Jorlit

At what point in his travels this eagerly shouldered habit had moved from a hobby to part of his career, he didn’t know, but moving from the first house, with a basket of freshly baked cookies in hand, he pondered this and many other things. Was the flour from the cookies grown from the mold they had brought in? They were delicious, with little sugary sprinkles pressed into the surface so they both squished and crunched as Jorlit bit into one. When had he started the routine he now followed, knowing which houses needed what? Had it just always been this way?

He stumbled while lost in the process of remembering each family on his route and how he had met them, when he heard a scuffle nearby. A child’s yelp, the sound of sticks hitting pavement, and a “You SAID you were gonna bring FOOD” stopped young Jory in his tracks. His cookies wouldn’t make it home that day, with young and hungry mouths in need, his golden heart would not let him live with plenty when he knew of so many that were in more dire need than he, himself, was. And so, finishing his cookie, and silently berating himself for the indulgence, he put the rest away for the young ones who would truly be elated at the treat.

In his twenty two Rotations, he had learned a thing or two about the systemic hunger that plagued their planet. The closest one to the Flares that was still bearing life, Earth had been hit the hardest by the food poverty that plagued the galaxy’s inhabitants. Not only was it the most affected by the radiation that still emanated from the burnt out sun, but those within the Cores had found it almost impossible to find any plant or animal that thrived in such a way as to provide food for everyone. When the Solarnaut project had been launched, it was a last-ditch attempt to keep Earth’s Cores inhabitable by philanthropists among the aristocracy that had survived the Flares, and though it had succeeded, it was not without cost. The processing of solar slime and it’s discovery as a universal fertilizer meant that food only trickled down at first, initially resulting in a dark and chaotic start, though it had quickly built into tight knit communities, often folks who had already shared cultural and societal similarities. The Scarcity program had been the beginning of a civilisation, and a means to provide for the expanding population.

The Scarcity Program was a collective agreement, a system put into place by the Rotation Engineers of Earth, incollusion with those of the other planets and as many of the votes of the people as they could reach, for even as they maintained the galactic balance, they not only maintained a strict protocol to ensure food was delivered evenly and equally to all of the occupants of the Cored Planets – and of Neptune,( though it was the only planet without a Rotation Engineer), they saw it a duty to ensure the best life possible for those who had survived the Flares. To continue the human race, to pay homage, honor, and dignity to those who had come before, it was their obligation to help ensure equality.


Even so, over fifty after the start of the Program, some families, and some without families to help, struggled to fill every need that arose. Assistance in the form of medical procedure or education was easily accessed, seeing an unhoused person was genuinely rare, and those who sought it could find work that fulfilled their joys … but simply put, food wasn’t always there.