a job, and a duty. I know what I’m doing.

I just don’t know why.