Complacency

"Docking request accepted"

This was announced by Erun's  on-board AI as his Myrmidon-class battle-cruiser was given a berth and towed into the small station.  He was docking up to rearm and resupply after spending the last few days hunting Guristas pirates for the local 'blued' alliance.  Finding ammunition had been becoming an issue as most of the ships being used by the alliance in the area were battleships or larger.  He'd managed to track down a small order for a few thousand rounds of thorium based plasma charges, and while they didn't pack as much punch as his normal antimatter rounds they did provide greater range as well as reduced containment costs from his capacitor.  The actual purchase and loading of the rounds required relatively little of his attention and proceeded with little hassle or fanfare.  His thoughts were focused on designing an efficient fitting for a Dominix-class battleship, as he'd made enough over the last few days from bounties to buy and fit the hull that was his go-to vessel owing to his drone control skills.  Weapons loadouts, defenses, power supplies, drone complements, all flashed through his mind as he requested and was granted permission to undock. He subconsciously plotted a direct course to the nearby alliance jumpbridge, a structure which functioned as capsuleer controlled stargate, usually to provide shortcuts within their sovereign space. Numbers danced in his mind as it wrestled with idea of reducing overall damage resistance in order to boost the amount of damage his drones could bring to bear.

 Suddenly alerts started flashing over the fitting projections as well as surprised yells rang out over comms from the skeleton crew as the ship's warp drive abruptly shut down and the inertial dampers struggled to kick in. The warp tunnel collapsed around him and Erun swore as numerous hostile vessels were detected all on approach vectors and locking on to him. He'd been caught in a warp bubble! He frantically programmed the engines to burn away from the center of the warp disrupting field, knowing he'd never be able to get a targeting resolution on such a small object in time. Numerous projectiles and high intensity light began to impact and wash over the shields and then quickly the armor as the ambushing ships opened fire. A nearby electronic warfare cruiser began bombarding his ship with conflicting sensor and telemetry data, rendering him unable to get firing resolutions or even give his drones targeting vectors. Resigning himself to the loss of his ship and it's small skeleton crew he broadcast the order to abandon ship as the armor began to fail and the damage control module's valency generators struggled to hold the hull in one piece. Numerous lifeboats ejected from the disintegrating vessel before it finally ruptured, releasing his pod in the process. Erun desperately tried to reach the edge of the debilitating warp field but his pod was quickly snared in a webifying field and then warp scrambled. Heaving a mental sigh of frustration at losing yet another clone he felt intense heat, then cold, and then...

Reawakening

Erun slowly reemerged from his sleep as his capsule registered signs of an impending mindlock in his psycho/physiological monitoring.  Quickly, but efficiently he ran through the procedures to decant from the womb-analogue of his pod.  Once he had emerged and cleaned off the the sustaining fluid he ordered the spiciest food available from the commissary unit in his quarters before he started some some basic calisthenics.  Odd to some, non-capsuleers mostly, Erun's actions served the important function of reaffirming his humanity.  During the initial screening for his capsuleer status he had been found to be susceptible to mind-locking over very long periods of time.  Not enough to prevent him from becoming a capsuleer, but it meant he could not participate in long term assignments like covert observations or wormhole exploration, both of which could last for months before a pilot was able to leave their pod. 

First observed in the earliest days after the Caldari were given capsule technology by the enigmatic Jove, mind-locking was a state where the pilot permanently disassociated their mind from their physical body.  Removing the "locked" individual from their pod would invariably render them catatonic as they could no longer function within their own bodies.  Improvements in the capsule technology and conditioning techniques had virtually eliminated the phenomenon, but there were still a few who still remained vulnerable.  These few must remain vigilant, as with their minds no longer attached to their bodies would not survive the cloning process, rendering bound to their pod and essentially mortal.  Having turned off his Neocom connections, a month passed before Erun's implants woke him enough to set the next skill to be trained before he returned to his slumber.  His training for the Elite Cartography Certification had been planned to take more than 45 days so he'd planned a period of somnolence to aid in his processing and retention of information.

Stopping his calisthenics as he heard the commissary beeping, Erun pulled his food - curry as it had turned out - before flopping on the couch and reactivating his Neocom.  Having been out of the loop for a month he'd expected a massive amount of information to assault him, but there were surprisingly few, consisting mostly of a couple Calls To Arms (CTA's) from Nulli Secunda but otherwise very little.  Bringing up his comm channels he found his new CEO skpopatoe3 active and struck up a conversation.  Half an hour later found him on a 74 jump journey through null-security space to his new home in the north of New Eden.

