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[punkhammer]

We will not trade disabled deaths for abled life. We will not allow disabled people to be disposable or the necessary collateral for the status quo. We will not look away from the mass illness and death that surrounds us or from a state machine that is more committed to churning out profit and privileged comfort with eugenic abandonment.

We know the state has failed us. We are currently witnessing the pandemic state-sanctioned violence of murder, eugenics, abuse and bone-chilling neglect in the face of mass suffering, illness and death. We are the richest nation in the world and we continue to choose greed and comfort over people and life. The state is driving the knife of suffering deeper into the gut of those who are already collapsed on the ground. The cruelty is sweeping and unapologetic.

This is no surprise to many of us on the far left. We have seen what the state is willing to do to its own people. We have never been able to rely on the state because we know the state does not care about us or our people. We have always had to organize outside of the state. This is nothing new. We have been here before and we are here again.

We know we need systemic change so that our peoples can literally survive this pandemic alive, but we also know that the kind of changes we need are most likely not coming. It is in the interest of those in power to keep people uncared for, sick and dependent on dwindling crumbs. This is one reason why ableism and poverty are so effective and why they are often inseparable. There are many things we cannot control or change right now, even as we desperately wish we could. As we fight for systemic changes, we can also try to change what is happening inside of our communities. We can learn from our mistakes and try to, at the very least, not make things worse than they already are.

Pitting the need for state and systemic change against individual and community change sets up a false binary. Both are necessary to get out of the pandemic mess we are in, just as both are necessary for any kind of liberation we are fighting for. We need to provide hazard pay to essential workers, end evictions, pay people to stay home, distribute free tests to everyone and we need everyone to wear masks, stop holding/attending in-person gatherings, stop unnecessary travel and get vaccinated and boosted. There are people on the left who are only talking about the need for a state response, while they themselves are still not vaccinated and boosted or continue to throw/attend in-person gatherings. If transformative justice teaches us anything, it is that systemic change alone is not enough. There are also many changes that must happen at the community and individual levels as well.

Vaccines have laid bare how deep ableism runs in our political movement culture. Disabled people have always known this, but I have been incredibly disappointed and angry at abled people, especially within our movements, who have reinforced abled supremacy via abled culture and entitlement and shirked their responsibility and missed opportunity after opportunity to challenge abled supremacy and act in solidarity with disabled people and communities.

Why have we allowed and contributed to the framing of vaccines as an individual choice instead of collective action, interdependence and solidarity with disabled people (especially those who are high risk), elders, children who cannot get vaccinated, the global south, essential workers and those who do not have the option to work from home? For those who are able to be vaccinated, getting vaccinated is not about personal choice. It is not like deciding to get an abortion; stop saying this. Not getting vaccinated is not “my body, my choice,” it is more like drunk driving or exposing someone to secondhand smoke.

We should be talking about getting vaccinated and making it part of our political left culture. Not only posting about it on social media, though that is important, but more importantly, engaging in direct conversations with those in our lives. Not in an attempt to shame, because we know from transformative justice that shaming people is not useful, but in a way that invites conversation and sets clear consequences, not punishment.

Getting vaccinated and boosted should be framed as part of our political commitment to interdependence, disability justice and solidarity. I have been truly disheartened, though not surprised, by the amount of people in our movements who are able to get vaccinated, who have not done so and continue to eat out and go to gatherings, instead of staying home to protect others. As someone who has experienced tremendous abuse, including sexual abuse within the medical industrial complex, I do not support forced medical treatments of any kind, including vaccines. I want you to want to do the right thing. I want you to want to protect and care for other people. If you are able to get vaccinated, but are adamant that you do not wish to, then for our collective safety, isolate yourself, stay home and stay away from other people.

