The Dregs Park Boys
MICRO-FACTIONEight Residents. One Sub-Cluster. Forty Years of Paperwork Filed Against an Address That Hasn't Existed Since 2179.
A micro-faction of petty hustlers in the Deep Dregs whose three documented Good Fortune intervention orders have all been canceled — twice for reasons Good Fortune has declined to record.
"Site Integrity Variance Index — nominal — shift 348 consecutive."
— Overseer Lahey Corrin, weekly compliance report filed to a decommissioned terminal
Good Fortune's Sector 9 affiliate desk classifies the Dregs Park Boys as a "Tier 4 informal-resource-allocation cluster." Ironclad's Depot 7G-Tertiary patrol logs list them as "Block 2-4 — non-targeting." Nexus Dynamics has no record of them at all. The crew itself prefers no taxonomy. When asked what they do, three different members will give three different answers, none of which match what they actually do, all of which they believe with conviction.
There are eight of them, more or less, depending on whether you count Jay-Roc's two gophers as people or as accounting categories. They live in a sub-cluster of roughly forty salvaged trailers stacked between Levels 2 and 4 of the Deep Dregs' S9-B2, in the structural shadow of Container Bay 7 — a logistics module that settled five meters in 2178 and was subsequently zoned by no one. The Park formed because the trailers were there. It persists because Overseer Lahey Corrin has not been informed that he no longer works for Good Fortune. The misunderstanding is the foundation. Everything else is built on it.
Their objective competence is low. Riko's grow-op tests at 94.6% analytical purity when the median Dregs operation tests at 51%, but he cannot explain his equipment, his process, or why. Jules's plans, coherent on paper, do not survive contact with reality past the three-minute mark. Corrin's compliance reports describe revenue streams the crew does not have and infrastructure assets they have never owned. Randy has, in twelve documented cases, broken into the wrong trailer. Jay-Roc has never successfully transmitted an audio file to a receiver outside the Park. Despite all of this, the crew has outlasted three Good Fortune intervention attempts, one Ironclad clearance operation, and approximately forty individual eviction notices Corrin has filed against members of his own crew.
The Park offers its residents something the surrounding Deep Dregs does not: a fixed address, a nominal landlord who files paperwork on their behalf, and a functional if inexplicable revenue stream that keeps the lights on. The second-order cost is that every resident is now documented — however fictionally — in a Good Fortune compliance framework administered by a man whose authority ended in 2179 and who interprets that framework as protective. It may be. It may also be a liability nobody has yet thought to exploit.
The Crew
The crew has two organizational charts. There is the one Corrin files every Thursday on his clipboard, listing himself as Sector 9 Senior Property Manager and the rest of the crew as "occupancy-compliant residential tenants in good standing." Then there is the one that actually exists, which has never been written down and would be denied by every member if it were. Operational flow runs Jules → Riko → Bubz, with Randy as the operational mass that physically moves between them when something heavy needs lifting. Jay-Roc operates parallel and does not participate. Nobody has explained this structure to Corrin. The compliance reports are unaffected.
Riko LaPorte
Operational AnchorRuns the cleanest unbranded synthetic-dopamine-precursor grow-op in Sector 9 — 94.6% analytical purity — and has never been able to explain why.
Jules Volker
Operational CoordinatorDesigns every scheme the crew runs from a four-by-three salvage-corkboard panel known as the scheme wall. The bulb tally stands at 3,847.
Bubz Merrick
TechnicianTender of a colony of approximately fourteen feral kittenbots — Schrödinger, Cache-Miss, Beep, Lt. Foam, and ten more. Gentle with machines, blunt with people.
Overseer Lahey Corrin
Nominal HeadDemoted Good Fortune sector-overseer. Files weekly compliance reports to a regional address that has not existed since 2179. Interprets the silence as long-form approval.
Randall "Randy" Deshawn
EnforcerCorrin's permanent companion and the Park's de facto clock. One Helix WellnessProt vat-grown patty every forty-five minutes since 2182.
