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[b]Before Planet Dirt

By: DankeDonuts

https://dankedonuts.sofurry.com/[/b]

It was a hot, dry autumn on Brydun VI. Indian Summer, the humans used to call it on their world. Oh, I know that's where my ancestors hailed from. Where all our ancestors once called home. But Earth was never my world. I've never been there. I don't think I'd even be allowed to set foot on it, now. Except as part of some prison-ship work detail.

Did they know? The ancestors of mine who decided to recraft themselves into Ferrets, I mean. Did they know that their distant descendants would someday look around the humans in their midst and see aliens? Be seen as aliens? Lesser things? Genetic traitors?

I prefer to think they knew exactly what they were doing. That they saw the divisiveness, the hate, the blind self-righteousness inherent in humankind. And decided to abandon a rotten genome the moment the tech existed to make any other option possible. Mustelids from a sinking ship. Goodbye and good riddance!

That's cruel of me to say, isn't it? Maybe even bigoted. I don't know. I try to teach my kits not to hate. But why do so many of them have to make it so hard?

Where was I? Ah, yes. The too-warm autumn. That's when the moving around started, for us. My husband, Shollo. Our son, Eskoo. And daughter, Keesha. My name is Tovi Kaidis. I am recording this for the Planet Dirt Heritage Foundation. Mine is just one story of many. One for every being who lives here now.

My kits aren't old enough to remember when we lost our house. The one left to us by my grandmother. On the edge of Neo Nebra. The whole colony world was going through a boon of beryllium mining, and the local government wanted to expand starport operations. That was the what they said on the holonews, anyway. Never mind that 'those operations' went through a number of mostly Fur and Scalie neighborhoods. That was just an unfortunate coincidence, of course.

We passed on the first round of land buys. There was a minor scandal when rumors started spreading that the Humans who sold their land got a better deal than the rest of us. But nothing ever came of it. When the second land grab started, they upped their starting offers for everyone. Up to what the humans apparently got the first time around. Shollo and I started mailing back the mailers they sent us. Shredded.

That's when the developers started putting the screws to those of us that weren't going to see at all. The megacorp behind the starport plans, DyMech Industries, underbid all the other contractors to take over the basic infrastructure work in the area. And promptly stopped doing any. Supply stoppages, cost of living increases, any excuse they could scrape out of the barrel. The absolute best one, which some slimebag in a suit and hardhat had the nerve to say to my face was that if we'd just move out and let them build the damn port than there'd be all the metal in the world to rebuild the sewer line!

As neighborhood after neighborhood degraded, crime went up. There was an elderly Komodo couple, who lived up the hill from us. I thought they were going to die roped to their house of that's what it took to keep hold of it. But they walked away after their visiting granddaughter someone was cut up during a mugging attempt. The rest of us set up a neighborhood watch after that. DyMech responded by spreading rumors in the press that we were intimidating their surveyors. Started lobbying to have our beam pistol permits revoked.

Shollo lost his job when the diner closed. Our kits were weaned, though, so I was able to make ends meet by doing repair jobs while he looked for something steady. I was a computer tech before I set it aside to raise the kits. And computers are in everything, always have been, so it's steady work. It didn't take him long to find a new place to cook at, being a boom economy and all. There were plenty of restaurants and hotels opening up in the city proper. But I never really stopped doing the side jobs, because there was always someone else near us who needed something fixed. All the local shops were drying up.

Once the area reached a 'minimum threshold population,' I think those were the words, the situation changed again. Much for the worse. The phrase 'eminent domain' started being bandied around on the holonews. Four years to the day that the port was first proposed at City Hall, the legislation which handed our property to DyMech on a gilded platter landed on Governor Tasniam's desk.

When he signed it, he was surrounded by eager construction workers. All of them human, like him. There had been some Furs in the relevant government office, but they'd all resigned in protest by then. Tasniam took his time signing, though. Made speech about how he'd secured a last-minute buyout period from DyMech. Translation: 'Take their creds and go peacefully so I don't have to blow taxpayer funds siccing the police on you for squatting. I have poll numbers to watch out for."

In the end, we received a cred-flim for less than a third of the Round One offer. I wanted to claw out the face of the very polite little man who passed it over.

