Varieties of Monsters

Posted on 29 Aug 2022 @ 7:24pm by Lieutenant JG Sofie Ullswater

450 words; about a 2 minute read

Do I love this ship? The others say they do.They say the ship like it means something big, like it isn't just a large marvel of engineering ploughing its way through space. A giant lumbering animal that can only move through an absurd quirk of physics, a thing so clumsy and heavy that we have to bend space to make it seem graceful. Teams of engineers work tirelessly to ensure the fire that powers that engine doesn't break out of its cage and consume everything around it. Only meters away from us at any time is certain death and endless cold but yet in our hubiris we can call this monster a home?

Okay, it is sometimes kinda pretty.

But what they really mean when they say the ship is something more, something bigger (bigger than this monster?). They include the crew in that, the relations they have forged, the shared history of the people that inhabit the ship. All the adventures, discoveries, the quiet nights in and the loud nights out, all of that is included in the ship. Do I love the ship?

Maybe not. It was on this ship that I saw the Trial destroyed. It was from the bridge of this ship that I saw that. It was from the bridge of this ship when I had been given the task of protecting Trial that I saw Trial destroyed. If everything that happens on a ship is part of the ship then that experience is included. Then all this depression and mess is included. Everything that is wrong with me is included in this ship and I hate those things. I'm not sure I could like a ship that had me on it.

There is good too though. I've made friends here like Aria, Mimi, Nesh but also it seems a lot of friends don't stick around. I miss Callin already and honestly it stung when Matt left. Yeah friendships haven't always been great, maybe I'm just bad at them. I wouldn't be avoiding Aria if I were a person who was good at friendships. I still don't know how I'm going to talk to her. I'm sure, I know, that she won't hate me and that we're still friends, but maybe there's something inside me that wants her to hate me. Maybe really all I want is for someone to recognise how pathetic I am, how out of my depth I am, how really I shouldn't be here anymore.

Maybe you can't love your ship unless you love yourself. Yeah, that fits in with this analysis.

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