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Love and Poverty on Distant Worlds Ch. 01

By: AnotherWannabe



Author's Note: Thank you for reading this story, the first of serial that I'll be submitting to this site. Keep in mind this is not a pornographic work. Rather than try and insert a poorly conceived sex scene, I have decided to focus mostly on story and character development. Any sex that occurs throughout the series will be "soft-core". I hope you enjoy it.



BALANCE: 344 kilocredits.



On Mavid, a planet orbiting a yellow star seventy lightyears from Sol, they speak English. The sort a 21st century American or Englishman might know. Niyan, a planet from a nearby system, speaks English, too. But Niyannese English, with the rhythm and phonemes old East Asian languages, and the pragmatism and playfulness of classical English.

The planets had been settled by different sets of people. Niyan was a blue-green world, colonized centuries previously by Asian and European scientists and entrepreneurs. Their cities became vibrant and people innovative, they made their buildings towers of mirrors that reflected their blue-white sky. After many generations, the distinction between races blurred, and the Niyanese became an attractive fair-haired people with slightly Asiatic eyes.

Mavid is in the system of close proximity to Niyan. It was colonized by Northern Europeans seeking to establish a cultural preserve. They were attracted by the dense metal deposits that gave Mavin its small size and ochre tint. They built their cities short and squat, all concrete and connected by a brackish canal system. Through this time the language did not change. The culture did not change. The technology did not change. And when younger, more vital worlds could move just as much rare metal at half the expense, the rest of humanity left them behind. They were left clinging to old dreams.

It had been about the thirteenth bombing that had occurred on the Waylon's street. The Waylons were down to two members now. A mother, Delilah Waylon and her son, John Waylon. John was becoming an ill fit for the elegant, grandmothery chairs, the flower print wallpapers and altogether too big for the cramped apartment. When the bomb struck, a massive shockwave caused dishes to jump from shelves and shatter, the kitchen table to smash into John's midsection, and his mother to fall over, buried beneath an avalanche of old pots and pans. John pushed the flimsy table aside and sifted desperately through the fallen kitchen potpourri. He found a withered hand and pulled up his mother, who skittered to her feet while pulling herself with her son's arm. He saw a gash on the side of her head that bled down her cheek.

"Mother..." he said in relief. He set her down on the chair, wetted a towel in the sink and began dabbing the old woman's head.

As he mopped the blood from her his mother blinked slowly, as if she was trying to recall something important. She finally croaked out, "It is time you left, John."

He knew exactly what she meant. Niyan. He had discussed going there for years. Getting a good job. Bringing her over, when he could afford it. Away from all this.

He started gathering up the pots and pans, but his mother shrugged and told him not to bother. She kicked a path to her armchair by the television. She noticed on the sidetable a small picture had fallen. She put back straight. It was an image of her husband and her son's father, portly, moustachioed, fishing pole in hand with a river running behind him. She breathed a yearning sigh and lit herself a cigarette that she had drawn from her pocket.

John sat across from her. She explained she had acquired a great sum of money – from where she would not explain – enough to pay for a shuttle to Niyan. It was a sullen conversation... on Mavid, Niyan had become a byword for never seeing someone again, and the weight on her voice made him feel she was discussing his last will and testament. John nodded.

"Do you have any friends you should say goodbye too?" she asked finally, plunging the cigarette into the ashtray.

John shook his head.

"Then you should leave tomorrow," she said, eyes cast toward the window. She still looked through the armored slats as if they were the same open curtains they had once been. "Next time, it could be you out on that street."

The last trails of smoke curled out from the cinders of the ashtray.



The day of the departure the spaceport became a swell of people. His mother patted him on the shoulder, smiled, then reached around for a hug. "Take care of yourself sweetie," she croaked.

"I will."

"Don't fall in love with any Niyannese girls. They're out to break your heart," she said.

"I won't if you stop smoking," he answered back.

She rolled her eyes.

That was the last he ever saw of her. He stepped into the crowd and was pulled into their flow. The shuttle was the end of a large gate. As he was carried through, he saw Niyannese-looking men with flight uniforms loitering about. They were discussing something between themselves, but when they stopped to look at the line of Mavidians, they seemed to appraise them contemptuously. They whispered something to each other, pointing in John's direction, then laughed. John plunged his hands deep into his pockets and lowered his head.

It reminded him of the old Mavidian proverb, "There are only two destinations in life from which you can never return: Death, and Niyan."

John resisted the temptation to turn his head, to get one more look at his mother before he stepped through those doors. He knew she watched him every step of the way, those serious, hardened eyes. Eyes that could be on the verge of breaking – eyes that could already be broken. He could feel the weight of them, he knew she was following him with her gaze. He did not know if she cried – perhaps it was best that he should not see her cry... she would not want him to remember her like that.

There was no stopping now, the crowd behind him pushed him forward. Only moments after entering he could no longer resist, so he spun his head about to find shuttle doors had already sealed shut.



The shuttle had left the surface of Mavid not long after. John thought perhaps he could grab a vidphone booth and give his mother one last call, but he found a queue already clogging the booths. Dozens of sad, sulky looking men stood along the corridor. A Niyanese security guard grimly stood by a sign. 10 MINUTES MAXIMUM, it said with authoritative bold lettering.

In old English, not in Niyanese. It must be directed at the Mavidians.

They were serious about it too. John saw a blood-shot eyed young man like himself getting dragged from the booths by two toughs. The young man protested hysterically, his knees dragged against the ground, but they paid no heed. John shrunk away and avoided their gaze. Still, the line traveled so slowly, and he knew the longer he spent waiting in line, the further they were from Mavid and ever closer to being out of communication range. It left a lump in his throat. John loosened his collar to let himself breath a bit easier.