It was a long, sweltering evening when we hitched the last of our things to the cargo sled. Eskoo and Keesha got one last walking lesson in the front yard. From the patio to the curb, where we lifted them up into our speeder. They were both fussy getting into their toddler webbing, because of the heat. Hover-wreckers were parked in the lot over. Waiting without patience for us all to get out of our way. He drove the kits, I drove the sled. Up around the hills and away.

We had such a lovely little house. With a big bay window up front and a cozy little kitchen in back. A spacious basement, where we used to host game nights with our friends. An old, old willow tree took up much of the back yard. It was just a short walk from a lovey park that overlooked a river a short cliff. Where you could stand and see the sparkling water below and the seven planetary rings above. Feel the wind in the grass tickling your toes. And at night, you could always see one of the Pleiades. So blue, so beautiful…

Sorry. I didn't mean to cry.

Can we continue this later?

. . .

We moved into an apartment near the center of Neo Nebra. Shollo would have a shorter commute from there; that's what I told myself to feel better about the cramped but expensive rooms. Just in time for Eskoo and Keesha's second birthday. That's what I focused on. Making them happy. Getting them settled. There wasn't much room for walking practice there, so the kits and I spent a lot of time in recreation rooms on the first floor. I got to know some of the other tenants, join the babysitting pool, and out feelers to rebuild my holoengineering side-business.

Some the tenants were from the old neighborhood, the one being bulldozed. Some of them weren't. There were a lot of Furs and such moving into the building. Humans moving out. It was easy enough to tell myself I wasn't living in a ghetto, in the early days. I had some old friends, to help ease the transition into this new life. I was making new ones, to help ease how much I missed Shollo some nights. He had to work extra hours to keep up the rent. And took over with the kits when I had to rest. We made it work. For a few years.

I just didn't know how much further downhill we were going to slide. I didn't want to see it. Not even after I saw that photograph. It hit the news cycle just after the last of our boxes was unpacked. I'm sure you know the one. The holojournalist who took it -- a Skink , I think -- won several awards for it.

“The Lost Scout" is the name of the portrait, if I remember correctly. The scout's name was Élaine Bisset. Formerly Sergeant Bisset. Of the Expeditionary Forces.

Her life was the cover story for that month's National Galactic. And she was living -- if you could call it that -- in a mega-city on Sigma Tau V. Out in the Spinward Expanse. In her active-duty days, her squad got hit by a plasma mine while fighting lunar insurgents. The descendants of Humans and Furs who'd set out to forge independent colonies generations ago, and who descendants didn't much like their respective -- they would say former -- governments swooping in to reap the benefits of their hard work.

The military gave her the full cybernetic overhaul. Total dermal replacement, and replacements for her arm and both legs to boot. The left arm had been sacrificed to shield her eyes. After she cycled out of the force, she hired herself out as a scout. Finding more places for the megacorps to colonize.

But upkeep on her parts required more than a steady income. She depended upon her employer for access to parts and services outside of the major colony cities. And when the contracts dried up, she spiraled into homelessness and scavenging. Prying pieces off herself to keep other ones from breaking down.

The story went on to say it wasn't much better for other cyborgs. They military was phasing out the upgrades as being too cost-ineffective, and the megacorps out that way were weeding out their enhanced employees. The winds of public opinions in the Expanse had been blowing in the direction of turning out anyone 'un-natural.' They were following, in the spirit of fair competition amongst their employees. That was the line, at least.

“If the M.C.'s gave a damn about PR, they wouldn't have taken our home." That was Shollo's take away from the story. I can't say I disagreed with him.

There was something else about it that caught my heart. Even now, when I think about the picture of Sargent Bisset, I think about her eye. It always makes me think of my grandmother. She was the Sargent's opposite number; she had real skin and hair and cybernetic eyes. High end models with self-customization capacity. She'd change their color out every time we visited. Just to goof around on us kits. We'd catch her having pink eyes, or green, or violet. And insist that the last time they were grey, or brown. Grandmama would insist, “No, no, you must be mistaken, little ones!" But she'd do it with a smile and a wink. Make us kits feel clever for catching her out. A secret that the other grown-ups didn't know.

