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Bui Doi

They're called Bui-Doi

The Dust of life

Conceived in hell

And born in strife

They are the living reminders

Of all the good we failed to do

-“Bui Doi”, Miss Saigon

“We’ve failed.”

“Nonesense! We haven’t even started yet!” G sniped at him.

Howard looked at him sadly. He’d known the professor for nigh all his life. Their parents had met on the ship to the colony. They’d grown up in the same district – a clean, middle-class neighborhood on one of the relatively affluent L2 colonies. As far from L2’s former penal colonies as it could be without being located at another LaGrange point, their colony was self-sufficient from Earth - if only barely. As children, they’d been forced to attend the same synagogue. They used to make faces at each other behind the rabbi’s back, been slapped on the head for it by their mothers. They’d grown apart in high school and chosen different colleges – Howard choosing to attend an Ivy League engineering school while G had chosen a private liberal arts college known for its political activism, despite majoring in the sciences. They’d remained in touch though - G had provided the toast at Howard’s wedding. Shortly after that, he’d left to attend grad school at L1 while Howard had chosen to remain and see about opening his own business. A repair shop, he’d thought, giving himself plenty of free time to tinker with his own inventions, not to mention goof off with his pretty new wife.

A decade later, she was dead – murdered by soldiers from the Earth Sphere Alliance when they violently quelled a protest against the military dictatorship at the same liberal college G had attended. She had been a political science professor there, proud of her students for the activism, encouraging and helping organize the protest. Civil disobedience, non-violent protest – she believed in those things, preached and practiced them passionately. Twenty-three students had died as well as one professor and the unborn child within her. Not a single soldier perished. Six weeks passed before G showed up on his doorstep, pried the flask away, forced him to shave, and gave him a new cause.

“We’ve already failed,” Howard said, contradicting his old friend. He looked through the glass separating them from the zero gravity chamber, looked at the boy in there dripping with sweat as he tried to navigate a hover chair meant for a man twice his size. God of Death? His voice hadn’t even started to crack from puberty yet. The hollows in his cheeks were just beginning to fade thanks to G’s new diet regimen, but Howard knew from his bi-weekly medical examinations that you could still count the ribs on the former street rat.

He had meant better than this. He and G and G’s new friend, the bio student from L1, hadn’t they meant to do better than this? He designed Tallgeese, presented it with the highest of hopes. They were going to create a better world for those kids, for the sake of those like his own who had never been born. He wanted a drink but even his saliva was sticking in his throat. He’d meant to prevent children like Duo Maxwell from being created. Because they were created, not born. No woman gave birth to a God of Death. That was something war did. Gunfire and violence and rape and poverty and hunger and despair and fear and hate. Those things could create a pilot for the Deathscythe. And Howard hated it.

“We expect him to kill for us, and more than likely to die for us. We’ve already failed him, and we don’t have a single damn excuse for it.”

A handful of years later, Howard is staring through the winder at the five young men – boys, really – trying to grab a few minutes of respite in the room that serves as a cafeteria on the Peacemillion, and he can’t help being reminded. They’ve already failed, he and G and J and those like them. He prays, although it’s been years – decades – since he’s been to temple. Prays that those boys will do better than them. And then he takes another drink, and wanders back off into the corridors of his ship, his good intentions and dreams of better trailing behind him like the dust of life.

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