We're out there, you know. The people who slip through the cracks. The ones that hurt too much to really succeed but don't hurt obviously enough to get help. It's a terrible feeling, to be jealous of someone who's in more pain than you are, just because they have legally mandated support. -- Anon Guest
[AN: Speaking as someone who's lived in the cracks, I get it. It's one of the reasons my pet universe has systems that patch the cracks.]
You can say a lot with small words. "It's going to be okay," is one fine example. So is, "I love you." Can you imagine for a handful of seconds how powerful it is to say, "I need help," when society around us is determined to have us make it on our own? When, faced with being labelled a failure, you are brave enough to say those three small words?
Imagine, in turn, being the poor sod whose job it is to say 'no'. It can break a heart. It can erode a soul. It is not a job for someone who possesses even an iota of sympathy for their fellow beings. Or, if they do, it is a job for the people who find the chinks in the defences woven by red tape.
There's a common lament amongst those who are swept into the cracks of administrivia. "If I were more broken, I would get the help I need." It is the cry of those with work-arounds. Coping strategies. It is the common chorus amongst those who use all their energy keeping up the facade of normalcy for the day, only to crumble into pieces at night.
That, too, can wear out a soul.
Yet it is always the able and sound who decide who is broken enough to need help. Those who demand the worst case scenario before action is deemed necessary. Those who would rather spend a fortune for the sake of pinching a penny. Those who choose to ignore one simple truth: It always costs less to solve the problem than let it fester.
It costs less to give homes and therapy to the homeless than it does to criminalise it. It costs less to have basic income than it does to fight a war against drugs, poverty, and crime. It costs less to educate everyone in the truth than it does to smear the world with lies.
Nevertheless, there are always those who scream about the people who could be 'faking it' for various reasons. Attention. Sympathy. Amusement. It doesn't matter. They somehow imagine that needing something is an excuse to get something their victims don't deserve.
Apart from Greater Deregulation, those kinds of people are nowhere within the Galactic Alliance. Pragmatism and practicality have won out. Even if there were one in ten who were fraudsters, the argument goes, better to let that one profit than let the other nine starve.
This is a shock to Deregger expatriates.
"You're... just... giving me a residence? Just like that?"
Aunty Lynn took a centring breath. Her twentieth so far in dealing with this lost waif found hiding in her district. "Yes. This is yours. You need it."
"And the food?"
"Yes, the food as well." Aunty Lynn decided to head off the next chain of questions. "The clothing, furniture, and soft additions are all part of our standard welcome package, for free."
"But... what if I'm faking it? What if I'm a fraud?"
A set of common questions amongst Dereggers. Aunts, Uncles, and Untys[1] should be used to it, but they rarely ever were. Aunty Lynn took her twenty-first centring breath. "I don't think anyone would be voluntarily snatching up other people's leftovers with the speed and determination you showed," she allowed. "Neither would they be voluntarily huddling by the heat exchange units for warmth, or sleeping in a hammock made of cardboard and station wiring."
"Someone still could," mumbled the waif. A chief feature amongst Deregger escapees was the ability to fit themselves into small, otherwise neglected spaces. It was why every trucker whose routes went through Deregger space kept the air in their holds after they hit Deregger ports.
It was why those same truckers packed extra food for those journeys. It was why they left that extra food out where it could be easily found.
It was why those same truckers often found themselves with more family than they could have bargained for.
They fled their planet looking for help, told that death was the only thing they'd receive. Death and experiments done on them, usually. It was always a great shock to them that they found the help they went looking for in the first place.
"Then that someone will still receive. Better than one in one hundred gets to pull a scam than ninety-nine suffer."
"That's not what they say back home," murmured the waif.
Aunty Lynn had one response to that one. She laid a comforting shoulder on the waif's shoulder and said, "Aren't you glad you're not there any more?"
[1] Unty - pronounced oon-tee. The gender neutral form of aunt or uncle.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / ardasavas]
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