Challenge #03073-H165: Soft, Fluffy, Friendly
They had been working for a few months now with the havenworlders, who had gotten quite used to hearing them wake up screaming but it broke their crewmates' hearts to hear it each night. A de-regger rescue who was still learning that the world was not as cruel as they believed. The companion goes in one sleep cycle as the human begins to whimper and thrash in the special sleeping bag. A gentle hand petting the hair, a soft, trilling, lullaby, the human settles back into slumber reaching out to hold their friend's hand, a very, very gentle squeeze of sleepy gratitude. -- Anon Guest
Not every Human is capable of bouncing back from utter deprivation. In a world where children are 'freeloaders' but every baby has the right to be born, there are many cruelties wearing the sheep's clothing of charity. The people who made these worlds wanted to exist in an era of rofantasised[1] glory, and succeeded in recreating a great many of the factual and historical torments for those they dislike.
Sweatshops, workhouses, prison sentences for poverty, depersonalisation that went hand in hand with pointless labor. Slavery that was everything about slavery except the name. True evil in all its depravity, with blatantly treating people as things. Most of them are known as Deregger Worlds, where all that matters is the making of money by those who already have too much.
Human Roi was a Rescue from one of those Deregger worlds. Taken by force from a slaver colony by the CRC. Rehabilitated to a point, and leased with caveats to the Fiscal Upside with the condition that their therapy continued at a comfortable pace. The Neotomin aboard pretty much fell in love with Human Roi when they referred to the crew collectively as "My ratties." Then they learned about the Workhouse Howl.
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