A Writer's Journey

[Leveque]

A joy beyond compare, to bask in your vast, frigid, azure embrace, oh the Crow Nebula. The elating sensation of traversing through your beauty of which mankind could only tell folktales and legends before harnessing space travel. To see your fruits nourishing the Sirian colonies.

Yet to your flower, there is a thorny stem. As beautiful you are, there are no doubt those wishing to use the dimness you provide and strike upon the innocent for their good and wealth. As the vast seas of the Caribbean on the ancient Earth, so beautiful, with a promise of virgin land, so do you contain pesky pillagers and persons of questionable morals. To my fortune, of that I know only from words of passing merchants and forewarnings of travel advisors. A tendency I would enjoy to have preserved.

And indeed, right there on horizon - the Edge. A vast emerald space, the cold frontier. Indeed, even as one would gaze upon the stars from my home, the Edge nebula would be a sight of note. Yet, as grand as it is, it is a land of no law. A land where man's worst tendencies surface and manifest. A land where survival can only be done with combat proficiency. A land without civilization, without culture, where synapses in one's mind come to short-circuit, where any cognitive activity is expunged by survival instincts.

And as an accommodation to this brutality, the despicable freaks from Malta that attempted to poison my culture with their drug have also emerged from this veiled meadow. Though it deserves not the hatred that I possess for Marne, the Edge inspires only one feeling in my heart - fear. And as such, I would do my utmost to avoid it, along with its residents.

Gladly, it is as far as I allow myself to deviate from the global trading route. My next destination is set in New Tokyo. My uneasy feelings about the Kusari government and military aside, it has been my long-time ambition to immerse in their culture. For it is not the towering sights that I desire, but fashion.