WRECKAGE
“Why did your mama name you Lash?” Mama asked.
“Because I hold you all together like the fixer I is,” Lash replied.
“But no one trusts a fixer the way no one trusts a star seeker. So tell me the story you’ll tell the scroungers when they ask you what you is.”
“I’m a four-bit boy, just a linger and a swift runaway. My papa was a looter and I’m a rape child, nothing more.”
But Lash’s papa was no looter, no scrounger. Lash’s papa was a captain. Captain Starfall.
And Lash was worse than a fixer, but he wouldn’t even tell his mama that. Lash could see the way things worked after just one trip through their workings, once apart, once together again. The first time it was pieces then not pieces, and he knew like a fixer what to do when he found just the pieces. He could put them together again or take a bad part out and bend a new one out of scrap. A fixer kept things working and no one trusted a fixer because everyone wanted to be one. If you were a scrounger all you could do is look for things and see if they worked and put them to good use. But if you were a fixer you could make a thing work that never worked before.
It was worse what Lash did, for Lash made things that never were.