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EPOCH: 3. AGE: 5. DAY: 13.
Every kid born on Hestia, no matter the species, gets roughly the same introduction to their space and place: “Let me show you my ship” says the cartoon holo-floating above a half-busted school projector designed (poorly) to edu-tain. She is sketched education avatar, the one with the doe eyes and code writ more friendly than any real octo-person you’re likely meet (at least on Hestia).
She asks “Can you spell Bussard Collector?” dances the question like her people do while the tin speaker screeches it in several languages (at once, it is broken). No, I cannot spell ‘Bussard Collector’ without machine assistance and no one cared to keep the things working well once the ship left the shroud, the nebular gas cloud, where it was born. The holo-teacher beams with pride pointing to the ship’s nose–star-mole splayed toward nothing-but-nothing. Nobody tell the computerized teacher how badly the scrappers worked the Bussard’s over. Would break one of her hearts.