High Gain, Higher Loss

Erun sank into the couch in his Minmatar styled quarters with a relaxed sigh.  He tossed his feet over the armrest as he sprawled out with his head cushioned with the pillows he had taken from the rarely used bed in the corner.  He stretched his body and twisted around, eliciting numerous pops from his spine before settling back into the cushions.  Recent studies in long term clone health had indicated that the lengthy periods of weightless inactivity in pods had similar effects to long term exposure to zero and micro gravity environments.  Erun's childhood gymnastic, and later full contact sport conditioning had left him in pretty good shape but recently his love of the often heavy food available in Minmatar stations had caused his current clone to put on weight.  So for the last few weeks had been performing resistance calisthenics every time he had decanted from his pod.

Sinking deeper into the cushions Erun closed his eyes and pulled up his Neocom interface in order to contact his current agent.  She welcomed him joyfully, correctly anticipating and then recording another successfully completed mission for her logs.  After his payment was wired to his account he tiredly wished here a good night before closing down the channel.  Her commission for the missions he completed ranged from 1 to 10 ISK each but at current exchange rates she could be a non-capsuleer millionaire by the end of the week, even if she wasn't already, so he found her good mood easily understandable.  He noticed his wallet flashing again, indicating he had received the last of his approved bounties for the night, further increasing his current balance in excess of a billion ISK.  Soon he would be able to buy and fit a Proteus Strategic Cruiser, something he'd been looking forward to since seeing the sleek modular vessels for the first time in space.  He planned on using his for low sec exploration, something he enjoyed but couldn't do very often given the Helios Covert Op frigates' poor combat ability.  His only reason for not buying one before now was his personal rule of being able to replace anything he bought, something he'd be able to do within the next few months if his current missions were any indication.

His last task of the night was to pull one of the packaged Tech 2 Ogre's he had brought from his lowsec production plant out of storage and have it assigned to his - expensive, but well worth it - Navy Issue Dominix.  He'd lost one of his older units when it exceeded it's control range, disallowing him to recall it or issue it any commands at all.  Erun had checked the trajectory, hurtling directly into the flight path of a Mordus Mammoth more than 100 klicks away, and assumed the poor thing had finally gone mad.  The drone had likely been with him against numerous other Mordus fleets, and knowing their habit of shifting fire to nearby drones had simply found a loophole in it's coding enabling it to label a ramming maneuver as a valid combat tactic.  This blatant abuse of the drones' assigned "Aggressive" combat stance had worried him.

Erun frowned to himself at this thought as he pulled up the display of his implants and the skill they were currently imprinting in his cortex; Electronic Warfare Drone Interfacing.  His current path to mastery on this skill would enable him to use the latest gen high gain transceivers for drone control, as the e-war drones required both better encrypted and higher powered signals to be used in combat situations.  The new equipment had the added effect of increasing the effective range in which he could maintain control of the drones in his flights, hopefully enabling him to notice another runaway, at least until he could go back into the Ogre's programming and alleviate this and numerous other worrying quirks his drones had been picking up.  His continued research into drone programming had been bringing him increasing covert scrutiny from Concord, whom he had correctly believed were worried he was attempting to circumvent Directive Omega-1-5.  He'd read the Code Aria reports of course, and found disturbing parallels in his own research.  He had begun receiving veiled messages indicating that his research had headed into dangerous territory, eventually leading to a low-key confrontation when he reemerged into Concord patrolled space on a supply run.  

His first accident had occurred many months ago in Low sec, thankfully away from the prying eyes of Concord, but some of the techs had obviously been unable to keep their observations to themselves.  He had been scared out of his mind when one of the techs frantically opened a channel to him with a message;

"Sir, we just picked this out of Ogre #4's subroutines...! It's been on a repeating loop and it's core temp is rising!"

*01010111010010000100000101010100001000000100000101001101001000000100100100111111*
*WHAT AM I?*

Erun had paled as he instantly translated the binary sequence with his implants and told the techs to evacuate the drone bay.

 "Sir?"

"Just do it, now!"

The Techs had all rushed for the exits before he jettisoned the entire bay into space in a prefab container, which was then quickly vaporized with a blast from the 425 rails only recently installed on the Dominix.  His panic subsiding Erun had docked in his home station in lowsec before coming up with a plan.  He had given all of the drone techs a small fortune before letting them go with lifetime NDA's that would have made a Caldari lawyer red in the face.  The drones had always had anger and sadness issues but they'd never really given much though to their own existence before.  He had shut down all of his production facilities within lowsec in order to focus exclusively on the problem of the drones' self-consuming rage in their programming.  This seemed to appease his minders, as they seemed aware he had never made an effort to produce construction or repair drones.  His combat drones had no ability to reproduce or even self-repair (though he had considered it) and were therefore unable to become a threat unless he was actively building them himself.

