There are many names for us. Some call us immortal. I try to stay away from that name. We die like anybody after all. Some call us Methuselahs, though I step back there too. Too religious. Cowboy I am happy with. Those of us who served earned that name well. But not every one of us served. And every year there are more of us who never had the opportunity. So we settled on the name Ageless. While a logical fallacy, it has poetry in it.
Someone asked me the other day if all Cowboys are Ageless. Well no. Many of the Cowboys were normal people. There were never enough Ageless back then to go everywhere we needed to go. Even now we aren’t really enough. But many more people have the right genes to make good pilots than merely those of us who don’t age. It took us a while to find the right ones, and how to use them right. But we got there. And so we’re still here.
Contact brought great change to those who lived on Earth. It changed us too though. It took longer. We had two thousand years of inertia to get past. We knew how to do things right. The Terran AIs didn’t have any of the rules we had. And they weren’t quick to adopt them either. They never really did in fact. That made it difficult for me. I come from a Peloran cybernetic family but was born Terran. It took me a long time to work through those opposing positions.
Gencon is big. Gencon is fun. It is the best four days in gaming and thank God it’s not five. I don’t think I could survive five. So here I am, Gencon is done, and it’s been another good one. I’ve talked to people about games, played games, demoed my own game, and done all kinds of other exciting stuff. I’ve taken some seriously awesome pictures too. Lots and lots of nice costumes. And lots of ones I wish I could unsee. But some things you can never unsee…
The Great Peace after War’s End has been a time of rebuilding for us all. Russian. Chinese. Alliance. Non-Aligned. We have all spent our time colonizing and exploring new worlds, expanding in the directions that the Treaty of Geneva outlined. It is a large galaxy and there is room enough for all of us in it. No matter what some people may say. We are one big happy family now. Dysfunctional as all hell of course.