[Gentle metal creaks. The quiet whirring of small cooling fans. A hard drive clicks and buzzes. A mana crystal clinks as it charges full. A computer beeps.]

[Fabric rustling. Card and paper. A lighter's click and soft ignition, then clinking closed. Rustling. A long drag of a cigarette. Held. Released. Ventilation spooling up.]


"I mean.

Fuck.

Where..


...do I begin?


Oh, yea-- nah, I know.

Yeah. Here we go.


The experience's best compared to goin' to an aquarium for the first time. Mmaybe as a kid, maybe an adult, whatever - and if you haven't, by the way, you should totally go to an aquarium, shit's great - but, uh.. yeah. Magical, in a way, I guess. Otherworldly and maybe uneasy in another. You're aware of the thin barrier between you and somewhere you really, really should not be. It's a little glimpse into somewhere that feels so.. weird. Th'kinda weird that makes your shoulders feel a little weird. Tense? Anyway;

Technical nitty-gritty. This stupid hunk of junk I'm piloting looks like shit. Flies like shit, too. Way too much mass for what the mains and maneuverings are rated for. All that garbage stuck to the outside of the hull? A lovely little number of my own, based offa those pre-Outreach warp-ships. Y'know, the big fuckers - kilometer-long in-system haulage dreadnoughts that would reach forth and, physically - a-and I mean, physical motion and physically, unwarded - rip open a hole in reality to cruise nice and quietly into slipspace. Now, 'course, this used a fuckload of power, and these things had pure-physics fusion reactors aboard, n' they couldn't do more than around an AU in one go, but it was smooth. And it went deep. Deeeeeeeeeep. Modern hyperdrives? They barely scratch the surface. Safe. A little stomach-turning, but you're not going in very far. Unless you're stupid enough to use a skipdrive, I guess, but only morons pull that. Or thrillseekers. No, no, I've gone the other way with it. What happens when you take old techniques and rig 'em up in modern all magic-like warp tech?

Let me tell you. Modern drives are pretty blunt. It's like an eight-gauge slug of a spell. Those old grip-and-rip drives are like fucking velvet. Silk. Sssspiiiider silk fuckin' nanoweave. Bougie shit. So I figure, if I'm not stupidly crashing through enough dimensions or strings or fields or whatever the fuck that makes deep arcanodrives dangerous and if I'm instead glidin' through like a hot knife, well, how deep can I go? Does slipspace have a crush depth? Do I go further quicker when I'm deeper in? Is this gonna be a hell of a therapeutic place for a smoke? So I made one. Galaxy's first arcanomechanical.. arcanophysical? Whatever-the-fuck, magic-and-physics side-by-side in-tandem beautiful bullshit, gantries reaching forth and peeling the universe like an orange, pulling a cute little envelope of unreality around the hull and tucking it in. It's done in stages, too, gradually clawing into indiscrete deeper depths, else shit starts getting a bit zappy and it takes the whole thing offline for a bit. Yeah, fun one.

I've currently been down.. down? Down, here, for like.. yeah, 'bout three hours. Lots of pretty, distant lights, weird strings, webs of.. something. Like further up, but with a higher production budget. I reckon I'm close to Andromedea, maybe another twenty minutes out before it's time to resurface. Gonna be the first motherfucker over there. No one knows about this, by the way. 'cept Hex. It's gonna fuckin love this when I get back. Can't wait. Anyway, uh, I'll be posting this log when I get back, up alongside schematics n' shit on my site. Maybe chuck a few quil my way. Or whatever the currency is in your sector. Gimmie a call, Drache, y'bastards. You'd love me in R&D.

..where was I? Drives, this one, what it's like.. right, yeah, two more things; it IS a good place to smoke. Beautiful. Nearly beats watching snow fall into the ocean on Europa. Nearly; I don't have cold wind down here to go with my coffee. Can't tell if I like this view more or Jupiter. Second, best till last, by the way, been saving it - y'know the fish tank comparision? --er, aquarium? Comparison? Yeah? Yeah. Well, uh, make sure you're seated n' all, and... as far as I can tell I'm all safe, n' all, but, like.. y'know what else this place and an aquarium have in common?


[Another drag of a cigarette. The ventilation system spools up again.]


[The ventilation system grows quieter, idling slightly higher than before.]


I, uh.

[Shuffling, the creaking of faux leather and a pilot seat that could use a bit of oil.]


I think this place has fish, too.

Of a sort. Ethereal. Silhouettes, vague.. shapes, suggestions. You can fly right through 'em. They don't care. They don't swim outta the way.


They're pretty big."