She drifts where the nebulae breathe,
quiet engines humming like a lullaby,
one ship, one mind, one heartbeat
threaded through the velvet dark of New Eden.
She is a Capsuleer who chose enough.
Rats bloom and burst in belts of forgotten stars,
ISK trickles in like rain on a canopy,
and freedom—sweet, weightless freedom—
is the real reward.
Here, she is whole.
No shouting fleet commands.
No hunger sharpened into teeth.
Just her, the void, and the soft certainty
that doing her own thing is doing it right.
Then she sees them.
Not ships—
reflections.
Echoes.
One will fractured into many,
the same hull repeated like a stutter in reality,
all moving in perfect, obedient symmetry.
Hands nowhere near the controls,
yet everywhere.
Space magic, they call it.
Multiplied selves mining the same silence,
clearing the same sites,
drinking the stars dry with infinite mouths.
She feels it first as confusion.
A wrinkle in the calm.
Then sadness.
Because she realizes
it isn’t skill being displayed,
nor wonder, nor love of the cosmos—
but hunger with no edge,
greed that forgot what it was chasing
long ago.
She wonders when more replaced enough.
When being everywhere at once
became more valuable
than being present.
A flicker of anger warms her pod,
brief and bright—
not because they are powerful,
but because they seem so empty.
And then… clarity.
She slows her ship.
Lets the stars stretch and breathe again.
Her single hull casts a lone shadow
across eternity, and it is hers.
They may multiply.
She remains.
One mind.
One ship.
One quiet joy drifting through New Eden,
rich not in ISK,
but in meaning.