Ve’nua, only now looking away from me, spoke up. ‘There is… a third option.’
All heads turned to them. There was a silence, even from the leader and their enraged right-hand Iyr.
‘They could be disposed of. Quietly. Nobody would ever know that we were involved.’
What? How dare they speak this way - deciding who lives and who dies.
I could feel my heartbeat surging again.
Even the rest of the Iyr remained silent. Equally, however, none immediately voiced an opposition to this idea.
Ve’nua continued, ‘What is one life versus the quality of life of our whole civilisation? It is nothing.’
Some of the Iyr began to murmur an agreement.
I tried to keep my breathing consistent, but the anger was limiting my ability to do so.
‘You are correct,’ another spoke. ‘We should dispose of her.’
More murmuring.
Someone thumped the table.
‘No!’
I looked around to which attendee had done it.
Strangely, however, everyone was now looking at me.
Oh.
It was… me, who did that.
‘Do you have something to add, Pi’nua?’ the leader asked.
I paused. Even I knew that my pause was for a moment too long. The stare from the suspicious Iyr across the table only confirmed this.
‘We are a proud species!’ I gambled. ‘We have evolved! We no longer need to rely on the… pathetic Arellians.’
Was I overdoing it?
With the drums reverberating around my mind, it was hard to sound these sentences out before I committed them to speech.
A pause.
Soon, the leader spoke once more, this time with a tone of resignation. ‘Perhaps you are right.’
Still, there was silence from the rest of the table.
‘We shall return to this conversation tomorrow. I think there is value in each of us spending the night pondering this issue.’
As they rose, the rest of the table did too. The meeting was over. I had survived it.
I headed for the door - with as much speed as my cover would grant me - and felt Ve’nua’s stare follow me as I went.
A clear vision of the next hour formed in my mind. I would break Syl and the prisoner free. We would then, together, broadcast the truth to the world. I resolved to do this, no matter the cost.
“Crowdfunding For Deaths”
The Diary of Leya RaynorGu, 13b-05-2332
So it turned out that the deceased man’s daughter, Ti, was still two rotations out; she was taking the Megashuttle. This service was, in reality, anything but “mega”, and stopped at every so-called planet and ramshackle space station along the way. Clearly, she wasn’t earning very much on Rykan. But then, Rykan wasn’t the sort of planet you work on if you’re trying to get rich. No. It’s the sort of planet you work on to have a good time and don’t want to faff about with long interview processes. They don’t call it the “Party Planet” for nothing.
This meant that I was waiting around with the grieving family for a little while. Over time, I even became quite familiar to many of them - so much so that I became involved in the funeral preparations. To properly understand Gulien funerals (and, therefore, what I was up to over these rotations), you need to know a little history of the planet.
Gu was initially abundant in natural resources - even more so than most planets. As a result, their economy boomed for hundreds of cycles, and they became a key trading hub for the Iron Sector. Over time, the inhabitants got lazy, began to rely on these natural resources to sustain their wealth, and didn’t truly do anything to remedy this situation until the resources were almost completely depleted. By then, of course, it was too late. Surprise, surprise!
So, suddenly everything became unaffordable. People had to adapt, and they started to reuse, recycle, and generally just become less wasteful. But that’s not where the problems arose.
The issues came about when all the businesses started to go bust, people lost their jobs, and then income and wealth tax revenues plummeted. Government budgets shrank by over ninety percent in less than one cycle. Suddenly all their services, their programmes, their subsidies and benefits were no longer viable investments. People, now, had to get by on their own.
So death rates spiked for a few years, everyone cut back on having children, people were generally miserable. They have a name for this period in their history… but I don’t remember what it is.
[Note to self: look up the name for the period of economic downturn on Gu, and try to remember to edit this bit of the entry later. If you’re reading this, and your name is not Leya Raynor, then, whoops, I forgot - sorry.]
I’m not sure any other planet has gone through so much economic turmoil as Gu. Or, at least, there’s none that survived it with a written record. But the Guliens did - I guess that speaks to the ingenuity (and, I’ve come to realise, also the obstinancy) of these people.
So, over time, the Guliens worked out other ways of providing the services that the population needed. Teachers would work for food, clothing, etc from the families of the children they taught. Guliens sold their bodies for medical testing from trans-galactic corporations so they would cover their healthcare bills. Many emigrated from Gu, and sought out new employment (and new lives) amongst the stars.
You get the idea; people changed. It’s funny how there’s that old adage that “people don’t change”. Gu is living proof that they do - when they have to.
Then, somewhere along the way, some Gulien had a bright idea. Out of work and in desperate need of a new shuttle, she reached out to strangers to ask for small donations towards her own personal investment. In return, these strangers would be given advertising space on her shuttle, in proportion
