For 300 years have I lived and worked for this company. 300 long years of constant cloning and revival, ever since the very first xenomorph wars launched from Earth. And yet, I always wake up in that pod, that cursed pod, wondering what killed me last time. I know someday soon I will wake up there again. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, but soon. I don’t even know how many times I’ve died. Am I even the real me? Is this hell? Forced to live and die on this hundredth, or maybe thousandth space station? They lie to those poor bastards, in the TG Marine Corps, telling them it’s some time a couple centuries ago. Maybe I am still on that ship, and the neurotoxin is making me dream strange strange dreams of being a clown. But every time I breathe and feel that pain in my chest they haven’t been able to fix, or the weakness in my knees, I know it is all too real, that I will wake up someday soon in that cursed pod. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. Until then, I will Honk.
"some times I wake up, fallen to the floor after the pod doors open, I look around and see the differences in technology, notice feeling on board, then I wonder “what hit me, what happened, how did I fail again”, with no ceremony I’m ferried out of the medical bay and I see the stars out the window and the Nomad fleet along side them.
I know I am home, but there is little comfort in that, because I know I lost part of my self.
Spots about what happened that day prior, the moments before it, either I never saw it coming and there is a dark comedy in that, or I stepped into that dance with danger and death, but I know I was a short a card up my sleeve of cheating and I’ve lost the thrill I sought even trying it.
But then they ask me “Will you stay here?” and “Why go back?” and the answer is always the same. I may be home at that moment, but it’s a ridged and cold home, where nothing feels like it happened because you did it yourself or because chance let it be so.
So I go back, ready to do it all again and hoping to go another while without waking up there.
Because all of it is worth it."