Abled culture teaches abled people to be entitled. You are entitled to never have to learn anything about disability and ableism. You are entitled to get to move through the world, and through our movements, with little-to-no understanding or political analysis about disability, even as you pontificate about every other system of oppression and violence. Abled culture in our movements mean that we will say, “we must center those who are most impacted,” all day every day, but then not include disabled, especially those who are high risk, in the center during a global pandemic. Abled entitlement means that you will still continue to plan your vacation abroad, even amidst the Delta surge; you will still post pictures from your giant family holiday gathering amidst the Omicron surge.

You are not entitled to our deaths. You are not entitled to the deaths of our loved ones in the name of capital, privilege and “normal.” You are not entitled to our silence about our pain and suffering and the wet tar grief that envelops us. You are not entitled to our fear and terror at the worsening conditions and chaos of this pandemic, wondering if we will ever be able to safely leave our homes again.    

[punkhammer]

Sometime in the next few weeks, the official death toll for the two-year COVID pandemic in the U.S. will reach one million. Despite being the wealthiest nation on the planet, the U.S. has continued to have the most COVID infections and deaths per country, by far, and it has the highest per capita death rate of any wealthy nation.

This is an unfathomable number of people dead, yet, mass media are downplaying it. This is despite an empathetic New York Times headline in May 2020 of “U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, an Incalculable Loss,” and using its entire front page to print names of some of the deceased. As Luppe B. Luppen noted on Twitter, the newspaper’s more recent headline was the cruel and callous “900,000 Dead, but Many Americans Move On.”

The Times is not alone; several large mainstream publications, in complicity with politicians of both major political parties, have been beating a death knell of a drum for getting “back to normal” for months. The effect is the manufactured consent to normalize mass death and suffering—to subtly suggest to Americans that they want to move on.

News media are helping to shape public opinion in order for business to return to the very circumstances that have created this ongoing crisis. A return to normal will allow profits to be reaped by people working relatively safely from their homes (the target audience of many news organizations’ advertisers) at the expense of people working or studying in person who are more vulnerable.

[punkhammer]

Planting Berries

by Punkhammer edited by a frend

2023- Factory Road is declared best street to live in the UK.

2024- The 1st house on Factory Road is sold for more than half a million pounds.

2025- The last of the origanal tenants moves out.

Winter 2030- Factory Road is flooded for the 1st time.

Summer 2031- First major wild fire comes threateningly close to the houses.

Winter 2031- Factory Road is flooded for the 2nd time.

Summer 2032- Wild fires come even closer.

Winter 2032- Factory Road is flooded for the 3rd time.

Summer 2033-Wild fires cause severe damage to multiple houses.

Summer 2033- The residents abandon Factory Road.

Winter 2033- The 1st of the original tenants move back in.

BING! A message appeared on a phone which was resting on the arm of an old sofa.

“Mam you have a message” Called a young girl of about 7.

“Whos it from?” A voice replied from down the stairs.

“Its from the factory road mutual aid group.”

“Really? I thought I’d deleted that group years ago, who texted?”

“I don’t know someone called bleurgehgreguhbah? I dunno, I’m bringing it upstairs.” She ran up the stairs with no time to waste.

Kate swung the bathroom door open on her mam as she’s washing the dishes in the bath.

“Whats the bloody rush Kate?”

Kate shrugs while Caroline dried her hands.

“Give it here then,” she said, taking the phone off Kate and staring at the screen with confusion.

“What is it mam?”

“Its Brian. He-He’s moved back into factory road.”

“ Where’s that?”

“Oh, its where me and your dad used to live. But those houses are ruined now.”

BING…BING…BING…BING

“What was that mam?”

“He’s sending us pictures of our old houses, they dont look so bad actually… he’s inviting everyone to a meeting at his house? This is ridicules who'd go to that?”

BING….BING

“Wow, Jack and Gloria and the Dhillons said they’re gonna go, what do you think, you wanna see the house your mother grew up in?”

Kate’s eyes grew 5 times and an enthusiastic “yeah” blurted out of her mouth.

“Alright then, are you in school tomorrow?”

“Nope. The electricity cut off again.”

