I want Leathy many sweeps ago please
Leathy's legs were propped up on the coffee table. His pinky nail worked away on a kernel stuck in the gum of his right fang while he watched Proohe furiously tear apart a well meaning bakers tarte tatin. The baker would be next. The TV was cranked high enough to drown out the dripping that served as the caverns incessant background noise, and then a bit more so he could ignore his cloister-neighbors requests for him to turn it down.
His palmhusk let out a ding. He absently reached to check who it was, expecting another former classmate pestering him for something or other. No, I can't come to that show, I'm back in the caverns. No, I can't help you study, I graduated last perigee, remember?
Instead, what he saw made him sit straight up. They got back to him already? His other hand blindly palmed around for the remote and paused the TV while the other unlocked the device and tapped into the Empire-sanctioned notifications app.
"GEE, THANKS!" his neighbor screamed.
He waited to make sure she was done chastising him, and then pressed into the alert.
Leathy Contin,
Your application for the Empire MD program has been rejected.
He stared at it. That one line meant that in the eyes of the Empire, he would never be a doctor.
A quick scan of the rest offered nothing more than hyperlinks to other opportunities to serve the Empire.
He tightened. He sucked in his breath and wrung the phone in his hand. He should've waited. He could've retaken that class. That test. Maybe he should've paid that Fleet nut to edit his application. Why did he think he'd get in?
"FUCK!" He shot the husk across the block where it cracked on the cavern wall next to Prunes' frozen, devilish smile. He stood and crossed his arms over his forehead and stayed there. He choked back a sob and pulled in a sharp, shaking breath through his teeth.
That was it.