((Warning, mention of relationships that don't fit the age criterias. It is not, in fact, glorifying them, and presents such acts in a negative light, but they are there, albeit not in any explicit way, and only mentioned. That is all.))
20th of Glory, in the 1st year of the reign of House Canaigh (331 A.F), on Ceres Media
When Salamah had barely turned eighteen, he had finally figured out how the world worked. He had scraped and clawed his way up, with his sister and kid brother, and viewed the world from such lofty heights he could not believe it. He had nearly a hundred Solars stashed away, the result of months and months of saving. They were quite unusable in normal situations: Solars were worth so much that an entire sub-strata of currency had sprung up.
A few thousand Solars could buy a mining facility so vast as to be unbelivable, and a hundred could feed a family of three that ate frugally through months of hardship if need be, and could also get them tickets to just about anywhere: such transportation was expensive, and merely from the fact of having seen two worlds, the three were officialy more 'galactic' than the vast majority of other beings.
At the 8th Street Bar--real original name, that--he had a place. He talked to the patrons, all flash lower-middle-class people, with a hint of danger and criminality, the sort of people who dealed drugs, sold information, did the non-violent side of this planet's underworld, which was as much about appearance as reality. Compared to many worlds, this planet had almost no crime, and what organized crime it had was almost smothered in this veneer of showmanship, of style and grace, like those gentle-men thieves.
What would have been merely one small element of posers on a crime-ridden planet, a very tiny slice of the activities was, for the most part, it. And among that crowd, Salamah could cut deals, trade information, serve as the trusted middle-man, and occasionally get involved far mroe directly. It was good money, really, and it played to his strengths: he had good memory, was fantastically charming, and could think on his feet. He was not entirely aware of how smart he was, since his other two siblings, to differing degrees, were around his intelligence level. he suspected his sister might be slightly more intelligent, and his brother slightly less intelligent, but all three would have qualified as Genius' had they taken any number of standard intelligence tests.
And all three of them were part of this latest business, now nearly a year old. For he could hardly do all that he was doing at the Bar without the approval of the owner, a rotund middle aged man with a small, misshappen nose and large brown eyes. The man, Jorge Vellis, was, luckily enough, quite attracted to his sister, who was fifteen when they met.
Aaqilah, for her part, was quite disgusted by him, but she understood that this was the role most useful to their plans, and treated the fact that she was Jorge's lover as a unfortunate, disgusting necessity. She had confided to him after the first time, with a frown, that Jorge was even more unbearable than "Madame."
Salamah didn't think about the fact that his sister was doing an act that disgusted her for money: the gifts she was given went straight into the pool, and with jewelry, they tore out the gem and replaced it with a careful fake. And it allowed Salamah the latitutde to act. To his mind, that made it alright, so long as she was still wiilling to do it.
Morality was entirely a matter of what worked, that and family, always family. Jorge, though, was married, and that's where Marcus came in. Jorge had a young son, to go with his middle-aged wife, and Marcus was the darling of the Mother, and the friend of the son, distracting both with play-dates and the like, when it was necessary.
Were the two acts all that different? While the son was better than the father, Salamah found both distasteful, and if Marcus was far more generous with the boy, older and more the leader-type, Salamah could still tell that there were boys that Marcus, given a choice, would rather have played with. Each member of their small family did things they disliked, for the good of the family as a whole, and so long as it was part of the larger plan, indignities would, in the last, be meaningless.
His siblings were strong, strong like he was, and they could stand against all the crushing force of the world. Just as he had, just as he did. At the time his ambitions, however great, did not extend even a thousandth of the length they would, three decades later.
The three family members lived together, loved one another, and that was enough for today. After many years, he had at last pulled something from the mire of the world.
Three days from when he had this thought, his world would change abruptly.
Cast:
Salamah Laurent, age 18: A quick, handsome young man who is a regular at the 8th Street Bar. If you want to make a deal, he's your man. He loves both his brother and sister beyond words and logic.
Marcus Laurent, age 7: A clever young boy, obsessed with video games, logic puzzles, and toys.
Aaqilah Laurent, age 16: Perhaps as brilliant as Salamah, she is his closest confidant, and they are each others' best friends.
Jorge Vellis, age 52: A man Salamah hates, but pretends to respect. He owns the 8th Street Bar.
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