Grandmama always could make me laugh. Raise my spirits on my worst days. Even when she wasn't around anymore. I needed her good humor, more and more, in the years to come. As my family slowly got closer and closer to ending up like that poor, unfortunate Dalmatian.

. . .

We made living in Spectros City work, for a few years. And I have to admit those years had their moments of beauty. Even if they hadn't, we wouldn't have wanted to pull up stakes and try off-planet. Shollo's parents were entertainers, always moving the family from one planet or moon to another. Ever watchful for the next concert hall, the next empty lounge. Never in one place for more than a couple years. He could count on one hand the number of friend's he'd managed to a hold onto long distance by the time he landed on Brydun VI in the middle of secondary school. He didn't want that rootless life for his kits. I'd only ever left the planet twice. The first was on a school trip to the outer worlds. The second was a family vacation to Osenfyre. Just moving to another part of my world was big enough change for me. I wouldn't have known what to do with more.

By the time Eskoo and Keesha were five, five-and-a-half, Shollo had become the lead cook at Whisperwind, the restaurant attached to the Sanctum Confort Hotel. The beryllium boon was still well in effect, and Spectros had become a center of tourism. Or a tourist trap, if you like. The city heads tripping over themselves to come up with the next shiny lure. Sanctum Comfort had quite the clientele to cater no, middle of the middle-class crowd. Shollo had gotten his resume in early, during the first cattle-calls to staff the place before it was done being built.

We'd slowly built up our savings -- what you can with hyperactive kits underfoot, ha -- and had our eyes on buying a new house in one of the new neighborhoods that were popping up every six months or so. Just because we didn't want to leave the planet, that didn't mean we wanted to stay cooped up in an an apartment building. But our family always seemed to end up on the bottom of years-long waiting lists. Several off-world investment pacs and anonymous benefactors were providing capital for the builds by buying up most of the slots in advance.

It was only through some face-saving legislation planetside that there were any slots for Brydun natives to bid for. Some of our kind managed to make it into one of them, though. Like the Carlingtons, a lovely family of Shrikes.

By the time the kits were coming up on seven, the first of the new neighborhoods had been built and started filling out. Then all of Spectros and other cities besides, found out what kind of people had gotten the slots. They weren't calling themselves True Humans yet. Not on that side of the galactic map, anyway. But they ticked all the right boxes. They hated all the right people.

All of us Furs and Scales and Avians are descended from someone who considered the human condition, their own, and chose something else. And it's not just we who've got a few patches in our genetic code. If a human or anyone else wants to protect their baby from Type I diabetes or McGregor's Syndrome, there's an RNA cocktail for that. And cosmetic ones, too. For human women who want to be hairless from the neck down but don't want to spend the time or pain to be so.

These folk considered even the cosmetic alterations an affront to their creators' divine plans. Oh, for-- why am I saying that in the past tense when [i]they're still out there[/i]?"

I wouldn't find this out until later but the new tenants who flew in together already had the pecking order of the neighborhood associations set before the ships landed. It didn't take them long to start writing up custom-made rules lists and start enforcing them. The Carlingtons ended up toughing out a series of ridiculous rules about lawn height, hedge size, the color of the patio. Anything and everything they could be hit with. The little landing posts they'd installed outside the second story windows, so little Tammy and her big sister Walinda, could fly in and out of their bedrooms were an unacceptable eyesore not in step with the rest of their block. I heard most of this through a mutual friend, however. I'd just like that stated for the record. I'm no holojournalist, digging truth out of the wind.

But I did pay more attention as the stories piled up. As the TruHu's started building political capitol, shops and restaurants run by the TruHus started refusing to serve us. And the ones that did… Well, one time at the groceries I overheard a little boy telling his mother, “Lookit, there's a Ferret. Billy says they're all sneaky thieves." She scooted the little brat along before I could decide how to react.

It wasn't long after that incident, as the holonews started filling up with stories of humans complaining about customer service across the city. Rumors started circulating that the TruHus were using tourist review guides to target stores and restaurants that prominently hired Furs and Avians and so forth and cause trouble. By playacting that a Fur on the payroll had treated them rudely, or done a sloppy job. The first couple of times it happened a Sanctum Comfort, they targeted the cleaning staff.

