My name is Riley Mackenzie.
I was born on Cambridge Bretonia thirty two years ago.
I went to University on the planet, & that seems the best place as any to begin my story:
I was hanging out one night in a small bar nearby the campus; debating Planetform mineral rights & historical terraforming disasters with a classmate of mine, while (to be honest) drinking quite a bit.
A guy steps out of the shadows from the back of the bar & invites himself into our debate; taking my side & going on and on (at irritating length) about how all disasters stem from 'Screwing with Gaia's pattern' or something like that...honestly I really don't remember it that clearly, but the bottom line is: he & I ended up sitting at the bar talking about Gaia, mythology & politics for hours.
As the time & drinking progressed, he finally introduced himself as 'Damien' & I mentioned to him just in passing that I think they should allow libraries to apply for liquor licences.
Then, He just completely snapped & lost it.
He bolted off his stool, getting in my face & growling and ranting insanely about the government, corporate corruption, & boiling frogs.
Heh!...& I just figured it would be a really good way to get more people to go to the library.
However, neither of us would back down, until we finally came to blows & beat the hell out of each other.
Eventually, we both healed up just fine, & became friends shortly before he introduced me to a handful of some Gaian mates of his that offered some easy side work for the Green Front.
For awhile, I was having a good life making a decent living as a fact-checker for the Cambridge University Database during the workweek, & spent alot of my freetime with Dimi, writing Green Front propaganda through our neural nets.
One night as he & I were winding down from a big dinner with our girlfriends Rhiannon & Erin... just talking, lounging, & otherwise just casually hanging out together, the Bretonian Navy busted in the apartment Erin & I shared, tossing in a flash-bang grenade that knocked us all unconcious before taking us into custody. (& incedently, to this day, they still have yet to charge me with an accual crime.)
Anyway, moving on: after six days in jail, the four of us were anonymously bailed out & flown to the Edinburgh System, and It was explained to us that the Green Front takes care of it's own, & that Erin & I were now under the protection of the Gaians.
I - was - pi*sed!!...
I still had my friends with me, but while in hiding on Islay Station, I was forced start my life completely from scratch.
After a while, I adapted & became a station miner and joined a group of workers called the Gravedancers Union toiling on an already decades long job called 'the Level 66 Project' while Erin simultainiously went into business with Rhiannon and opened a pub inside one of 66's finished caverns.
Dimi was transfered to the Gaian Guard & became increasingly anti-social with the three of us...That is, when he got the rare chance to come back & visit while on leave from the Lewis system next door.
That not withstanding, a couple of years passed, & I was having a good life...The 66 Project was in it's final stage of construction, the Union leader offered me a permanent job as a groundskeeper of what would eventually become a complete ecosystem after the last of the mining & constuction jobs dried up ...and Dimi & Rhi were the Best Man & Maid of Honor at my and Erin's wedding.
It was held on the banks of a small isolated loch quietly nestled in one of the mountian ranges on the surface of Gaia. All courtesy by the way, of Dimi's C.O. & my adopted father figure: Caulobacter Phage.
(Not his real name to be sure; more of a codename accually...but he was the originator of the 66 project, so ultimately, in a very real way just as much my boss as Damien's)
It was the best time of my life...just too bad it didn't last.
By our third year in Edinburigh, everything began to change...Rhiannon was transferred to Glendale Station in Lewis to join as a member of the same small group Dimi was in, and Erin & I barely saw either of them for entire seasons at a time.
My wife, having to run the bar alone, became very difficult to live with, & I, by this time spent everyday up to my eyeballs in work, skirting the breaking point with my own stress while doing my best to plant a forest inside an evironmentally hostile cavern system deep inside a Gaian space staiton.
& By our fourth & final year, I was lonely.
My Job took the vast majority of my waking moments... so I quit working on the Green Hell Project, (as Level 66 became known after the Gravedancers Union dissolved) so I could help Erin run her pub...all the while, attempting to re-connect with her & save our time-starved and failing marriage.
I came in to open the pub one day after Erin's closing shift the night before...she must have been overwhelmed with work & slept there for the night, because I noticed her side of the bed untouched as I woke with the station's rising daylights that morning.
I found her on the floor by the bar, face-down in a coagulating puddle of red, originating from an aggravated slit in her throat.
...& that was over a year ago by now.
Sapped of every ounce of survival instinct, I sold the bar & drank away most of the money while roaming aimlessly around Bretonia looking for my own death, until a Zoner named Reggie Waverly of the TAZ offered me an interesting & less suicidal direction to point my life in.
I wasn't sure what to make of the Discordians at first, but Reggie, Malcalypse & his Fnordettes took me in with open arms & literally saved my life.
After coming out of the worst of my depression, Mal rented me a small starter-freighter, and in honor of my wife & her favorite place, I gave it the name 'Erinloch'
...So, now I live my new life as a Zoner, & now is as good a time as any to propose a toast:
"The large print giveth, & the small print taketh away."