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[Quintrala]

"What do you hear?"
"Nothing but the Rain."
"Then grab your gun and bring the cat in."

Nothing but the Rain

It had not even been a war.

In the end there had been death and destruction, sure, harrowing tales of escape and last stands, sadness and hope, but it had not been a war. Not in the sense that you fight an enemy that has a strategy, resources, positions, soldiers or even worries. How would you? How do you fight the weather? How do you fight entropy? How do you fight the Rain?

No one knows when the Rain started or where. It just started, and spread. First it may have been rumours spread by wormhole explorers returning with tall tales of strange systems: Here Be Magnetars or Beware the Shattered Planets. Remember a time when it was rare to see a planet just... fall apart? I do. But I also remember when Seyllin happened. That should have been a warning but, well, few people remained actually alarmed in the long term.

The problem with smart matter is not that it is smart, it is that it wants to be efficient. It seeks more matter, not caring how dumb it is, it learns and it multiplies. You could stamp it out if you wanted, but if a sliver was left, it would Rain again. It would move by wormhole, slowly diffusing into connected systems, or it would hitch a ride through several gates while it munched on a covops' rusty bits. As long as it was sunlit it would gnaw at asteroids, disassemble moons or rearrange entire planets, bit by bit. It would take its own sweet time, hundreds or thousands of years, but the result was always the same, a star surrounded by a dust cloud of thinking matter basking in the light, and not much else.

Nothing but the Rain.

Systems that happened to be free of Rain did not remain that way forever. By the time hi-sec miners noticed their asteroid belts looked oddly different, explorers had found entire systems which had had their planets pulverized and turned to Rain. People like to say it was too late by then but, come to think of it, things were over long before. They just did not know.

The funny part is how I slept through the entire thing.

(continued)

[Quintrala]

(( I will only be stealing the very best for this story, beginning with this second post. Hope the story makes sense. On second thought, I hope you enjoy, whether it makes sense or not. ))

Introduction: Nothing but the Rain
Chapter 1: Fairytale

[Quintrala]

Fairytale

// GRID: SDR ONLINE, CMLD ONLINE

My eyes were so puffy I could barely open them. You know how it feels when...

Wait.

You know how it feels when it is warm under the covers and everything else behind a slightly colder haze? This felt nothing like that.

Well, that is what you get when you clone jump: surprises. I breathed in and the air was cold, crisp; I could hear soft noises all around me, mostly sounds of nature - the wind, creatures calling or buzzing by, water in the distance. Over everything, a sound I had not heard in a long time, not ever since I was a little girl: the rustling of leaves. Was this on my egonics?

I opened my eyes.

There were trees right in front of me, tall, moving to the wind, bathed in a soft orange-red glow, as if illuminated by a bonfire. A forest? No way. I felt warm all over -not just my back to the fire- and weightless. A Holo? I turned around to the face the fire.

And I kept turning. I could not find it, nor the source of the glow.

I heard a twig break and that is when I saw this man, standing in mid-step between two trees, his eyes wide open and an expression of surprise. He kept still and tried to blend with the dark. As the expression on his muddy face changed to one of fright, I felt scared for the first time.

I turned around, again, to face whatever it was, and found nothing. What was he scared of...?

I faced him again and said "Hello?", trying to sound friendly.

His face turned to sheer terror. He dropped the firewood he had been carrying in his arms, and ran.

"My Lord, my Lord! Help!"

I am not sure why I chased, but I did. I don't know, if Firewood was running away from something nasty maybe I should too run like hell -I looked behind me, just to be sure,- or maybe he was my ticket out of wherever, so I chased. I do not know. His sprint was noisy, clumsy and I -not that I am any athlete- was somehow silently and effortlessly catching up. As I ran, I noticed the shadows moving. The glow was moving with us -no, wait- it was moving with me. And I had no shadow. Because I was glowing red and had no hands.

Puzzled, I stopped chasing just as he looked back over his shoulder. The last expression I saw on Firewood's face was of relief as he put more distance between us. He then ran into a thick tree trunk, head first, lost his balance and fell onto the ground. He remained down with his head tilted at a funny angle.

I ran away.

Rather, I glided.

[Quintrala]

// PAUSE
// GRID: DDR ONLINE, SDR TERMINATED (UNSCHEDULED), CMLD ONLINE
// ABORT / RESTART FROM CHECKPOINT / RESUME

After a mad dash, I stopped to collect myself by a water stream. Okay, by now I had figured out that I was a disembodied red glow - no arms, no feet, no nothing I could see, and looking at my reflection in the water just confirmed this. Me, my thoughts, my feelings and my red, red glow.

Had I just killed a man? The guy had looked as scared as I was beginning to feel myself. Was this a good time to freak out?

How did I get here?

I remembered. I had triggered the self-destruct sequence of my capsule at Ichoriya not five minutes ago. By now I should have been waking up in a clone at Second Chances. Was I dreaming? Or had they bungled my reanimation? Oh, I had a mouthful for them if they had.

Was this hell? That would be funny, if the Amarr had been right all along. I smiled (inside) at the thought. If they were, I probably deserved a place here and this would be full of fun people. Or, this could be one of those Sleeper... place... things. That would not be as much fun.

One way or the other, I was stuck somewhere in between being dead and back to normal.

Yes, it was too much to take in. I glided back the way I had come and looked for a hollow I could squeeze in. Doh, of course I could. That is where I slept.