The third time it happened there, they targeted my husband's restaurant. Pressuring the human who managed it. A Mister Campos. They kept doing it. Getting louder and meaner about it each time. A poor young Llama waitress ended up quitting rather than come back to work. The [i]fifth[/i] time someone threw a loud fit to complain about hair in their food, Shollo stood up and did something.

This woman, who as I heard it, was going out of her way to ruin everyone's meals as she was set on not enjoying hers. You could hear her all the way in the kitchen. Caterwauling about how her surf and turf had been ruined by a 'carpet of fur.' The Llama's replacement, forgive me for not recalling their name, was huddled by the door. Inside the kitchen. Afraid to go outside.

Shollo clapped him warmly on the shoulder and marched on out into the dining area. Where Campos was doing all he could to mollify her, and failing miserably.

My husband walked right up to the table, in full view of eighty or so customers, and slapped a cred stick right on her table. He didn't address the woman at all. Rather, he told his manager politely but firmly, but loud enough for everyone at the other tables to hear, “I'll pay for a genoscreen right here right, right now. Credits to crumpets, that hair came from a housecat or their kid's puppy. You're being played for a free meal. And not for the first time."

Without missing a breath, the woman demanded to speak to the hotel manager. Campos' superior. In the end, the TruHu got their free meal. And Shollo got his first write-up on an otherwise exemplary record. The hairs were never scanned.

But I was. By some neighborhood watch goon waving a mediscanner at me with one hand, the other propped up over a holster. His jacket, lightly armored against energy weapons, only listed that he was in a Watch, not which one. So, I walked right up and asked him. He refused to give me his name. Told me to move along. The velcro strip where a name should have been stated was empty.

Our new home was starting to feel as much of a pen as our old. But now it wasn't a megacorp with teams of lawyers lurking in the shadows, waiting for any excuse to act out against us. It was all happening on the local level. Newly-minted 'locals' who were driving more and more of us further and further into the core of the city. And then of course started decrying inner Spectros as a hotbed of crime and decadence. Whispers of gentrification became open talk. “You have to build up the parts of the city core that you don't want to rot away," were the words of a pundit I heard screeching out of more than one holo-stand. I remember [i]his[/i] name. I'd just prefer not to say it.

. . .

I promised myself I wasn't going to cry while recording these stories. But I expect I'll be breaking that promise, again, today. I had a good sob and sniff before I came here. Just for knowing what I'm going to be talking about. My name, again, is Tovi Kaidis. A Ferret, former citizen of Brydun Vi. The Planet Dirt Heritage Foundation has asked me to tell the tale of how my family and I came to be here.

This is how my husband died.

The world I had grown up on was becoming more hostile to me and mine. After my husband publicly defended a co-worker Fur from false accusations of contaminating a diner guest's meal, more complaints than ever started piling in Sanctum Comfort Hotel. Calling him out personally for one petty offense or another, all of them lies. Even for slights he somehow committed on the main hotel grounds when he was verifiably on duty cooking in the Whisperwind kitchen. Ultimately, the management started trying to make Shollo quit the restaurant in order to save face.

I'm proud to say he didn't back down. He hung on through the nights of too little sleep and mornings of crawling out of bed just in time to kiss our kits good morning before departing our apartment, red-eyed, for his next shift. Of knowing he was being blocked for promotion, and that he was training the newest batch of cooks to be promoted over him. Humans, all of them.

All the while, more and more of the Furs on the staff got their notices. And not just at the hotels.

Regardless of his professionalism, he was staring down the start of a two-week suspension within a few months. I don't even remember the excuse they used. We were somewhat prepared for him to be outright fired by then, in that I had updated my resume and arranged for some recommendation letters. Mostly from people I'd done odd techie jobs for back in our former neighborhood, but hopefully my prospective employers wouldn't look too closely at who had written them. I went out looking for regular work while he stayed home with the kits. Sore for why he was there, but plenty happy to have the extra time with Eskoo and Keesha

They sure were overjoyed to see more of their father, but of course they weren't so happy to see me off so much. “Why can't we be a big family together all of the time?" Keesha asked me once while I hugged her and Eskoo goodbye. They were seven, then.

