Jax wasn’t born for space. He was born in the rusted, grimy underbelly of Neo-Mumbai, where the sky was a hazy orange smear and the air tasted of synth-curry and desperation. Space was a distant, flickering dream advertised on flickering holo-billboards, a dream only for the credit-rich.

  His dream turned into a nightmare of debt and indentured servitude to OmniCorp, a monolithic entity that practically owned the solar system. His sentence: Scrapping. OmniCorp owned a graveyard of derelict ships drifting in the silent vacuum of the Ceres asteroid belt. His job: go in, strip them bare of designated components, and return with the loot. Zero gravity, claustrophobic corridors, and the constant threat of hull breaches were his daily companions.

  He hated it. He hated the cold bite of the vacuum on his suit, the hum of his plasma cutter, the echoing silence punctuated only by the clang of metal on metal. He hated the way his life was being bled dry to pay off a debt he barely understood.

  He was efficient, though. Brutally so. He developed a sixth sense for the decaying architecture of these dying ships. He could navigate the labyrinthine interiors blindfolded, anticipate structural weaknesses, and extract components with surgical precision. He never complained, never argued, never questioned. Just worked. And he paid off his debt years ahead of schedule.

  But then something strange happened. He didn’t stop.

  The thrill, it turned out, was addictive. The dance in zero-g, the calculated risk of slicing through a pressurized conduit, the satisfaction of hearing the hydraulic hiss as a core component detached from its rusty moorings – it was a high he couldn’t find anywhere else. OmniCorp, initially baffled, soon realized the value of a man who worked without complaint and generated a steady profit. They left him alone, a silent, spectral figure haunting the ship graveyard, a legend whispered among dockworkers and space haulers.

  The union reps came, of course. Spouting slogans about worker’s rights, demanding he join the rebellion against OmniCorp’s iron grip. Jax ignored them. He wasn’t fighting anyone’s revolution, he was fighting gravity, stagnation, and the suffocating memory of Neo-Mumbai. He was a ghost, content to drift in his own private vacuum.

  He was considered crazy. Most spacers kept their distance. They saw the haunted look in his eyes, the methodical, almost detached way he worked, and quickly decided he was a man best left alone.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Then came the suggestion, whispered by a bored mechanic during a rare docking session. "Hey, Jax," the mechanic, a greasy-haired man named Grok, said, leaning against a crate of fusion coils. "You ever thought about livestreaming?"

  Jax stared at him blankly. "Live… streaming?"

  "Yeah! You know, record what you do, broadcast it to the inner-net. Idiots pay good money to watch that kinda stuff these days."

  Jax shrugged. He had a comm-recorder built into his helmet. He used it for recording cargo inventory. What harm could it do? He uploaded the first stream with zero expectations. The image was grainy, the audio laced with static, and the content was just hours of him dismantling a derelict ore freighter. No one watched. For weeks.

  He kept doing it, though. It became a routine. He'd start the stream, focus on his work, and forget about the existence of an audience. He talked to himself, sometimes, muttering about the best angle for a plasma cut, or cursing the stubborn corrosion on a vital conduit. He was just…working.

  Then, one day, something shifted. One of his streams, focused on safely extracting a volatile coolant tank from a partially destroyed cruiser, went viral. Someone, somewhere, had found it captivating. They shared it. Then they shared it again.

  The view count exploded. Suddenly, Jax had an audience. Not just any audience, but a dedicated, rabid fanbase. They called him "The Graveyard Ghoul," "The Silent Scrapper," and "The Zer0-G Zen Master." They debated the merits of different plasma cutter models in the comments, analyzed his every move, and dissected his muttered monologues for hidden meaning.

  Jax was bewildered. He barely acknowledged the viewers. He didn’t do shout-outs, didn’t answer questions, didn’t even know how to turn on the chat window. He just worked.

  But that, apparently, was the appeal. In a galaxy saturated with manufactured content and carefully curated personalities, Jax was authentic. Raw. Real. He wasn’t trying to be entertaining; he was just trying to survive in the cold, unforgiving vacuum.

  His audience became obsessed. They romanticized his solitary existence, seeing him as a stoic warrior battling the entropy of the universe. They sent him tips, enough to buy him a new plasma cutter, a better suit, even a decent meal when he occasionally docked at a station.

  He still didn't care about the fame, or the money. He kept scrapping. But now, he knew he wasn't alone in the vast, silent emptiness. There were eyes watching, voices murmuring, a silent chorus accompanying his solitary dance among the ruins of forgotten dreams. And sometimes, just sometimes, that made the vacuum feel a little less…empty. He was still crazy, maybe, but he was crazy with an audience. And in the vast, lonely expanse of space, that was enough.