Challenge #02060-E236: The Way to Make Change
Humans gonna Human -- TheDragonsFlame
A mother in a war zone hands her baby up to a complete stranger, knowing that they may never meet again, but her child has a chance at something better than this. Bullets sing through the air. Fire turns the surrounding landscape into tones of amber. And the last evacuation vehicle leaves the few remaining to their fate. The mother smiles anyway, and waves 'bye-bye' to her child. Pretending, perhaps for a last handful of minutes, that everything is going to be fine.
A pilot pushes their vessel's engines to the maximum. He runs a cargo ship, not exactly equipped to deal with any of this, but like hell is he going to save some rich asshole's industrial equipment when there are people who could be saved instead. He helps the panicked masses toss out cases and adjust shelving so that they can cram into the empty spaces like cordwood. They have nothing, but they are alive. And they are grateful.
A soldier only spares a moment to realise that their weapon is empty before yelling defiance at the attackers and using it as a bludgeon. Ze may not survive, and ze knows it, but if it buys the rest of hir unit a few more seconds for the evacuation, then it's worth it. Ze kills five before stealing one of their own weapons and turning it against them. Mowing them down like wheat. In two days, ze will be the Hero of Zangria Five, but at the moment, hir priorities can be encapsulated in the words, Stop Those Bastards.
A Medik in triage has run out of Stasis booths for those near to death. He rips open one that was reserved for the expensive and delicate fruit that some corporation had prioritised over lives and puts two patients into the space. The fruit is handed out to those with a green status. Profit can go to hell. It's death that must lose, today. There's fifty booths like it. One hundred lives that can be saved. More, if they are children.
A little girl takes her dolly to a crying man, and offers it to him for cuddles. She's swept up in the stranger's arms and held tight and kissed and thanked. She only understands that some people are sad, and her dolly could help them. In a few hours, she'll be given a fruit that she'd never been able to taste before and will likely never taste again. She'll eat it, and talk about the flavour with the stranger. Unaware that they are consuming a fortune in rare fruit. That some people would pay a Year for a slice.
A technician takes clear images of everyone, spending every second she has to re-unite families, friends, and loved ones. She'll be eating the cheapest Nutri-Food for a month or more, but the relief in the air is a palpable thing. She's never experienced trauma like this, loss like this, or upset like this. Yet she knows that nobody should be forced to suffer while someone has the tools to help. Across from her, another technician is carrying around a portable power unit, so that those with comms can use them to leave messages. She, too, will be eating Nutri-Food because of this. Neither of them care.
Across the wide gulfs of space, a rich businessman who had been warned not to set up a farming colony on Zangria Five hears the news through a quantum-paired comms device. He shorts his own stock via a shell company, buys up stocks on the rare fruit before the price skyrockets, and prepares a 'thoughts and prayers' speech from a stock copy. After the news goes out on more common channels, he will publicly wail and bemoan the loss of hundreds of Years worth of product. He will publicly laud all the people who disobeyed his orders to save lives, and fire them later in private. He will have made a fortune, regardless. He carefully calculates a large amount of Time to start off an apparent charity. None of it will filter down to those who are ruined by the war.
His plans are ruined by a different disaster in a different part of the immense territory that is the Galactic Alliance. Two ships collide, and a tea lady helps a stranger that could not be stranger. Both to stabilise the interlocked vessels and to save as many lives as she can. She becomes Ambassador Harry of Britannia, and Humans are welcomed into the Alliance. This means that all Human businesses, especially the ones already converted to using Time, are inspected for potential violations of Cogniscents' Rights. No amount of ingenious shuffling can protect the businessman from the combined forces of the Galactic Alliance Tax Agency. They extract Centuries -Millennia- from his accumulated wealth and start everyone else over with the accepted minimum. It is more than they are used to. It is more than they expected.
The businessman will complain. Nobody but him will care.
A baby is handed back to a mother. The baby is in the hands of a lizard and the mother had spent hours sandwiched between two strangers, lying on a shelf in a cargo hold and praying that the engines held out for long enough. Long enough to reach the safety of the station. Long enough to keep them all alive. Long enough so that she can live another day and find her baby. The baby kicks and squeals to see his mother again. The mother weeps and wraps herself around both child and alien saviour. These have been the longest twenty-four hours of her life.
She is exhausted, both physically and emotionally. She has nothing but her son and the clothes they are dressed in.
In that moment, she has never felt better in her life.
Three strangers entertain a lost child -another stranger- with the only song they know together that's kid-appropriate. Five other strangers join in at the chorus of Grandma's Feather Bed. Some with more lyrical genius make up new verses on the spot. For the hours it takes to find their families, the loss is not a priority.
The Humans remember who helped them. They remember who did what for the disaster. They pay it forward.
A child who was once lost and alone has grown up to become a Space Marine. She scoops up a small being on a planet whose name she can't pronounce and thrusts it into a stasis pod to launch it up to safety. A few neat shots eliminate the threat. She searches burning buildings for other survivors. She has combat armour on her livesuit. She can withstand much more than these little lizards can endure.
Tomorrow, she may be the Hero of Antenus Three. Today, she is making a difference because someone else had made a difference to her. She carries a pod in one arm and a rifle in the other. She shouts a phrase she has learned that she knows these little aliens will understand, "I come to help!"
Once she had a doll. Today, she has more. She doesn't expect reward, or thanks. She expects to get as many out of this mess as she can.
Because it's what anyone would do.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / yeekazar]
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