Matches
Preface
Matches is a piece of Player Created Fiction written by Herko Kerghans as one tale out of his series on Ships, Pods and Clones. Originally published in the EVE-online forums [1].
Matches
Call me old fashioned, but I love matches. Since as a child, watching Grandpa rolling his cig slow and carefully, striking the match never failing to light it, getting the flame to his face finally smiling through the blue smoke...
Mother would leave a handful by my bedside table, just in case: sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night, afraid of darkness; the pale flame warming my fingertips always conforted me and I could go back to sleep.
Yep, loved matches since as far as I can remember, yet I had to go Up to really appreciate their simple beauty.
If you ever went Up you are familiar with the long Red Form with the list of all the things “forbidden” at your target station, and the even longer Orange Form with all the things “restricted” there. The first thing I looked up was “smoking”... harsh as it may sound, Mother and Father raised me along the idea that a Caldari must seek his destiny even if it takes him light-years away from his own… “Just follow your feet my son, your blood will be with you wherever you go”, they would always say. Add Grandpa’s tales about the War and his Bronze Star Medal “from when real men died only once and went down with their ship and crew, not like them clone jumpers nowadays… bah!”, and you have one young Civire with nowhere to go but Up even if Family is to be left behind.
Ah! But smoking! I just needed to take it with me! One of the many traits I owe to Grandpa… Father always frowned, but if his old man was all for it there was nothing he could do, he he. It was Grandpa that taught me how spread the tobacco over the paper, how to roll’em up, how to light the match against any surface no matter how smooth using only your left, “damn handy when with yer right hand yer pouring tungsten over one of’em drone lovers and yer cigar goes off… did I tell ya that back in the old days, real men used guns and missiles and only those poodle lovers used drones? Back when real mean actually piloted their ships instead of hiding in them eggs! Pod pilots… ugh!”
Oh yes, don’t talk to Grandpa about pod and clones, you will get him going for an hour and a half rambling about the good’ol days. He still swears that the tears in his eyes while he and Mother and Father were hugging me after I got accepted into the SWA pod-pilot program were due to some “damned bug that just got into me eye!”
“Both of them Grandpa?”
“Oh, shuddup!”
Father just chuckled and Mother said nothing but oh man can the three of them hug. The SWA acceptance almost cost me a couple of ribs.
Got a friend who four months before had been accepted as a maintenance engineer at a Zainou Biotech station and the first thing he told me was “No. Damned. Smoking. Allowed. ANY. DAMN. WHERE!” Father had been barely able to repress an evil grin, I know, and I was slightly worried even if Grandpa had promised to eat his Bronze Star if the Navy had nowadays forbidden smoking. He didn’t have to; as you know if you went to any CalNav station the Orange Form says:
>SMOKING
>>Qty/day: UNRESTRICTED >>Areas: RESTRICTED TO >>>DOCKING BAYS >>>MAINTENANCE BAYS >>>DESIGNATED LEISURE AREAS
Father and I sighed for the opposite reason and Grandpa yelled “Ha! That’s no less than 70% of the station! ‘xcuse me while I go polish that piece of bronze over there!”
I gathered my few possessions including two bags of Nonni Dark Sky (“What real men smoke son!” said Grandpa, “be sure to smoke it yourself… your soft assed clone would throw up at the second puff!”), a nice stack of White Snows (“What your Grandpa used to roll’em up with during the old days, like we’ve heard… was it a million times?” winked Father), and four boxes of Koikalen matches (“Here, my love” smiled Mother through her tears, “may it be an evening star shines bright upon you")
And so I went Up.
It was true, there are so many areas where smoking is allowed on CalNav stations that you barely notice the difference with back Down, save for when you go “out for a smoke” you are actually still indoors.
Took me a while to fully enjoy my cig with the roof and not the Nonni sky over my head… oh yes, Mother made it very clear that smoking inside was not allowed, be it egger wannabe or Bronze Star war hero. Grandpa hated it, “damned wind currents put out my matches! Smoking is for closed environments like coc.kpits and missile turrets!” but I loved the outside air. Stars look great from inside a station, I know, but you haven’t really enjoyed a starred sky if you haven’t lain on the Nonni grass on a warm autumn night.
Grandpa was right about the wind currents, though. Lighting a match inside a station is a breeze, if you excuse the dumb pun that a Deteis would like so much. Good for impressing the ladies, too: watching absently-minded through the station windows, finishing rolling the cig with your right while lighting the match against the glass with your left as you are regaining stamina for the next round… chicks just love it. I learned to always keep my matches by my bedside table, just in case I got lucky.
It was around then that I realized that while smoking was not a problem, matches were hard to come by. Better said, impossible. Not that they were forbidden, they just were not sold on the station: everybody preferred laser or plasma lighters. I had only a handful left when I found this out and had to switch to lighters myself, saving matches for special occasions only.
Hated it. Absolutely no skill required, thus absolutely no rite to it. No rite, no sparkling sound, no more the little sulphur taste you get on the first puff, while you shake the fire out from the match itself, dropping the match, inhaling and taking the cig from your lips with your other hand while putting the matchbox away... Feeling the nicotine rush its way into your bloodstream, especially in the winters when the cold nips at your cheeks and your fingertips after the brief warmth of the flickering flame... nothing! Just a surgically clean, tasteless, odorless reddish beam. Half of the smoking pleasure was gone… who was to think that tobacco and paper meant so little to the whole experience?
To make things worse it was near the time for our first pod practice. Heck. Damn it, my palms sweat just by remembering those times… if you’ve been through it you know what I mean: the first time they hook you up to a real pod instead of a simulator. Most of us couldn’t eat or sleep or think of anything else than “is it gonna happen to me? Even with all the training, can I get mindlocked?”
