Charly's World is dangerous. Settled over 200 years ago, very few of its residents were born there. Life expectancy is about 19 years. Most come to get rich, but only one in a thousand actually makes enough to leave and live comfortably elsewhere. The planet has little axial tilt and has no moon. There are no hurricanes or tornados, but it rains every day with an annual rainfall is 250 inches. At the equator, the daily average temperature is 86 F or 30 C, but it only drops to 80 F at night. The humidity is an uncomfortable 95%. Thick clouds blanket the planet and the sun is seldom seen.
The men and women who come to Charly's World only do so for one reason-to get rich. Some men that come prey on others while the women that come service and provide comfort to the hard men. There is no actual law on Charly's World. Weapons are carried openly and used. Women who throw unwanted babies in the trash are never prosecuted. Babies that are kept are thrown out of the house at 14 to make their own living.
By the time Toby was two, he had learned well enough to never leave when placed in the alley to await his mother's return. Other children were left there, but he wasn't allowed to play with them. But his mother would never return, having met a violent death. He was hungry, oh so hungry, so he ate bugs to help satisfy his hunger.
Abnalaperon was an artificial extremely intelligent symbiont artificial being over three billion years old manufacture by the Hac, long now extinct. His purpose was as a companion, extender of life, and maintainer of health. His last host had perished 125000 years ago in a fiery crash, the result of a violent war. Once dead, he crawled in his low energy, low intelligent form from the crash site near the poles, searching for a new host. Without a host. it was boring but time passed quickly except for times when he was eaten, Then he remained in the low life host until it died since he couldn’t kill any creature by design. The trip to the equator, where he hoped to find intelligence, was unending. But in the last 200 years he felt vibrations reminiscent of arriving and departing spacecraft.
Entering an area with artificial structures, he stayed close to wall edges trying to percent ingestion of multiple rodents since then he would need to live out the rodent’s life. It was raining heavily when he inadvertently crawled across a foot, snatched, and swallowed. A dumb creature that he would have to spend its life inside.
But no, intelligence but so young, hungry, infected, and possibly near death. Expanding to send tendrils to every cell in body and brain, it began his first.imperatve- health. It was many, many hungry days before Toby regained all the weight he had lost. The weeks, months, and years proved dangerous on this nasty world.