Home sweet home

Your place is a mess. People with an instinct for domestic happiness don’t become quickship jockeys. For years on end you’re on a mission, and then you’ve got six months or a year to crash, debauch, train, see if any of your old friends remember your last visit, and if so whether they’re willing to overlook it— if not, cruise the Vee for new friends.

That, and certainly not (say) character flaws, is the explanation for the dirty clothes, music dots, obsolete weaponry, and datapacks littering the floor, the mail messages on the datapost dating back to the early 4800s, and the overall air of squalor.

It wouldn’t seem like home if it weren’t for your pet. Iqizi is a trelentocynomorph, a creature native to ε Eridani, who has such a slowed metabolism that it takes him a month to cross the room. His food is a pile of iron shavings in a bowl; he eats the rust as it oxidizes. He is not exactly aware of you, but you feel some affection for your old companion as you watch the small, solid, stubby creature shambling motionlessly across the floor.