And that Akki Kouzai bastard who, right after professor Orutada told us not to worry, that mindlock on highly trained individuals as ourselves amount to less than 0,07% of the population, that Kouzai bastard just had to point out that on that year’s promotion of 3431 pod pilot applicants “0,07% means that two or three of us will be real silent soon.”
Damn those Deteis and they cold matter-of-fact accuracy! I had to use five of my precious matches after that class dropping my remaining stash to 26 and for the first time in years I needed both hands to light them.
Damn it. Math was on his side; luck wasn’t on mine. I was one of the three poor bastards mindlocked that year.
“Listen to me son. You are extremely lucky. Extremely lucky”. That was what Doctor Kourailen said, word by word.
Do you know what hell is? Hell is being paralyzed from your neck down, able to listen, able to see, but unable to produce anything else that a faint gurgling sound when you need to scream at the top of your lungs “GO **** YOURSELF DOC YOU HEAR!?!?? GO **** YOURSELF!!! YOU CALL THIS EXTREMELY LUCKY!!??? **** YOU!!”
My pulse skyrocketed. The sedated me and put me to sleep.
I woke up. Doctor Kourailen was in front of me again.
“You awake son? Ok, listen up: you are extremely lucky, and I have this enormous quantity of sedatives but I don’t have all day. Can you keep quiet and listen?”
I said nothing. What could I do?
“You got partial mindlock. I know what you’re thinking: sucks. Ok: mindlocked, bad luck. Partial, good luck. Partial mindlock is treatable. You follow?”
I followed.
“Takes time. Lots. But there’s hope. The good news? Your brain is in perfect shape. I know you don’t believe me but it is the truth. Perfect. That’s why it’s mindlock, mkay? Brain’s ok, but the mind is trapped… somewhere, nobody knows for sure. Ok so far?”
Damn.
“The trick is: you have to will yourself out of this. You have lost all tactile sensation: we’ll try acupuncture and tactile stimuli but you have to want to feel it. Your mind retained sight, hearing and smell; you will have to imagine, to remember how your skin felt.”
Damn it.
“You can only move your eyes, partially move your mouth, and partially move your left arm and hand. We’ll build from there until you force your mind to remember how to will your muscles to move, until you convince your mind that if you can move one finger, you can move your whole body.”
Damn it!
“It can be done son, others have made it. Up to you.”
Damn my luck.
Doc Kourailen advised me to perform “as complicated a manual task as you were able to do, son”, so I asked for my tobacco, my paper, my matches and lighter. He gave me an approving look, got me my stuff and permission to smoke on med premises, and left me to it.
Did I say not being able to scream is like Hell? Well, it is, but the upper part of it. The lower pits of Hell, the this-makes-upper-hell-look-like-warm-springtime is having all your smoking implements by your fingertips, smell them, even impress the gorgeous nurse by single-handedly lighting a match (my beloved 26th), yet not being able to roll’em.
I can’t, I fu.cking can’t, not with my left hand alone. I can light the match but I cannot roll the cig.
Aikka the gorgeous nurse gave me some cigarettes… I lit one with my precious 25th but I just couldn’t smoke it… So defeated and hopeless and useless!!! I threw the whole pack she gave me, gurgling in rage.
She injects me some more sedative.
I wake up alone, in the middle of the station night. Hospital bed, hospital room, hospital silence. And a useless, wasted Civire that used to be me. Silently crying. Sorry Mother. Sorry Father, sorry Grandpa… some son to be proud of, eh? Can’t even roll me a damned cig. All I can do is light a match in a windless room.
I took out the 24th, don’t know why. I wasn’t going to smoke… I took out the 24th and lit it, lit it and just watched it burn. I could see it burning, burning, burning shorter shorter I can smell it burn even shorter burning now my fingertips see it burning smell it burning I cannot feel a thing
It went off.
I took out the 23rd. Lit it. Watched it burn, saw it burning burning me but I cannot feel a ****ing thing.
It went off.
22nd. Burn! I can smell my fingers burning but I cannot feel a ****ing thing!
Damn it.
Damn it!
21st! Burning, burn and smell my hand is now all scorched!! I see it! I smell it! Did I… just…?
20th. Burn!
19th. BURN!
18th oh sh.it… oh man… oh holy mother…
HURTS!
OH HOLY MOTHER ***ER!!
YYYYYEEAARRGHHHH!!!!
At the top of my lungs, as if unleashed from Hell.
“Miracle” murmured Doc Kourailen. “This is not just a record, this is a bloody miracle. Yer good to go. Good as new. Bloody perfect! Save for the tactile sensation on left thumb, index and middle fingers reduced by 85%... nothing we can do there son, nerves and skin tissue burned beyond repair but doncha worry… if you ever get cloned you will be just fine.” He glanced at me from his papers: “assuming you decide to give the pod another try, of course”.
Of course I did. What would Grandpa think of my clone jumping generation?
Oh yes… wonderful things, matches. I’ve been through six clones so far now, never a problem except that with none of them I seem to be able to feel with those three fingers my original self burned, which still puzzles Doc Kourailen to no end but I’m not complaining… the rest of me is in top shape, I can still light’em matches even if I don’t feel the flame’s warmth anymore, the first smoke with your new clone tastes like heaven, and life ain’t perfect anyway.
Besides, cloned left fingers nonwithstanding, Doc Kourailen became quite a star in the field with his “Self-inflicted painful stimuli as a recovery factor for partial mindlock” paper, with my humble self as leading character. As a token he keeps me well stocked with supplies (“Wow! Nonni Dark Sky rolled with White Snows? Your old men surely know the good stuff!”), and Ashless Matches he gets from one of his friends from Jita. Not as good as Koikalens but as I said, life ain’t perfect.
I still keep the 17 matches left from the boxes Mother gave me by my bedside table. Just in case.