Challenge #02552-F362: Find a Family

She was small, almost dangerously thin, but fast. Her parents, addled yet again on drink and the newest designer drugs, didn't even notice as she left their quarters in search of food. She heard, as she was contemplating swiping an unattended sandwich, that one of the big havenworlder freighters was docked and was on loading cargo for their next run. Large cargo freighters usually meant larger amounts of food. This wouldn't be the first time this young human had snuck aboard freighters, swiped food, and escaped them before they left. But this time she wasn't so lucky. She was in their kitchens gathering food when the doors locked, as they routinely did when the freighter was preparing to leave a station. She was stuck there. When the havenworlder crew member discovered the kid, she was sitting on the floor hungrily devouring another sandwich. But they were now far from the station and, really, she didn't want to go back to uncaring people who hadn't even realized she was gone. -- Anon Guest

They called her Bub, when they didn't call her Move, so it seemed reasonable that Bub was her name. She had learned to be fast and had learned what foods were good and what foods were bad, and how to keep as clean as Great Korprat deemed acceptable. The big people were sleeping and all the food Bub could reach had gone bad. The big people could eat it anyway, and would, but Bub needed to find something better.

She had been out of the apartment before. The big people left magic cards lying around and Bub knew that the magic cards made doors open. She found the one with the prettiest ribbon, put on her backpack, and scuttled out into the bigger world. It was always a race in the bigger world, between feet, around movers, through doors that her magic card might not make open, but she eventually found somewhere with food to eat. There were big boxes on trolleys and Bub found a place between the boxes. She could use a screwdriver to poke holes in the cardboard until she had a hole big enough to pick the cardboard apart and extract a packet from within. Lots of times, it was good good food.

This one had a picture of a peanut on it. Peanuts were bad food and made her sick. Bub turned around and picked at another box. Cookies! Jackpot! She ate those one by one while she picked at a third box just to see what was there. Something green. The big people always said Bub needed greens, and when they got them for her, they always made sure she ate them. Well. She had greens now, so she ate them. These ones were crunchy, and salty, and smelled like fish, but they tasted okay, so Bub didn't mind. She definitely didn't notice the trolley moving until it stopped.

Bub snuck out of her hiding hole into paradise. Boxes and boxes and boxes! All lined up in neat rows, some packed on top of each other, all in a big space with lights and arrows and safety equipment that was almost her size, like the play tools that weren't very good at being real tools. This was a safe place to be. If there wasn't any safety equipment, then they didn't expect people to be there. Which meant, in turn, that they would have air in here all the time. Bub was lucky she was still afraid of the dark. It had saved her life more than once.

Picking and sampling found her lots of good food. Bread and other greens and things the big people had talked about with daydreaming voices. Things the rich people could afford. Bub, now in safety gear just a little too big for her, set up camp in one of the bigger spaces that had warm ovens nearby. Bub liked being warm. She made three sandwiches. One for now, one for later, and one for after her nap. She put them in her backpack and hid it in her camp behind some boxes of plates and cutlery, and went looking for a bathroom.

It was a lot cleaner than the one in her apartment. She was able to relieve herself without holding her breath, and sanitise her hands without anyone yelling at her for making the knocking noise while she waited for water. In fact, there wasn't even a knocking noise. Bub could get to like this place a lot more. She didn't want to go home.

Bub went back to her camp and snuggled down in her little nest of napkins. She had her second sandwich and drank as much water as she liked before falling asleep in her little nook. Nobody yelled at her for anything she did. If she wasn't thoroughly alive, Bub might believe she had died and gone to heaven. She slept through the moment the vessel she was now on undocked and boosted away.

Bub woke, and stretched, and started on her third sandwich. Listening to the space surrounding her, she could hear people at their work. Talking in funny voices, and clattering about with whatever tools they were using. Bub was used to the noise of work in progress. It was soothing. It made her happier as she ate her food.

Someone opened a door, and moved her hiding-boxes, and stared. This someone was sort of like a dinosaur, sort of like a bird. They said something in funny words that Bub didn't understand, and then there were a crowd of bird-dinosaurs all bent over and looking at her. Bub ate her sandwich just a little quicker.

They coaxed her out with more good food. Cooked meat and the nicer greens and coloured stuff that Bub had never seen before but smelled yummy and tasted yummier. When the bird-dinosaurs spoke in GalSimple, they asked questions that Bub tried her best to answer, but somehow made them sad anyway. Nobody got angry, nobody yelled. They just... got sad.

"What being name?" they asked, and Bub said, "I'm Bub."

"Where you being from?" they asked, and Bub answered, "My apartment."

"How many years being you?" and Bub answered, "Four."

"What being parental name?" and she said, "I dunno."

It was a confusing afternoon. They gave her a bath that was all warm and had bubbles and smelled pretty, and new clothes that looked pretty. And socks! Funny happy socks that had a bottom to them that went 'plap' when she walked. And they took her to a big place with lots of coloured lights and more bird-dinosaurs that pointed things at her and made funny purr-trills like a Skitty and they looked sad but they never said why... And then there was another big space with a big nest and a bird-dinosaur who said her name was Taa'nah, and that she would be Bub's momma until they found her real momma.

Bub said she'd never had a momma. She just had big people who fed her when they remembered and yelled at her a lot. Taa'nnah wrapped her big feathery arms around Bub and said that, if she could help it, nobody would yell at her again. Bub felt warm and safe inside those arms.

That was her first day amongst the Thropori. There would be many, many more. Taa'nah, her new momma, kept her safe and warm under her wing all night, and made sure that Bub got balanced meals and the beginnings of an education. Taa'nah fussed over making sure Bub was healthy, and fretted when Bub caught the immunoflu a little earlier than the doctors would have liked. Bub never remembered having a birthday, but she soon got a celebration of her adoption day. Her new family paid attention to the things she liked and helped her learn about anything she took interest in.

When she was older, they gently told her that nobody ever reported her missing, not even the Great Korprat that she had said ran everything on the station she might have come from. They told her that the CRC was looking into living conditions there, and that it was a dangerous thing to allow a Human corporation to run a space station. They tended to view living beings as parts they could simply replace when they were no longer useful. Bub had never been useful, according to that corporate body, so her loss was not a liability.

Their casual dismissal of a missing child was one among many reasons why that particular station was under heavy investigation and soon to be under new management, if the CRC had their way.

By the time Bub learned who her genetic family was, she didn't want to re-unite with them any more. They had relied heavily on Korprat-supplied inebriants just to survive their working and living conditions with something of their psyches intact. They were only just now receiving therapy and rehabilitation. Their surviving children - Bub's sibs and half-sibs on either side - were undergoing similar treatments.

She let them know who she was, but they were only her genetic family. She had, in a round-about way, rescued them from their plight, but she had no emotional attachment to them. Her true family were the ones who cared about her, worried about her, and helped her. Her true family were the ones she cared for, worried about, and helped in turn.

It was a lesson she had learned well, and would teach at every opportunity. Family doesn't have to be the people responsible for your genetic makeup.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / savageultralight]

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