“Okay well that’s decided. We’ll get there early tomorrow so I can give you the full tour.”

That night Kate lay in her mother’s arms drifting in and out of sleep, listening to the most wonderful stories of the rivers and mountains her mother had grown up with, and not long later they were both fast asleep, both dreaming of the next day. Soon it was the next day and their journey to Factory Road began.

Buses no longer went to Bargoed anymore. After all, those few who lived there never left and those who did not had little to no reason to visit. This meant Kate and her mother had to walk half the way there. Over hills and through abandoned farm land they made their way until they found themselves under a Viaduct. Kate was admiring the small spindly trees that had made their way through the brick work while mum just looked up, staring at the sky in remembrance of somthing lost. Then she squeezed Kate’s hand.

“Come on, this is the street. Our old house is just around the corner.”

The houses looked much the same as she remembered. Most of the signs of gentrification washed away by water damage and buried under a thick layer of muddy ash.

But one noticable difference was each house on the street had a small windmill sticking out of it.

Brian came out to meet them. His paint covered face eclipsed by a smile and arms open wide, he embraces mam whilst Kate stares up at him with wonder. Kate likes Brian. Mam tells her that Brian used to be a girl but changed into a boy when he was in Europe. Kate wonders if she will one day become a boy and desperately hopes she will go to Europe.

“Welcome home you two,” Brian says with a genuine warmth.

“Brian, what the hell are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are, I’m moving back in. All those posh English lot dissapeared years ago. The houses are rotting and I need a free place to live, so I’m moving back in. Come on let me show you what I’ve done so far.”

“Wait a minute, how are you moving back in and why is it free?”

“Oh, becase I’m squatting.”

“Squatting? Isnt that illlegal now?”

“Ilegal but not impossible. After all, nothing’s impossible. Now come on, I want to show you around.”

Brian showed them both around, explaining thet he’d made the wind turbines as a quick source of power that can be connected individually to each house as and when people move into them. This was needed as the electricity had been cut off to the street years ago. And how the TV antennas had been adapted to pick up internet, he had also started to replace the floor boards in a couple of houses, but this was taking him a lot longer than he had expected.

That night the meeting took place and Brian explained his ideas for the street and then the people talked and talk they did till late into the night. Some were excited, some where angry and some thought it was a joke. But by sunrise, they had come to a conclusion.

They would stay. Rebuild the houses they grew up in, and defend them from floods and fire.

The next day Kate sat in a tree house that her grandfather had made for her mother back when she was about Kate’s age. The treehouse, simply a wooden pallet nailed to a tree, was the only thing left standing by the side of the river. Once there were garages, sheds and caravans but they were all gone now, washed away in the floods. But the treehouse prevailed and Kate, unaware of what was there before, watched the adults building what was to come.

On one side of her there was a group of 5 to 10 people marching up and down the steep hill. Like ants they were carrying heavy rocks to the top and placing them to build a wall between the river and the road. On the other side people were dismantling the pavement peice by peice with pick axes.

Mam had told her this was all part of a plan to stop the flooding they had come up with the night before.

This went on until dark and Kate was called in to eat. Kate was pleasantly suprised to see a beautiful feast, laid out in the communal house. This was not what she was expecting when she heard some of the older kids saying they were going to collect the food from the super market bins.

Everybody ate, then all watched an old movie together on a pedal powered projector made out of an old bike. The older kids took it in turns riding to keep the movie playing

The next morning there was an energy and a tension in the air. Everyone was piling into vans and Mam was going too, though she wouldn’t tell Kate where she was going.

Luckily, with so many curious kids floating about, secrets didn’t stay secret for long. Not long after all the grown ups had left, every single child on the street knew exactly where they were going and what they were doing. A tall boy much older than Kate explained it to her.

“You see what they wanna do is use all the water from the floods to slowly put it on the mountin in the summer so it doesn’t burn anymore. But they need all these expensive pipes and pumps n stuff, so they went to that big D.I.Y shop over the hill n they’re gonna rob it.”