The first time I heard the term 'Truhu' was on the hovertram to one of my interviews. Some Fennecs were arguing about whether or not to pull their son out of his primary school. He was being bullied in by a pack of kids who'd used the word like it was some kind of shield. The tip of the mother's tail was twitching up a storm. She wanted her pup to stay in, and take self-defense lessons so he could fight back.

Sitting there listening to them, my mind wandered back to that holo-article about the Dalmatian I've spoken of before. The homeless veteran with the decaying cybernetics, laying naked and hopeless in an alley. What had fighting ever gotten her?

Before long, the word had come into my home. While the kits were I school, Shollo had more free time than he knew what to do with, even after housekeeping. He started spending time on the holoboards. They were segregating themselves into their own forums so they could share their grievances with each other free from harassment by trolls or other forms of anonymous ugliness. To my eyes, Shollo's new friends seemed to be doing more complaining that finding solutions. But he was enjoying his newfound outlet for his frustrations. Browsing became subscribing. Subscribing became posting. Posting became him repeating favorite reads over dinner.

And he was reading quite a lot on the TruHus. Where they'd started. How they were insinuating themselves into so many worlds. Why so many otherwise reasonable Humans seemed to be rolling over for them. My take was that he was absorbing too much opinion and not enough hard data. But he kept on plugging in with his new friends. By the time he was back to work, he'd joined up with Furs United. A local-action group founded to mount protests wherever there was Human favoritism to be found and to gathering funds to bury the TruHus in civil action lawsuits.

Shellyanne Hauser was the local chapter head of Furs United. I'd never met to confident and charismatic a Kangaroo Rat. Which, of course, her detractors used against her; claiming she was inciting public unrest so she could whip up a base of fanatics and launch herself a political career. Truth be told, she'd been an art museum tour guide in Fort Luhn for years over in Dolenton. That's where she'd lived until Human-centric gentrification rolled over her neighborhood. She was just very good at giving speeches and directing people's attention where she wanted it to be.

Mrs. Hauser was convinced the TruHus were a few more allied or compliant politicians away from outright declaring non-Humans to be illegal l on Brydun VI. “A slow-motion coup is happening on this world, and so many others. The people enacting it cry false tears of persecution and pretend to be the victims of a system rigged against them. And, having convinced themselves that they are the victims, they then tell themselves that they are entitled to push back against us. But I promise you, once they [i]are[/i] they system, they'll just keep right on telling themselves that lie. And push even harder. We have to push back [i]now[/i] before they have all the leverage!" She said that at one or another meeting Shollo had taken me too. I found myself agreeing with some of it. I signed up not long after. Started volunteering my time to get their communications systems up and running,

We Furs weren't the only ones openly mobilizing. The TruHus were powerful enough, politically and financially, to act openly. The various neighborhood watches the Humans had set up in their own little corners of this neighborhood or that, formally allied into The Watch. The signing ceremony was broadcast live. Their newly minted leader, Walth Vallard, declared the organization the moral victors in “whatever phony conflict someone else wants to start." He was a short man, but a wide one. With thick hands that he liked to swing around and slam into tables when he talked.

The tipping point towards open conflict, like so many other things, started with money.

Brydun VI had been riding the beryllium rush for years, but the news holos I was devouring came with more and more warnings the bust was on the horizon. Investors oozed away. Stocks fell. Banks got worried. The economy soured. The TruHus lured in more fresh blood; people who wanted to use anyone else as an excuse for their own diminishing lots in life, or their own shortcomings. Furs were as good a scapegoat as any for more than a few of them, I suppose. Once these disaffected souls joined up, then they got feed the party line.

Rumors started swirling of the Sanctum Comfort started talking serious cutbacks. Shollo had been very careful not to talk Furs United or even plug into their pages on his own commbox while on company time. But now it seemed his employers were looking for an excuse not to need an excuse to tear up his contract.

I'd kept up the job hunt while the kits were at school. No anti-Fur bullying where they were going, thank goodness. But nothing had come of it but a few 'we'll call yous' that never called back.

