YOU BUILD THE METAL FOR YOUR HOUSE

Posted on 24 Feb 2016 @ 6:05pm by Lieutenant JG Rael Psy.D.
Edited on 24 Feb 2016 @ 9:41pm

342 words; about a 2 minute read

The Ʃar Pipeline wasn't a real place.

You couldn't visit it. You couldn't touch it. Nor run your hands along the walls catching your fingers in the cracks and eddies. Yet, he felt its presence as keenly as though it were a living being made of flesh.

The Khadri had blood flowing through its walls. It moved with the joy of family. The engines sang with the praises of Zeritha the Defiant. She who spared him smiles and allowed him to purchase her cookies; with a kiss. The Khadri was connected to the nervous system of the Rāpla Underground--it was the afferent sensory fibers that traveled into the pulsing synaptic network of the Orion Syndicate.

It was real to him.

An Oru had no place in the universe but to the single confined world in which they were born. No loyalties or allegiance but to the caj--the family--who take them in.

Legends said that an Oru was the blood--not flesh, but metal. They emerged from the Shimmering Veils of Heaven as perfectly formed infants. Blank slates to be written. An Oru was born from the very mother-fabric of a starship.

They were nothing but the name given.

He could never say that he was proud of it--it just highlighted his place in the order of things so skillfully that he could not bear to part with it. Lightfooted. Pressed into his skin just like the brand at the back of his neck. The tattoo burned its way down his spine. Curled ink blots that spread out Trader creole characters. Eventually he was told it could be removed. His brand would stay with him forever--the tattoo was his choice.

The Ʃar Pipeline wasn't a real place. Lightfooted wasn't a real name. The Khadri wasn't a real mother.

It was his choice to keep it--and that was real to him.

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