Epilogue – Patch Day

It must have been weeks of sleep. Possibly more. I dreamt of my newfound security, and the injustices of Jita abolished by the simple solution of moving all of her rocks to block the gates in. My followers were here, and I was at peace in a utopia.

The exhaustion of it all spun over my head. From my mere days waking up in a cheap apartment, driving an Ibis and running murderous missions for pocket change… all through conquering 0.0 space and defeating Robert’s massed army, it was exciting. A thrill.

As light returned to my vision, I began to awaken. I saw right above me a dirty ceiling, and an uncomfortable bed below. Stretching, I rose to look at the surroundings.

Everything looked… different. Shinier than when I left, but I realized it indeed was the familiar old apartment that I had started this adventure in. It had the smell of poverty that you couldn’t cover up no matter how hard you tried, yet everything was glazed over with a shiny sparkle.

I rose to find a small note left on my bedside. My hand reached out to read it aloud.

“Happy Patch Day. Welcome to Kali III. Today’s date is… January 1st, 2017?”

I blinked again. And looked around. The entire room was covered in post-it notes again. I gaped, as one fell from the ceiling to my lap.

Quote:

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Congratulations on waking up. This tutorial will show you how to undock from bed. Please take note of your overview and...

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Pushing the Tutorial aside with my extensive old-school knowledge, I moved for the window. I looked outside to see everything new and shiny, showing off some sort of graphical upgrade across the world. For some reason, the gates lay un-blocked, and cars honked and people argued through the streets like the Madness of Jita that I had loathed. What had happened?

As I read the note by the window, I sank back in a chair.

Quote:

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Welcome. You have been given a new capital-class car, standard to all rookie drivers of your race. It is called an Ibis-II. For more information, please refer to the new tutorial downstairs.

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Looking below, a brand new ‘Rookie Dreadnaught’ lay parked and waiting for me, complete with civilian siege module and all. It still looked like crap of course. And I took a deep breath, resting back. It seemed some things would never change. I felt refreshed from my break, and smiled through brief moments of lag.

Some things just don’t change. What changes are people. I stood up and headed downstairs.

I had a universe to break again.



(The End... for now)

Part 36 – We didn’t listen!

We were there. The smells, the local ramblings, and the incredible field of lag surrounding every one of our movements. It was the street called Jita, my sworn nemesis. And we were locked down, needing a way to somehow cut off those endless waves of CONCORD reinforcements from coming in here and totally spanking us.

I was alright at least. My speedmobile Typhoon had only been scratched in the chaos, but most of my followers clogging up the traffic queue were in those bizarre plastic eggs. Barely anyone made it out with a proper ride or weapons it seemed.

Around us, Chaos prevailed however. The local denizens, disturbed from their wal-mart shopping and moneymaking filled the streets, as ever more present suicide bombers tried their hand at them. I had to think fast before the chaos disrupted my forces.

“Uh…” I stumbled. “Tackle the gate! Don’t let it get away and… um. Smash em!” I called. Yes, we would smash the highway gates that entered Jita, however long that would take. A brave Velator shifted by me, already crashing into the gate and backing up, lunging forward to crash again.

This was clearly not working. Action had to be taken. We had to find something to destroy or block all of these gates…

“Everyone.. um..” I paused. “Get a chunk of Concrete from every Rock Field in the area and stack them all over the gates! Fast!” I called hastily. For this plan to work, it would had to start now. I myself flew through, toasting poor mission-runners trying to kill some defenseless members of that Guristas gang, who barely did anything bad to anyone except hang out amongst themselves. After a few hours of murder, I returned to one of the gates to see how everyone did.

Apparently, there was not a single loose rock in Jita anymore. Nor any way in through several gates. The road was completely closed and all the price we had to pay was several billion metric tons of Concrete hauled. A few of those robotic asian miners I knew from before seemed upset at all of this. They were soon dispatched with that trusty violence I had grown so used to…

Still. I felt tired. Jita was gone now and my mission complete. Had I won? Had I stopped it all? I felt exausted from this terrible ordeal. As the lag faded, I slipped off to much needed sleep.

It was good to be lag-free. I slept for quite a while.

(to be concluded!)