In self-imposed exile, even with a beloved pet, a person can go slowly mad from loneliness. The world is lush, perfect for colonies. The first colonists to come down? A boat-load of GOOD luckers. Bad luck doesn't stand a chance.
https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03192-h283-a-bad-luckers-best-friend -- Anon Guest
In all the universe, there is a form of balance. For good luck, there is also bad luck. And, as many Humans know, some people have all the luck.
Those people are called Luckers.
Lucker Phy had the worst kind of bad luck. Everything she loved and held dear came to a horrible end. Except her gengineered pet, Porgy. The Mycojelly Dog was literally made to be immortal, as well as balancing out Phy's personal luck field.
All that said, exile is not always good for the psyche.
Phy was busy working on some shale roofing tiles when she saw that some other people had decided to work on that. These ships made a relatively soft landing, lightly grated[1] in the last few Standard Distance Units as they fell victim to Phy's luck field.
It took two days to reach the landing zones, where those there had made it out without a scratch. They were busy salvaging the wreckage and making vehicles out of it and the tools that had also survived the crashes.
Phy had a very logical question for them. "What the flakk are you doing here? I'm tremendously bad luck!"
"We know," chirped one of her new neighbours. "We're all good Luckers who are craving a challenge for a change."
Another neighbour grinned as they hauled some heavier debris from a crater. "Lucky for us there's you and this whole world. Just what we needed, really."
They'd come out of their way to be here, and make a community of their own.
Lucky for Phy.
[Photo by David Clode on Unsplash]
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[1] Soft landings are those in which the ship can plausibly take off again. Hard landings may include a casualty count and survivor list. 'Grated' landings have a debris field spread across a vast area and a lot more survivors.