There was tension at work, and tension at home. We'd never really fought before that. Oh, when we were getting serious about seeing each other, we played at it. Made a game of finding things we disagreed about. Or rows around this time were less about coming to mutual understanding, more about letting off steam in the direction of someone who'd take it. The kits by then were old enough to notice the difference. So even more tension. We funneled our frustrations into Furs United in our own ways. Him working recruitment, me the back-end tech.

Did I mention that this moment of economic downturn and social strife was occurring during an election year? The kits were on the verge of turning eight when certain holosites -- I hesitate to put the words 'news' in front of that word in this case -- started running with the story that Colonial Governor Tasniam and his wife had both had some cosmetic gene-editing done. He, to keep from going bald. She, to keep from ever having to shave her legs or armpits again. His numbers plummeted with the TruHu's, who began mounting a write-in campaign for Michael Jaladar. One of the Humans who's first government position was in the Land Management office. He'd been appointed to one of the seats left empty after the eminent domain seizures that bulldozed our old house and so many others. Vacated by the Furs who'd resigned in protest.

Jaladar immediately began campaigning on restoring order and prosperity. He denigrated Tasniam in the press for his “weakness in the face of societal disintegration! Self-destruction posing as plurality!"

In a move meant to placate a base that had already turned on him, Tasniam rammed through a second set of austerity measures. These ones centered around heavy tariffs on luxury goods. With what qualified as a 'luxury' defined narrowly enough to hit mainly Furs in their pocketbooks. Items such as specialized fertilizers for the Koalas' eucalyptus groves. Catnip teas for the Felines. Lightweight gear of all sorts for the Avians. We didn't have a Panda population at the time, but at triple the price for bamboo imports, we weren't ever going to ever attract one.

Mrs. Hauser put the call out to organize a march on the city halls of the five largest cities on the planet to protest the bill, which she called “a knife in the belly of our collective community." An action that large couldn't ever hope to go unnoticed. The request for demonstration permits was leaked, and come the big day The Watch had every city hall enclosed with counter protestors. Having acquired access to government grounds with little or none of the bureaucratic hurdles our side had had to jump through to set paw on the streets.

Many amid this Human chain, most of them wearing the blue and white of the True Human party, were armed with energy weapons. Supposedly set on stun. “Those animals are bringing weapons to this shindig!" Vallard bellowed at a reporter. “Hell, they bring weapons [i]everywhere[/i]! Claws! Fangs! Quills! Venom! We're only evening the odds!"

It was true that there was a sizable Dart Frog community further south in San Buena, one of the cities to be marched upon. But the notion that they are naturally venomous was of course a complete fabrication, or an example of that man's ignorance. The insects the Frogs would have had to consume in order to produce any toxin went extinct ages ago with Earth's rainforests. Not that the reporter tried to present that fact before that awful man yanked her commwand away, claiming it for his own uses.

“We will not be intimidated!" he shouted, and his words were screamed back by the hundreds-long throng. “[i]We will not be intimidated![/i]"

“We will not be bullied!" “[i]We will not be bullied![/i]"

“We will not be suppressed!" “[i]We will not be suppressed![/i]"

That was what hundreds of our kind were walking into. Peacefully but undeterred. Shollo did exactly what I thought he would. He kissed us all one by one, and headed out the door to catch the ride-pool that would hover him over to the nearest staging area. If the kits had been just a little older, we'd have all gone.

What unfolded next I saw from the holoscreen and the warmth of my own couch. The news coverage started cycling through the various protests. I saw my mate standing in a row next to Mrs. Hauser, and Windell Cless from the old neighborhood in Neo Nebra, and a few new faces from the Furs United meetings I'd attended. They were slightly elevated, holding court before a countless crowd of Furs and Scalies, many of whom had signs in the hands. Shollo had the audhorn, and was telling the crowd “This is where we stop running! This where we have to take a stand! Because someone has to!"

Those were the last words I ever heard him say. That was the last time I ever saw him.

His words received two cheers, and the third was upended by something crashing off-screen. Or being smashed up, I'm not sure. There was a sudden rush of bodies. Someone put their hand over the holocam. Voices started shouting at each other. In what little space the camera could show, a line of tear gas plumed, blotting everything out. Everyone was screaming, their words soon drowned out by the bellowing siren of a police siren.

