As it turns out, some aspects of my life are so horrible that people think I'm making stuff up for shock value. -- Anon Guest
Human Daz always had one week of food on their person, and an atmospheric condenser that stowed two Sivu[1] of purified water. They had a very small molecular reassembler integrated with their livesuit that could only make one thing - Nutrifood Paste. It had one job and it did it very well. The livesuit was a work of both art and paranoia, containing solar panels, a small wind turbine kit, and a very small, dormant, zero point energy unit. It could, theoretically keep Human Daz alive in the vacuum of space for up to two months. Last time companion Ryx checked, Human Daz was researching how to stretch it a fourth.
Companion Ryx was vaguely aware that Human Daz was what they called a "wild Deregger rescue", but had no idea what that chain of words meant. Individually, Companion Ryx could understand the meaning, but... as a phrase? It had lost all of it. As she watched the Human run sims on potential mods for their suit, the nature of Daz's obsessions came to be worrying enough to prompt her to be rude.
"If I may ask rude questions," risked Ryx. "Why are you so concerned with surviving everything? You have not needed a majority of your livesuit mods since their installation, yet you keep adding more. Is this an addiction? Would you like psychological help?"
Human Daz laughed. "Oh, I'm well broken. The best you can hope for with me is incrementally less broken. I'm a wild Deregger rescue. There's no fix for that."
"My pardons, Human Daz, but... what is the meaning of 'wild Deregger rescue'?"
Daz took a deep breath. "You might want your calm meds on standby. It's a long and dark story."
Daz was an illegal. The product of an abandoned Trophy and a scrubber who barely kept a sleeper in the slums. Their earliest memory was playing Keep Quiet under the bed with their mother as the latest Control Patrol ran their performative Search And Terrorize. Scrubbers weren't allowed to keep women. They certainly weren't permitted to be parents.
The Control Patrol killed Daz' parents when Daz was out learning to read in one of the less-than-legal gutter schools. You had to have a certain level of income to be permitted to read, and Scrubbers were meant to be illiterate and stupid. Nevertheless, there was a healthy underground system of education for the gutter kids, and a favour economy that ran on little deeds, handcrafts, and spare moments.
The school moved often, and the kids who were good at running were sent out by the teachers to collect the kids who were good at hiding. Trust was worth more than gold in the gutters and the ghettos. It was worth more than food, and food or clean water for a day were premium.
People were always mad about the gutter schools, and Daz was out fetching another kid when someone decided to end the subversive terrorist organisation that all gutter schools were by shooting the shit out of it. Twenty-four illegal gutter kids dead, and three Scrubber adults. Not even enough for a mention on the radio.
Mister Hendall had died killing the shooter. Too late to protect the rest of the class. Not that he could have done much. The guy had a hand grenade with the pin removed in one fist. Just in case.
Thereafter, Daz lived out of dumpsters and garbage cans, scrounging enough food for one more day off of cafe tables when the Control Patrols weren't looking. Avoiding the riots because being on the same block as rioters got you shot.
When Daz escaped, sneaking aboard a Galactic freighter, they were already sick and close to death from a combination of bad food, bad air, bad water, and no medicine. Daz didn't believe they were lucky to be alive, they knew it. The shock of basic care and shelter being standard just about blew their mind.
"I made the mistake of trusting a standard livesuit once," said Daz. "I barely made it out and needed treatment for the rads I caught in the process. I survived by luck once. I don't trust in luck."
Ryx could not believe that an alleged civilisation could let itself sink that low. Illegal children? Illegal education? It boggled Ryx's mind. As surreptitiously as possible, she began looking up Human Daz's past.
Daz noticed. "Hah. Yeah. It's unfathomable to you Galactics. My life before becoming a Ships' Human's pretty gonzo."
Ryx found a few events in more recent history that stretched the realms of plausibility. "And even afterwards."
Daz laughed, "Ah, you found my Ride Or Die Period. Fun times."
[1] Galactic Standard Volume Units - SVU, pronounced sih-voo.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Colecanstock]
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