Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle,

All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

All of the sights of the hill and the plain

Fly as thick as driving rain;

And ever again, in the blink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle by.

Robert Louis Stevenson - From a Railway Carriage

Have you ever stood on a tall building, peered down at the pavement, and for a split second imagined hurling yourself over the edge?

Of course you have. We’ve all felt that urge. Hell, there’s even a name for it: “The Call of the Void”. You don’t really want to jump, and yet that compulsion can be overwhelming. So instead you take a step back from the ledge and laugh it off before putting it out of your mind.

Until the next time.

We’re strange creatures, us Terrans, chock full of contradictions and inconsistencies. For thousands of years we’ve tried to make sense of the mystery that is Homo Sapiens, even devoting entire scientific disciplines to the problem, and honestly, we’re not much further along now than when we started. It’s annoying.

For example, why would someone say… oh, I don’t know… trade in their flesh and blood for an electronic string of 1’s and 0’s? Curiosity? Boredom? A deep-seated death wish? Or maybe it's simpler than that. Maybe the Call of the Void resonates just a little stronger in some than others. I’ve been asking myself that question for years now, and I’m no closer to solving that riddle than when I started. Because for me, it’s not just an intellectual exercise.

My name is Alphad Aemon, and I’m an Avatar.

You’ve got questions, am I right? Of course you do. I imagine “What’s an Avatar?” is high on the list, along with, “Why the hell would you even do that?” I’ll have to get back to you on the second one, like I said, I’m still chewing on it. As for the first…

A couple of centuries back there was this nasty bunch who took on the entire galaxy, and worse, they were scary enough to actually pull it off. Most races that inhabit our little corner of the cosmos couldn’t be bothered to help another species, in fact, the phrase, “Wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire” leaps immediately to mind. Even though most races can't stand one another, when stacked up against species-wide extinction, banding together for survival suddenly didn’t look so bad. Funny how that works.

We humans were the new kids on the block, and frankly most races wouldn’t give us the time of day. Interstellar travel was a fairly new thing for Terrans, a gift from the Oivu, a race of interstellar traveling merchants. Okay, maybe gift isn’t exactly the right word, because that sort of implies getting something gratis. The Oivu are decent enough folk, especially compared to plenty of other races I could mention, but they’re not a charity. We paid through the fucking nose for that drive, but suddenly the entire galaxy lay at our feet. All we had to do was reach out and take it, only we soon discovered there was no room at the inn.

There wasn’t a decent planet anywhere we looked that hadn’t already been claimed. Even the marginal worlds had “No Trespassing” signs planted all over them, not to mention a battle-ready armada or two to make it stick. It was the same story everywhere we looked, and by the time war came we would have settled for an airless ice ball on the backside of nowhere, but even those had some damn race screaming “Mine!” The constant competition for usable worlds was so bad that some of the bigger fish began looking over the Sol system and started licking their chops.

It’s a dog-eat-dog universe, kids. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

We managed to avoid a hostile takeover with some fast talking and a little fancy footwork, but it was touch and go there for a while. We’d colonized Luna and Mars, but everything else in our solar system was a dud. There were a couple of mining outposts in the Belt, but that was it. There was occasional talk of settling Ganymede or Titan, but it went nowhere. The costs of making those moons even remotely habitable was astronomical, especially when it was cheaper just to slap another dome on the Sea of Tranquility and call it a day.

But when the Yīqún started chewing their way through the galaxy, suddenly we had an opportunity to tilt the board in our favor.

The Troika, the coalition of the three most powerful races in the Perseus Arm, had formed an Alliance to defeat the dread enemy, with everyone busily falling over themselves to sign on… humanity included. Maybe we weren’t the oldest race out there, or the smartest, or the largest, or the…

… look, you get the picture. But as it happens, war is something we’re good at. By signing on and proving our worth in battle, maybe we could parlay that into a grubstake somewhere. It was a risk worth taking, and besides, the Yīqún played no favorites. Everyone was at risk, so for most races, joining the Alliance was a simple case of self-preservation. We immediately buckled down and got to work, cranking out ships as fast as we could slap them together and manning them with humanity’s best and brightest. More swiftly than anyone would have thought possible we created Task Force Odin; the greatest naval fleet Earth had ever assembled. The lowly monkey-boys of Sol would show the galaxy that we were just as worthy as they were.

