A hearing impaired human, now with implants to allow her some ability to hear, but is also telepathic, has saved up to purchase a ship and start their own business. She ends up finding a ship for sale and, while touring it, hears a familiar 'voice'. She buys the ship on the stop and joyfully reunites with her old friend.
@internutter/challenge-02621-g064-reach-out-and -- Anon Guest
This is space, nobody can hear you scream without special equipment. There's not a lot that can conduct anything. If you are unlucky enough to encounter space as you are, you will boil before you freeze.
For Human Joi, the silence of a livesuit was a silence she had known all her life. She had only ever heard speech by close contact. People literally putting their heads to hers and shouting VERY CLEARLY. For that, they called her broken. The world she was born on treated her as less than human at the best of times, and worse even than that when they found out.
Joi could not talk. Her vocal chords were non-functional. They called her names she could not hear and made sure to be cruel to her. Her world did not miss her, and shipped her out with the rest of the living garbage in a box with dubious merits. That was then. Now? She had the stars.
Joi had choices she could make. Implants, retrogenes, even old-school tech. Hell, the B'Nari could re-wire her brain if she wanted them to. But only if she wanted them to.
Having made friends with Dree, a Nae'hyn trainee priestess, Joi could be tempted. Dree danced and sang, and signed words in a rhythm that was almost a dance in and of itself. Joi had never heard of 'singing' before. But it was why she chose to have her hearing installed.
She asked, signing with her hands, "Will I still hear the ships singing?"
The biotech Mediks working on her instantly tested her genes, and there was a scrum over some new sequences. Joi's translator couldn't keep up.
"They're excited," said the translator, giving up on keeping track. "You have some new genes, not congruent with the usual Esper stuff." A Melil technician was called in for a moment of intense staring, but nothing else. "You're not a regular telepath. Congratulations, you're officially weird enough to warrant further study."
It took a year for them to be certain. No, the absence of her hearing was not "compensated" by her gift of hearing what the Nae'hyn called "machine souls". Gaining the ability to hear as other Humans did would not cancel it out.
It was an old and tired myth, anyway. Gifts like that are rarely exchanged for merely being ordinary.
The Ferryman was only the first among the gravity drives that Joi heard. She could hear other entities, machines given cogniscence, but not always a voice.
It was quite shocking to learn that. It was also more than a little shock to learn that Ambassadors wanted her services. Fleshy beings dealing with the AI Alliance and the Consortium of Steam wanted to be certain that the constructed cogniscents were being honest[1].
Joi was tentatively booked for the rest of her life. If she wanted that as a career. The B'Nari wanted her for her genes, but the rest of the universe wanted her time.
She settled for regular unaugmented Human hearing, and a few freelance jobs for Time Plus. Then she went with a Sargasso Salvage crew for an option on an otherwise abandoned vessel.
Joi knew what she was listening for.
Hello? Hello? Alone. So alone. Anyone there? I can feel/hear you. My name is Swoops-softly-through-the-nebulae-disturbing-nothing. Please help me.
Just like The Ferryman had heard her and sent others to help, Joi paid the favour forward, and rescued a new old ship from dying alone in the dark.
They patched the vessel up enough to be able to safely tow her into drydock, where everything could be fixed and a starter family of Nae'hyn could look over the engine and see to their needs.
The ship was Joi's find, and she re-named it the Rough Diamond with the engine's consent.
The ship had a family and a crew again. Joi had independence and choice.
Needless to say, sing-alongs were a regular activity while they were traveling from here to there.
[1] The ability to lie is also a good sign that you're dealing with an intelligent being.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / breaker213]
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