It is, but not a very happy one.
So … to be clear, while culturally I’m wholly an Achur, by blood I’m half-Civire. That’s not a pairing that’s widely approved of, officially or privately, either in the State or the Achura client-state. Mother, Yumiko Sujui, came from an old monk clan. Father, Sarth Jenneth, was from the Caldari Laborer caste, a SuVee spaceport hand.
I don’t know how they met. I do know that Mother’s family, the Sujui, didn’t approve at all-- not just the mixing of bloodlines, but also Jenneth, personally-- and cut her off, leaving her (and, in time, little me) socially and financially isolated, dependent on Father.
That might still have been okay if they’d been wrong about Father.
Like a lot of Caldari he was a hard drinker, and that whole “focused aggression” thing the Civire encourage … well, in a way I’m making excuses for him now. The upshot is he got drunk and beat her. I can’t say how often; maybe it even only really happened the once. An Achur national living illegally in a Caldari city isn’t well-advised to leave much of an information trail I guess.
What’s a lot clearer is that one day Sarth Jenneth lost his position. His anger and frustration is maybe understandable; he was abruptly out of work and maybe in danger of losing his citizenship and becoming a nonentity. What’s less-understandable is that he expressed that anger by getting drunk, coming home, and beating Mother to death before my seven-year-old eyes.
So, yeah, on the list of “things I’m just as glad I don’t remember,” that one’s kind of at the top.
After that, Father went into the SuVee court system and I went into the creche. It took the Sujui a year to finally decide to lift the ban on Mother and recognize me as kin. I guess SuVee wasn’t all that unhappy to see a half-bred daughter of a murderer go and didn’t put up much of a fuss, so I got recognized as a monk clan member and citizen of the Achura client-state. And off I went.
Not that the Sujui were very enthused to have me, either, of course. From what I can gather I was an embarrassment to Mother’s parents: proof of their inability to control their daughter. Apparently I kind of alternated between living at the temple compound and a series of private boarding schools. None of it went all that well, but I guess somewhere along the line I decided I was going to prove myself to them, no matter what-- prove I wasn’t useless, or weak.
Given how I went about it I can maybe kind of infer I was also about ready to kill someone. Client peoples aren’t permitted at the State War Academy, so I adopted the Caldari culture (assuming we survive, eggers can’t practically be prevented from reverting, after) and achieved State citizenship (which must have been a bit of a challenge for a person of mixed blood, so I really must have worked at it).
I attended academy with support from the Sujui, who probably thought this was a great idea. I graduated, and within a couple years had become a leader of a pirate corporation dedicated to the Angel Cartel.
That was my “predecessor.” The details of her career are a whole series of other stories probably, only of course I don’t remember. To this day I sometimes run into people who knew her, and who don’t know I’m not really … “her” … anymore. It’s especially awkward when they were friends.
One story I do know for certain is the one that brings this tale full circle: that one day my predecessor paid a visit back home, to rural Achura and the Sujui.
As you know, Achur monks of all sects practice martial arts, and I guess a part of a homecoming even of so mixed a blessing as my piratical predecessor might be a testing of what one has learned, or forgotten, during time away. And so it was.
Only, during a sparring match, I guess my predecessor experienced a flash of murderous anger, took an opening, and snapped Grandfather’s neck between her ankles. So died the Sujui clan patriarch. Easily explained as an accident, but my predecessor was always very clear that it was murder: vengeance for Mother’s abandonment, and for her own miserable childhood.
Satisfying, no doubt, but it made her … us … me … something far worse than guri, possibly even worse than a traitor: a kinslayer, one who has killed family, murdered her own ancestor.
Probably, I deserve to die for that, as Father ultimately did: executed for Mother’s murder. But I’m not quite prepared to take responsibility in such a way for my part in a story I can no longer remember experiencing any part of.
At the same time, it’s not like even total forgetfulness cleanses all wrongs. So, as much as I want to fill my eyes and memories with sights once familiar, the closest I will ever come to Achura is orbit. A small and insufficient way of taking responsibility for such a grave crime. But it’s what I can accept.
Out of respect for both the dead and the living, I can never go home again.
There’s more, but that’s kind of … what “made” my predecessor, sort of, I think. As for my memories, and why I don’t share that background exactly … my predecessor went missing, close to ten years ago now. I mentioned she was running a corporation loyal to the Cartel? Well, she, maybe, wasn’t quite so loyal to them, personally. She’d been trying to filch secrets: Jovian tech, that kind of stuff. I guess at some point she went on the run.
About six and a half years ago, someone hacked a clone bay archive containing an old backup copy of her (yes, that’s famously extremely difficult). They wiped the sectors related to personal memories-- just scrambled them into digital noise, which would write to a clone as a complete blank. They left everything else intact. Then they initiated a download to a clone. They overrode the automatic termination failsafes that were supposed to biomass the clone once the corruption was detected and blackmailed the staffer on duty to stop him terminating manually.
Basically they made sure I became pretty clearly “a person” before anybody could do anything about it. And since my predecessor’s missing, there was no one to contest my legal right to this identity.
I haven’t had trouble from the Cartel, myself, so it’s not too hard to guess I’m probably a project of theirs, probably bait to lure my predecessor out of hiding. Either way, it’s been years now and there’s still no sign of her. Maybe she’s dead after all. Maybe not.
Either way, that’s how I came to be a person (revised and edited) instead of an archive.