Rust Belt: I Rely on My Ears to Learn How to Write

Lu Chen has been squatting in the space slum for eighteen years, relying on a pair of ears that are better than anyone else to listen to deep space signals in exchange for food. No one treats him as a human being. The dispatch center called him an "asset on duty." The inner ring gun barrel was pointed at him, and even his own sister was lying in the oxygen chamber hanging for life. Until that night, a swarm of insects that had not been seen in three hundred years emerged from the cracks in the star abyss. Everyone is running. He didn't run. Because he heard it - the insect tide said a word in his mind. "Hungry." From that moment on, he became the only person in the universe who could talk to the insect tide. The inner ring fired at him, and the insect tide blocked the cannon for him. The council put his name on a wanted poster, and the insect tide carved his name on the door. Everyone wants to kill him or use him, but the insect tide is asking him a question: "Can you help us get home?" The price is - every time he understands a word from them, he loses a little bit of his humanity. The more you listen, the fewer people you hear.