That evening just after sunset lights from a convoy of vans filled the room where Kate was waiting patiently for her mother. She ran out to the sound of passenger doors being slammed shut while back doors were getting yanked open. Up and down the street people were running back and forth with arms full of piping

The tall boy seemed to be telling the truth Kate thought to herself.

The next morning was the day Kate had been waiting for. Today they would start work on the hill behind the house. Diggging trenches and laying pipes was not what she had dreamed of when her mother had told her stories of hiding in the ferns and picking berries, but she could hardly imagine that now, looking over the rolling hills of mud and ash. But there was no time to greave for what would surely return so she continued helping her mum. Mum would dig the trench then Kate would lay the pipe, then they would connect the pipes together and they went on like this along the hillside.

The next morning, when the police arrived to search the entire street, they found nothing. Even though what they were looking for was all around them, the pumps placed under the paving slabs and pipes buried under soil, they couldn’t see any of it. After a few mud pies of encouragement from the kids, which Kate may or may not have participated in, they left empty handed.

Summer 2053 - Kate and her daughter walk the hills behind Factory Road, collecting berries. Caroline waits at home, preparing to turn the berries into a pie.

[punkhammer]

[punkhammer]

I do not want to be part of the crafty underclass in a cyberpunk dystopia. I do not want to be confronted by militarized police drones or have to wear defensive AI camera camouflage. I want this:

[punkhammer]

So my pitch is a solarpunk Harvest Moon (or Stardew Valley for those not old school like me) game in South America, but instead of being a farmer, you're some kind of... super park ranger, and your duty is to restore natural enviroments and build healthier, sustainable communities, set of course in a fictionalized Latin American country, with all enviroments from mountain chains to rainforests to deserts to ocean.

There's no money in the game, you gain points based on how healthy the enviroments you rebuild are and how much you help the community. You start out with former intensive farmland contaminated by agrotoxics or mountain ranges exploited by mining, and then you start introducing plants, then caring for small fauna, until you're able to reintroduce big emblematic megafauna and predators like condors and jaguars.

Having a good relationship with your neighbors (which are spread all over the *continent*) now, is vital so you can build better communities; installing renewable energy, promoting health and education, cooperatives instead of extractivist corporations. You can also learn new techniques and open up new mechanics by knowing each other, and the better you do, the easier your job becomes, in fact, most things in the game (like in real life lol) are only possibly by community building.

yes, of course there's dating sim mechanics

yes, of course you can pet the dog/cat

yes, of course the soundtrack is just Mercedes Sosa in 8-bit

[punkhammer]

i dont want to play a game where the main character has to save the world from certain destruction anymore. i want to heal the world, to travel to wastelands and analyse what happenned, what i should do. i want to understand the ecosystem and do stuff to heal it. i want the main character to have friends who are also healing the world. if not, then i want the main character to become friends with new people who also want to do that, and no, i dont want this to be a tale of tragedy and how humanity always f thing up because of greed. i want to see humanity understanding that it wasnt kind, that is was the worlds destroyer, and i want humanity to step back and say "no, this is enough" and try to heal it. i want to see the wastelands slowly fill themselves up with life, life i helped grow, life that refused to give up, and i do not want the main character to do it because theyre getting paid. no. f that. i do not want to see a sad and lonely and edgy main character, i want them to have a soul, a desire to help, a desire to heal and fix what has been done to the world.

theres way too much games about saving the world and how humanity is small and evil. i want more games about healing and showing that, yes, humanity is small and evil, but it is also big and kind and it does not want to kill, it never wanted to, but it has wronged the world and is now its job to fix it.

[punkhammer]

Good morning, evening, or afternoon! The official cover art of Issue 01 was revealed recently. It was drawn by our co-EIC, @mosshawkarts (hey! That’s me! I’m the one writing this! 😁)

Here is the link to the Twitter post. Every week until the January 11th release date, we will be randomly drawing two winners of a free Issue 01. The pool will consist of those who retweet.

