I saw a calendar today.
I looked at it for a good minute before it dawned on me what it was. It’s been that long and that rare for me to see one and to stop and look at it. As a time keeping device they are a wonderful achievement and I haven’t had much use for them. A far cry from the way it was before I immigrated. I did my best to remember the exact date and decided eventually to settle on generalizing.
I’ve been on Calypso for about eleven months.
I can honestly say I don’t miss Earth Space at all.
I was born on a solar-orbital habitat and spent my first twenty-six years there. SoH457 was not a rich or large habitat, it was crowded and it was highly regimented. It wasn’t one the poorest habitats where a soul could get rendered down for resources if oxygen taxes could not be paid but that regimentation I mentioned was a needed survival tool. Crime was very low but it did happen and there was the occasional disappearance.
Disappearances that were usually attributed to organ-legers--everyone was sure that there was a black market for body parts. SoH457 did not qualify for general resurrection technology which meant that maybe three percent of the population could afford it. The rest of us had to make do with what ever med-tech the insurance we could afford would cover.
Personally, I had my doubts about organ-legers being the culprit in the majority of the disappearances. Given how few of the missing were good candidates for “involuntary donations”. We were a hard partying lot when not on the work or maintenance schedule and that means the prime target organs are not in the best of shape. I think they just pissed someone off and “fell” into a bio-reclamation chute.
So, twenty-six and no hope of anything better outside the lottery that everyone played. It had been the same for my folks and for their folks before them. A constant tight kept schedule of grind, a few hours of drinking and drugs and then sleep it off to repeat on the next cycle.
Then I hit the lottery.
|