My name is Joi, and almost my entire life, since leaving Earth, I helped gravy drives escape Sargassos and retire peacefully. My love and I had children, and several were born as I was, at least with the same gift. Now we work as a business / charity, and we're happy. As is our beloved friends sailing through the stars.
@internutter/challenge-03193-h284-to-hear-them-singing -- Anon Guest
It's rarer than one might think, to find an abandoned gravy drive in a Sargasso. Only Dereggers are cruel enough to abandon something like that with nobody to care for it.
The Nae'hyn don't bring their engines to the people who do that.
For Joi, it's a job that takes her to every known Sargasso in the Alliance. Listening for the lonely songs. So the Nae'hyn can find and recognise their own. She spent the best years of her life singing with the ships that carried her from one place to another. What surprised all of them was the discovery of gravy drive colonies.
The ship was abandoned, true. The engine left on its own. It reached out and sang. When it found another song... it took initiative. It was, after all, a drive that propelled the ship and kept the passengers comfortable on their journeys. It could and would act on its own. And like any thing capable of independence, it did.
So when the Nae'hyn found one lost gravy drive with Joi's help... they frequently found a cluster of up to five.
There was only one Joi, at least until her specific mutation passed on to the children. Not necessarily those by her body[1]. With the help of Joi and several other Esper[2] tutors, the Nae'hyn had another tool in their metaphorical box.
They called them Listeners, and no Nae'hyn salvage crew would be without them.
Some have taken up habitation in known Sargasso zones, all the better to catch the miscreants in the act.
[1] Progeneration "the old-fashioned way" is seen as needlessly risky by many Galactics. This also allows for certain genetic quirks to be added to, or removed from, multiple children-in-potentia at any given time.
[2] Esper: A person with more than the 'normal' set of senses. Derived from a phonetic derivation of the initials E.S.P. For Extra Sensory Perception.
[Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash]
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