Reflections

Dec. 30 - Zenobia

"The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in—let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself." - Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

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It seems that I had a visitor scratching at my window while I was away.

A Watcher Drone took this photograph of Ardra demonstrating that she knows where I sleep.

She moored her ship on top of mine too. I hope that isn't going to leave a mark.

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While I did not know where Ardra slept, or even if she slept, I did know where she had at least some of her modifications done.

November 27.

It was just over a month ago. Shadow was still sunny and green. Zenobia was under a lockdown after the attack on Londinium. Military control was well on the way to being established and I had an opportunity to slip away for a little background research.

The Colonel told me that Ardra had chosen to become modified, that she was displeased with the results. He named a planet far from Alliance control where she had had her work done, and it was to there that I traveled.

Ardra had been here. A Guild Navigator. She would have been already addicted to spice. And it was here that she sought her personal transformation. A place where flesh and metal merged. The information was that it ended badly.

The rain was oily and had an industrial smell to it.
The air was heavy and, at times, I had difficulty moving.
I made made my way through the dark, wet streets of this floating city.

The machines here were massive. I had seen nothing like them before. Most had a purpose I could not begin to recognize. With their overwhelming size, they inspired something of the same kind of awe one feels in the old cathedrals.

Had she seen these great machines with human eyes?
What feelings stirred within her as she beheld them?
Was this rain, the last rain that kissed her human cheek before she began walking the cold path of cybernetics?

She had been here.
Here, she had stopped being what she was.
Here, she had taken the path to become what she is now.

Leaving her heart at home ....and kidneys ...and teeth.

Machine and human.
Thumbing her nose at death.
Body parts, nothing but cargo.

I opened a bag of spice, raw spice that I had mined from the desert at Splintered Rock, and I placed it to my nose and mouth.

My enemy. Myself.