Parasite║LGBT+ Romance 🏳️‍🌈

1: Hunger

05:35, Firstsol 12th M5, 2226

To be alive is to be hungry.

Not the passing hunger pangs of a miner clocking off work, safe in the knowledge that dinner will bring satiety. No, my hunger is different.

It gnaws at my heart. It dulls my senses and makes my mind knot like an eel. Hunger bends and twists me, luring me into depravity. I haven't fed for four sols, and my very soul is unravelling.

The city's air filters are faulty again. Droplets of salty drizzle bead on my jacket. Careful to retreat into the shadows whenever a warden passes, I snake through the market's back alleys, past dumpling vends and makeshift shops constructed of sagging tarp and boxes.

Every sol I tread the same tired pathway from my pod to the hospital, and every sol I hijack that pathway by a brief stop at the Kida Biotech building. It looms over an entire eighth of the city's dome, so exquisite that it disgusts me. The building looks like it's been freshly plucked from Earth and dropped at the Solar System's Edge by Shiva's own celestial hand.

Three storeys of curved brick, mortar and glass, an exotic gem shining in the city's mire of grey recycrete and steel. How many millions of Rupees must old man Kida have spent bringing bricks and mortar, of all things, from Earth to Eris? As if we need any more reminders of the Kida family's immense power out here on the Edge; we're all surviving on the back of Kida technology.

Each step closer to the building's great shadow has sweat pooling on my lip and soaking through my uniform. I've approached the building so many times before, but I've never held my nerve for long enough to make it through those glass doors. Through rain-streaked windows I can make out clusters of svelte Kida Biotech employees in azalea-pink suits with cinched waistlines; busy workers in a hive. Occasionally one of them peels off from the throng and scurries through the foyer, disappearing into corridors beyond a glass atrium.

Proximity to the red bricks triggers my lenses. The Kida Biotechnology logo appears on my retinas in 4096-pixel brilliance. Megumi Kida's smiling face follows, and I scramble to mute my earpiece.

A willowy beauty in her thirties, Megumi Kida tilts her head and mouths her broadcast, all furrowed brow and earnest smile. I don't need to hear her voice to recognise one of her public health statements, the same as her father's before he retired, reminding Eris residents to stay warm to keep our metabolic brain implants — our meatware — in optimal condition.

As if the domes of Eris-1 are ever anything but warm, the temperature at a perpetual twenty degrees with precisely twelve hours of artificial sunlight each sol. As a child I'd wondered how the people of Earth tolerated seasonal changes in light and heat, but twenty-five years of hunger on Eris has me craving sun and monsoons, or indeed any distraction from constant starvation. Megumi's pretty face disappears from my retinas in a wash of flickering pixels, and my lenses fall to rest again.

In my early teens I'd tried to end my eternal hunger by starving myself to death, only to break down after five sols and feed ravenously. Nothing has changed since; I trudge from the hospital to my pod every evening, saving my energy and ignoring the maddening pangs in my bones. Some days I don't exist; my bed becomes a coffin and I half-expect that I'll fall asleep never to reawaken. After five sols the miasma of hunger becomes too thick to escape from. Then, I limp deranged into the city and feed under a cloud of gluttony and guilt. Whatever pitiful attempts I make to outrun it, hunger always catches up.

The iris scanner on the building's glass door glows red as I approach. I should have discussed my rare metabolic condition with Kida's scientists years earlier. Perhaps they'd find a way to fix my meatware; they'd cure my perpetual hunger, and this tired daily ritual of walking up to the red brick entrance only to flee in cowardice would be over. Megumi Kida herself might be curious about my condition and want to meet me. I doubt that there's anybody like me in the Solar System. Perhaps she'd take an interest in me and introduce me to her father as a bionic curiosity.