Dublin the Sheep was part of the 2060 production run of the City Defenders series commissioned by Haptic International Patriot Products after the Pact States had gained a foothold in western North America. The first time Hitomi had lain eyes on him, he had been sitting on top of a metal box in the back of her Grandmother's Brighton Ibex. And she had seen him only through her left eye. The right one had been swollen shut.

  She had been almost eighteen.

  "Big fight?" Her grandmother had asked in her particular brand of broken English. The Sullivan family was no stranger to accents.

  "Kara Marcus," Tomi had grumbled, jaw aching.

  "Don't come much bigger than her."

  "My lunch card got rejected. The money's in there, but for some reason, my personal exchange rate got all screwed up. Kara made the comment that--"

  She took a moment to appreciate who she was talking to.

  "That?"

  "That it was a little... Pactish to want a free meal. So I slugged her in the nose. I think I broke my hand on all the plastic in there."

  Grandma had smirked and then tapped her fingers pensively on the steering wheel.

  The flashback faded for an instant, and she was back in the fiery cockpit of the Starseeker, eye no longer swollen, but vision just as blurred; locked on the ejection hatch where the sheep sat above the receipt for her right to vote and the warning note from Dom, her technician. All three had started to singe around the edges. Dublin's fur turned first brown and then black along his ears.

  Another instant and she was back in the car.

  "But, it doesn't matter." Tomi opined as Grandma pressed on the accelerator. "Graduation is in two months, then I can fly with Mom and Dad."

  A two-month-long cargo run to Mars and back in living quarters the size of a small apartment might sound like Hell to some eighteen year-olds, but it would beat hanging around Earth in the heat all summer. You could float in your bunk, and focus on the sounds of breathing coming from across the alcove. The people you loved all in one place. And when you got sick of them, you could sit in the pilot's chair, hanging out in oblivion, like you were the only person in the universe. That was okay by Tomi's standards.

  Grandma pretended to be focused on the road ahead, on the lookout for children darting around the nearby Ayn Rand Private School. At almost the exact instant they crossed over the crosswalk, a red banner flickered up over the dash warning Grandma to pull over.

  "What's that?" Tomi asked.

  Grandma sighed, half in weariness, half in embarrassment. "I'm on the assisted package now. It's an ad."

  "Since when?"

  “Around noon.”

  After several seconds of avoiding eye contact, she pulled over into the loading zone. The school had been built over eighty years prior in the age of school buses. None of those around here anymore. A few dilapidated vehicles people were living in, but no school buses.

  The view out of the windshield was replaced by a man sitting at a fireplace, accompanied by the gentle coaxing of guitar strings.

  "The Republic Rights Exchange got me the money I needed to get out of a nasty hole. And it puts resources in the hands of the people who can make the best use of them..."

  Grandma cranked down the volume knob. The ad dimmed, but did not disappear entirely.

  "I have something to tell you, Tomi."

  Although unaccustomed to devastation, the way Grandma said the words filled Hitomi with impending dread.

  "Your grandfather passed this morning."

  Hitomi blinked. She had to mean the grandfather she knew about; her father's father because whoever had impregnated her mother's mother -- the one sitting in the car with her -- was a complete mystery.

  The anoxia induced hallucination dissolved once again, and she was staring at the ejection hatch cover. The heat in the metal coffin of a cockpit was unbearable.

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  There really is no escape. You pull that lever and the next time you set your feet on the ground you'll sink into a quagmire of debt.

  A blink and she was back in that car.

  Passed? Passed what? Like a stone? Second grade? Her brain's gears slipped a few notches, falling back to the thoughts of graduation. Had he passed some hitherto unknown grade for old men?

  "He was working through the night and his heart just gave out."

  So, he was tired?

  Grandpa had been a fiery, stubborn old sod who refused to pronounce her name the way she preferred. Instead of Tomi with a long O (t-oh-mee), he insisted on 'Tommy'. Tommy girl. On more than one occasion she was sure he had forgotten her name all together.

  Oh! Ooooooh. He died. Well, why didn’t you say so? That-- that...

