Today was Rado’s tenth birthday without the people that had mattered most to him: his family. Ten years. He’s changed so much. Would they even recognize him if they were alive today?

He sat dejectedly at his new dining table, eating a jumja stick. But not even that could cheer him up. Sighing, he looked at the two pictures that he had set up. The first one was a grainy image of his mother Rado Cife and his sister Rado Xamis at the one Gratitude Festival that they managed to get to. Rado didn’t having that picture as a reminder of his mother’s and sister’s faces. The quality of the photo was awful and taken six years before their deaths, but alas, it was the only photo of them that survived the Occupation.

But at least that photo was of his family members. He looked at the photo that he had substituted as a photo of his father. It had originally been a photo of some politican from Earth by the name of Lyndon Johnson but with the assistance of a marker, Lyndon Johnson the Human became Rado Milol the Bajoran farmer. The resemblance may be uncanny, but Rado couldn’t fool himself into thinking that he was looking at his father.

He could have used the much better and clearer pictures of his family that the Federation News Network had managed to find and released in one of their journalist’s report called The Victims of the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor, but Rado couldn’t bring himself to look. It hurt too much.

He looked at his half-eaten jumja stick and mumbled to himself, “Happy Birthday.”

Lieutenant Junior Grade Rado Gainn
Chief of Security