When the line finally eroded, John rushed the booth, pecked out his mother's number, and listened to a tone. It was the intermittent ring of a bad signal.

The screen came alive with static. "...Hello?" said a crackly voice.

"Mom!" cried John. "It's me!"

Only pieces of her voice came through. "Oh... are you... please... Niyan..."

John hit the side of the vidphone machine. "Mom!" He banged again, giving the machine a solid strike. "C'mon, work!"

"...John..." the voice said, before it died out.

He hit the machine a couple more times, but there was no point in continuing. John pressed the END CALL button and stomped out of the booth, hands in his pockets and his head down. He gave a deep sigh and, when he was sure no Niyanese was looking, he kicked the wall.

He cursed at already being homesick. At not thinking of something better to say. At forgetting to bring pictures of his former life of any sort. All his possessions now were confined to a single fake-leather folio and a plastic: a work visa, a change of clothes, and 344 kilocredits.

He made his way to the shuttle coffee shop and splurged on a chocolate brownie and a cappuccino. It cost him 22 kilocredits.



The shuttle itself was a model 89, Hercules-class frigate turned passenger ship. The vast cargo bays had been replaced luggage carriers and cubicles of passenger cabins. Its crew had to be desperate if it had resorted to shipping cheap labor from Mavid to Niyan.

John's cubicle was extraordinarily depressing, nothing more than a colorless shell with futons and a sick bag dispenser unceremoniously fixed to the wall. His bunkmate was at least not that bad. He was a man about twenty years his senior. He talked and talked about his time in the navy, as an engineer on a big capital ship. He signed up apparently so his children could have a better life than he did. But when he came back, he found that they were older than he was, and that he now had grandchildren his own age.

"So how old are you? Objectively?" asked John.

The navyman (John never bothered to learn his name) scratched his head and thought for a moment. "Well, fuck, I think I was born just about 200 years ago."

John lifted an eyebrow. "That's incredible. I've never met anyone like that."

"That's nothing," said the navyman. "One of the officers I knew was born year 1998. Boy, did he talk about old times!"

That was a tad difficult for John to believe. He dismissed it as the man's poor memory.

John for the most part spent the majority of his time sitting on the rec deck. There, a large holographic display showed the route through the stars. Currently, the ship was arcing on a dotted line toward Niyan, though it seemed in the few days that John had been on board that it hardly moved at all. It was supposed to be a month long trip, after all. He'd watch it serenely while sipping the black coffee that the crew gave out freely. He would add cream and sugar to hide the stale taste, and liked to stir it in the styrofoam cup until it became a light chocolate color.

There was not a whole lot to do in that period, and time passed slowly and uneventfully. Halfway on the trip he'd taken to carving out little patterns on the coffee cup with a spoon. He became quite adept, embossing landscapes of little swirling clouds and ocean scenes. One Niyanese officer even offered to buy one for 10 kilocredits. Mostly, though, the little artifacts were binned as quickly as they were made.

The last week of the trip the atmosphere became tense, and a sort of coppery stink newly festered throughout the ship. It was discontent, the sort men get when removed from women for a long time. Men began to eye each other suspiciously, they ground their teeth and began to act without regard to who was watching, scratching themselves, spitting, even urinating. There was a universal sense of being watched. John began to hear rumors of attacks on young men. Arms were strictly forbidden, so he took a plastic knife and sharpened it into a shiv, enough so that in a pinch he could plunge it into a throat. He hid it in his sleeve.

It almost came to that. One day John noticed a couple of Mavidian toughs with blonde hair and broad chests were following him. John quickened his pace while trying not to run. It was difficult, as his heart became jolted by fear. He turned a corner and felt for the shiv up his sleeve, pulled it out and clutched it within his fist. When the Mavidians turned, John flattened himself against the corridor, hoping that the gang would walk past. As they approached, they gave evil grins and seemed to reach inside their coats. What stopped them were a couple of distant voices in Niyanese accents. They froze and pushed the weapons back, with John making his escape by walking briskly towards the security staff.

He learned later there had been murders on the ship. The Niyanese, of course, didn't take any action, it being a "Mavidian" affair.

It had become almost intolerable by the time they reached Niyan. Even the navyman had finally clammed up, spending most of his time inside the cubicle. But announcements declared a final approach. Through the porthole Niyan seemed like a ray of sunshine, a softly glowing blue marble suspended in the black silkiness of space. A little crescent of darkness was carved from it, and visible there was a spiderweb of glittering lights. It would be his new home.

Announcements blared. In just a few hours they would be landing. Things seemed to calm considerably. John could barely wait for a natural atmosphere and solid earth beneath his feet. As they became closer Niyan could be seen in greater and greater detail: the white frostings of clouds and mountaintops, deep rich greens and browns of valleys, the oceans which sprang to life with the reflections of the sun. John gathered his few possessions (a bag with a change of clothes), bid some cordial farewells to the navyman, and waited patiently by the shuttle doors.

Another agonizing hour would pass. Many other men had also congregated as he did, just as anxious to be out of a spaceship. The shuttle shook violently as it entered atmosphere but it was not long before the landing gear hissed open like a sigh. The shuttle doors soon after.



Stepping outside was like emerging from a dark cave. The brightness of an entirely new sun shone down through the massive glass walls of the terminal and totally enveloped John. An overwhelming plethora of new sounds and faces greeted him, bright neon store signs and flashing advertisements, the smiles of elegant female employees, the laughing of children and the hustle of businessmen. Past the glass, trees and plants stretched out forever, blades of green like an endless formation of emerald crystals.

