Sleepless Thoughts

Selina sat in the darkness of her quarters for some time just listening to the sounds of the station around her. With no sun to rise or set, no day, no real night, time seemed to be almost meaningless in space. A person eats when they're hungry. Sleeps when they're tired. The "9 to 5 job" is no more than an ancient relic of a phrase from times all but forgotten when space flight was a very exotic affair. Now, what is perhaps millenniums upon millenniums of years since, the perpetual machine of man had no real end. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it was a constantly churning beast. And yet, as if to offset the seemingly endless cycle, a system had been put in place long ago to give a momentary break. One hour each day, the immense aura network that drove all of New Eden would shut down. Story is that its to give the system a momentary break where it could cycle through and purge its memory of the day's trash or reload fresh data for the next 23 hours. System updates also took place if there were any and eventually the network would once again be reestablished and the universe would carry on as usual.

The strangest part, and something that always perplexed Selina was where is Aura? Perhaps its like the relic known as the internet, there was no real location. But then that can't possibly be true when Aura herself will tell you that she has a vast amount of neural links as if she is some sort of physical entity. She (and only being referred to as a she because it has a she voice) controls everything. The market system, the corporate and alliance control systems, the inventory and asset management systems, the communications systems, everything was managed and linked by this so-called Aura. Seemed just a bit intimidating really.

Selina shuddered a bit as she thought about it. If there is a god in all of Eve, this Aura would certainly have to be the closest thing to it. Maybe she'll do a search through the chronicles and information channels to see what more she can learn of this mighty "god" named Aura.

But now wasn't the time. Now was the time she was supposed to be sleeping and instead found herself, for reasons she couldn't quite gather, sitting here wide awake, staring at the darkness of the room surrounding her.

Finally frustrated with her inability to sleep, she rose from her bed and threw on her robe. Passing the need for shoes, she slipped quietly down the hall, doing her best not to disturb the others in the corporate HQ's sleeping quarters. Not really knowing anywhere else to go at the moment, she made her way to her hanger's viewing platform, looking out at where her Vexor cruiser sat suspended. It had been a long journey through a lot of low security sectors to get to this new HQ but she was glad she made the trip. As she'd neared the borders of the high security area where the station was located, she had begun taking note of the pilots in the systems and what corporations they were attached to, what sort of security statuses they held, making note of those that were obvious pirates and those that, although they seemed legit on the surfaced, still gave off a vibe of trouble.

Though the low sec systems were relatively quiet, there was still enough here to keep her thoroughly entertained. A few pilots had some pretty decent bounties on their heads, of which she was more than happy to relieve them of eventually. Aye, she laughed quietly to herself as she could already feel the tugs of all those bounties just flying around out there, waiting to be collected. Of course, she knew that a lot of those pilots would be far above her in skill and experience but after being issued her first "insured" clone, her last ounce of regard for her own life went right out the airlock. Yes, she now had implants, implants given to her by a fellow corpie but that really just made her fight harder. Either way, a pilot not afraid to die was a dangerous pilot indeed.

It was just unfortunate however that most of her ship's crew were not aware of this. The way she saw it, there were billions upon billions of people spread out in the universe and a vast majority of them dreaming of flying aboard a ship with a pod pilot at the helm. So many in fact, that if she were to get destroyed, it would take no more than the time it takes to reawaken in a new clone, as it would to find a new crew. And though petty to her, the pay she gave them for their services compared to that of which a normal ship would pay or some medial job planet-side or in a station....well...they knew the risks.

Selina smiled and gave a slight, flirty wave to one of those crew members now as he passed the window, guiding a lift stacked with ammunition towards the cruiser. Locking eyes with her for the briefest of moments, he turned a few shades of red before quickly looking away. She laughed softly for a moment at this. It still tickled her how regular folk got so jittery in the presence of pod pilots.

After standing and watching the workers for a few moments longer, she finally turned and with a small sigh, made her way back to her quarters. Still a few more hours before she had to be up. Might as well try and get at least a little more sleep before her busy day starts...