Author: Stargrace

Some wormhole systems feel haunted before you even finish loading grid.

This one did.

The static crackle of the connection faded behind me as I slipped into the system and launched probes almost immediately. Empty local. Just me, the stars, and whatever secrets the system had decided not to bury properly.

The results came back quickly.

Ten relic sites.

Ten.

I actually blinked at the scanner for a second, convinced I’d misread it. Relic runners dream about chains like this. Somewhere, some explorer would have started hyperventilating. I warped to the first site already imagining intact armor plates, ancient components, maybe one of those absurd cans that makes you feel chosen by fate itself.

The loot was terrible.

Not just bad. Impressively bad. The kind of bad that becomes funny after the third site. Burned-out scraps. Worthless fragments. Containers that practically apologized when I opened them.

By the fifth site I was laughing softly to myself.

By the eighth, I’d started narrating my disappointment aloud to no one in particular.

“Ah yes,” I muttered while cracking another container full of garbage, “the ancient civilization clearly valued melted wiring very highly.”

Still, I kept going.

Because honestly? I was enjoying myself anyway.

The system itself was beautiful in that lonely way wormholes sometimes are. A C6 connection loomed like an open wound in space, dangerous and heavy with possibility. Nearby was a Drifter wormhole, pale and ominous, silently daring someone to make a poor decision.

Not me.

Absolutely not me.

I gave both a respectful amount of distance and continued picking through archaeological disappointment in my little Helios instead.

And somehow, despite the terrible loot, despite the utter lack of profit, I felt content. There’s a kind of peace in solitude when it’s chosen. No fleet chatter. No politics. No urgency beyond the next warp.

Just me, drifting carefully through forgotten ruins while the universe remained impossibly large around me.

In the end, I left the system poorer than I’d hoped and happier than I probably should have been.

Not every expedition needs treasure to feel worthwhile.

There is a bench somewhere in the Federation that I keep trying to find again.

I know that sounds ridiculous. New Eden is enormous—thousands upon thousands of systems, stations, colonies, forgotten outposts orbiting quiet worlds. Entire wars disappear into history out here. People disappear even faster.

But still, every so often, I go looking for that bench.

It sits beneath pale trees on a Gallente planet whose name I can never quite remember afterward. The sky there turns gold in the evenings, and the city lights below the hill shimmer like station traffic seen from orbit. Capsuleers are not really meant for places like that anymore. We become too large, too detached, too immortal.

But somehow, that bench always makes me feel small again.

That’s where I meet them.

Our lives never quite align properly. One of us always chasing duty, distance, obligations, timing. Sometimes they’re across the cluster. Sometimes I am. Sometimes weeks pass in silence before a single message appears asking the same quiet question:

The bench?

And somehow, one way or another, we find our way back.

I think that’s why I search for it so carefully when time passes. Not because I’ve forgotten where it is, but because I’m afraid one day I’ll arrive and find the spot empty. No saved place beside them. No familiar silhouette waiting under the evening lights.

But they always save me a spot.

Always.

Even when things don’t work out. Even when life bends in difficult directions and timing remains cruel. The bench remains ours in the small way that matters. A fixed point in a universe built entirely around motion.

Today I found myself drifting through Gallente space again, chasing fragments of memory from orbit to orbit. A hillside looked familiar. A station tram sparked recognition. For a moment, I thought I had found it.

I hadn’t.

Still, I smiled.

Because somewhere out there is a quiet bench beneath golden skies, and someone patient enough to keep saving me a seat.