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I'm still in a mood to talk about this friendship between Daskatoma and Sutzir.

———

Sutzir climbed up on the couch to find his owner sprawled out on his back, drinking a beer. Between what little welfare paid and the few golds his uncle threw his way, Daskatoma seldom splurged on any sort of alcohol. “So, what are we celebrating today?” asked the ringel.

The krakun looked over at the suited figure and sighed. “I just got word from the Sailor’s Gambit I,” he said. “The Viper has made his eighth kill. She was Lieutenant Moppii.”

Sutzir sat down on a pillow that was nearly as big as the cleaning crew’s barracks, but he couldn’t look at his friend. He felt cold inside. “You must be very proud of yourself,” he muttered.

Daskatoma let his head fall back against a pillow, so his chin pointed up at the ceiling. He moaned. “Please don’t be that way, Sutzir.”

“What way?” the slave said suddenly, his voice full of anger and frustration, his ears burning red and hot. “Disappointed that my best friend is murdering his slaves?”

The krakun’s chin slowly dropped until his huge eyes were glaring at the suited figure. “That’s not very fair. You know it’s company policy,” he said quietly, evenly. Then, raising his voice slightly as if he were reading from a manual, “‘Any gateship employee found to be a greater liability than asset is to be retired immediately.’ Admittedly, I didn’t handle these retirements ‘immediately’—”

At that, Sutzir was up on his paws. He paced around in a circle, gesturing wildly with his paws. “How stupid of me—‘retired’, not ‘murdered’,” he shouted at an uncaring world. “I’m sure Lieutenant Moppii’s family will be greatly relieved to learn that their dead mother wasn’t murdered after all, just retired from service early, without notice, and without explanation. They’ll feel so much better!”

Daskatoma sat up, his face towering over the tiny ringel. It would have been terrifying, but his heart hurt too much to register fear. “What do you want from me, Sutzir?” Daskatoma asked. “You know this crap isn’t up to me. I’m not the CEO of Planetary Acquisitions. I’m the lowest guy— Hell, I’m not even the lowest guy! I’m just the nephew of the lowest guy—not even on the payroll, just trying to help out so I can put something on my resumé.”

He drained his beer, talking into it more than at his best friend, “I don’t make the rules. I don’t even get to talk to the people who make them.”

“It’s just…” Sutzir stamped his paw in frustration. “I’m not exactly proud that my best friend is a murderer.”

“I’m not!” Daskatoma shouted back, crushing the empty can in his claw.

“Fine,” Sutzir grumped, “that my best friend hired a murderer to do his dirty work for him.”

Daskatoma rolled his eyes. “Would you rather I had done it myself, Sutz?” he asked. “How do you think my uncle would have handled it if I hadn’t been filling in for him?”

He tried to take another sip from his can before realizing it was empty. “Because I’ll tell you! He would have called this Lieutenant Moppii into his office, smashed her flat with his fist,”—crushing the aluminum can between his fist and palm—“and let the cleaning crew mop up the mess. And you think cleaning my toilet is bad? Can you imagine how traumatic it must be to clean up a smashed person?”

Sutzir sat back down. He wrapped his long tail around his legs and pulled his knees to his chest.

“Or, if he felt the need to make an example of her,” his owner added, “he would have summoned her down to the recycler and broadcast it ship-wide so that everyone could watch her being tossed in.”

“Or you could just not!” Sutzir shouted, choking back tears. “What if you hadn’t executed her at all?”

Daskatoma shrugged. Reaching over the side of the couch, he dropped the can in a low waste basket. “And do what with her, precisely? She was doing a terrible job, and by every account, she was an awful person. I couldn’t just demote her, she’d only be making a different set of people miserable.”

He rested his chin against his palm. “I couldn’t transfer her to another ship—she’d just make trouble there. Did you want her on your cleaning crew? I could have gathered up all eight of these defective, greedy, and abusive geroo and made you guys deal with them. Would that have been better?”

“Maybe? I don’t know, Dask!” Sutzir breathed hard, clouding up his visor while the air processor in his suit struggled to pull out the extra humidity. “And I really don’t trust Thojy. You offered him so much money, and still, he asks for more!”

The krakun sighed. “I can’t exactly blame him. If I limited everyone in my cleaning crew to sixty years, you’d ask me for more. You’d hope that your friendship with me would be enough to bend the rules.”

Sutzir looked down. He didn’t expect many perks for being Daskatoma’s best friend, but then again, he didn’t have a life clock ticking down, ready to cut him down before he truly got old. He didn’t want to die.

Worrying that his friend might get in trouble, he asked, “But you didn’t, did you? You didn’t edit his birth token—”

Daskatoma shook his head. “I lied. I told him only a real commissioner like my uncle could, that I didn’t have access.”

“Well, that’s good, at least,” the ringel sighed. But the more he thought about Thojy, the more upset he became. Why did his owner even need a friend like that? Oh sure, Dask had lured him in, offering him more money each time as each subsequent task became more morally murky, but Thojy never said no. What kind of person would agree to poison someone? Even if it was an execution instead of a murder, it was still killing someone! Why would he ever agree to that?

Tears started to flow, and then that awful tightening in his throat threatened to cut off his air. “But in all my years and in all the stories my grandfather told me before he passed,” Sutzir sobbed, “our crew has never had to execute anyone! Are these geroo so much more awful than ringel are?”

Daskatoma frowned. He scooped up his friend and held him gently to his chest. “Shh. Come here. Cuddle with me, Sutzir,” he whispered. “Of course, they’re not. Geroo are just people, just like ringel, just like krakun are. None of us are morally superior to anyone else.”