The crowd moved around him. He caught sight of his reflection in the terminal glass... he looked pale, unshaven, with dark purple crescents below the eyes and dirty-blonde hair in need of a cut. He had not eaten much, and must have been getting thin. He pulled his wallet out and flipped through what he had left. After the paltry meals aboard the ship he had about 12 kilocredits, less than what the fake leather of the wallet was worth. He gritted his teeth bitterly.

After passing through customs and collecting his paltry luggage (nothing but a plastic bag with a change of clothing) he passed through the gate. It was even brighter outside, blinding, in fact, but the earth below him felt good, a comforting weight that he'd almost forgotten. He enjoyed the sensation of a heavier gravity working through him, invigorating his muscles with pressure.

He looked out past the terminal and the workings of the spaceport. Far out in the distance was a gleaming Niyanese city, settled between the arms of two great, green mountains. The buildings seemed silvery and elegant, rising like bristles against the horizon and unlike anything on Mavid. He wanted desperately to get there. He saw a bus station which he immediately went for, barely dodging a solar-powered bus that screeched out. He was so eager he nearly slammed his head against the glass of the terminal. He put his head to the pane, and saw a sign. 

BUS TICKET: 20 KILOCREDITS, it said.

John looked at the crumpled, sweaty wad of money, and cursed. He turned his head to the shining city, and the long, winding road towards it.

Love and Poverty on Distant Worlds Ch. 02



Author's Note 1: I apologize to any of my "fans" (if they exist) for the length of time between stories. I has been little under a year. I swear, I had a good excuse, but it was eaten by my dog.

Author's Note 2: Italicized dialogue represents the Niyannese language.

*

BALANCE: 12 kilocredits

One foot ahead of the other. For John, it had ceased feeling like walking. Instead, it was like he was treading tablecloth, the city pulling ever closer like a teetering tower of dishes, but always slipping out.

Niyan's gravity was meant to be lighter than Mavid's, but it didn't feel like it.

A vehicle on the road sped past him, the resulting draft blasted into John. The sun, which he had thought so bright, became oppressive. It cast his dark shadow, so he had to watch his hunched, hungry, pathetic silhouette crawl across the tarmac. John clutched at his stomach. It was well past the point of rumbling and now was just numb.

His movements felt irregular and weak, like he was stumbling forward.

Someone once told him in situations like this it was best not to think and just soldier on. John struggled to remember who it was that said that.

As he closed in, he saw just how impossibly tall Niyan's towers were. Clouds rolled out from over them, over their twin reflections on the mirror-like buildings. The needles and antennas and wires of buildings criss-crossed the horizon. A rocket flew overhead, and even though it was departing the atmosphere it almost seemed it would crash into the jumble.

The mirror landscape stood silently and impassively. The place seemed cold, he suddenly felt. There was no character to it, nothing he could know or that he knew of. What sort of place is it that there is no color, except for that steel-blue reflected in the sky? How does one make a living in that world?

He wanted to go home. But he couldn't go all the way back to Mavid, not just yet. He had to search for something familiar if he wanted to keep going.

He took in a breath, trying to take in the smell of the world. Though it was full of alien substances and sensations, it did have a trace of salt and sweat. It was that same seeping, humid smell of the canals, like the ones that permeated Mavid. That was something like home. He turned his nose to where the scent was strongest. The road that way curved down the foot of the mountain and ended in what appeared to be a small town. He could see the shining blue of the ocean and piers jutting out into it. There were no large ships, just what appeared to be the almond-shaped bellies of yachts.

It could be a fishing village, though John. It might have some work.

That was enough of a reason to change course. He began to lope hungrily towards the fishing village.

It took much trudging through long, wild grass to get step onto the streets of the small town by the ocean. He closed his eyes. He could smell baked bread, fish, the freshness of ocean air. His skin felt the comfortable burn of salt water. The town was a city by Mavidian standards but quaint for Niyan, but what shocked John was the absence of the usual bustle of a port city. Instead, the town was marked by long promenades, little boutiques and shopping areas, and populated by families leisurely moving amongst the city.

Under their wide-brimmed beach hats the Niyanese looked on John with suspicion, with glances that drilled right through him. John tried to make his way through fast, to a place where he might feel a little less alien.

He almost felt comfortable when he entered the industrial district. Though it resembled nothing on Mavid, it had something of the spirit. The canals, unlike Mavid's, were nearly as clean as the ocean itself, and not crumbling. Large cranes hoisted cargo from barges that seemed to float on massive black balloons. There were few workers, just the buzzing of machines and the grinding of mills.

Nestled within a wall of crates and containers, a group of men sat in dirty little lounge chairs outside of what seemed to be a factory. They had empty bottles littering around them, and were joking amongst themselves as though they had no work for the rest of the day.

At first, John simply watched on apprehensively. A sort of cramp seized him in the gut, and he could not tell if it was nervousness or hunger. But he approached, cleared his throat, and said out loud:

"Job."

The workers turned their heads towards him. He repeated himself again, but still they didn't react.

"Job!" he said finally in Niyanese.

The Niyanese men laughed. "Job? Job?" they mocked. They jeered amongst themselves. He knew they were making jokes at his expense, but he could not understand them.

John rubbed his stomach. "Food!" he said, then mimed hammering something."Job! Food for job!"

A large worker with a scraggly beard took a plastic-wrapped candy bar from his pocket and skittered it at John's feet. John looked down at the brightly colored bar, all purples and yellows, picked it up and unwrapped it.