As a tiny little heads up, be on the lookout for our Patreon, which we are currently working on getting set up. In addition to other Cool Stuff™️, it will be the sole host of Solarpunks, a bimonthly comic illustrated by @mosshawkarts and written by our poetry editor, J.D. Harlock.

Thanks for reading!

Have a wonderful night or day. 💚🌞

[punkhammer]

Factions for SOLARPUNK 40,000

PLAYABLE FACTIONS

STAR PUNKS

The star punks are a loosely connected collection of small gangs and affinity groups that either out of choice or necessity do not settle on a single planet but travel space squatting abandoned space ships and discovering new or forgotten planets where most of the galaxy have fallen into established ways of living. Those who identify as star punks are still experimenting new ways to live, challenging accepted galactic truths. A mixture of alien races, they are resourceful, inventive and when threatend can be extremely violent.

EVA PLANETARY DEFENCE

The EVA are a race of ailens defined as much by science as they are tradition. Their understanding of reincarnation and connections to past lives helps them to create infrastructure with thousands of years of knowledge. Every planet with a sizebale EVA city has a well armed and well organised planetary defence collective. It is made up of mega robots, air ships, and infantry sworn strictly to only take up arms if the planet they have sworn to protect comes under threat, though in times of disaster it is not uncommon for a small portion of their force to be sent to another planet in their defence.

THE WAR MACHINES

Built by the humans towards the end of the 21st century, the war machines are robots built with an AI intended for nothing except war. They were not mobilized en mass until the war of the worlds began in the 25th milenium when the humans, considarebly out-gunned and out-numbered by the EVA, took the desperate option to fire thousands of ships full of these war ready automated beings into space in the hopes of overwhelming the EVA. Now, long after the end of the war, due to the war machines ability to rebuild and replicate, they are still one of the biggest threats to life in the galaxy— led by nothing more than a desire to kill all organc life.

LOCAL DEFENCE GROUPS

Though the human military structure was dismantled thousands of years ago. What elements of it’s infrastructure could be deemed useful were maintained and can be found all across the galaxy, confronting threats of all kinds. Most towns and cities will have a defence group of some shape or form, from the mountain village that has one armoured hover tank which every member of the village will be taught how to use when they come of age, to cities with hundreds of solar armoured volunteers backedup with numerous vehicles dedicated to protection of their entire home planet.

THE IRATA

In the mid 20th century on earth there were many high profile cases of space exploration. But for every one covered in the news papers of the time, there were hundreds that were done in complete secrecy. One secretive project sent numerous different animals further distances then known to be possible. All attempts to track these animals’ progress through space were complete failures after a certain distance. Yet the humans persisted, sending countless animals into the unknown and what they didn’t know was all of these ships were landing in the same cluster of planets all rotating around the same star, now known as the eye of the Wilde. A sun that not only emmits light and radiation, but knowledge. These sun rays combined with numerous chemicals aboard the ships the animals had arrived on, and the connection to Earth’s computer data bases meant a rapid evolution was set in motion. Within 10,000 years they became what we now know as the Irata. Anthropamorphic creatures, from dogs to monkeys, cats and most famously—rats, who are most famous due to their large population and their inclination towards war and planetary invasion. Those originating from dogs are more likely to join with other races in planetary defence, the apes and monkeys are usually found living in the bigger citys along side humans and EVAs, whilst the cat-like ones are usually loners, either travelling alone or with the space punks. But really you could see any subspecies of Irata doing any of these things, though these are the usual roles they choose to take.

DEVOUTS TO THE OLD WORLD

Fighting a war they lost 1000s of years ago, they are all but forgotten by the vast majority. They hide in the shadows of their 4 hellish planets in worship to the misery and cruelty of days gone, adorning power armour with skulls, spikes and insignia of their new religions— based on the old ways of living. Their only goal and reason to exist is to destroy all that has been built in the last 10,000 years. To reduce the galaxy to ash and declare themselvs the Divine rulers of the ashes using outdated military equipment and armies of creatures manifested in their dark labs.

