Page 3 of The Hornet’s Hucow Pet

So, I assigned myself a problem. I worked it on pen and paper, hidden in cyphers in the pages of my private journal, one of the few places the city’s computer couldn’t read or track.

Grief journaling, I explained when they asked me why I spent such long hours bent over those pages.

I was running variables.

And then I had my answer. The perfect time, the perfect place, to make my escape.

I hurt as much as I ever did, but I had a plan, a purpose. I walked smoothly and confidently down the halls of the city ship one last time.

Then, I slipped onto a star barge holding unrecyclable waste and low-value exports, making myself busy with a tablet so nobody would question my presence.

Certain vulnerabilities in the system were permitted because closing them would cost too much in terms of rigidity and mistrust. When humans feel mistrusted, they tend to earn that mistrust. Vice versa, trust inspires trust.

So, there are always little gaps like this to slip through.

In the quiet moment when the transport ship closed its doors and disengaged from Neo Terra with me still aboard, I became free.

And a fugitive.

For the first couple years, I was alive again. I could always find a distraction from the constant ache. A new person to meet, a new drug to try.

We partied and skulked around the borders of ICSS space, in corners of starports and back rooms of taverns. I drank and gambled with all kinds of sapients, each strange and wonderful to my human mind: six-limbed salamander-like Urodeloids; humorless sphere-shaped Euclideans which roll about and vibrate their whole bodies to speak; quadrupedal Spirewolves and their delicate prehensile whiskers, more dextrous and sensitive than even human fingers.

Whenever I was sober enough to think clearly, I used my mind to find a job and make some cash. I used that cash to buy enough drugs to forget about my pain—and my job. Then the cycle continued.

Every time I numbed out, the pain returned with a vengeance. So I took more and more of whatever drug was within reach.

I had a close call with a synthetic opioid. Too close.

I sobered up. Swore off hard drugs.

This past year has broken me.

Two decades of constant pain.

I sit out behind an industrial loading dock on a dusty planet, smoking a joint with my coworker, a crow Avioid I call Percy.

It’s not really cannabis, but it’s the next best thing. It’s one of the few drugs I permit myself now, and only on the worst days.

I run the books for this little smuggling operation. Lately, even basic addition makes my head swim.

“You should go to Zairion Prime,” Percy says. “Become one of those… what are they called? Hucows? Wish I could do that…” They tap the ash off the end of the joint and hand it to me.

“Can’t get assigned to a clinic unless you’re in the system,” I say. I’d looked into it. I’d looked into anything that claimed to alter sensation.

“Oh, the clinic sounds horrible. I mean as a pet.”

“A pet?” Now, this is new.

“You sound skeptical, but hear me out. Taken care of, pampered… not a care in the world…”

“Nice on paper, I guess. But lactating constantly doesn’t sound that comfortable.” The sapients of Zairion Prime are mostly Arthropoids, centaur-like creatures with humanoid torsos and bodies that resemble various bugs. Apparently, they need a lot of calcium to maintain their exoskeletons, which makes them crave mammalian milk.

The ICSS fancies it up with their clinics, but basically, they tend humans like livestock. I assume this pet thing is even more so. Like owning your own cow or coop of chickens.

“I wish I could lactate,” Percy sighs.

I raise a brow at them.