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...