[punkhammer]

[punkhammer]

Over the next 2,000 years, that small exploratory fleet became the Musalians, a human civilization sharing an exoplanet called Vutoa with multiple other humanoid alien species — Hyena-like humanoids, transhuman cyborgs, human-plant hybrids, and powerful mind-reading symbiotes. DePass said that the setting draws its inspiration from both the Star Trek franchise and Marvel’s Black Panther.

“It’s an original Afrofuturist TTRPG,” Walters said. “It is a science fiction universe where there is no colonialism. There is no expansionist rhetoric. That is not the root cause of the action.”

[punkhammer]

Monthly Micro Fiction Contest

Link to Submission Page

December Theme: Solarpunk Holidays

Authors may send up to one micro fiction per monthly submission window.

Submissions must be 250 words or less and based on the monthly contest theme.

No submission or contest fees.

Submissions are capped at 100 per monthly contest.

One winner per month gets a prize of $25 and publication on the Solarpunk Magazine website, from where it will be emailed to hundreds of our blog subscribers and posted to our social media pages.

Each winner is announced the following month. All other regular submission guidelines apply.

All monthly micro fiction contest submission windows open at 12:01 a.m. on the third Friday of each month, and close at 11:59 p.m. on the fourth Thursday of each month.

The theme for December 2021 is “Solarpunk Holidays.”

Open Submission Windows and Themes:

2021

December 17-23 — Solarpunk Holidays

2022

January 21-27 — Afro-Solarpunk Futures (black authors only)

February 18-24 — Climate Fiction

March 18-24

April 15-21

May 20-26 — Queer Futures (LGBTQIA2S+ authors only)

June 17-23

July 15-21

August 19-25

September 16-22 — Indigenous Solarpunk Futures (Indigenous authors only)

October 21-27

November 18-24

December 16-22

Here is the link to the Moksha submission page, same as above.

And here is the link to this same contest info on our website.

Thank you! 🌞💚

[punkhammer]

A new game is possible

[punkhammer]

Im working on a solarpunk setting for people to play games with there favourit minituares in. As you can see Im not great at computer art lol so if anyone wants to help me out or are interested pleas get in touch :-)

[punkhammer]

Y’all know the drill! Reblog if you post:

Corvidcore 🦅

Fairycore 🦋

Mermaidcore 🧜🏻‍♀️

Glamourpunk ✨

Solarpunk or lunarpunk 🌓

Basically anything up that alley 💖

And I’ll give you a follow!

[punkhammer]

SOLARPUNK 40,000

SOLARPUNK 40,000 A green bright future

It’s the 41st millennium and as a result of generations of dreamers prevailing through centuries of war, the galaxy exists in a state of relative peace—as much peace as is possible in a galaxy littered with parasitic bugs the size of skyscrapers, rats the size of apes (though most of them are much nicer than you might think), and rogue A.I.s (orbitting relics of the old wars of the year 30,000). Not to mention those determined to drag the galaxy back into the dark ages of pre-30k times. But despite these and many other threats to humans, animals, and aliens alike, the lives lived in this time are undoubtedly worth living and when necessary, worth fighting for.

The H.C.I.P. (Human Coalision of Industrial Planets) and the technologically advanced Eva race collapsed, exhausted from constant war and smashed by a galaxy-wide chain reaction of solar flares, revealing the sentience of the stars. The situation in the galaxies was verging on apocalyptic; Food production, Industry, health care and society seemed to stop in it’s tracks almost overnight, but as the sun must set so it must rise, and when the sun rose worlds did not end, they were reborn. And given another chance. The gentry and elites tried to hold on to their old lives, but those who had lived lives of trauma and toil in the factories or on the battle fields barely looked back as they strove to make a new life, a better life and the work began

Through collaboration and ingenuity the galaxy united to turn factory to forest and battle fields to meadows. Forms of sustainable living were invented and re-invented until perfected. Layers of oppression were peeled away like wet clothes and discarded, as people found the time to find themselves.

