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All I could
think about during the day was returning to Eve. Calculus
equations, physics problems, the musings of long-dead authors,
all these things meant nothing to me now, for I was well on my
way to becoming a virtual pimp. I drove home like a maniac
that day, darting in and out of traffic and speeding through
crowded city intersections. I sprinted to my computer and
started Eve, my heart warming at the gentle glow of the galaxy
sun. I netted about 1.5 million more credits by 7 PM, when
HardHead logged on. He wasted no time in messaging me.
HH: "Hey dood, how's it going? How's the financial situation?"
Me: "Pretty fucking awesome, I've made 5 million credits so
far."
HH: "Are you kidding me? Jesus Christ that's a lot, can I have
my money
back?"
Me: "Sure. I'll give you a million extra too, just as
promised."
HardHead logged in, and I wired him 4 million credits. His
trust in me was now firmly established, and I got back to
work, doing what I did best, running trade routes. During this
time, Trazir bitched and moaned, asking me to wire him money
so that he too could start doing trade routes. He even called
me up a few times, asking for virtual money. I eventually gave
in and sent him a million just to shut him up. By the time I
went to sleep that night, having made an additional 500k by
whoring large amounts of cheap items through safe areas, I
knew that my virtual life had changed forever.
Over the next two weeks, I traded harder than a Chinaman in a
flea market. Trazir even joined in, but since he was too lazy
to wake up early in the morning, he would be lucky on his best
days to make half what I made on my worst days. During this
time, HardHead told me about how he had moved on to actually
writing scripts for the game so that he could find and mine
the very rarest of asteroids with ease. I also became a master
of blasting off with my MWDs the second any hostiles showed up
near a warp gate, and while there were a few close calls,
nothing ever rivalled my experience with Dethbringer. By the
end of this period, I was worth close to 85 million credits,
and Trazir was near 30 million. I felt like a fucking space
tycoon, a financial juggernaut, ready to expand my realm of
influence from the monetary to the military. I was going to
buy a cruiser, the next step up from the frigate you are given
when you first enter the world of Eve.
I did my research, and decided that the best ship for combat
would be the Caldari Moa; it was fast, deadly, and had an
armament approximately equal to the United States’ missile
arsenal during the Cold War. Nuclear winter, here I come. I
was going to pick it up from a guy named “OneEye Willie”, a
hard boiled manufacturing magnate I met one day in IRC. Willie
sold the ship equivalent of an Alienware computer; terribly
overpriced, but outfitted with all the best decals, all the
best hardware, and most importantly, the best weaponry that
money could buy. When you bought from Willie, you weren’t just
buying a combat ship; you were buying death incarnate, a
million credits at a time.
After an intense bout of haggling, some shouting on my part,
and some screaming back on his, I worked him down to 35
million credits. Willie, in addition to being just a little
eccentric, manufactured his ships far away from civilization
where costs were lower and competition was nil. I suspected
that he supplied pirates with their combat ships, but I never
could confirm it, because Willie never, ever talked about
himself or his other clients. I would pick up the Moa in some
near-abandoned outpost in a 0.0 sector in the Caldari region.
It would take me 2 hours to fly out there, but I wanted that
fucking ship, so it was worth it. Since it would be 0.0 space,
and since I didn’t want to have to leave my indie out in the
middle of the space equivalent of Bumfuck, Alaska, I would be
flying out in my lifepod.
In Eve Online, your lifepod is the final string in the cold
vacuum of space which keeps you in the world of the living.
Unfortunately, it’s about as strong as an anorexic midget in a
world of steroid-laced giants. NPC enemies ignore lifepods
completely, but the NPCs were easy to get away from anyway. It
was the other humans you had to watch out for, the asshole
player killers who destroyed lifepods and set you back hours,
not for profit, not for personal gain, just for the sake of
ruining somebody’s day.
I had been gliding through space for about 90 minutes when I
saw the red targeting cursor. My pod beeped, and I shouted at
the monitor, “FUCKING DAMN IT!” Seconds passed, and I was
perplexed; no missiles had hit my pod, and no lasers blasts
were ripping through my hull. My speed bar was decreasing. 400
m/s. 300 m/s. 200 m/s. I slowly grinded to a halt. “Your
engines have been disabled,” the notification read. His name
was DanielSan, and he had me immobilized in space. My life was
in the hands of the fucking karate kid.
His message arrived shortly after, “give me 500k or I’m gonna
blow you to shit.”
“All right, calm down, I’ll wire the money right now.” I
groped for the send button, nervously trying to type in
500,000 in the wire transfer box. The way I figured it, giving
up the profits from a single 30 minute trade run more than
justified the loss of skills and time I would have incurred if
I was blown away.
A second before the wire went through, I received another
message: “send it NOW you bitch. Heres a little present.” A
single laser blast tore through the mass of my ship, bringing
my hull integrity down to 15%. “Ok, you can leave now bitch,
and dont come back.” Thirty seconds later, my engines let out
a low whine as they came back to life. Once again, I had
narrowly evaded death at the hands of a malevolent prick with
a dumb name. My engines were damaged and on fire, only
operating at 1/3 capacity. My ship hobbled through space
towards the jump gate, beads of sweat broke out on my forehead
with each additional meter; I feared that the karate kid would
pull the equivalent of a Mr. Miyagi finishing move by blowing
me the fuck up. As I passed through the warp gate, I vowed my
revenge, and 60 minutes later, I arrived at Willie’s, a
broken, burning shell of a man.
“Bout time you got here. Man, what the hell were you doing
anyways? You said it would be 2 hours.”
“I got into a little accident. Can I see the ship?”
He placed the Moa in a trading window, and it was just as
beautiful as I envisioned it. It had 3 long-distance laser
racks, 2 high density missile bays, and an ECM ray to drain
enemies of their ships’ energy. I gave Willie the money, and
within minutes, I was flying away from Willie’s base in a
shiny new Moa. I had a good idea of who my first target would
be, and I was shooting through space with a rage I hadn’t felt
in weeks. The familiar explosion of the MWDs sent me roaring,
closer and closer, towards each warp gate. He was minutes
away, I could feel it in my bones, and I burned with a rage
equal to that of the galactic sun.
And finally, I knew it. He was one jump away, and I was only a
kilometer from the warp gate. He would be on the other side,
camping, bullying, killing, waiting for another innocent soul
to pass through his dark grasp. I loaded up my missile bays,
readied my left hand over my weaponry hotkeys, my right hand
over my targeting hotkey; this was gonna be one hell of a
fight, and it didn’t help much that it was going to be the
first time I ever fired a weapon in Eve. I nervously gulped
and passed through.
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