Spoilers: Harper 2.0
"Harper, you're hopeless, you can barely conjugate Common." Beka says, half jokingly. At least she means it jokingly, but it's not a joke. Not to me.
You see, it's true. I've only been speaking Common for, oh, five years now. Less, 'cause part of that time was learning it.
Growing up in the Ghetto on Earth, we all spoke English. My parents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins-- I had a big family, I'll stop here-- as well as all the other people who lived in the camp with us. The ubers didn't speak it, no use, not like we're gods or anything. That was part of the reason we spoke it, too, if they don't speak it, they don't know what the hell we're saying! It was perfect, at least, amoung us.
Some people spoke Common, too, the educated ones, they all did. The educated ones were somewhat of a mystery to us. They were all people who hadn't lived in the camps for all their lives, and they could read! My father was educated, but he was usually too drunk for it to matter. He didn't speak Common though, he'd either been brought here too early or drank it all away.
Anyway, some of the educated ones tried teaching the children, including me and Brendan and Brendan's sister Michandy, but gave up pretty early on that. You know children, they're the same the galaxies over, attention spans about the same time as my machine shop stays clean. So I learned some words in Common, but not enough to actually say anything, just food, assorted things, and their relation to each other. Yeah, if anyone wanted to know if the apple was on the chair, I was their man!
We always heard the ubers speaking in Common, and I picked up a few things too from listening to them, but never let on to this, those who could speak Common, no matter how little, were always more of a target. Easier to order around I guess.
I hated being talked to by the ubers, especially, since they think us incredibly stupid. This one time, I was maybe eleven, in the food line-- I usually never went, but Mum was sick and Dad was always too drunk or too hungover to go-- one of the ubers said something to me and I obviously didn't understand. He repeated the same thing for about five minutes before yelling something and pushing me out of the line. Most of the food spilled and I took my time getting home, I knew Dad would be furious that I'd lost the food, and if he was drunk, I'd get a beating for sure.
That was the last time I went, Mum always went after that, no matter how sick she was. She hated Dad for how he was, how he treated me and Brendan, but he'd never touch her. Not ever, he'd never lay a hand on her in any way other than love. Also, she understood more Common, and she knew how to blend into a crowd. Most of the women did, come to think of it. They dressed in drab clothing and hid themselves, trying to attract as little attention from the ubers as possible. I know Mum learned this from experience, in one of Dad's drunken rants he yelled something about it, but I didn't know what he meant until I was much older.
I know Dad loved us, he just never really showed it. His life certainly was not a bed of roses, he'd been a slave for three years in a camp outside of Boston, it was only after that that he drunk so much. I remember when I was small, he'd bounce me on his knee, and he'd laugh and he never touched me. Then when he left Mum was so upset, I think she was sick so much because she was so sad. Then Dad came back and maybe that's when he drank away everything he knew. He'd be so knackered sometimes he didn't even know who I was. He was abusive too, mostly to me and Brendan, everyone seemed to fear him. None of us questioned where he got the money for the liquer he drank, but we all had our suspicions.
Maybe it was fear of my Dad that led me to never actually take an interest in learning Common. But when he and my Mum were killed, I knew that it was my only ticket off-planet, and I was so desparate to get off planet I'd do anything. I don't remember much about that time, but I seem to remember giving myself up to the ubers, I guess I knew that I could get off-planet if I proved useful. Have I mentioned that I didn't really think a lot when I was a teenager? I must have been about fifteen or sixteen at the time, none of us really knew how old we were.
Anyway, I did get off-planet and the ubers sold me to a merchant on some drift somewhere, finally, I thought, here was my ticket to freedom! Not as easily as I thought however. I still spoke hardly any Common, and this made my job rather difficult. I worked fixing stuff for whoever had something broken and could pay my "employer" for me. However, they all wanted someone who actually understood what they wanted done. This made Prometheus rather upset, since he still had to feed me and give me somewhere to sleep, but I certainly wasn't making any money for him. I picked up pretty quick what I needed to know about the inner workings of various spacecraft, and it seemed good... I was plotting my escape, but one day before I could put my plan into action, She showed up.
She was blonde, human, and beautiful. She came in looking for someone to fix her Slip drive. That's all I got from her conversation with Prometheus, since I understood "Slip drive" and "fix" and that's about it. Anyway, I left with her to fix the Slip drive on her ship. It was quite the junker, and man, she reminded me of home. I was admiring her engineering department with awe and the woman said something to me. I didn't understand what she said, and she tried repeating herself, slower, but I couldn't understand. The look on her face was priceless as she realized that I couldn't speak Common! She walked off, obviously giving up and leaving me to the Slip drive.
I fixed it, of course, I am a freaking genius. That baby ran like nothing you'd ever seen and I could tell the woman was happy. She said something about a job, ah this I could probably understand. I asked her, in my broken Common, to slow down, and she did. She offered me the job as engineer-- I learned later that the previous engineer had died because he forgot to check the seal on his out-of-ship suit-- and this as even better than my plan of escape! I accepted, of course, and maybe she didn't know I was a slave, or maybe she did, anyway, we just left and never once looked back!
I'm sure I was more than a bit frustrating, but Beka never once gave up on me.
But I can't let anyone know.. Dylan hardly trusts me as it is, and if I knew that half of what he says makes no sense to me, I doubt I'd still have a job. And besides, I'm the comic relief.