It… didn’t quite work out that way. The enemy zigged as the Alliance fleet zagged before bouncing off the Tu’udh’hizh’ak Empire’s defensive perimeter. They were probably the most tenacious faction of the Troika, and likely the only ones who could have managed such a feat. It left the machine race reeling, furious at their losses, and hungry for payback. Unable to strike back at the species who had hurt them the most, or perhaps simply unwilling to commit the necessary resources, the Yīqún cast about for a new target.

They soon found one. Earth.

… look, you already know what happened next. I really don’t want to rehash that again, so let’s just move on, shall we?

So once the dust settled, Odin was all that remained of humanity. Those were dark times, made so much worse when we started fighting amongst ourselves over dwindling resources. Those were the Clan Wars, the moniker we’ve given to the battles and skirmishes that punctuated the fleet tearing itself apart. In order to survive, one needed a competitive edge, some angle that you could exploit. The Navy turned to piracy; the Marines became mercenaries, while the Engineers/Tinkers declared themselves neutral and worked with everybody, but that still left plenty of folks on the brink of starvation, wondering when the air would run out.

Cue the opportunists.

There have always been flesh peddlers in the Perseus Arm, preying on those desperate enough to sign their lives away for a chance at something better. The Protean Clan began as lab rats and guinea pigs, clawing their way to power via gene splices, experimental technology, and implanted alien organs. Recently they’ve fallen on hard times, but we’ll get to that later.

We Avatars, however, took a slightly different path. Like our transhumanist cousins, we too had to learn the trick from another race, but where we differ is the manner in which we gained that knowledge. Circumstances beyond their control forced the Proteans into perpetual servitude, whereas we… well… um…

… okay, fine… we stole it. Happy?

Plenty of races have gone the electronic route, and once we learned about Uploaded Personalities securing that technology for ourselves became our top priority. We scoured the galaxy for every scrap of intelligence on the subject, but what we really needed was a working prototype the Tinkers could reverse engineer. Considering the facilities necessary for the transfer could fill a medium-sized shuttle to capacity, that was easier said than done. Making off with a planetside model proved beyond our capabilities, so instead we focused on something we could actually pull off. We brought the Corsairs on board and hijacked one in transit. Some assembly required.

Mastering the technology wasn’t easy, and there were a few hiccups along the way. Well, more than a few, being honest. Okay, a lot of hiccups. And by hiccups, I mean deaths. Those first volunteers didn’t fare so well; in fact, we were well into triple-digits before we finally made it work. Yeah... I know. Maybe that’ll give you an idea of just how desperate we were. Also, “volunteer” might be a misnomer, though we mostly used captured aliens and criminals for the tests.

Mostly.

Ahem.

Anyway, it also helped give the Clan its direction. Not thievery, since the Corsairs have that market cornered, but the acquisition of information through extra-legal means. Although, given the number of races out there, not to mention the dizzying variations of governments, they probably consider everything we do illegal. And while their alien masters can alter the Proteans to take on many roles, we Avatars have stayed within our wheelhouse.

Espionage.

There’s an enormous market in espionage, as it turns out. No surprise there, since we Terrans have been ferreting out and selling secrets long before we ever left Earth. Every race has enemies without and factions within, all of them eager to learn as much as they can. We are more than happy to provide that service, for a suitable fee, of course, and mostly we’ve done pretty well for ourselves.

But that doesn’t change the fact that we Terrans are a divided species, homeless, scattered across an uncaring cosmos, facing the ever-present threat of extinction. We’ve crunched the numbers, and they don’t look good. Our ships are getting older and harder to maintain, our population has been declining steadily for over a century, while the cost of basic resources continues to rise. We’ve been rapidly approaching a crisis point, where unless drastic action was taken humanity would reach the point of no return. All seven clans struggled with the problem, both singly and in unison, sadly, without success.

Until a cranky old Tinker named Maggie resurfaced after spending several decades living off the grid, and suddenly the wheels were in motion.