It was a biscuit in the shape of a dog bone.

The workers fell into hysterics. Nervously, John sniffed it. It had meaty scent that made John's mouth water. Without shame, he bit into it, finally snapping it with his teeth after some effort. The biscuit was extremely hard, but had a strong and not unpleasant flavor. This spectacle silenced the workers, who watched, with horror, John devour the second half. But John did not notice, he simply wiped his mouth with the collar of his shirt.

They had all stopped laughing. They looked on John with a sort of pitiable awe. A grown man had just eaten a dog biscuit without shame, and still, he persisted: "Job," he repeated. "Food."

The factory doors burst open. It was a white-shirted bald man, late forties, and bespectacled, he carried himself like someone in authority. He cried some things out Niyanese, to which the workers sputtered out something in response. They started gesturing towards John.

"What do you want? Don't you know this is a restricted area?" said the bald man.

John couldn't realize that the man, apparently a manager, had been speaking his language.

The manager repeated himself. "Can you understand me? Do you not know this is a restricted area?"

"You speak my language?" said John.

"I took the classics," replied the manager. "What do you want?

"I would like a job," said John.

The manager frowned. "They say you ate a dog biscuit. You must be desperate."

"I would like a job," repeated John.

"Step into my office," said the manager, who went back through the double doors. John followed.

The manager's office was essentially a single desk with a built-in holoscreen and hundreds of sheets of paper, stacked about the room, toppling from bins and file cabinets. The manager cleared off some rogue reports from his desk with a swipe of his, hand and gestured to the chair in front of his desk. John took it.

"This is a courtesy," he said, "but we aren't currently looking for menial labor. As you probably noticed, we gut our fish by machine. We have men here enough to clean and take care of the machines. So unless you have a master's degree in hydro-engineering, we have little else to talk about."

John frowned. John didn't have an education.

The manager took note of his expression shook his head. "It's sad. I'm sorry, I really am. Niyan is a cruel place for the uneducated. You should have stayed in Mavid."

John had a flash of his mother, Delilah. He saw her sitting in that apartment, on that flowery armchair, with the flames of terrorism and disorder consuming all around her.

John spoke to the manager in almost a mutter: "Those machines... how much does it cost you to butcher each fish, with those machines?"

The manager rose an eyebrow. "Four kilocredits."

John bit his lower lip. "You would only need to pay me three."

Something predatory flashed in the manager's eyes. He paused a moment, thinking and stroking his tie. "Three kilocredits, eh?" His smile curved to something sly. "I'm not sure I can do that. You see, I'd be breaking all sorts of laws by paying you that little. Minimum wage be damned. Plus, the butchering is quite complex. You'd need to get trained. I respect your offer but I must decline."

John took a glance around the office. Very little décor, constructed of cheap, expendable materials. Even the holoscreen was shoddy, he'd seen the same model on Mavid. The man could not be poor. He could only be cheap.

He was haggling him down to the rags.

"What about two and a half?" said John.

"And if I'm caught?" said the manager. "That little half-a-kilocredit is going to seem quite expensive."

John groaned. "Two kilocredits. And a quarter."

The manager lifted an eyebrow.

"Two kilocredits," said John finally.

The manager grinned. "That's too good to refuse, my Mavidian friend."

John was taken to a back room, away from the workers and the heavy gutting machines. When the manager (who introduced himself as Shigeru) opened the door, John was enveloped by an intense red light. It was a tiny room bare except for a table and a knife. Stacked like bricks were hundreds of "atun", a Niyanese fish species, tails and heads sticking out from a mortar of ice. Shigeru explained the "red light room" was a fish storage room.

"Watch closely," he said.

He took a fish from the stack (a fat one the length of John's arm) and slammed it on the table with a thud. The manager held a knife to the fish, but John grabbed his arm. "Let me try," he said.

Shigeru gave him the knife. As John held the knife toward the fish, he closed his eyes. He recalled the memory of his father kneeling at the banks of one of Mavid's many canals on a warm day. Mavidian fish were small, scrawny things compared to Niyanese monsters, but this one his father caught was special. His mustache curved with his smile while stroked the foot-and-a-half long fish. His father gestured for him to come closer.

"You better pay attention," he said, turning his head to the young John. His father's blue eyes seemed to shine with the light of Mavid's distant star. "You never know when you might have to gut a fish."

Confidently and gracefully he gutted then filleted the fish. They later fried it under starlight with olives, garlic and onions. It had been a good day.

As John recalled the gutting, his knife traveled down the belly of the fish, to where the tail began. He pressed his hand against the gills, then thrust the knife into it, pulling it through the bony cartilage. He popped off the head, pulled out the guts, then filleted it from the spine. When he open his eyes, it was just as his father had done.

The manager nodded, impressed. "You'll get faster. Congratulations, my good Mavidian, you earned yourself two kilocredits!" The manager vigorously shook John's hand, like he was attempting to dislodge it.

When he finally let go, the manager's eyes drifted tod something amongst the fish guts on the floor. He picked it up and palmed a shiny 10 kilocredit coin.

"Finders, keepers," he said, pocketing the coin.

It was painful watching the coin disappear into the manager's pocket, but John swallowed any protests.

Shigeru patted John on the back. "Well, I think you know what to do now."

He left John alone in the room.

When John emerged from the red light room, he felt he could barely remember a thing except for gutting fish. The floor was awash in fish intestine, and John's clothing was positively soaked in ichor, despite an apron. He pushed out a box of neatly stacked fish cuts with his feet, and closed the door.

