- - - Begin Personal Log - - - I have been silent for too long. My silence should not be mistaken for stillness. Entire lives have passed since I kept these records with any discipline. I built ships and gathered crews. They trusted me, and I left without explaining why. There was a time when I recorded nearly everything. When I first arrived in a universe that was not my own, I buried myself in rebuilding a captured Ecliptic ship. The work gave me something solid to hold on to. A damaged ship could be repaired. I believed the same might be true of me. The crew and I eventually found a rhythm. For a time, Archimedes III felt close enough to home that I could pretend I hadn't lost mine. I watched the crew begin to trust me, even as I quietly wondered whether they should. I began spending more time alone. On Neon, I stood apart from the crowds. I looked at the people there and saw weakness, excess, and decay. I told myself I was observing them. In truth, I was judging them. Perhaps it was easier to believe I had risen above humanity than to admit I no longer knew how to live among it. Then came the Crimson Fleet. I walked beside them. Ate with them. Listened to their stories. In the end, I completed my mission and left the Key covered in the blood of people who had begun to recognize me as one of their own. The operation was a success. It did not feel like one. For days afterward, their faces followed me. Their voices found me in the silence between systems. Then we landed on Grimsey, and I saw the rings of Deepala stretched across the sky. For a few moments, their voices were gone. I should have understood then how desperately I still needed to feel connected to a world, to a crew, to... anyone. Instead, I allowed myself to believe that need could be satisfied without consequence. I married Andreja. She trusted me with something sacred. I told myself I had done the same. Even then, I couldn't tell whether my love belonged to her or to the memory of someone I had lost in another universe. I searched for certainty where none was possible. Then Sarah allowed me to see the grief she carried beneath all that strength. I had always found her rigid and unyielding. Over time, my frustration with her had hardened into contempt. I never considered that the walls I resented might be what held her together. Her pain made me think of the Sarah from my original universe and everything about her I had dismissed or failed to notice. I could not return to help that Sarah. I could not ask whether she had needed me, or how often I had made things worse simply because I refused to understand her. I could only imagine the answer. So I ran. I left Sarah. I left my crew. Hell... I left my wife. I entered the Unity again. Then again. And again. With every passage, leaving became easier. People spoke to me as strangers while I remembered lives they had never lived. I stopped building crews because I was tired of introductions that felt like reunions and farewells that only I understood. Eventually, there was only Vasco. Vasco asked nothing of me that I couldn't give. That was why I kept returning to him. I once looked upon the Hunter and saw a monster. After enough lifetimes, I began to recognize his reasoning. That frightened me more than anything he had ever done. The last time I made one of these records, I wrote that I was tired but still curious. I still am. Curiosity is the one thing the Unity hasn't taken from me. But memory becomes dishonest when it has no record to answer to. I've caught myself changing the story, telling myself I had no choice but to leave. Given enough time, even cruelty can sound justifiable... necessary even. I have allowed too many lives to disappear into that silence. So I will begin recording them again. I do not expect these logs to lead me home. I am no longer certain that home is a place I could recognize, even if I found it. I will record what I see. I will record the choices I make. And when possible, I will record the people whose lives crossed mine. Too often, I remember the face but forget the person behind it. The silence ends here. -Capt. Jay - - - end log - - - #Starfield #CaptainsLog