vilakins | Ficlet: Amnesty

Last week's b7friday challenge was to pick a random word from a dictionary and use it. Set pre-series, no spoilers, 250 words.

Amnesty

"See? You're on the list."

Vila bit his lip as the name Restal, Vila leaped out at him. The government was offering amnesty to selected wanted criminals in return for induction into Space Fleet. Vila knew quite well why his name was there. He'd become quite famous for a short while after escaping from CF1 in a hijacked supply ship along with a group of other convicts, several of whom had been caught and spilled the beans about who'd done the flying. As a 15-year-old pilot, he'd been bought a lot of drinks, and, for a time, acquired the nickname of 'Huple' from a well-read fence.

"You could be a space captain,"

"Yeah." Vila pointed at the bottom of the notice. "You have to read the fine print though. 'Rehabilitative training.' Know what that is?"

Linzi shook her head.

"The modifer, that's what. They'd turn us into mutoids. They want our skills, see, but not who we are." Vila looked sideways at Linzi. "I can cheat on the test so I come out grade 3 ignorant or even worse, but I'd need you to make sure it's subtle enough. Copy someone else's results and maybe slip a report of brain injury in there?"

"All right." Linzi was happy to. She was a promoted Gamma clerical grade and Vila had been the only school-friend who hadn't ostracised her.

"Don't want my remains orbiting some star after all," Vila said. "Mind you, I s'pose they will if I stay here on Earth."

***
My first pick was rehabilitative. I didn't fancy writing about the Federation's reprogramming practices, so I had another stab and got modifier. Hmm, it looked like I was meant to. I thought. "All right, third time lucky," but my last word was remains. So I gave in and to make up for trying to weasel out of it, used all three.