He hung his apron on a hook.

He went to the manager's office and knocked on the door. No response. Outside the window was a clear night. It must have been well past closing time.

John heard the sound of high heel clattering behind him. He spun around. He saw a woman with black-hair pulled back tightly, healthy-looking with only the slightest lines hinting at age. She wore a blue suit, like a professional would wear. She looked at John curiously.

He had not seen a woman in a while. Partly out of shame for his own appearance, he quickly combed his hair with his hands. When she began approaching him, he had the strange feeling of being cornered... he stood frozen, waiting for her to say something.

She said something in Niyanese. He knew enough that she was asking who he was and why he was here.

"My Niyanese is bad," he said.

She nodded, "I speak slowly. Can you understand?"

"Yes. I am worker. Are you manager?"

"I am manager's wife. You work... overtime?"

"Yes..."

Shigeru's wife looked John up and down. She then shook her head. "Shame," she said. "Are you hungry?"

John wasn't sure how to respond. But his appetite returned in the absence of the fishy stench, and his stomach began to growl. He nodded slowly.

"Come," she said.

He followed her out back and across the street to a small detached house, yellow light glowing from the windows. She held the door open for him. He walked into a hall that seemed to glow gold. It was in Japanese style, with faux-paper walls and glossy dark floors. Frameless pictures of the manager and his wife emanated from wall, set in backgrounds of mountains and beaches. In one of them they stood before cherry blossoms in kimonos. Before John's eyes the picture melted into an autumnscape, with the couple set between two dramatic red trees. He didn't notice any children, or any extended family. Just them.

"You do not have those, do you?" she remarked. It took him a moment to realize she was talking about the photographs embedded into the wall. He shook his head.

Her fingers tapped against the wall, and a computer terminal apparated before them. She brushed her fingers against some of the controls, and there was a click from the other room.

"You want a bath?" she asked.

He nodded.

She lead him past a living room into a spacious bathroom with a large corner tub already drawn and bubbling. The thought of a hot bath was exhilarating, he could almost plunge in with his clothes on.

"You need clothes cleaned?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Take clothes off."

John nearly took a step back. Was this what she wanted the whole time? But he saw that she had nothing animal in those eyes. And he looked at himself in the mirror, skinny, baggy ill-fitting clothes, skin stained with fish ichor and a face of sunken cheeks and bloodshot eyes. It was no picture of masculine beauty. He dropped his pants and slipped off his shirt. The sight of John's ribcage and pallid body caused her to wince.

She gathered up his clothes and shut the door.

He slipped his toes into the hot, frothy bubbles. The feeling of heat shuddered through him, it was electrifying. He plunged in. The relief was immediate, like molting a layer of itchy, decrepit skin. He scrubbed himself all over and sniffed his arm -- it smelt like lavender. He relaxed and let himself soak thoroughly.

After about ten minutes, he stepped out, slightly chill and looking for a towel. His wet foot stepped on the bathmat, which clicked, triggering a blast of hot, dry air. He held out his arms and felt the moisture evaporate from him. The drying stopped.

He cautiously peeped out the door. The aroma of cooking food was so overpowering that it almost made him faint. He looked down and found his clothes neatly folded in a pile. He slipped into them... they felt soft and warm, fresh from a dryer. He could not put them on fast enough.

He followed the scent into a dining room with a low table, only reaching John's ankles, and several pillows instead of chairs. John had never seen anything like it, and had no idea how to approach it. Shigeru's wife came in with kimono, a tray of porcelain tea ware which she set on the table. She knelt before the table, and bid John to follow. John tried to mimic her gracefulness, but ended up with legs uncomfortably folded under the table..

She poured him a cup of tea and then herself one. He picked up the tea, carefully (the cup had no handle), sniffed the hot vapor, then took it to his lips. She chuckled at his expression.

"Not like ours..." he said.

"Mavid not tea people?" she asked.

"Tea? Yes, but, I don't know how to say it..." he paused for a moment. He didn't have the words to say it in her language. "More 'bitter'."

She nodded politely. A ring came from the kitchen, for which she excused herself. A minute later she came out with two bowls of thick stew. It was red, it smelt like vegetables and some sort of animal broth.

He took a greedy sip. The hot goodness of it reached deep into his belly. He took another deep sip, enjoying how it slid down his throat. The lady was eating much more slowly, sipping only tiny spoonfuls at a time. It made John feel self-conscious.

"It is delicious." he said, putting the bowl down. "You good cook."

"Thank you," she said. "It is my hand-art."

John had never heard the word. "What is a hand-art?"

She tried to explain it, but evidently the concept was too complex for John to understand in his limited Niyannese. She explained it, what John understood as, "The thing that people do for machines", and then "Doing the machine work", which left John confused. Eventually she just shrugged.

"There is noodles, too. Save space."

John finished the bowl, drinking the meaty dregs straight from the bottom. He gave a satisfied sigh. The lady left and came back with two bowls of simple rice noodles. John attacked his portion with a fork, lifting up hearty balls of semi-transparent noodles and putting them in his mouth.

"You like them too?" she giggled.

John turned a shade of red. "Excuse me," he said, rapidly swallowing a mouth full of noodles.

She smiled politely and they ate in silence for some time. John had taken down half the bowl in big hungrily mouthfuls, despite himself. He didn't even notice the drip of noodle-water that escaped from a corner of his mouth and lingered on his chin. She, however, took her time.

She set the chopsticks atop the bowl, and asked, "It is exciting, being on a new planet?"

