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Some Scrapyard Station lore
Dec. 7th, 2021 04:50 amThe Parasites tend not to make speeches, at least not to species other than Parasites. They don’t tell us we’re meant to serve, or our defeat is inevitable. It doesn’t fit with how they view us.
The nicer Parasites, the ones we can negotiate with, see us like cats. We’re feral and distrusting, but we’ve banded together into colonies and eked out a sort of life. They can take us in, feed us, shelter us, treat all the illnesses we’ve picked up from living wild. And if they so desire, they can microchip us to keep us from escaping again.
Other Parasites see us as livestock, or perhaps fruit to be plucked. Not prey; that would denote hunting, and Parasites don’t need to hunt to claim us. They raise us and train us on their worlds, or they come to our worlds to gobble us up. We sometimes manage to hurt them, but cows sometimes manage to gore us, and it doesn’t change the essential relationship.
There are Parasites who like to watch us suffer, of course. There are humans who like to torture stray cats. But a lecture presumes the listener is in a position to understand, and even the nicer Parasites don’t see us as beings that can truly understand. They act, and we are acted upon, in one way or another.
(There was a Parasite, once, who realized she didn’t understand us either. To remedy it, she stood among us as an equal, and saw us as we see ourselves. In all the years since our ships first reached the skies, it was the only time a Parasite died.)
The nicer Parasites, the ones we can negotiate with, see us like cats. We’re feral and distrusting, but we’ve banded together into colonies and eked out a sort of life. They can take us in, feed us, shelter us, treat all the illnesses we’ve picked up from living wild. And if they so desire, they can microchip us to keep us from escaping again.
Other Parasites see us as livestock, or perhaps fruit to be plucked. Not prey; that would denote hunting, and Parasites don’t need to hunt to claim us. They raise us and train us on their worlds, or they come to our worlds to gobble us up. We sometimes manage to hurt them, but cows sometimes manage to gore us, and it doesn’t change the essential relationship.
There are Parasites who like to watch us suffer, of course. There are humans who like to torture stray cats. But a lecture presumes the listener is in a position to understand, and even the nicer Parasites don’t see us as beings that can truly understand. They act, and we are acted upon, in one way or another.
(There was a Parasite, once, who realized she didn’t understand us either. To remedy it, she stood among us as an equal, and saw us as we see ourselves. In all the years since our ships first reached the skies, it was the only time a Parasite died.)
