"Happy"

The recording starts with a screeching sound. The live camera destroyed, only the digital records were able to be recovered, and they always had terrible sound artifacts. Fast-forward to a few minutes before the event, 15:03 local time. The scene is that of the spatioport terminal. The place is unusually busy. Three passenger ships warped to the stellar sling at the same time, causing a ruckus and filling the hub to the brim.

Nothing unexpected happens for three minutes, until a hooded figure approaches the customs. Tall and sickly, the silhouette is wrapped in so many robes they must be melting in the heat of the afternoon. The person towers over the crowd, typical of people living in orbital habitats or low gravity planets. The buzzing of their support gear is registered by several microphones, none detect any anomaly. When the robed figure reaches the two custom officers, it stops as they boringly order it. The sound of the recording comes from the integrated microphone of one of them, Clark Dougal.

"Hello sir, may I see your passport?"

A gloved hand exits the maze of clothes to put a small metal chip in the open hand of the other officer.

"Please state your name, and reason of visit. Which ship were you on?"

"I don't have a name. Not anymore."

The voice coming from behind the faceless mask has a higher pitch than one could expect. It has the imperfection of a poorly crafted voice modifier, the kind that betray the real tone of the speaker. The use of such artifices does not faze the officers. They have seen stranger things today, and they already have trouble sorting out which anecdote to tell to their colleagues once their shift is over.

"It's another one of these lunatics, muttered officer Dougal to his colleague. Let's try again sir, what do your folks call you?"

"My folks... are all gone, all but me. Only my comrades ever call me nowadays. Do you cherish your comrades, officer?"

This time, the officer raises one eyebrow. Instead of elevating the tone at the end of the question, it went down, in such a low pitch he had a hard time catching the last word. A strange defect, even for a cheap voice mod. He is not one to deal with technological mishaps, and quite frankly, he does not care in the slightest.

"Listen pal, there's a line behind you and we have to survey everyone here before the night, so it would help us if you were a bit more cooperative."

"My apologies, officer (again, this word sounded a lot lower than the others). My comrades, they call me... ah, I'm afraid it won't make much sense to you."

"I'm not here to make sense of your name, but to record it."

Another artifact in the recording. The answer of the visitor is corrupted, probably unrecoverable. Clark Dougal, on the camera feed, blinks several times, like he has been struck with a brick.

"Sorry, I think I just had an absence, what did you just say?"

"It may be, ah, maybe too much for you to handle. In a lot of languages, what they call me translates to 'happy'. In yours, it translates to 'death'."

Recording ends.