You probably think I deserve this, don’t you? Oh sure, it’s all fun and games until you’re knocked down the chute to a space station’s trash compactor by some barely post-pubescent farm boy with a laser sword. Unless you’re the barely post-pubescent farm boy with a laser sword, in which case I imagine it continues being fun and games.
You’re probably thinking “Who the hell is this guy to complain? What right could a space Nazi working on a moon-sized planet destroyer have to air any sort of grievance against premature death?” Well, not all that much. Unless you count the fact that I went to university, earned a degree in xenocultural studies, and struggled to support a family despite my considerable education.
I didn’t even sign up for the Imperial military; I just got drafted when the rebellion started gaining traction. I’m not a soldier! I can barely hold a blaster and pull the trigger at the same time, let alone hit some laser-wielding maniac with the ability to move things with his mind. No wonder they sent me to the most self-sustaining, heavily armored, thoroughly overmanned space station in the galaxy.
My boss is a dick, too.
Or he was, before that charming rogue blasted half his face off. Not that you would have seen that his face was missing its better half. Do you know what it’s like working in a place where everyone wears face-concealing helmets? You can’t tell your best buddy from your workplace nemesis. The easiest way to identify someone is by trying to guess their height in inches and then comparing that number to your mental database of heights and names, which is damn near impossible and not really worthy of the term “easiest.”
Sure, built-in helmet radios might solve that problem, if the chub bucket’s internal computer didn’t include an unnecessary process that converts literally everyone’s voice to a single, simplified drawl. I’ve lost three friends to “workplace hazards” (rogue droids, accidental blaster discharge, toilets made for the wrong species) since showing up on this big ball of bullsh*t, and I swear all three screamed the same scream when they died.
I just saw an eye stalk pop out of the turd-colored water here. You know the worst thing about living in a galaxy with countless sapient lifeforms? There’s just no easy way to determine who’s a thinking, feeling being, who’s a monster who will have you for lunch, and who’s an acceptable lunch target for you.
Sure, you can always try screaming at the buggers, but there’s no guarantee that you can even produce sounds at a frequency in their hearing range.
Even if they can see you, and not all of them can, they might mistake a physical action on your part as an insult from their own culture – even when the physical action in question is “walking like a freaking human being.” And that’s not even the worst of it: one of the lunch ladies at my alma mater could only see by more or less molesting the thing she was trying to see, and she was a ten-ton block of slimy tentacles – blind as a bat, only without any echolocation to help out.
Before you say anything, let me remind you that I have a degree in xenocultural studies; I have a lot of friends whose senses are completely alien to me. But you can consider someone a disgusting wretch that crawled forth from an otherworldly hell and still have respect for their culture.
“Otherworldly hell” is a pretty apt description of my current surroundings. I’ve been in this trash compactor for hours at this point. It can’t be much longer until everything here gets dumped out into the vacuum of space, which will really suck.
Wait a second; I think I just heard something coming down the main reactor’s exhaust vent. I wonder if it’s a rescue party?