I spent all my teenage years on that god forsaken rock. My whole family is dead, besides my father who I want nothing to do with. So I guess I've always been somewhat of a tinkerer... I'd take something apart, look at how it's meant to work and either fix it or upgrade it somehow. I just had that knack. It certainly came in handy when you've got an entire spaceship to take apart for inspection and a strange alien world to survive on. How exactly is a 12 year old meant to survive on an empty forest planet? Barely. That's how. but I managed it. 7 years ago, I was aboard the spaceship that my civil contractor father was deployed on an exploration mission. He tagged me along, because like any 12 year old kid I wanted to be an intrepid space explorer. My dad was making my dream come true. But then the tentacle beast attacked earth, and my dad was called back. He boarded with one of his crew-mates and told me to wait for him on the ship to come back. I waited. A week. After which I decided that I was going to die of boredom or insanity from being on the tiny ship. So I took apart the teleporter to see how it worked. After I had done that, this 12 year old kid was able to beam down to the planet and up again with ease. It was a great escape from the monsters. After about 2 months, I decided I would build something to keep me entertained. I looked in one of my dad's old magazines and saw an acoustic guitar. It looked pretty. So I made a crappy one out of pieces of bark and a few strings of metal from the ship's FTL drive. Sure, I sucked at first like any budding musician. But after 3 more months of playing around, I was starting to hit some random notes that kinda sounded like music. Before long, I was re-tuning, re-stringing and re-building my little means of entertainment. At the age of 14, I decided I needed another hobby. I looked at some of the books in the shiplocker storage container, and found the survival handbooks that my dad used to show me. I read through them all. At least seven times. It was only after the 3rd year that I decided to put the knowledge in those books to use. So I beamed down to the planet, built a little shelter out of a hole in the ground, lit a campfire and played guitar until morning came. It was the most fun I'd had in 3 years. Over the next 3 years, I built myself a little home. It was structurally sound, waterproof, had a basement, a bed made from plant fiber... It was my home away from spaceship. But the point was, it wasn't the tiny spaceship. Then one night, it finally hit me. I had been passing my time, waiting for my dad to come back. To come and get me. To rescue me from the little paradise I had made for myself. But that one, fateful night, it just fucking hit me. He wasn't coming back. I'd have to go find HIM. I spent the seventh year gathering minerals from the ground and smelting them down into usable material to create a long distance communications relay. I dumped it on top of my shack's roof. It must have been a full day before I used that communicator. By now, I had assumed that I MUST be the only human alive. After all, if my great and amazing father hadn't survived, no-one could. The moment I activated that radio, some Floran would respond to my call and have me for breakfast. I guess I got the SECOND worst response possible. A small USCM squad picked up my broadcast and beamed down to my little shack. Shortly before a woman, who also attempted to rescue me, but no, the USCM had to come in and claim that they were the superiors. They were the heroes. Shortly after being picked up, I was reunited with my father. We had... a talk. I asked why he never came back. I wanted to know how he could just leave me on that planet, why he would leave a 12 year old to fend for himself. How he could let me live my entire teenage life on a purple dirtball. He told me why. "Protocol." Huh. Protocol. The command of the great and powerful USCM is far more important than your son's upbringing? To lose a fight against our doomed home planet? You had your goddamn son with you in deep space, and you just LEFT me there. I despise my father. I despise the USCM. And I'm beginning to despise the remainder of the human race. The only people left alive are USCM fanatics, and USCM soldiers. And my dad. The worst one of them all. Well, maybe I can't say that. He gave me the laptop I'm writing this blog post on now, and he "allowed" me to fix up our old ship and get it flying again. WHICH I FUCKING DID, DAD. I FUCKING DID IT, YOU SKEPTICAL BASTARD. Could have given me some spending pixels if you really wanted me to survive? No? Alright. Guess I'll have to find my work someplace else. My first few nights in society have been spent exactly the same as they have been the past 7 years. Boring. Living off scraps of alien meat and dry bread. The USCM are scum. And if you're a human being with a scrap of dignity left within you, I suggest you avoid them at all costs. Now I need to find work in a galaxy as a fixer... or a builder... or a bard... or something. Something I'm good at. The only opportunities that have come my way so far involve cutting off my limbs. Which I need for the things I'm good at. I swear to god, if I ever get the chance, I'm bringing down the remainder of the USCM. Like the post title says... The grass isn't always greener. The green is just paint covering up the same shit-coloured empty wastelands. Except that the painted wasteland has more assholes than a few dumb monsters that want to eat me. - Wrynnus
