– by Nukleanis

I’d first enquired about Nisha’s services a little over a year ago. A defensively humourous audio conversation stolen during a free moment at the office had led to me standing nervously at her front door one spring afternoon. The sun had emerged from the ceaseless expanses of cloud a little early that year and the foliage had responded eagerly. Deep green leaves draped gently over the ancient walls of her home, hiding the cracks in the brickwork from the cursory glances cast by those walking along the quiet street. My shoes crunched over the gravel on my way to her door, itself a serious marriage of deep red wood and black iron.

As I stood before the door I considered walking away and chalking the experience up to a foolish curiosity about things that were far too intricate for me to fully understand and best reserved to the domains of television or the fabulously wealthy. I decided, however, that this would not effect the change in thinking that I needed. Without intervention my plight would continue and my own personal downfall, invisible to the rest of the world, would avalanche unabated.

I didn’t wait long for her answer after knocking. Her fluid motions still belied her guarded demeanour. Until now I was a distant voice asking for acceptance from someone with more qualifications than I could ever dream of. She must have had her reservations about letting me into her home without knowing fully what brought me here or what I hoped to achieve.

“You must be Henser?” Her voice sounded understanding in a clinical kind of way. A little more rugged than our previous conversation, perhaps.

“Afraid so.”

And so our relationship progressed. I would sit in her office for fifty minutes per week telling her all about my problems, hopes and fears. I couldn’t ascribe noble motives to her due to my own twisted perspective on life, but still she persevered in her efforts – showing the endless patience and the utter lack of compassion demanded of her in her line of employment. Mostly I managed to speak about the relevant topics, but some weeks I rambled about larger issues that, while worrying, had little bearing on my issues.

Which brings us neatly, dear reader, to this week’s session.

Comfortable and interested. That’s how I would describe my mood as I sat opposite her, as her profession and ability to wed scripture and psychology always interested me. Faintly yellow beams of sunlight pierced the blinds, gently illuminating the dancing specks of dust as they orbited and danced across the room in a quantum ballet. Quantum ballet. I specifically remembered that during the session before I began writing this down for you, dear reader. I thought it sounded good at the time.

Every week she looks at me expectantly and raises her shoulders a little and gives this little false smile as if to coax it all to the surface. I picked up on that and told her that I knew her smile was fake and how to differentiate between that and the genuine article. I told her that I’d seen a lot of false smiles recently, as though the people had not had good reason to enjoy the coming summer. Predictably, she asked me what I thought was the reason behind my perceived downturn in the mood of the people. “Capsuleers,” I said.

“What do you think of them?” She asked, exploring the topic further. I immediately thought that this would be an easy session for her, but continued in an unnoticed peak of narcissism.

I told her that I didn’t understand them at all, and how could we? Themselves an obscene ménage a trois, (a Gallente word. Must stop using those) of humanity, technology and immortality. I told her that I considered them so far removed from the rest of creation that they were little more than a background hum to the average person immersed in their own life and struggling to make a decent wage. Nisha listened patiently as I ranted about people locked in a near-crippled state inside egg-shaped pods, and that it was heresy in the purest form to consider someone motionless and invaded by tubes and data cables as a God. She nodded as I reaffirmed my belief in God and his divine tapestry.

“You seem to have very definite ideas,” she said. “So why worry about it?”

From there I speculated for a good five minutes. Truly, if one had the power to spread their nerves to the extremities of a starship’s hull, then of what possible use would we be to them other than fodder for their machines? If one had the power to carve an asteroid the size of a town into tiny fragments to feed their insatiable lust for war, then why bother with the soggy marshes that covered out little world? They had enough money, I said. What about us?

“Do you ever think the rich and the powerful are ever satisfied by what they have?” She asked. I told her a firm no but said that surely such people retained higher reasoning abilities.

“Greed is a very basic instinct. No different from the instincts that have landed you in your current predicament.”

I countered that I was able to use logic and reason to find a solution to my problem, to which she informed me that capsuleers didn’t regard the eternal acquisition of wealth, material possessions and power as problems to be solved in a traditional sense, only that their problems stemmed from a belief that they never thought they had enough.

Suitably challenged, I followed that if this was the case, the recent change in CONCORD legislation would become a much worse fate than previously realised. Our world would not be reinforced with the promise of employment and infrastructure, but simply held hostage to a greed as grave as any sin, perpetrated by people who would take our resources and flitter them away on pointless wars. At least from our perspective as backwards peons. We would never see the gleaming behemoths they planned to create with our raw materials, save for a brief flash of light as they were destroyed before our very eyes on the evening news. If these people were Gods to the other races, I told her, we were making intolerable sacrifices to them.

I then wondered aloud where it would stop. Capsuleers owning land and property on our worlds would only satisfy them to a point. Could they then own entire continents and wage war with one another across the entirety of the planet? At least with our war with the Minmatar we have a purpose. We try and enlighten those wayward souls rather than work and fight and die for something laughably referred to as ‘corporate loyalty.’ What wounds would our planet bear as they mined every ore, uprooted every tree and polluted every sea only to cast those very riches at one another in vehicles and weapons that would destroy the cities and roads we had worked so hard to create?

Nisha’s nominal expression cracked slightly. “You sound as though you’re describing life in The State.” The words caught in her throat slightly.

My point exactly, but not the Amarrian way. We as a people are lucky to be united under God and move forward in faith. The State, however distasteful, works for the Caldari and their misguided motives yet still they do so slowly with shareholders and a government that only recently has begun to scrutinise their activities. Such power in the hands of people who hold no value over life (jumping as they do from clone to clone) would spell doom for those of us helplessly looking at the stars.

“I pray to God.” I said. “That I have the strength to do something about it.”