[Saltheart]

It would be impossible to say when or how it happened, or even if it was an accident or not. It just did. And I certainly didn’t trust the other me enough to stay close to all who are important to me.

For ten years I’ve been traveling from spaceport-to-spaceport, colony-to-colony, planet-to-planet, running from myself, running from my past, and running away from officers who were, without doubt, ordered to capture me and deliver me home. I jumped into hyperspace, became a bandit, a pirate, a priest, a hacker--anything I could to forget. I’ve seen it all: the Quartron Nebula, the Dasha Sector, even Earth. I’ve done everything a man could do to forget his past, bury it, forget it. I’ve even surgically removed that part of my mind.

Yet the memories still lurked, deep inside, just behind the veil of my dreams, echoing loud, incoherent nightmares. I would suddenly wake up covered in sweaty sheets, panting, screaming at my Father, who I couldn’t even remember. And the other me wouldn’t let go. He refused. The feeling of horrible deja-vu whenever I held a knife in my hand or saw a gun pointed at me jostled me, and I cursed him for it, demanding he faded away, left, packed his bags and left left left. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. He refused.