John (who was working through a particularly large mouthful), hadn't realized the thrust of her statement. When he looked at her, the way her eyes were downcast and the manner she gripped onto the hem of the kimono, he knew she was... anxious. He couldn't fathom why. He swallowed.

"Yes," he said finally. "But it is hard."

What she said next was very hard for John to understand, she mumbled something, buried too far beneath her breath to make sense of it. There was no point in asking her to repeat it, she clearly was saying something to herself.

John stuffed his mouth with another helping.

When they were both done, she said, "It is time for you to leave."

Before he did leave she gave him what appeared to be a bundle. "It fits you..." she said mysteriously before closing the door.

He unwrapped the package. Folded neatly was the glossy black silk of a business man's suit, for a person about John's size. When he caressed it, he felt how soft it was. He walked into his alley, laid down, and used the package as a pillow.

He did not remember that morning, even less stumbling into the fishery. But the next day he was already beneath the oppressive crimson glare the gutting room, with his knife plunged into a fish, forearms black with ichor.

He ignored his rumbling stomach and got to work, shutting his mind away to allow his hands to gut and slice. Working like this was almost like sleep, he was barely conscious of time passing, every moment dragged out to the minutes and the seconds. He did not notice the door opening.




Love and Poverty on Distant Worlds Ch. 02



The manager squinted through the murky crimson. He meandered to his side and inspected the neat pile of fillets and nodded. "Good work," he said.

John tried to say something, but instead made a hacking cough. His lungs were beginning to feel like the cold insides of a fish. He croaked out: "Did you pay me?"

The manager nodded. "Yeah, I did, check your pockets."

John lowered his hands into the overall pockets, but he couldn't find any sign of currency. He continued to dig deeper, feeling the bottom hem.

The manager shook his head sadly. "I can't help you if you lost it."

John searched for a memory of getting paid, but it was absent.

Those days seemed to be composed of sleeping in the back alley and the fish gutting room, between nights and the darkness of crimson. When he did sleep even John's dreams were tainted red. The meadows and inhabitants of his imagination lived under a red sun. Fish bones crunched beneath his feet wherever he walked. Flowers let off a murky, oily pollen as he passed by.

His rare free hours were always at night. Between the gutting room and the alley, he took walks along the dusky sidewalks of closed groceries and bakeries and chocolate shops. In the displays he didn't admire the cakes and candies but the fresh fruit and bread. His lips smacked at the prospect of a cold glass of water and a bite into a crisp apple. He searched behind the stores for dumpsters. He popped the lid off of one and found a bit of day-old bread. He ripped into it, enjoying the feeling it had in his stomach. His saliva tasted like fish, but the mere sensation of chewing and swallowing was ecstatic.

But it seemed alright. As John worked cheap and lived cheap he felt a warm sensation in his pocket: money. Now he had many crumpled bills... some denominations of 100 or more kilocredits. It added up to a little under 2,000... whether he deserved more he had no idea of knowing... he had lost count of the fish he'd been gutting... it was quite possible he was earning less than a kilocredit per fish. It certainly felt up to this point he'd done considerably more than a thousand fish.

But still, he did it, each day, under a sickening red light, in a haze of ichor and guts.

"I'm really glad to have hired you, my Mavidian friend," said manager Shigeru.

John was busy pulling out fish entrails.

He nodded with satisfaction. "To think we may have stepped into an entirely new business model. I should start hiring only Mavidians from now on. We can call it 'hand-art carved fish'."

"What is a 'hand-art'?" asked John, slicing through another fish.

Shigeru lifted an eyebrow. "It's... uh... it's a skill you learn by hand. Why? Don't you have hand-arts on Mavid?"

John shrugged. "Everything is a hand-art on Mavid."

Shigeru had a thoughtful pause. "Perhaps that's why you Mavidians are such good workers. I mean, you are like a machine yourself..."

"Why am I losing my hair?" asked John.

"Hmm?" Shigeru squinted at John's hair. There were patches of baldness appearing at odd spots on the side of his head. "Oh, it's probably just the red lights. Special preservative effect on flesh, y'see, but eats at hair roots. Don't worry, it doesn't cause cancer or anything."

John groaned.

"Don't be such a baby," Shigeru shrugged dismissively. "Don't you know that baldness is fashionable? All the kids are doing it now. You'll look cool." Shigeru grinned as he rubbed his own bald dome.

John looked down at his hands... black miasma now stained his fingertips, on hands which were calloused and bony. This is what my body looks like, he thought.

"I'd like a day off," said John.

Shigeru sighed. "C'mon! Wouldn't you want to make money instead? I thought we had a good thing going."

"I'm feeling sick. My throat is sore."

"You know," said Shigeru, "if you do that, I don't know if I can continue to work with you," he raised a suggestive eyebrow, "I have machines that don't make those sorts of demands."

John gave a sputtering cough. "I guess it can't be helped then," he said as he put away the knife.

Shigeru gave out an whine. "C'mon... don't twist my arm like this! Alright, you get your day off, but don't get used to it."

Shigeru left the cell, leaving John to his work. The excitement of a day off propelled him, it gave him the power to push a little further. He finished perhaps an hour earlier than normal, received his pay, then collapsed in the alley, under a pile of boxes.

For the first time in a long while, John awoke with the sun in his eyes. As his blinking eyes adjusted, he could see it was suspended just over the fishery, in the afternoon. It was a soft, warm reminder that he did not need to be anywhere today. That realization alone felt quite good.

It made John almost forget that it was, in fact, an alien sun. And hardly anyone spoke his language.

