Harold Waterman was 19, a little unattractive, and completely unhappy. He was happy with his job. It provided him with a few creds from week to week, and he managed to save a little here and there. He was hoping to join the Alliance one day, like his forgotten father had. His mother was dead set against it.

What he was unhappy with was the shift. Working fast food was a chore enough as it was. The grave shift, however, was the hated shift he had been banished to as soon as he had graduated school. Everyone who was still in school worked the afternoon shifts, where they could still manage a social life and studies. Harold had never had much of a social life, and this didn't bother him. He wasn't ambitious. Which might explain why he was working in a McDonald's.

At three AM on morning, there had been a strange bit of static over the drive through comm. It sounded to Harold as though the people aboard whatever ship couldn't decide what they wanted. There was much arguing, and a constant, underlying static that was the hallmark of a poor, cheap communications system. This spoke to an older ship, and Harold was not ashamed to say that after two years of working here, he could pick out what a ship sounded like by the communications he heard. Most of the time, when someone called or came in at this time, it was a bunch of drunks. This was, in fact, the farthest outpost that held a McD's. So, no one was really terribly worried about running into the law here.

He managed to pick out the words "Captain", "Fries", "Horse", "Book", "Order", "SHUT UP", and "River" before the night shift cook, a squat, older man named Hax knocked him roughly aside, toggled the mic and said:

"If'n ya'll can't decide what ya'll want, then bring it inside. There's other's that might want to use the drive through!"

Hax was another downside to the grave shift. The older man had requested, continuously to stay on this shift, and God himself only knew why. Hax gave Harold a look that rev