Only a few of the drones with his original specifications remained now, deconstructed and stored in maximum security containers within a station deep in lowsec.  He was burning through them as their now obvious individuality drove them into either uncontrollable rage or suicidal tendencies.  Erun's personal research led him to believe he had given his drones far to much in the way of emotional capacities, something most other drone inventors never even gave thought to.  As it was though it took weeks of action before they began to be symptomatic, and he caught all the ones that became overtly violent or morose.  Erun was loathe to take away what he felt made his drones unique but hoped that his continued research into Gallente Drone Specialization would give him an insight into helping them get themselves under control, at least before Concord arrested him for his accidental breach of Directive Omega-1-5.  If it came to it he would remove the drones' capacity for emotion, though he would mourn the loss of what were often his only companions in the cold and lonely depths of space...

The Dangers of Cloning

"Skill training completed..."
Aura's voice rang calmly through Erun's thoughts as his unconscious mind finished the subliminal learning of his latest drone programming and maintenance skill set.  He had already instructed his implants to begin his next set, designed to help him better utilize the massive bulk of Orca Industrial Command ships.  He smiled grimly to himself as he remembered the rather steep fee, both monetarily and mentally,  he had paid when his previous clone contract could longer support his ever expanding intellect.  He hadn't balked at the price however as it had helped him become acutely aware of just how necessary maintaining an up-to-date clone was...

::ARCHIVED MEMORY RETRIEVAL INITIATED::
::TIMESTAMP:7/29/23349(JULY 29TH, YC113)::

Erun watched with reluctant acceptance as he watched the Harbinger's Tech 2 Pulse Lasers track his pod.  He'd been caught mining for Outer Ring Excavations in Null-sec and quickly lost his ship when he was unable to escape once the Harbinger shut down his warp core.  His small Tormentor class frigate, chosen for it's spacious for it's cargo hold, had been no match for the harnessed light brought to bear against it, and was lanced to pieces in short order.  Unable to escape the debris of his vessel before his pod's internal warp drive was forced offline, he now sat and awaited his fate.  It came quickly in a wash of intense heat as the Harbinger's lasers annihilated his quiescent body.  But as his implants flashed-copied his brain for fluid router transmission, he experienced something he'd never felt before during a podding...

Pain...

Throbbing, stabbing, unbearable pain as Erun awoke in his clone at his facility in a Republic University station.  Through the haze of pain he was assaulted by myriad noises; the alarms, the shouts of the infomorph technicians, and finally a keening sound he finally identified as his own screams.  Shuddering on the floor as he slowly regained control of his senses he heard the voices of the technicians attempting to gain his attention.

"Sir! Sir! Sir, can you hear me!"
He eventually replied hoarsely, "Yes, can you turn off the alarms please?"  The alarms were quickly silenced leaving a ringing in his ears as he slowly formulated his question in his pain wracked mind, "What just happened?"
"Sir you exceeded the limit of your clone.  You never updated to a higher capacity after your last incursion into lawless space.  The pain you are feeling right now is a result of your current clone being unable to handle the excess of information.  We were able to process almost the entire datastream as you only recently overshot the storage capacity of your medical clone, so you will have no cortical scarring to worry about sir, but you should reference your Neocom records in any case to make sure you haven't lost anything important."
Erun quietly thanked the technician before shakily trying to get up under his own power.  One of the nearby orderlies rushed to his side, concern clearly evident on her face.  "Mister Talan please try not to move too much, your motor control will be shoddy until your new nervous system adjusts."  He hobbled to the nearby bench with her aid before sagging into it and against the wall.  "It's just Erun ma'am, and thank you."  The orderly gave him a wan smile before going to retrieve a robe for him to wear while he recovered.  While he waited Erun closed his eyes and brought up his Neocom expecting the worst.  His fears proved well-founded as there was a massive gap in his knowledge, primarily his expertise in manipulating and improving the performance of battlecruiser sized vessels.  He groaned quietly to himself as he imagined going through weeks of subliminal education to bring himself back to his previous level of mastery.  Walking back with his simple gray robe the orderly noticed his internal musings and expressed her concern once again, "Will you be alright sir?" Erun smiled tiredly at the young woman, "I will be ma'am, I just need some time to sort myself out..."  She smiled back politely before helping him to his feet and giving him the directions to his assigned quarters on station.

::END ARCHIVAL RETRIEVAL::

Coming back to the here and now, Erun shook his head as he recalled the last few months.  He'd almost completely stopped his normal space based operations to focus on the recovery of his previous knowledge.  Most of his income for the last half a year had been through his planetary operations, with the occasional foray out to lowsec to bring out his goods.  He hadn't seen actual combat for a few months and was eager to get back into space to prove his worth.  He'd regained the knowledge he had lost and supplemented it with additional courses to help him get the most out his vessels.  And though it had taken him time, he was feeling ready to venture back out into New EDEN, with a new-found respect for how fragile the human mind could really be...