Maggie had been part of a mission to Earth back in her youth that had hoped to discover the location of New Terra, an almost mythical world we hoped would someday be our new home. For two hundred years we’d searched and found nothing, but then a scrap of information surfaced and offered a tantalizing clue. Unfortunately, the mission ended in disaster, with half the crew dead and leaving us no closer to locating a new world. The survivors went their separate ways, and eventually the entire business was filed away and forgotten.

Then the survivors started dying.

Look, I’m in the information business. People die all the time, in all sorts of ways. It’s the one thing you can count on in this universe, that someday you will no longer be a part of it. Clusters of deaths aren’t that unusual either. For example, if a ship makes a navigational error and slams into some airless moon, a lot of folks are going to be dead all at the same time. It happens.

But the odds of half a dozen individuals linked to a specific mission dying within a five-year timeframe, each of distinctly different yet seemingly natural causes, are roughly somewhere between a quadrillion to one, and impossible. Those kinds of numbers make people like me sit up and take notice, but we couldn’t prove a thing. Even now we don’t know who was ordering the hits… if they were hits, the jury’s still out… though the smart money is on the Troika. The only thing was, we couldn’t figure out why. Why silence the crew of a failed mission years after the fact? It made no sense.

When Maggie showed up on Freya, where it just so happened all seven clan heads were conveniently gathered together for their yearly meeting, it was as if Dame Fortune had smiled on us. They quickly threw together a second mission, as in the intervening years some bright young wizard had discovered something the original crew had missed. It was a longshot, and Maggie took a bit of coaxing before she finally signed on…

… look, it's my story, and I’ll tell it the way I want. You don’t like it, take it up with the management.

Anyway, each clan had representatives on board, and it just so happened they chose me to stand for the Avatars. Interesting trip, and we learned quite a bit, not the least of which being why the Troika… or whoever… had been busy offing the competition. It turned out that New Terra had once belonged to an ancient race known as the Precursors, and they believed their world was a treasure trove, filled with powerful artifacts that could make them all but gods in name.

Only there was a catch.

The Precursors had left behind a guardian, and they believed that no ship had ever breached its defenses. Only it turned out that one had, a small Terran scout ship during the war that had somehow found its way in and back out again, only to suffer at the hands of the Yīqún before the pilot could pass the secret on. The Troika would stop at nothing to learn how we’d managed that trick when all others had failed, and a lot of good people died because of it. But somehow, we stayed one step ahead of them, and with a little sleight of hand teased out where this planet might be located, getting us one step closer to the prize.

We’d hoped that we’d wriggled free from the Troika’s hook, long enough at least to locate New Terra and claim it for ourselves, but with their reach and resources it was never really an option. My old crewmate Samara stirred up enough trouble to get them chasing their own tails for a while, though she’s since disappeared. I don’t know what’s become of her, but I fear the worst. If that’s the case, then at least she went out with one hell of a bang.

Personally, I thought Commandant Zakiyya’s plan to dig in on Sonoitii Prime to be dangerously foolhardy, but she has since proved me wrong. The Alliance she helped create, something that may someday be strong enough to stand up to the Troika, is the first real positive step the galaxy has seen in millennia to break their hold. It’s not there yet, but I have hopes. Old crewmates served there as well during the siege, and sadly we lost Sergeant Kai in the last battle. We weren’t close, him and I, but I respected the man.

Something tells me he won’t be the last.

And now? Now the whole Perseus Arm is facing an upheaval of monumental proportions. The situation is inherently unstable, with fragile coalitions rapidly coming together and then just as quickly falling apart, only to re-coalesce in some strange new formation, each ephemeral as soap bubbles. We’ve had to throw out every statistical model we’ve ever used and start from scratch, and no one, least of all me, has any idea where it’s all headed. We Avatars have been running ourselves ragged trying to keep up with the demand for up-to-date information, but as chaotic as things are now any data we uncover has an extremely limited shelf life. It’s like the Wild West, the October Revolution, and the Age of Discovery, all rolled into one, where a single bit of intel can make you rich beyond your most avaricious dreams or force you to flee for your life.

I haven’t had this much fun in years.