Free Hard Luck Hank: Delovoa & Early Years by Steven Campbell

Shaedsta-2ians marching around reminding them of how inferior
they were.
    The installation did so many checks because
they were worried the Natives would hurt or otherwise contaminate themselves.
Or worse, interfere with the mutation process for the billions of
Shaedsta-2ians who had to be processed.
    Still, it was relatively informal. When the
doctor saw Delovoa, he tended to batter and poke and twirl him around looking
for anything out of the ordinary.
    Fortunately, this wasn’t very often because
Delovoa worked at night and the doctor tended to be in the afternoon. Still,
Delovoa dreaded their encounters.
    Delovoa was amazed by the facility. He explored
it as best he could while still working. He found the machines they used to
administer mutations. The machines to monitor the process. The long-term
therapy areas. Everything associated with turning Colmarians into mutants, the
Confederation’s greatest scientific achievement.
    But it took a month for Delovoa to find what he
was really looking for:
    The actual mutation drugs.
    His goal, the reason he was subjecting himself
to these daily indignities, was so he could give himself some of the Colmarian
Confederation’s guaranteed beneficial mutations.
    Unfortunately, the Confederation had
exaggerated their success rate. A significant number of all mutations were
negative. And an even greater number were so slight as to be useless.
    But more importantly, the process of mutating
someone was incredibly involved. You had to perfectly match their genes and
introduce the mutagen slowly.
    Delovoa didn’t know that, however, as he was
just a janitor. A Shaedstan janitor well below average intelligence and not
remotely capable of understanding the intricacies of forced mutation.
    It had taken him another month to finally get
the passcode for the door. Always mopping the same floor as scientists walked
in.
    “Ah!” Said one biologist, after he slipped on
Delovoa’s preternaturally polished floor. “Go work on some other hallway,
stupid Native!”
    “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.” Delovoa said, bowing.
    It was only because his species was so
routinely ignored that he had been permitted to investigate as he had. He was
very nearly invisible.
    Delovoa entered the mutagen storage center one
night and found himself surrounded by literally millions of samples. The
complexity of it all was crippling, and Delovoa found himself curled into a
ball on the floor, coughing and drooling instinctively.
    The Shaedstan defense mechanism was to play
sick and diseased, so predators would be afraid to eat them.
    Night after night Delovoa would enter the
storage center, gradually gaining more courage.
    His dream was that he would mutate himself into
a form strong enough to survive on Shaedsta-2 where he could have a normal
life. The kind he read about in the new tele stories that featured
Shaedsta-2ian love affairs, and Shaedsta-2ian adventure series. No one wrote
about Shaedstans. They would only appear as an adjective now and then to
describe someone particularly dumb or small or worthless.
    But coming this far, Delovoa didn’t quite have
the courage to take that final step. And he wasn’t sure what the final step
should be. He was not a biologist or doctor or engineer or any of the hundred
or so high tech professions required to instigate the mutation process.
    What concerned him most, however, was getting
caught. It was Shaedstan instinct to stay away from danger, because playing
sickly wasn’t a very good last defense.
    If he took the drugs the doctor would know. Or
the scientists. Or someone. And then what would they do to him?
    “Come here, Native,” the doctor said.
    Delovoa almost jumped out of his skin. He had
been staring at the mutagen storage area, daydreaming.
    “Yes, sir,” Delovoa bowed.
    He ran over and the doctor peered into his
eyes, nose, mouth, ears, lifted him up, checked his arms, pulled down his
pants, checked his knees, calves, feet, thighs, buttocks.
    The doctor let him