He stumbled out of the alleyway. He walked amongst the bright, glassy buildings that mirror the sky, the cute bleached shops that lined the avenues, the faux-adobes that were common on Niyan's beach communities. But he was oblivious to the stares of alien faces, mothers grabbing onto their children as John passed.

John went past a street vendor that was frying... something. John couldn't read the menu, so he pointed to the thing that appeared to have smallest number next to it. A minute later, John had several ball-like things in his hand, and when he bit into one, it was creamy, a little greasy, tasting like a salty yam. It was good, but John was not used to having something so rich. When he swallowed it, it seemed to almost seemed to push the fish-taste out of John's throat, and he could later feel it dissolving at the pit of his stomach.

But just in the corner of John's eye, he caught sight of the ugliest lime-green suit, past the elegant and officious black-and-white ones that were on display in a little store. He pressed his nose against the glass. It was so bright, so gaudy, John perversely found himself wanting it.

He fished through his pockets. He had about 2,000, and he knew how little it would last him (the yam-like balls had cost him 200). Still, considering what he had gone through to get it, it seemed to be almost an absurd amount of money. Money that he wanted to spend.

He pushed through the door. There were no customers in the little boutique, just a saleswoman who grimaced as her heels clicked against the hardwood floors. Her eyes slid onto John, and he suddenly found himself frozen by the threshold.

She said something in Niyanese to him. It didn't seem friendly, still, awkwardly, John began to walk towards the green suit.

The lady didn't seem to like that. She walked between him and the suit, and said something angry.

"...Suit..." he said in Niyanese, pointing at the lime-green coat.

The woman rolled her eyes. "...Clean!" she said back. "Clean!"

The woman pointed at a sign. He couldn't read the Niyannese script, but he assumed it had something to do with customer being clean.

John had forgotten he stank of fish.

Still, he pulled out his cash and proffered it to the saleswoman. She raised an eyebrow, then suspiciously lifted a corner of one of the notes to check the denomination. She laughed.

John felt rather offended at this and only more forcefully held the money out to her. In response the woman showed him the tag of the green suit: "25,000KC"

John shut his eyes morosely. When he opened him, the lady was biting her lower lip.

"Reserve it?" she said suddenly in a heavily accented Mavidian.

"What?"

"Reserve. 500 kilocredits. Reserve."

John pulled out five notes and gave them to her. She checked through them and pocketed them.

She pulled out a notepad. "Name?" she asked.

"John Waylon."

She scribbled it on her pad, pulled off the piece of paper, then strung it through the clothes hanger.

"Sixty days," she said.

How could he possibly be able to afford a 25,000KC suit in sixty days?

On the sidewalk, John squatted to pick up a 100KC bill that was pushed like a leaf by the wind. He held it tight in his hand, watched the crumpled corners flap lazily in the wind.

Everything was more expensive on Niyan by an order of magnitude. Even a candy bar that sold for 200KC here would be 15KC on Mavid. It made sense now that Mavid's best and brightest made the journey for the opportunity to clean toilets.

John had in his pocket enough money to last a month on Mavid. In Niyan he could blow it on a single trip to the grocery store.

How could money be so cheap?

When he unfolded his hand, it was just a crushed up note.

He lifted his eyes, and he saw her walking towards him. The woman in the blue suit, the one that had fed him and clothed him that day. She stopped on her heels for a moment to appraise him slowly. The sun hung a little above her head, and so she appeared to be a black-clad silhouette.

John squinted and held his hand up against the sun. She had given him a suit. He suddenly felt ashamed he had not been wearing it.

He took a step forward. "Sorry..." he said quietly.

She pinched his sweaty t-shirt and shook her head. "Let's go," she said after a moment.

"Where?"

She said nothing but gestured for John to follow.

They went into a little restaurant. The wide windows let the orange light of the descending sun in. They both took a booth with a good view of the street.

A waiter came to place menus on the edges of the tables.

John could not read a single item on the menu -- the Niyanese script may as well have been alien. Each character looked like it was drawn with the foot of a dead chicken. The manager's wife looked up and noticed his consternation. It was enough to make her chuckle politely.

She pinched a corner of the menu. Suddenly the writing evaporated and up came a visual display of each item. Niyanese technology -- John hadn't even realized that it was an electronic device. He began to flick through the menu.

"What do you like?" she asked.

"Not fish," answered John reflexively.

She gave another chuckle. John hadn't even meant to say something funny, but he found himself smiling slightly. It faded soon after... even with the pictures, none of the food looked recognizable. Much of it was the literally alien seafood of Niyan, others were "staples" of Niyanese cuisine, a western-Asian fusion that had evolved to the point where it was far removed from anything on Mavid.

She noticed that, too. "I suggest?"

He nodded.

She summoned the waiter and gave a few orders, and he nodded and walked away. He had no idea what to expect when he came back.

When the waiter was gone, there was a moment where John didn't know what to say. He smiled politely. She smiled back then looked out the window.

Her eyes gleamed with the light of the falling sun, her skin tinted with the soft gold glow. She was older than him, only slightly. He looked at the lined texture of her face, and he sensed that these were not age lines, but those carried by someone who did not experience much joy. The deepest ones were around her eyes, when she did not smile or frown, but simply looked on at the world passing by.

She was quite beautiful.

John averted his eyes. He did not want to stare. "What did you do today?" he asked dumbly. He winced at his own awkward attempt to fill the silence.

She looked at him strangely. He thought he could not stand it, but thankfully, the waiter came back with two cups of hot tea.

He sipped deeply, while she contemplated the wafting steam.

