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Transmission Log - Orestes
Author: Green

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Auto-generating preface...

  A transmission log by GREEN. He thinks the messages aren't
  reaching anyone. He philosophizes about the concept of life. He
  complains about his fellow human-inhabitants at the Orestes.

  Thank you for sending the mining equipment, I'll distribute it to
  the crew when the time seems fitting, as per your recommendation.

-END-OF-PREFACE-
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  You still haven't sent the mining equipment, or anything for that
  matter. Lending credence to my theory that these messages aren't
  reaching anyone.

  I still, for some reason, feel the desire to update you. There
  are things to tell. Events that happen. Even in this remote
  corner of the universe, populated only by three people and a
  bunch of strange, inert, red crystals, things happen.

  If reminds me of something a philosopher once said, when talking
  about 'life' (Life, after all, and the inexplicable human desire
  to find more of it, is why we're here).

  We usually think of things beginning when life appears. That
  is, before life, there are no real 'events'. Life is activity,
  motion, desire, growth. In absence of life, there are just rocks
  planets, stars, etc. We are fascinated about the question of the
  beginning of life, that strange moment when one cell first
  divides into two.

  But, the philosopher said, there is no life without difference
  and before what we call 'life' appeared there was difference. The
  universe is full of differences. Or, to be more exact, the
  universe made up of of processes, and processes are just a series
  of differentiations.

  We think of life as continuous, as having a history (genealogy),
  a clear beginning and end. But this sense of life, the one that
  we cling to so dearly, the reason we voyage out into the void in
  search of it, this sense of life is a construct. A story we tell
  ourselves to try to make sense of the constant differentiation
  and change. Underneath it all is the force of pure difference;
  the relation between this molecule and another, between a 1 and a
  0, between the geology of this 'dead' rock floating in space and
  'that' one. So, if you're tracking a process of differentiation
  across the universe, 'events' are happening all the time.

  Not with these crystals though. There really is nothing going on
  with them, in any sense.

  All that's been happening are the overly-familiar kinds of
  'events'. PINK ate the last of the apples. I couldn't believe it.
  She ate it right in front of me, like it was a perverse act of
  sadism. I don't get her sometimes. She is usually so calm and
  rational.

  NAVY is sulking or has taken a vow of silence or something and
  has become as unresponsive as the crystals. I ended up screaming
  my head off at him the other night. I feel bad about it now.
  These kinds of 'events' tire me. I wish sometimes I could be less
  'me', less 'alive', and just be a pebble on the beach or
  something. Being slowly eroded by a wave.



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Complied by the Werner H. Young Terminal Emulator

Info: Simple A.I., designed on-site for executing
systems maintenance tasks and exchanging messages between the
Orestes outpost and the Arsinoe.

Built by Werner Young (2113-2151).

Names of persons have been masked to protect their identity.
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