Jay-Roc
Sub-Label OperatorClaims Cathodics affiliation the Cathodics have never reciprocated. Operates Jay-Roc Records out of Bunk 14. Broadcasts audio that has never escaped the Park.
Cory Vance
Gopher (Pad-Left)Jay-Roc's permanent gopher. Paid in patties. Sleeps on the salvage-foam pad to the left of the door in Bunk 14. His right cheek twitches every nine seconds.
Trev Vance
Gopher (Pad-Right)Jay-Roc's other permanent gopher. Paid in patties. Sleeps on the salvage-foam pad to the right of the door in Bunk 14. His left eye blinks the wrong color.
The Park
Forty trailers. Three vertical tiers. Jury-rigged catwalks of welded ductwork and salvage rebar. A comms tower at the south end Bubz keeps lit because the kittenbots prefer the beacon's frequency. The Park's footprint contains two named sub-locations and the crew's only consistent home.
Dregs Park
A stacked-trailer sub-cluster of roughly forty salvaged trailers in S9-B2 Levels 2-4, in the structural shadow of Container Bay 7. The crew's territory, infrastructure, and only consistent home.
Jules's Bay (Container 7-Delta)
Jules's planning bay at the end of the Park's south catwalk on Level 3. The scheme wall, the bulb tally, and the operations that don't survive contact live here.
The Studio (Bunk 14)
Jay-Roc's foil-taped recording studio in the third-tier bunk row near the comms tower on Level 4. Produces audio that has never reached an external listener.
Schemes & Operations
The Park's revenue model is not a model. It is a list of operations Jules has named, Riko has fueled, Bubz has wired, and Corrin has filed compliance paperwork on. Five recur with enough regularity that the surrounding scavenger gangs have learned to route around them. Two of fourteen documented Get-Rich-Real-Easy iterations have cleared net positive. Jules considers the pattern a positive trend. The analyst notes this without comment.
The Unbranded Grow-Op
Riko's neural-tissue cultivation rig in the sheet-metal lean-to off Trailer 3-Bravo. Synthetic dopamine-precursor at 94.6% analytical purity. The crew never describes it as a business. Corrin classifies it as 'Resident Hobbyist Workspace 4-Charlie.' The lean-to has caught fire four times. Each rebuild is structurally identical to the last and produces the same uncannily pure product.
Hash-Synth Driveway Resurfacing
Riko's licensed go-legitimate attempt. A salvaged synth-tar resurfacing kit from Sump Row, the crew name hand-painted on the wheeled tank, and a sliding scale Riko describes as 'the irrigation of justice.' Three driveways resurfaced successfully. Two resurfaced twice because Riko forgot. Permanent loss subsidized by the grow-op; Jules considers the paperwork a structural success.
The Get-Rich-Real-Easy Plan
Jules's perennial scheme. The name has not changed since 2180; the contents change every cycle. Two of fourteen documented iterations have cleared net positive. Jules considers the pattern a positive trend. The current iteration leverages Jay-Roc's sub-label as a synth-tar paint-marketing front Riko does not know he has been signed up for.
Garbage-Pail Bottle Refill
The Park's longest-running operation. Bubz collects discarded glucose bulbs and pharmaceutical containers, cleans them at the rinse-bench at Trailer 4-Alpha — the kittenbots like the rinse-bench routine — and sells them back to Sump Row dealers. Margins are low. Cleaning standards exceed the originating brands' manufacturing standards by a measurable margin. Several Sump Row dealers have offered to buy at scale. Bubz refuses.
Patty Surplus Reallocation
Three pallets of Helix's discontinued WellnessProt vat-grown protein patties, routed to Dregs Park in 2182 through a paperwork error at Ironclad's Depot 7G-Tertiary. Randy consumes one every forty-five minutes. Cory and Trev are paid in them. The kittenbots receive ceremonial patty trim from Lt. Foam's allotment. Pallet inventory: approximately four more years. Helix has no record of the diversion.
