[As requested by Manwe Todako from http://www.eveonline.com/iNgameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1571916]

I'm not giving up, I'll never give up, but I'm losing hope.

I won't bother to look up when Kuvakai returned... I just know it feels like it was much longer ago than it really has been. The Nation is made of flesh and machine but it might as well be stone; every battle that's been won to hold the incursions back hasn't slowed the inevitable next attack.

The sheer number of their forces has eclipsed whatever my imagination could predict. At first I was afraid, I knew they were a bigger threat than rogue drones could ever really be, but I knew there would be people willing to fight with the firepower necessary. Now I'm not afraid anymore. I'm not resigned... I do know I'm reaching a limit I've never really faced before.

Even if I step away to allow myself to recover, I don't think rest will come easy facing the guilt that I am not helping to eliminate the biggest threat to Humanity that we have ever faced. The Nation doesn't just take your allegiance, they take your dreams and expectations. They delete memes and turn people into war processors. It's not a fight over beliefs, it's absolute subjugation of our ability to hold beliefs.

I expected either encouragement to push on or permission to settle. By giving me neither you give me both.

This is a very special war. Humans have infighting, distrust, complexity... between each other we can exploit these organizational vulnerabilities. I don't know a whole lot about the Nation, and seeing how it apparently can't offer me a conversation I can't really learn much about it. I do know that to some degree, maybe entirely, they do not suffer this handicap.

Kuvakei can break us. Capsuleers are the most powerful instrument against a threat like this, but we're human. We can become corrupt in ways that can't possibly be described. We can be monsters and machines. We can become everything that Humanity should despise, but in being human ourselves our minds have very real limits. Pressed enough, we collapse. Everything we might believe ourselves to be can be shattered in unpredictable ways.

He's spent far too long preparing to just pepper us for our own amusement. This is his trial and only the beginning. He will keep pushing just enough until enough of us grow tired or complacent and let go. We have no way of knowing how many drones or resources he has or can produce. Imagine if he's discovered a way to grow new warriors as quickly as we eliminate the incursions. Imagine if he is building motherships indefinitely at the same rate they are being destroyed.

I might live for thousands of years. What offers me the power to escape mortality is the same thing that may condemn me to spend those thousands of years fighting this same war. In another time, I might have imagined Zukes and me growing old together. Instead I'll be a demigod until there's an accident or when I choose to escape it.

Without her, I think I would have already cancelled my medical contract... or maybe just surrendered to the Nation.

I can't be a leader, I can't summon pilots to fight for me. I just take up opportunities to lend my hands to people more qualified. Do I think for myself? Am I just the not-Sansha drone equivalent to Sansha drones?

I need to stop drinking so much wine and go so long without sleep.