Flash Fic - Question of Needs

 (Author's Note: this was inspired by a writing prompt on r/humansarespaceorcs.)

    It's gotta be one of those days when you're just getting people asking you for stuff.  "Hey, buddy, can you spare a dimebag?"  "Pardon me, but do you have some spare change for the Ventrethi war orphans?"  But the day has officially hit the limit for unreasonable requests for me with this one.

    "Hello, human.  Can I have a gun?"

    I localize the speaker, looking down.  Rikki, young, female, probably from near The Tombs given the height and general stature.  Shorter and more frail than other members of her species.  Chronic malnutrition will do that to a person.  Just one more hard luck case in New Eden.  "And what, pray tell, makes you think I have a gun?" I ask, crossing my arms over my chest.  "More to the point, what makes you think I'm willing to part with one if I did have it?"

    "You're human.  Humans are always armed.  Knives, guns, tactical nuclear explosives in metal briefcases, you've always got something like that."

    "You've been watching too many Dirlosla Companions holo-flicks," I snort.

    She pushes the hood back a bit, her eyes shining like garnets as she locks her gaze on mine.  I see the fear easily enough.  Humans do have a somewhat exaggerated reputation, after all.  But there's more to it.  She's scared out of her mind, and she's desperate.  "I can smell the propellant residue on your skin.  I can see the flecks embedded on the inside of your right forearm, which tells me you shoot left-handed.  The area between your thumb and palm are callused from handling different weapons repeatedly.  And the wrist is completely bare of any hair, despite there being hair on the backs of your hands and on the rest of your forearms, the result of overcharged coilgun searing."

    "Well, you've got an eye for detail, I'll give you that," I reply frankly.  A quick cursory glance tells me this isn't some sort of clumsy sting operation.  "Let's find a slightly more quiet spot to talk."  I turn and make my way down an alley and she follows without any obvious hesitation.  Once we're away from the general din of the city, I look back at her.  "You answered the first question pretty thoroughly.  But you still need to answer the second question, and it needs to be at least as thorough if not moreso."

    "I asked around the spaceport.  Your name came up more than a few times, along with your description.  I've got some palladium slips.  Should be more than enough to cover the cost of whatever you have on hand."

    I shake my head emphatically.  "No."

    "Why not?" she squeaks.  "I have the specie, you have the product, this is pure business!"

    "You're bad business, that's why," I tell her flatly.  "Like I said, you've been watching too many holo-flicks."

    "I have not!" she squeaks, a little louder, her small foot stamping on the pavement.

    For a moment, I stand perfectly still, then snap my leg out, the toe of my shoe stopping only a hair's breadth from the tip of her nose before she skitters back to avoid getting hit.  "That's why I'm not selling it to you," I growl as my foot comes down.  "Because you flinched.  Because you think that getting your hands on a genuine 'Human-made' gun is going to solve all your problems, whatever they are.  I hand you a piece and sure as I breathe, you're either gonna wind up dead or in the box.  There's no percentage for me in it."

    "But I need it!" she blubbers.

    "Why?" I ask, arms back across my chest.  "Make me understand your need and how this is the only way to fulfill it."

    "Because if I don't, my family will be taken!  My parents, my siblings, the rest of our block gets snatched up and scattered to the stars!  We're not big enough or strong enough to fight back any other way!"

    My lips twist in distaste.  I've been hearing rumors of "locusts" sweeping through the tenements around The Tombs and other low-income areas.  The fate of people, regardless of species, who get swept up is always a mystery.  But it's most likely not pretty.  "I hear and I understand, kid," I tell her, my voice still firm, but not quite as dismissive as before.  "But I wasn't just being obnoxious or engaging what others fondly believe to be 'aberrant and socially atavistic maladaptive behaviors.'  I don't doubt the purity of your motives.  I have no faith in your effectiveness."

    "That's why I need a gun!"

    "Wrong," I tell the Rikki.  "Like a lot of folks, even some humans as it turns out, you have this notion in your head that a gun is an automatic shortcut to victory.  In the hands of somebody like me, who has trained in their use and used to them to great effect, it's not a guarantee of victory but it does tip the balance in my direction.  In the hands of somebody like you, who has never trained, who has never had to use them but blithely assumes you can pull the trigger without any thought, it's almost certainly a guarantee of you getting yourself killed.  Or worse.

    "When I tried to kick you, you flinched.  An understandable reflex.  But it tells me that you're not used to violence.  Certainly not the sort of organized violence hitting The Tombs these days.  You've never held a gun in your hand.  You don't know what it's like to feel a chem-prop weapon rock against your hands, the muzzle swinging up towards your face because your wrists are rattling from the recoil.  You've never felt a coilgun jackhammering in your grip, feeling the feedback fields coiling around your wrists like living shackles of frigid fire.  You're a stranger to violence, kid.  And that is precisely what a gun is.  It's violence made manifest in alloy and composites.  If you can't control your reactions to violence, you don't have a hope in Hell of being able to handle a gun.  All you'll do is get people hurt who don't deserve to be."

    She looks at me, tears starting to pour down from her eyes.  "Then what am I supposed to do?" she wails piteously.

    I take a knee so I can look at her straight on.  "You start by recognizing a fundamental truth common to all sophonts.  There are no dangerous weapons, just dangerous people.  And I mean deliberately dangerous people.  Somebody who recognizes those 'maladaptive atavistic behaviors' as the foundations for your own potential.  Humans, Rikki, Ventrethi, every species that got to the top of their home gravity well did so by brute force and ugliness.  You have to accept the fact that you have the potential to unleash focused violence at will, at your discretion, right where the deepest seed of your core identity lives in your mind and soul.  And then, you have to commit to realizing that potential."

    "I don't have that kind of time!"

    "Maybe not the kind of time that makes you a past master of destruction," I smile at her wryly.  "But if you're willing, and if your family and your neighbors are willing, I think we might be able to get you pointed in the right direction.  I won't promise you victory.  But I will promise you that whoever decides to pick a fight with you is going have to work for it.  And that's before the guns come out."