They cut to a different correspondent, who detailed a similar incident in a different part of Spectros City. Then another in San Buena. Followed by Fort Luhn, Dolenton and Riverwide. From the big five, the riots spread out into smaller towns. The kits were watching by then. Asking where their father had gone. Starting to cry from worry. And he wasn't answering any of my calls. No reply while buildings burned and vehicles were destroyed. Not while the fistfights were scanned from the safety of skyspeeders or reporters chased one line of crowd control officers or the other. I was clutching the blanket were were laying under hard enough to leave holes in it. My eyes filled with silent tears.

I managed to get Eskoo and Keesha to bed around midnight, after they'd worn themselves out from worry. “He's alright. He probably just forgot to have me check the power settings on his commbox before he left. You know how glitchy that thing has gotten. We'll hear from him soon, and I'll wake you up the instant I do." I left their room with tears running down my cheeks. Praying to a god I'd never had much use for that that I wasn't lying to my children.

I didn't sleep at all. I called absolutely everyone I could think of, and then through up more numbers to find and call, looking for any news of my husband. Fear eating further into me with each busy signal, every time I heard 'no.'

When I called Verga Gulden, one of the ladies who had given me a recommendation letter, her voice was frantic. “Oh, Tavi! I was just about to call you!… Do you know where my Lissie is?"

Word came a 4:47AM. Someone matching Shollo's description was mentioned by a reporter as having been dragged into the back of a police hovervan. And that his body was seen being pulled out of it on a stretcher when it reached the precinct. Dead before he reached the station.

“Resisting arrest," they said! “Did what we had to do," they said! “Hard times call for hard decisions!" “It was his own fault!" “The Furs started this, not us!" “They had it coming!"

Those bas- [i]brigands[/i] caused the very riot they used as an excuse to rip us to pieces in the press! Call us murders! Thugs! [i]Animals![/i] I'm sure they did it! I know they did!

Excuse me.

No, I'll be alright to go on in a moment.

With my husband's name tarred in the press as one of the instigators of a night of violence that cost twenty-three lives – nineteen of them Furs or Scalies, and one Parrot -- mine was no good for finding work. The money started running out, and he rent suddenly doubled. The apartment complex had been bought out by some conglomerate, and they wanted us out. All of us. No incentive checks this time. They weren't necessary. Not with the new zoning laws that had been put into effect on day one of Governor Jaladar's term.

Three months to the day after Shollo's cremation, I had sold everything that wouldn't fit into two bags for myself and two smaller one for each of the kits. We squatted in the apartment for three days after our lease expired. No heat, no water. Only setting foot outside to find food or a restroom. I had to bathe my offspring in a library sink. We were sneaking our way back in through the rear of the complex when we were found out by Big Gus from the floor below us. He got the name for being the biggest Bulldog you're ever likely to meet, and was using that bulk block the path up to our floor. “Cor, I'm glad I found you lot first. Word is the new landlord's laying in wait for you in the room opposite yours. The one he cleaned the Parkers out of yesterday. With members of The Watch in there too." I thanked him hurriedly and ducked the kits back downstairs and out the building. We never looked back. Thank goodness we'd gotten into the habit of taking our bags everywhere, or Mr. Abernathy would have gotten them too.

Halfway down, I think I heard Big Gus making some excuses for himself while he blocked the door, but I don't suppose I'll ever know for sure. Unless his family comes by these parts someday. I hope he's alright. I hope they all are.

It was another two nights in a dingy back alley before the ship arrived that would take us off-planet. But I never let myself sink to Formerly Sergeant Bisset's despairs because I had two kits with me who were [i]not[/i] going to live their lives in squalor. It took two years to get a real home. Across more planets than I care to remember, more camp towns and shanties than I could ever forget. All to get here to Planet Dirt. But we made it. Another ship is on the way, so I've been told.

Shellyanne Hauser disappeared the night of the riot. To my knowledge, she was never found.

I still don't know what my husband's last words were.

Is that enough?... Are we done?... I'd really like to go hug my children.