DAY TWO

DAY THREE

Thanks to all my fellow citizens for the very kind words of encouragement and especially to those who made vague threats!Here's what happened between yesterday and today:Day two heralded the true beginnings of my adventure. I logged in and surveyed the scene in my new 0.0 station. Local was filled with unsavoury looking characters of the highest order."Security Status -7.1, Wanted: Bounty 25 million isk", etc etc, was what I was greeted with when reading random peoples' bios in Local. This was a scary place for a n00b, indeed.My plan was to leave the station in my shuttle and to go further into the deep dark recesses of 0.0, not knowing where my randomly chosen path would take me. So, what did I do? I chickened out and logged out of the game, hoping to do it when local was "less piratey".....A few hours later and there was still a distinct "Yarring" atmosphere. I gradually bided my time to make my audacious escape and logged in and out every few hours. Could this have been a case of n00b nerves? Or was it prudent and sensible behaviour? I do not know.......I eventually logged back in at around 5am this morning and discovered that local only had a few other pilots.Two of these heroic brutes were docked in my station so this seemed like an ideal opportunity to make flight into the dark recesses of 0.0.I called up my map, and selected "Ships destroyed in the last 1 hour" and studied the local area. There were a few absolute no-go hotspots, where many an unsuspecting pilot had met their grisly end. I was determined not to become one of them.I also selected "Escape Pods destroyed in the last 1 hour" and compared the two results. It would seem that most people who have their ships destroyed also get podded out here. One system showed 29 ships destroyed with 22 pod-kills.Nonetheless, not to be deterred, I used waypoints and plotted a complex course around the hotspots, my ultimate destination being 30 jumps away, far into the underworld.I was pleased to discover a feature of the map that allowed me to remotely locate stations in far off systems. So I chose one, made sure to take my basic miner from my starting ship with me (which I had carried to this station) and off I went.The first few systems I went through were empty and the thrill of flying through 0.0 space in my shuttle was great. I sailed and soared, with the "vaccuum beneath my wings", unflinching, uncatchable, and forever determined to succeed out here. I could not be stopped.18 jumps later, having passed through a few systems where evil ones lurked and where, much to my surprise, the gates were camped not by players, but by NPCs (Guristas Battleships), I entered a system where there were two other human players.I quickly looked at their bios and saw that one had a +5.0 security rating and one had a slight negative rating. A chat request box appeared on my screen from the guy with the negative rating........Should I answer? Or should I ignore him? Would he make me walk the proverbial plank? I decided to be a brave n00b and to answer the call, despite the fact that he was a member of the "Cursed Killers"....After saying "Hi", he informed me that he had read my bio and that he "wanted me". This led me to three possible conclusions:Figuring that a random homosexual invitation was unlikely, this deep into 0.0 space (although I have seen posts on the Eve Online forums by a member of the "Minmatar Gay Rights League" so anything is possible), I eliminated option #2 and pondered the other two for a while."I want you to join my corp" - he added, thus enabling me to deduce that either:(to be continued.....)