FreeBSD/sfr (ursam) on qty0 login: starm Password: Last login: UMa-ZETA-CT A01A 0A0A 0A20 FreeBSD 3C15.1-RELEASE-p2 GENERIC Welcome to FreeBSD! Release Notes, Errata: gopher://gopher.FreeBSD.org/releases/ Security Advisories: gopher://gopher.FreeBSD.org/security/ FreeBSD Handbook: gopher://gopher.FreeBSD.org/handbook/ FreeBSD FAQ: gopher://gopher.FreeBSD.org/faq/ Questions List: gopher://gopher.FreeBSD.org/lists/questions/ FreeBSD Forums: gopher://forums.FreeBSD.org/ Documents installed with the system are in the /usr/local/share/doc/freebsd/ directory, or can be installed later with: pkg install en-freebsd-doc For other languages, replace "en" with a language code like de or fr. Show the version of FreeBSD installed: freebsd-version ; uname -a Please include that output and any error messages when posting questions. Introduction to manual pages: man man FreeBSD directory layout: man hier To change this login announcement, see motd(5). _____________________________________________ / You say you are lying. But if everything \ | you say is a lie, then you are telling the | | truth. You cannot tell the truth because | | everything you say is a lie. You lie, you | | tell the truth ... but you cannot, for you | | lie. | | | | -- Norman the android, "I, Mudd", stardate | \ 4513.3 / --------------------------------------------- \ ^__^ \ (oo)\_______ (__)\ )\/\ ||----w | || || You have mail. starm@ursam:~ % ------ >> CAPTAIN STARM REPORTING >> STARDATE: UMA-ZETA-CT A01A 0A11 13A0 >> SHIP ID: BABY-BEAR >> SHIP SELF-DIAGNOSTICS >> ALL SYSTEMS ONLINE >> HULL [================================] 100% >> ENGINES [============================= ] E8% >> FUEL [============================== ] F0% >> SHIELDS [========================== ] D0% >> BREAKFAST [================ ] 80% >> MIGRATING FROM LEGACY DECIMAL TO HEX... >> [=============== ] 78% >> TRANSMISSION BEGIN our ship has been drifting for some time now. not that there's anything wrong with our engines or the fuel situation, just... it's hard a lot of days to go in for a landing. sometimes people are hard to relate to. i've been reading on eathern history. sometimes it's hard to separate out the folklore, i suppose. i'm not a historian and it's not easy to figure out the historical consensus from what the quacks are saying. but as far as i can tell, the consensus is that when it was inhabited, earth had only one moon, and that it was on the larger side as far as terrestrial planets go. but there's a story about the moon that's less agreed on, i think it's probably an old wives' tale but my co-captain thinks it's true. maybe it's just wishful thinking, but i guess i'd like to believe it too. the idea is that from earth's surface, the angular size of the moon in the sky was exactly that of the sun. and every now and again, maybe a few times in an individual's lifetime, the moon would be lined up just right during a solar eclipse that it would exactly cover it, for maybe five minutes or so. the sky would go black like the night and you'd see all the corona, these solar storms with the naked eye, shimmering and pulsing. staring too long you would go blind, as though the rest of the story didn't sound suspiciously theological in motivation... i guess i'm of two minds about it. maybe i'm a bit of a curmudgeon but it sounds like a stretch. but at the same time... i don't always talk about it but i have (off and on again) something of a spiritual outlook on lunar cosmology. something of a part-time lunatic, you could say. but that's to say that maybe i'm overly critical. it sounds too on the nose, and maybe i'm quick to deny these kinds of things because i'd feel embarrassed to have entertained it and been wrong. but maybe that's where we find the strength to keep going, is entertaining and having been wrong. maybe that's the point of telling stories. and maybe me burning out on entertaining these ideas is why i'm stuck drifting in my ship like this so long. mind you, i -- i used go on these lunar missions all the time. weekly, sometimes daily... i've taken core samples from moons of ice the size of Mizar b, flybys of two-body dwarf systems, readings of the disruption of gas giants' electromagnetic fields. and i've observed more than my fair share of eclipses, even. planetary, solar, lunar... red giants and two star systems, moons eclipsing moons eclipsing accretion disks. which is maybe why i find it a bit fanciful to believe in stories like that. of exact fits and perfect harmony. of an unknowable beauty nobody's seen before or since, lost to time in the only satellite of the very first planet our species ever inhabited. ------ ..===.. .;='`` ``=;, .;' ';. .;:. .:;. _=:;.__ ,--. ;:=_ `'--==._____ : ;_'" `, `.__,` `-,_ _,- `'''` starm ------ but it gets me thinking. not because i believe in such things. but like i said, i'm a bit off-and-on of a lunatic. i don't do those kinds of landings very often anymore. it just takes so much... mental energy, i guess. the people you meet in those places, just -- the looks you get from someone who's never left their planet of residence before. who've been there as long as their parents and their grandparents before them. there's a kind of judgement there that gets under my skin. it degrades you. like.. back on earth we watched the night sky with wonder and awe. it stirred something up in people, the boundlessness and mystery of it. then we found that the infinite tiny still points of light are worlds, trillions and trillions of them. we took to the stars because there's a vacuum of blackness that connects us to realities we couldn't imagine existing. everything around us is tiny tiny tiny points, infinitesimals, lives and worlds and rounding errors against the dark sheet of spacetime that envelops us. our planets are made of dust and the spots inbetween -- the actual universe, the FF.FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF% of stuff, that black velvety fabric, is nothing more or less than sheer connectedness. it's possibility, it's potential energy, it's a bridge, a road to everyone and everywhere. and you look in people's eyes and they see a dirty word, they see a void. what's outside their atmosphere is an empty nothing, coldness and radiation. a harsh and blasphemous emptiness. ------ * ` *` . . . . . *`x* * . . . . `+x* , . . . . * , + . . . . . . , x * * . . . . * + * . . . . . * .* . . . . * x * . . . . `. * x . . . . + * starm ------ so many of us live on that road, we live for it because there's nothing for us on finite bounded surfaces. sometimes when i'm standing on a planet and i'm talking to these terrestrials, it's like i can feel the gravity of their world slowly pulling my spirit out of my feet and into their planet's core. like a little bit of me is just slowly slipping down, and every planet i visit takes a microscopic piece of me out of me. and like that accumulates. until i'm not a whole person, i'm C0% of a person. and i miss the missions, but i just fucking can't bring myself to leave orbit. because 100% of a person can do a landing, but i'm turning translucent or something. i'm like a ghost. these things that used to invigorate me now just rip these chunks out of my heart. and the people i meet down there don't wanna see me and i don't wanna see them. it's just a thought. i haven't been in so long. i'm only bringing this up now because i'm thinking about it, and i'm only thinking about it because now -- as i do every so often -- i'm considering going on another lunar mission. not a landing, i don't think, but just another eclipse observation. so i get thinking of those stories of earth's solar eclipses. how did we get from there to here and still things feel the same. nothing is new above the sun, i guess? >> END TRANSMISSION