  "I- He wanted to be cremated," she managed. "He said the Earth wouldn't take him because of all the piss and vinegar."

  "I know. I sent a message to your Mom and Dad. They're nearly back." Grandma motioned to the back of the car. "He wanted you to have those."

  Tomi recognized the metal box from the faded and ripped stickers on it. It would be heavy, filled with slim, black, almost rubber-like disks. Grandpa Sullivan had never let her touch them on her own, but he sometimes he would pull one out and place it on the slender, modern looking machine that slid into the box with them. Crackling music would come out of it.

  The sheep she had never seen before.

  Present, spiralling-toward-Earth Hitomi coughed. The two pieces of paper on the hatch were crispy. Black burn marks were beginning to form on Dublin's head.

  "Does this mean..."

  Past, life-in-free fall Hitomi’s mind had gone back to the financial incident in school that had left her right eye swollen.

  Grandma nodded. "Whatever debts your grandfather had were called in the minute his death certificate was signed. And... if the family sells all its assets we can just barely pay them off."

  "Okay..."

  "The house. This car. And... we won’t be able to afford escorts to deal with the Pact blockade. We'll have to sell the freighter."

  "No!"

  She would look back on that moment with an intense shame that would cause her to almost curl into a ball. She had cared more about that old hunk of metal and plastic than she had about the hunk of bone and sinew who had given her shit for bringing friends around the office.

  That sense of freedom, of being the only person in the entire universe slank away, humiliated it had ever had the nerve to show its face. In its place was a clamouring throng of people, pushing in on all sides in the parching summer heat. And she had cared more about that than she had about the slowly cooling corpse in a long plastic box downtown.

  The advertisement ended, the view of the deteriorating Toronto suburb came back along with the radio stream of Power Trippin’ AI remake. Grandma didn’t move the car.

  "Your tuition here is paid up for the next month, we can likely find a way to go one more month until graduation, but it would be better if you could move up your exams."

  "But..."

  Her eyes darted around at the run-down vehicles with eyes starting to peer out at the still desirable Ibex SUV. Those eyes belonged to the people who had chosen the more desirable of the two available options: join the military or live on the street.

  This is it. We’re fucked. We’re fucking fucked. Shit, Kara was right.

  Somehow, that stung most of all.

  "Listen." Grandma, seeing the hungry eyes, started up the vehicle and pressed gently on the accelerator. Before approaching dangerous speeds she reached into the back and grabbed the sheep. "When my country got annexed by the Pact States and I left, I had to make some very hard choices. But I did what I had to to survive. I admit I was skeptical when my daughter wanted to marry your father, but..."

  Tomi’s hand squeezed on the sheep's soft body, the anxiety and the frustration oozed between her fingers.

  "Your grandfather bought you this on the day you were born, but there was an emergency with your aunt and uncle on a Mars run, and he never made it to the hospital. Things kept coming up, and maybe he forgot, maybe he was just embarrassed it took so long, but this stayed in the desk in his office.

  "Both sides of your family are stubborn as hell, Tomi. They keep their heads down and keep trudging forward. That's what survivors do. And that is what you're going to do."

  The blistering heat of the Starseeker’s cockpit roused her from the pleasantly air-conditioned car. All the fear and uncertainty came along with her.

  And it pissed her right off.

  She had thought about giving up, but she was a survivor goddamn it. Every thrice-cursed member of the Sullivan family was. Including married-in, barely-escaped-the-Pact-Tunbing Grandma.

  And so, present Hitomi grit her teeth and forced her synapses to keep firing. The "Don't even think about ditching my ship." note crumbled practically to dust as she brushed it aside, pulling open the hatch.

  "Not even in your dreams." A second note was taped to the large, black lever inside.

  She breathed heavily, closing her hand around the lever. Pulling it meant a life of scraping by just to recover from this catastrophe, but it was a life dammit. Tomi closed her eyes, grasped the smouldering polyester of Dublin down from his perch and hugged it close to her coiled her fingers around the lever. The heat burned through her gloves as she yanked down hard.