Harlan

"A trash planet full of trash cowboys; if you can, you're better avoiding it. Those union boys can give you all the wrong sorts of ideas" -- Cpt. Kim Sung, Alliance Shipping & Logistics Division   "Now let me tell you...   Out in the black, beyond Charbodis & her demon comets, lies the remains of the Gate. Lot of people your age don't know it, but that burning husk used to be a doorway to hundreds of worlds, a whole empire of human systems, spread all across the galaxy. Colony ships, bigger than Alliance Destroyers, wove in & out, bringing people to the three Core Worlds to set up & make new lives for themselves.   Then one day, it broke.   Don't no one alive know why or how, but it did. Turned on itself & tore itself right apart, scattering pieces out into the black. & though I may call myself a bettin' lass, I don't think we'll find out why anytime soon--them storms razing about its burning bod tear apart damn everything we've sent at it.   Worse yet, when it broke, we broke too.   See, here on-planet, the main reason why we can stick together is because we can keep in touch. Radio waves & all that. But out there, the rules change. Waves get bent & distorted by strange-matter, ship sensors become all but useless after a certain distance, & mathematics & star-maps became the only way we could even hope to plot courses to the other worlds & settlements in the system. & even then, as you probably know from watchin' the truckers ambling 'round town, space does stuff to ya--haunts you, makes you see things that ain't there, keeps you from sleepin' right. It's cold out there, in all sorts of the term, & even the toughest, meanest, dirtiest spacer can get filed down to a nub of a person after spending too long in one of them flying tin cans. Space ain't a frontier no more--it's our own nightmares making themselves at home.   It took decades for everything to calm down--must've been three or four civil wars that done broke out between worlds, or, more rightly, them companies stuck out with no base to return to & them colonials with no one to answer to. That's how the Alliance ended up getting formed--through blood & fear & war. & honestly, you'd be right in thinking that's what keeps them going, what with the leeway they give companies like MagnaCorp & all. Must've been what made them forget where they came from, because as soon as they started running out of resources & needing to start settling the Belt & terraforming the Outer Rim, they became the very thing their great-great-great-great-grandpappys ran away from--a iron fist, a red flag waving in red soil, a fleet of ships without end, a....   Ah, I see you nodding off--ain't up to listening to an old crazy gamer wax poetic I guess. Need I remind you that you asked where plastics come from, & why we here dig them from the earth, & what this lil handheld controller is. We dig 'cause our lil moon used to be a dumping ground for ships heading in & out to the Gate. When that fell apart, they had no more need for the spot. But once they started building permanent settlements out here though, them bigwigs corporations learned that one cowboy's trash is another gamer's treasure--there's money to be made here, in recycling microplastics, in setting up datamines, in prospecting for metals. Over them years, our lil trash moon got worn down into a desert of microplastics, full of wreck-visas, valleys, & mountains & populated only by fungus & the odd Trash Beast, a world ripe for setting up colonies & salvaging whatever valuables from the earth that we could find. We're just those peeps who were desperate enough for a breath of fresh air that we settled out here in the trash. It's a hard life, & we don't have much, living under the thumb of the company & the like, but we make it work with what little passes for law & civilization out here. & trust me, it gets wilder the further out into the desert you get.   & the gaming? Well, that just came naturally. Wasn't long before we discovered some of the Old Empire tech, like this here X-Box. Now, most offworlders don't really get it, but there's a fine artistry in the game--the thrill of the virtual chase, the separation of gamer & character, the weird physicality of it all. Nothing like the virtual reality sims them rich rich rich folk play in--this is the real deal, the real way to play.   Now listen kid, I know you're new here & everything, but, for real, I have a Halo match I've been itching to get back to for the last day or so, & you know I have to show the younger generation how it's done here. But before you go, a word of advice; best to live with what freedom you can get your hands on, & keep your head on a swivel for all sorts of trouble that comes with living the gamer lifestyle. Because the old song is true, & you best keep yourself together, because you'll never leave Harlan alive."