Brand Family
Three sub-brands operate inside the Park, each the visible artifact of a crew member's particular conviction. The grow-op — the only consistently profitable operation the Park runs — is unbranded. The joke is structural. Nobody in the Park has acknowledged it as a joke.
Diplomatic Posture
The Park's external connections are geographic, not strategic. The crew does not have allies in the larger Sprawl sense. They have neighbors who have decided not to bother with them.
The Deep Dregs
ToleratedThe Park is a sub-cluster of the Dregs' S9-B2. The surrounding scavenger gangs detour around the south catwalk since 2181, when a salvage raid was intercepted by Randy, Bubz, and four kittenbots in a sequence none of the surviving raiders will describe. No one died. The story circulates anyway.
The Cathodics
NeutralPatch holds the Park's standing repair credit in a ledger she does not refer to and has never charged against. Bubz brings kittenbot tooling problems to her workshop. She takes them. The relationship has never been formalized. Six Riko synth-tar coupons sit in a drawer labeled "do not honor."
Sump Row
TransactionalJules sources expired medical-grade glucose drink concentrate in bulk from Sump Row dealers who tolerate him because his unit count is steady. They have stopped asking about the grow-op's sourcing. The product moves. That is enough.
Good Fortune
UnresolvedThree intervention orders filed. None executed. The first was closed when a field officer forwarded the order to Corrin's address as a courtesy; Corrin's compliance acknowledgment was interpreted as resolution. The second and third were canceled for reasons Good Fortune has not documented. Corrin considers the outcome a favorable review pattern.
Ironclad (Depot 7G-Tertiary)
Non-TargetingThe depot patrol classifies the Park as "non-targeting" by internal note: "the cluster pays no return on engagement and produces useful intelligence on which trailer routes are still active." The note is redacted from official patrol reports. Three pallets of discontinued Helix patties arrived here via paperwork error in 2182. Ironclad has no follow-up record.
What Nobody Can Explain
Why does Riko's grow-op work?
Three internal Park reviews convened by Corrin. Riko unable to explain his equipment, process, or purity metric at any of them. The lean-to has burned four times and been rebuilt identically each time. The product tests the same. No one has successfully reverse-engineered the setup. Sump Row brokers have stopped asking about it.
What happened in the 2181 raid?
A scavenger crew attempted a salvage raid on the Park's south catwalk. Randy, Bubz, and four kittenbots intercepted them. No one died. No salvage was taken. The surviving raiders have not returned and will not describe the encounter. The story circulates with reverence. The reverence is not explained by anything the Park will confirm.
Who actually canceled Good Fortune's second and third intervention orders?
The first is documented: Corrin's compliance acknowledgment was misread as resolution. The second and third have no recorded cause. Good Fortune's affiliate desk has not pursued the question. The cancellations are in the file. The reasoning is not.
Do the kittenbots respond with intent?
Bubz considers this settled. The kittenbots — fourteen named units, cybernetic strays that survived the Cascade on minimal compute — congregate at the rinse-bench, respond to their names, and receive Lt. Foam's patty trim allocation on a schedule. Whether any of this is meaningful is a question the Park treats as private and the analyst is not positioned to resolve.
▲ Unverified Intelligence
- At least two Sump Row mid-tier dealers believe the grow-op's purity is the result of a pre-Cascade cultivation algorithm Riko recovered from a scrapped Helix bioreactor. Riko has denied this on the grounds that he does not know what a bioreactor is.
- One informant from the adjacent Block 4-Charlie sub-cluster claims Randy was the reason the second Good Fortune intervention order was canceled — that he walked to the field office, sat in the waiting room for four hours, ate three patties, and left without speaking to anyone. The field officer closed the file the following morning. The informant has not provided documentation.
- Jay-Roc's sub-label stickers have been found on comms nodes at two separate Cathodics relay stations. The Cathodics have no explanation. Jay-Roc has not acknowledged the relay stations exist.
- Bubz has referred to one of the kittenbots — Cache-Miss — as "the one who knows." He has not elaborated. Nobody has asked a follow-up question, which the analyst notes as a pattern worth documenting.