Bennu Station, 213:7 - Revelations
I didn't ask to be here. Not on Bennu, which I chose, but existing in this universe at all. And I didn't want to constantly crave purpose, but I do, and it comes with the unadvertised requirement that I must make my own meaning. It's a tough ask, at least for the life of the somewhat examined.
I completely understand falling back on pre-made solutions and meanings. A soul needs an analgesic after all, and religion has been customized and tweaked across time and culture to provide the perfect effect for its time. Often as rallying cry for a group to continue despite the obvious continued awfulness of existence laid out before them. "Yeah, this life sucks, but don't worry, after you're dead, that's when things get awesome. No, wait! No! Not like that!" The awesome party is invite-only, and requires a life of suffering to get on the list.
While good for the gander, sometimes the disproportionate benefit of a particular salve for the soul goes to the goose instead. Self-appointed divine vessels apparently know no cultural boundaries. I still have memories of the ship from Tarstan and the severed tentacles all over the deck when the loading dock lowered. A single fat organism at the center of a throng of emaciated anti-gender supplicants, pleasing themselves with their own gnawed-off tentacles and then offering them as divine sacrifice to the self-appointed conduit to who-knows-what. Shah had to do that one on his own.
I used to look out at all the stars, and the trails from reactor cores of passing ships and see infinite possibilities. As a child in the Core I was told there were more stars in the Universe than sentient organisms that would ever live, and I dreamed of lighting up the atmosphere of a planet in a never-visited solar system. The problem is that I have collapsed that possibility space, condensed the infinite to a single point: Bennu. And now I feel stuck. Infinity still exists, but I feel like my access to it has been revoked. I can't self-medicate with the organized solution, and it makes me sick to think of those who split their outward profession of faith from their inner desires. I'm already spinning, and that mental friction would unwind me completely.
There is always the Klaxle procedure. I've heard of some people getting it electively, before any symptoms manifest, just so they don't need to deal with the mental wear and tear of daily life. It's technically voluntary brain damage, and "the results speak for themselves" is both condemnation and advocacy. Coming from the Core, it is an indictment and the procedure is banned. Out here in the concentrics, parents gush about their happy children sleeping through the night, "the amount they remove is so small!".
Everything on Bennu is well monitored, so I know my symptoms aren't caused by some spurious emission from the mechanical core of the station. If I was on some of the ships that come through here, then I wouldn't be so sure. Shah says I need to start inspecting the real disasters that make it to the station---the ones that should have ruptured from years of neglect or cost-cutting construction, but didn't---praise be to the salve.
He says there's nothing quite like escaping your final moments to fill the days you have left with vibrancy. I think he might be right but somehow he doesn't grasp that identifying these problems from the safety of the station neuters their effect. Maybe Shah is the type to feel personally spared when the protagonist of a story evades certain death, and it's just me that wishes they could escape the light cone they find themselves trapped in.