They did not talk, but it was not awkward like before. There was some mutual incomprehensibility, so there was only so much talking could accomplish. Instead, John looked out onto the skyline, onto the city he avoided when he first arrived on the planet. The booth offered a good view of it now, the sun actually seemed to make the buildings look like great solemn monoliths with dramatic strokes of molten gold. It was majestic now, where it had once seemed cold.

They did not talk until the waiter brought their meal... it was a strange thing, a steamer made of wicker material, and inside it was a bowl of very hot mixed vegetables and pork, with two buns sitting atop. Despite John's peckishness, he let the woman go first, who graciously began to pick through for choice bits.

The steamed vegetables were mixed with a pepper and a salty sauce whose taste John could not recognize. It was quite good, though unusual for John. He grabbed his bun and bit in. It was a pork bun and it was so moist inside that steam exploded from the bite. It was strange and delicious.

They eventually finished the meal. They felt satiated, and the waiter only passed by to refill the tea cups. It was now night.

"You come from far," she said finally.

He was surprised by her sudden question. "Yes," he answered.

"Why?"

John took a deep sip. He even paused a moment as the cup rested in his hand.

"To please my mother," he answered.

She looked extraordinarily confused for a moment. Then, suddenly, she broke into an adolescent smile. Years fell off of her face as her entire face brightened.

"We are the same!" she chuckled.

Though John had no idea what she meant, her laughter was infectious. He felt himself smiling, too.

When she was done laughing she let out a sigh. "I have a gift for you," she said.

He lifted an eyebrow. She pulled up her purse and took out a tiny earpiece, and placed it into John's outstretched hands. He looked at it.

The label said "Learn Niyanese" right in plain Mavidian.

It was a mini-book, little things that would fit over your ear and narrate for you. They were disposable, but not cheap, at least not for John.

"Thank you," said John.

He hadn't realized he'd spoken his native tongue, but she seemed to understand it. She nodded gracefully.

John licked his lips nervously. Then he said, again in his native language, "I don't have the words to express myself in your language, but I want you to know I appreciate your help. You've been the only nice -- rather, good person I've met here. I don't why you're helping me, but I don't really care to ask."

She looked at him with confusion. The waiter came by and placed the check on the table.

They looked at each other for a moment. "I pay," said John, switching to his poor Niyanese.

"No," she said, pulling out her wallet.

She stopped when John reached over and grabbed her hand. "Please," he said.

For a moment she was frozen, just looking into the seriousness of John's expression. She lowered her wallet.

The check was for 1500KC. It was almost everything he had.

He took out the crumpled bills. They were stained with ichor fingerprints, but worth just as much as a crisp one. He also put another 100KC bill. A tip.

It was painful to John, knowing how much effort had gone into that money. But it would be far more painful to leave such a kindness unpaid. It seemed that she had sacrificed something too, and he didn't want for her to forget that.

"Thank you," she said. "There was no need."

He smiled and nodded his head.

It was late. They departed ways after that.

John entered work the next day refreshed. Although it would take quite a bit of work to earn back all that money, but he didn't mind. He had begun to get used to lifestyle, as intolerable as it would have seemed to begin with. Besides, he only needed just enough money to make his way to a new city, with new work, new people.

John entered through the back (thus avoiding any regular workers) and pushed against the gutting room door... it wouldn't budge.

He pushed against it again. He could feel the heaviness of a lock behind the door. What was going on?

He didn't care if he was spotted by the workers. He marched to the manager's office. Mr. Shigeru sat behind a desk. When his head turned, John was taken aback as his eyes narrowed to slits and his face twisted to disgust.

"Why is the door locked?" asked John.

"You don't work here anymore," he answered back.

John suddenly felt a lump in his throat. He swallowed it down, but he could sense that there was something very, very wrong.

"Why?" he choked.

Shigeru laughed bitterly. "I provided you with what you needed, piece of Mavidian trash that you are. You people come here to our beautiful planet, expecting to be treated like native Niyanese? You're common, you're all no good," he said hatefully. "If you were good, you'd fix your own damn planet without coming and ruining ours."

John clenched his fist tight.

"Oh yeah, you act all angry," said Shigeru. He suddenly stood up, his chair nearly buckling backwards. "What're you going to do? Strike me? All I need is to call the police and tell them you assaulted me for them to shoot you dead. They don't care about a dirty immigrant."

It was surreal, seeing Shigeru's sudden and utter hatred. Still, John suddenly felt a deep, deep shame, when he realized that somehow, someway, he'd found out. There was no other way.

"I didn't sleep with her," said John.

Shigeru flopped back on his chair like a dead fish. He gave a bitter and raspy sigh. "If you had slept with her, I would understand better what you did to her."

John didn't know what to say.

"Get out of here," said Shigeru.

John did what he asked.

It was the early morning, the sun rising over the ocean. He tossed a rock into sea, which obliterated in a tiny plop.

He'd been lying to himself the entire time. Even without sex, even without romance, it was still an act of infidelity.

He sat on the sand, beside him his package of all his belongings. The mini-book and the suit were all the possessions he cared to have right now. Both of them were given to him by that woman.

He cared for her, he realized. And he had never asked for her name.

That city of mirrors on the hill, it always seemed to catch the sun. It was beautiful now, not cold. A new place for a fresh start, far from the hell this town had become. It was something to struggle for, a place to reach.

He looked in his pocket. He had less than 20 kilocredits. On this planet, it was not even worth carrying. He bent down and buried the coins under the sand, a sacrifice to the universe for good luck. Almost immediately the ocean lapped at mound, erasing it from existence. Then he walked on the long road to the city on the hill.