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---
template=post
title=Untitled
style=/styles/post.css
description=from an accidental prompt of "louder than loud, brighter than bright"
published=2025-08-28 20:59
---
You have a moment, just before you ram your starship through a fleet of the
brigade. Is it worth it? For her it was never in doubt. Those bastards took
her for everything. Her joy, her love. Even her grief. Can you imagine? Not
being able to grieve the love you lost; not having the capacity to feel at
all. They burned the color right from her eyes. A husk commanding a hull.
Full of dwarf-whitematter.
The first collision was nothing, just a bump. You don't need barracks with
no crew. Those cowards never came back from Red Gulch. Won't catch her
rotting on a battlefield, no, she's going out a hero; she's making her life
worth something. Or so she tells herself.
The second is harder. Your rear cascade is pushing the full weight of three
justice-class vessels now, struggling. The vacuum of space is great for
exhaust, provided you're going fast enough.
She can't hear the alarms, no one can. She opened the airlock hours ago.
You have to be smart about these things, see? Let the air out so it doesn't
explosively decompress and suck you asunder before you can finish your
mission, complete your purpose.
But eventually you get there, you reach your end. Within distance enough
to blow the entire thing. There's no hesitation. It's computer controlled,
anyway, but she still hits the button. Orange, threatening, painted with
terror, with "this is it", with "are you sure?".
It was louder than loud, brighter than bright. Rent all meaning from the
words, dissolving their concepts to pure experience, snuffing out existence
itself. She was alone in this. As we all are, really, in the end.
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