“We can’t all be natural-born survivors,” Jeb said, suppressing a chuckle as he pictured himself as Zlesk’s Rambo human.
“Alas, you’re right. Humans are, in general, fat, lazy little keegan clones only motivated by fear and greed.”
Don’t forget love, sex, and stupid, Jeb thought silently.
“But as weak and stupid as humans are on average, damn near every single one wound up getting by somehow. I guess humans’ strength is their ability to get on.”
The conversation fell silent for a moment.
“Except for you.”
Jeb clenched his teeth. Even though he knew the guy was dead wrong about him, it still hurt to be shit on like this.
“You wanna hear some of my thoughts on life?” Zlesk asked.
Not really.
Jeb couldn’t afford to lie or speak the truth, so he stayed quiet.
“I believe that where we are today is just the result of a long chain of effort leading us to our current situation. I’m an officer because I worked hard to become one. Spent five years training to be where I am today.
“You, though?” he asked, looking Jeb up and down. “What long chain of stupidity and failure brought you here, I wonder?”
Jeb finally broke a smile. “Honestly? I worked hard for an outrageous amount of success that captured the attention of the entire world. All to beg on the street corner of your charming city.”
Zlesk stared at Jeb silently for a moment, fingering the beatstick on his waist. A moment later, the keegan burst into a gale of laughter.
“That’s a good one, Jeb,” the officer said, chuckling for a moment.
Suddenly the keegan stooped down from his seven-foot height and grabbed Jeb by the back of the neck, his fingers like iron rods clamped around the base of his spine.
“Don’t let me catch you begging between noon and three, alright? Or I’ll have to fine you for obstructing traffic. You and I both got better things to do than take a trip down to the office.”
Jeb shuddered, remembering the cracking beam in the cell’s ceiling that had kept him awake at night, staring at it for hours.
No thank you. Jeb wasn’t interested in sleeping in PTSD Central again, not even for three hot and a cot.
“Got it,” Jeb said.
Zlesk released his neck and moved on, apparently losing interest.
Jeb got himself situated on the street corner, straightened his smelly rags, took off his pegleg and put the stump out in front of him, rubbed some street grease on it to make it look bruised, setting the missing limb center stage.
Begging is a performance art.
Jeb set his beat-up hat in front of himself, and sat back, watching the day flow by. Time seemed to speed up as Jeb zoned out, people zipping past him, doing their dailies. Every now and then a tiny copper coin about the size of a man’s thumb would clink into the hat.
Jeb’s eyes widened when he spotted a silver glint in the sun before it hit the hat, and he gave the keegan woman an appreciative nod and a ‘thank you, ma’am’. A silver was like throwing a fifty into a pot full of ones.
Maybe later tonight I’ll take a bath and visit the bar. See if there’re any human women there interested in a hobo.
Jeb chuckled to himself as he imagined the inevitable question after a night of flirting:
‘Your place or mine?’ she would whisper sultrily into his ear.
God, could you imagine if I brought her back to my place?
There’s the trash pile I stack up to block sight from the main road. It gets removed every Wednesday, so we should have some...privacy tonight. Over there’s the blankets I use as a mattress. Don’t mind the smell, some of the trash leaked on it before I noticed.
Hey, where are you going!?
Jeb was still chuckling to himself when a richly dressed keegan and a much shorter one approached from down the street. The taller one was male, and the shorter one was immature, hard to determine their gender based on physical cues, but the clothes looked decidedly feminine—for a keegan, that was.
“Ew, what’s that?” the shorter female asked, pointing at Jeb, drawing him out of his amusing reverie, covering her skull-face nose.
“Oh, that? That’s a human,” the taller male said, eyeing Jeb and his hatful of coinage.
“It stinks.”
“Yes well, that’s more of a condition of being a beggar than being a human. He really only has himself to blame. Look at the difference between us and remember: We’re the ones that are broke. Because of the gods-damned Stitching, he’s got nine thousand more bulbs than we do.”
What an asshole.
Jeb’s brows rose as the taller keegan, presumably the father, pulled out a gold coin and leaned in toward the hat.
A gold bulb was the rough approximate of a thousand dollar bill. A single one could keep him fed and clothed for three months. Jeb actually salivated as he watched the gold coin descend toward his hat.
This right here is some premium alms.
The keegan flicked the gold coin back and forth in his fingers, flickering it in the sunshine, capturing Jeb’s attention as he leaned forward and plucked the silver coin out of Jeb’s hat.
Just that quick, the keegan man straightened and walked away.
Jeb’s jaw dropped.
Did I just get robbed!?
Visions of a shower, shave, a bowl of hot food, and a slim chance of getting a date for the evening flickered past his eyes and into the gutter.
“Hey!” Jeb shouted, trying to stand, but the pegleg wasn’t on, so he wound up hopping in place for a moment, shoving the wood onto his stump and dumping the meager copper coinage into his pocket, then clomping after them as swiftly as he could, catching up to the father/daughter pair in a matter of moments.