Now the galaxy is alive with beautiful planets of many colours, where winding jungles meet towering skyscrapers and floating behemoths, known as crafted gardens overflowing with plants previously believed to be extinct, travel space.

It is the future, we have not found peace but something worth fighting for.

[punkhammer]

Chapter 4 of my solarpunk story

Tiny Chapter 4

The boat untetherd and cruising on auto pilot in the direction of the coast Togel and K-9 are sat at the front of the boat dangling there bare legs over the edge, letting water lap up and splash onto their feet and soaking up the early spring time sun while dolphins leap over and around them from every direction while a flock of birdss follow them from up high in a nearly cloudless sky. Togel is used to this by now, after all she has been living at sea for about 15 years and knows how truly alive the oceans are. But the look on K-9’s face —now that is a truly beautiful sight to her. His eyes almost falling out of his head as he tries desperately to see everything there is to see, his mouth seemingly in a permanent state of mid-yawn, open in amazment. Skin glowing in the sun shine she knows this moment is much bigger for him than it is her and that made it special.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” She asks. He replies with a sadness like he wishes he is “

“No.” Not taking his eyes off the dolphins for a second.

“So you from the Technostates?”

“Yeah did my robot hand give me away?” Holding up his left hand as if confesing a shameful secret.

“Well yes, that and the fact you were screaming in 1’s and 0’s last night.”

“Oh yeah sorry abot that.”

“No no reson to be sorry kid, just people don’t normally talk in those sorts of languages around here. So you never been here but where have you been? Where has your traveling life taken you so far?” K-9 finaly takes his eyes off the dolphins and lowers his head, staring at his feet in some sort of preperation to confes a crime.

“Um nowhere actually, I aint realy seen nowhere at all, that is except the village I lived in my whole life, but that’s just a metal slab. A place to launch off from or land on, nothing to see there.”

“What do you mean nowhere? You’re Ratkin aren’t you? One of the dirty kids ride or die traveling punx, no?”

“Um well no, actually I’m not” his head sank deeper below his sholders, almost in line with his knees. He wishes he could submerge his entire head under the water and dissapear under the ocean of shame, but he thinks to himself he owes the nice lady an explanation. After all she had saved his life, not to mention she could make the best damed hot cocoa he’d ever tasted, so he proceeds without lifting his head. “I live, I mean lived, in that village I mentioned. Yeah that slab of metal, well I was the only kid there you see, just me my mom and dad and a hand full of old fishermen and their tired wives. There really was nothing to do except from time to time the Ratkin would show up looking for boats to give them lifts to all sorts of places and sometimes they would get stuck in my village for days. I liked it when they got stuck, it felt like the village would turn into a city for those days. There would be fires on the beach and music and stuff. Anyway I would always go and introduce myself to them. Some were mean but most were nice.”

He lifts his head with excitment and pride, “one of them gave me this jacket its not fake or anything its a real life Ratkin denim jacket. I wanted a tattoo but he wouldn’t give me one, but to stop me nagging he gave me his jacket. It’s cool isnt it?”

“Yeah mate you got some nice patches on there, do you know the bands?”

“Of course! Im not a poser,” he says like he’d never been so insulted in his life “I downloaded them on this thing didn’t I.” Waving his robotic hand with a cheeky smile .

“Okay we’re almost there now so go pack your bag I think your stuff should be dry by now.” Looking up at a range of clothes waving in the wind, K-9 jumps up and gets busy pulling the clothes off the line one by one and cramming them into his bag, whilst Togel prepares the boat for docking. Land is approaching and K-9 looks up to see a golden beach with a background of dark thick forest glistening in the sunlight. A far cry from what he knows beaches to be back home. He likes this new view much more and wishes he could show mom and dad. He thinks to himself, they would like it more too.