Louis

by on May 29, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Louis Mattioli was a good Cowboy for a long time after War’s End. He lived up to everything we stood for. Truth. Justice. The American Way. All that jazz and more. He had his problems, but he kept them from showing in his work. As long as I wasn’t involved. He helped a lot of people over the decades. He fought a lot of fights, and he won most of them. Entire planets owe him a debt that can never be repaid. They are free because of him. Because when they called for help, he answered. He put his life on the line for them. Again and again and again, he did everything a Cowboy was supposed to do. Everything we’ve devoted our very long lives to. He devoted most of his to that same goal. When it comes time to tally up his legacy, we should never forget that.

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Top Gun

by on May 28, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

I just saw the new Top Gun. It is good. I enjoyed it. It hit all the right nostalgia points while also being a new and good story. And it gives enough back story for how he could still be a captain in the navy without having been kicked out or up yet for me. It’s still crazy, but I’ll buy it for the story. One thing that hit me was a conversation between Iceman and Maverick. It was at a hard part of the movie, and Iceman told Maverick “It’s time to let go.” And Maverick said, in a moment of atypical total honesty that nails the character so well, “I don’t know how.” God, I feel that so much right now. I’ve had people leave. I’ve watched people move away. I’ve even cut people off. But I’ve never really just let go. And I don’t know how to do it. And that makes everything so hard. Top Gun is a good movie. It’s a fun movie. If you had any like for the original Top Gun at all, I think you will love this movie. Go and see it. I give it two aces, without reservation.

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Louis

by on May 27, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Louis Mattioli and Natalie never had exactly the same relationship they had before he died. Before I stuck my well-intentioned nose into keeping her alive. She wasn’t all his anymore, and there was a jealous streak in him. It burned deep and cool over the decades, but he never put it to words. I would have handled things differently if I’d recognized it bothered him, but I didn’t. Nobody did. Even he didn’t. And that just made things worse. He couldn’t tell me why he resented me because he didn’t understand what he resented me for. But our disagreements got worse, and I just tried to stay away from him in the end. Our cybers helped with that, and of course that stuck in his craw too. He should be able to confront the man who messed everything up, right? Even if he couldn’t say how I had done it.

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Louis

by on May 26, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Me and Louis Mattioli had a lot of disagreements over the years, but there was one that always stuck in his craw. One he could never forgive me for. I tried to steal his cyber. I didn’t. He was dead, but I can see his point of view. I talked Natalie into fighting on rather than shutting down. I got her to stay with me for a while. I think she was coming around to the idea of staying permanently when she got news he was alive. Not that she told me. It was classified. But it’s where she went when she left. To be with the man she’d been born to protect. But her time with me changed her. Not much, you understand, but it was enough that he noticed. And he she didn’t erase the parts of her that changed when she linked back up with him. She kept the parts of her that had grown. Their relationship was just a little bit different after that, and the fact that it was festered in him.

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Louis

by on May 25, 2022 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

Louis Mattioli died at Epsilon Reticuli. I did not know that Aneerin grew him a new body with a cloning chamber, and used his last brain scan on Alpha Centauri to bring him back. That wasn’t a technology that was widely used on us back then. Sure, the Peloran used it on themselves all the time, but they didn’t work right on Earthborn humanity’s more complicated DNA. Or so I thought. So everybody thought. But Aneerin had been a busy little tinkerer since our first failed experiment, and Louis came out of the cloning chamber exactly the man he’d been the day he left Alpha Centauri. After a new name and some edited records, he was a new man with a new mission to guard the Wolfenheim Project. It’s amazing what technology can do these days.

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