"I dunno. That's why I was asking, you see. It could be the fear of being known to others, which all people have to some degree. Like, say, you tell any of us your name and we look you up on the net, find where you lived, what you did, who you were, how silly you looked at the end of middle school and the name and ultimate fate of your very first adolescent heartthrob. That would, for once, give good ol' Random Q. Convict an advantage - a minor advantage, to be sure, but still an advantage - over you, which takes away some of your power over them, at least in their imagination. Of course, you could probably fix this misconception right away with some of the extremely deadly equipment you've got behind the counter there, but I would bet that it would be uncomfortable to begin with and violence would hardly mitigate that first moment of humiliation before an inferior. So it could be a fear of losing one's power, even if only for a moment."
Stacy takes a deep breath, then goes for verse two.
"Secondly, you probably realize that most of the people buying equipment in the armory, even some of the hardiest-looking, meanest, most intelligent and least completely moronic, the nicest, most pleasant and polite people, all of the techies, the manipulator users, the medics and even the useless layabouts coasting on other people's successes, indeed, particularly the useless layabouts coasting on other people's successes, each and every one of them is very likely to die a horrible death due to silly bad luck if nothing else."
He points at Feyri.
"Like the lady over there whose name I keep forgetting, for instance. I am sure she is a pleasant person, intelligent, possesses good manners and so forth. None of these saved her when she was sliced in half by a cutting laser wielded by what I presume was an animated corpse of a miner, which she was unlikely to have seen coming in any event. And next time, she may not get so lucky as to survive beyond death. It is merely a fact of life. No offense, by the way. So when you actually bother to emotionally connect with a convict, it makes it all the more personally unpleasant when they are, say, erased from existence by some alien force when they finally become the next Unluckiest Schmuck of the Day. So it could be fear of losing people you like or, dare I even say, may grow to love."
The old man clears his throat.
"Thirdly, you could just be a bit of a snob and hate socializing with people that are, as you perceive them, a class below you. You may feel a sense of entitlement that comes with not being a death row convict, and rightfully so, might I add, and see fraternizing with convicts as a betrayal of your place in this glorious society, very much like a rich man may be deathly afraid of poor people cooties and enjoy basking in the envy of his lessers. So there's that."
"Fourthly, you could just hate convicts in particular for some reason, the gods only know what that may be. Perhaps they kicked your very first adolescent heartthrob to death just as you and he (or she, I don't judge) were about to get your mack on, I don't know."
"Finally, you could merely be of the opinion that convicts really have nothing interesting to converse with you about anyway, so you choose the Path of the Shut-In and stick to communicating with the friends that appreciate your true intelligence and wit. Or your cat, that works as well."
"All in all, the possibilities are many. However, those are all my answers. I was hoping to hear yours."
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette On ship Thread: Maurice's One Night Stand (Read 5927260 times)