Jagga's Rules

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JAGGA'S RULES

by Amy Taylor

copyright 2013

CHAPTER ONE

LUNA STATION

Every day when Jagga rode home from school on the tram, the video ads poured across the screens in the car. Depending on the sector you were gliding through, the ads changed. In Parkside, the expensive neighborhood bordering Luna Station's largest open park, they offered up views of gorgeous tropical islands, accompanied by a whiff of coconut oil, sleek private spacecraft, spectacular food, high-end cosmetic treatments, hybrid wives.

As the tram approached Jagga's sector, things got more practical. People couldn't afford luxuries here. A sale on five kilo bags of STP (soy textured protein) at Ali's Market. Luna Loan & Pawn. iChange Surgery....raised symmetrical welts, stretched ears or necks, embossed tattoos. A lot of Jagga's neighbors were customers of iChange; they liked a little something to make them stand out. These people could rarely afford to leave this huge space station that served two entirely different worlds: the mining industry on the Moon, and the wealthy tourists who came to vacation, gamble, and maybe take a trip down to the Moon. The tourists didn't need welts to stand out or feel special.

So far, Jagga had resisted the urge to change his appearance much. There were two tattoos on his body, a bracelet of fish on his wrist and a Chinese character for growth on his ankle, but that was it. He was trying to hold on to a hope that he'd get out of here, and he didn't want to look too weird for some jobs. He was done growing now, at just over six feet, and his long black hair was in a single braid down his back.

Jagga da Silva was a seventeen year old Lunatico, born on Earth, who had come to Luna Station when he was four. Now his parents were divorced, his mom was Blissed-Out, and his dad wasn't much better in the parenting department; he had lost his good sense and most of his salary to his new hybrid wife. His parents never talked about what he should do when he graduated, since neither of them talked to him much at all. Every time Jagga thought of the future, he felt like his mind was running in circles.

Jagga rode the Blue tram twice a day, across the five kilometers that made up the enclosure of Luna, because ten years ago, the one thing his parents had done right had been to enroll him in the Knox School. If you graduated from the taxpayers' school in his sector, it was a ticket to a life in the rare earth mines on the Moon, or maybe in FoodWorks. Before his parents split and basically lost interest in him, they had signed him up in the private Knox School. They had bought it back in the good old days, when they both worked, and cared about him, and it was paid up to graduation, which was in a month. That was a good thing because there was no way he'd be getting in these days. Not with his mom always at the Bliss Bars, and his dad spending more money than he made on Lotti, his hybrid wife.