Author:
In another lifetime, August was a punk kid running a writing-themed e-zine in 2002 and participating in online survivor writing contests; these days, she’s a punk pseudo-adult with an office job and a studio of her own.

Meet Pitney Scolan. Pit, for short. He’s a decorated general and a venerated leader of the sprawling human race. He’s protected his species' colonies from vicious native animal populations and hostile alien life. He’s fiercely introverted, and he’s really looking forward to retiring on his personal planet in the very near future.

Except…now he has to be a dog.

A daugment, to be specific: a cybernetically enhanced canine, previously the doting pet of Pit’s biggest rival, General Tristan. It’s the only way to escape certain assassination.

So Pit grudgingly allies himself with a pair of well-meaning scoundrels and sets sail for seedier space in hopes of escaping Tristan’s clutches. What he finds instead is a galactic conspiracy to force him to make friends.

Daugment

It is my professional belief that solitude is dangerous. It is the ultimate failure of the human condition. We, who clustered around the same tiny fires for survival, cannot live alone. Nature has decreed we must die alone-and so when we are alone, we die. That is what I believe. Dear reader, turn back from this path, lest the emptiness consume you.


But should you be compelled to seek your own lonely way, the book open before you is the only guide I can, in good conscience, recommend.


~ Introduction to The Ichor of Solitude, by Lili Ma, renowned intimacy scholar


Pit stared at the spine of The Ichor of Solitude for a long while after he was awake. Morning had brought with it a fresh twist of the unfamiliar knife of guilt, and a heavy sense of his inhumanity. He hadn't slept well, his stomach churning and his head spinning all night.


Chapter 36