“Then why…?” Sutzir wailed, not even trying to control his emotions. His best friend was murdering slaves—slaves like Sutzir’s friends and family! He didn’t think Dask was a monster, but he was acting like one!

“Well, it’s hard to say,” the krakun said in a soothing tone, the rumble in his enormous chest calming, warming, comforting, “but I think a lot of it has to do with how many people live together. Like, imagine if your crew wasn’t sixty-five ringel—”

“Sixty-four.”

“Okay, sixty-four,” he said with a smile. “Imagine if your crew had only six on it—you and your sister, mom and dad, and perhaps an aunt and uncle. Can you imagine what that would be like?”

Sutzir shook his head and wished he could wipe his eyes, but that would have to wait until he returned to the barracks and removed his helmet. “We wouldn’t be able to change your sheets.”

“Heh. No, probably not,” Daskatoma agreed, “but just imagine what life would be like if those five other family members were the only other people in your world.”

The ringel closed his eyes and tried to picture it, tried to imagine removing each person from his cleaning crew—and even Daskatoma himself—until there were only six. “It’d be kinda lonely,” he whispered.

“Perhaps but imagine what it would be like when you got upset at each other. Even if you really hated your … I dunno, let’s say you hated your uncle, you’d still get along okay, wouldn’t you?”

Sutzir shrugged, imagining strife in such a small group. “I guess we’d have to.”

“Yeah, you’d be under immense pressure to be nice to him,” his best friend said. “He’d be under pressure not to be a jerk. All of your family members would try to make things work, because the two of you would be like a third of their world. Even if you hated each other’s guts, you’d still stay civil to each other. You wouldn’t be mean.”

“I guess not,” Sutzir said. “Sure would suck to hate one fifth of all the people I knew.”

“No doubt, Sutz. But now, step up your imagination from a family to a village like you have now. Does everyone get along?”

“Most of the time.” He shrugged against Daskatoma’s scaled chest. “Not always.”

“Exactly. That’s what happens. Bigger group of people—you still know everyone, but you’re not going to feel that same intense pressure to get along with everyone, are you?” Daskatoma explained. “If two people don’t like each other, then it’s probably best that they just stay away from each other. If one of them tries being mean to the other, they’re still going to be pressured to stop for the good of the community, but probably not as hard.”

Sutzir sat up. “Where are you going with this, Dask?”

The krakun cupped his claw around the ringel’s back. “Well, that may be as big as you can easily think, Sutz,” he said. “I know you’re a smart guy, but your entire world has never been more than sixty or seventy people. Can you imagine stepping up from a village to a city?”

He sighed. “In a city of a few thousand people—like the geroo have—it’s simply not possible for you to know everyone. People are going to be mean to each other, and there’s not going to be that pressure to get along. Instead of being punished for being mean, they actually get rewarded! They take advantage of each other and get more pay, more perks when they do.”

Sutzir perked an ear. He tried to imagine how hurting someone could be a good thing and his brain refused. “That’s … horrible.”

“It can be, yeah,” agreed Daskatoma. “In a city, most people feel alone even though they’re surrounded by other people.”

Sutzir was silent a long time, just trying to imagine a world unlike his own. Things weren’t perfect among the crew—life never was—but compared to what his best friend was describing?

He bit his lip. “What’s it like outside the apartment?” he finally asked. “What’s it like in your world, Dask?”

The krakun laid back on his couch, interlacing his talons behind his head and staring up at the ceiling many stories overhead. “Worse than you can imagine, little buddy,” he said. “The next step up from a city is a world. In a world, the least principled people will take advantage of entire classes of people, exploiting them to get ahead.”

He drew a huge breath and slowly released it. “Then the next step up from there is an interplanetary empire, where people exploit entire worlds—worlds like Ringeltec and Gerootec.”

After a very long pause, Daskatoma raised his head once more and stared down at his friend. “I don’t like playing this game. I really don’t,” he explained, “but you don’t get a lot of choice unless you’re at the top. Down here at the bottom, you just need to find your friends, keep them close, and protect them the best you can.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ElMRj8o-mcwqOqaCRlEq6QYdLkASaGKh90u2-r0G4fM/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?

Comments

Anonymous

Poor Dask. He hasn't gotten the shortest stick in life, but he's still low on the totem pole. But his response has been apathy, which is upsetting. If only he realized he had the opportunity to make large swathes of good for those who are still under him.

Voligne

Daskatoma has so much potential... oooo I just love it.

David Ihnen

This is some serious philosophical exposition here - pointing out that the size of the community is what allows people to exploit others more egregiously. Well done

Anonymous

I like it!

Edolon

I’m not sure what part will make it into the final book what will get cut, changed, merged or what not But definitely some interesting ideas Honesty I’m not sure I’m following all the changes, but that’s fine with me :) quite happy to enjoy the chapters as drafts of what may be I hope your enjoying trying to weave a tail as much as I’m enjoying reading (which is a lot)

Greg

Yeah, it's kinda tricky when you're looking at drafts, but I really think the final result is gonna be great. Thanks for bearing with me along the way!

Diego P

This is excellent writing! I'm loving this conversations

Charlie Hart

I'm really enjoying this interaction. It's tough to do after most all of the interaction with the Krakun has been not in a friendly way shall we say to any of the smaller species. Keep it up!

Greg

I love that this thread started as just a silly experiment, but now I'm definitely keeping it. It really shapes the story in a new and interesting way.

Edolon

I’m quite happy to be a long for the ride. Need to start with some to be able to make it better:)