Project November II — Stories of the Struggles

Southern Albion Penitentiary, Southern Albion Sea
Hyperion, Hathor System
4:00 PM Albion Standard Time, 1 January 2698

---

Mohe was at that moment sprawled upon his dull gray mattress, looking upon the grid-locked fan that laid above cycle slowly. Wannabe escape artists that ended up in the hole always attempted to break off such grids and think there was a route out; instead, they’d find a hole that lead to a pipe no thicker than the width of one’s palm. He remembers hearing the frustrating cries from nearby cells whenever such a thing happened.

The man chuckled over the thought as he slowly got up from the bed below. It was strewn about with random items ranging from dulled-paper magazines to the improvised iron pipe that he had made a few months ago in order to exploit hits of kreggy. At least, whenever they made their rounds throughout the prison and were smuggled in by a “charitable” corrections officer. The pipe burned like a bitch in one’s naked palm, but there was no other materials to fashion it out of; everything sold to prisoners were either made out of dull and pliable recycled paper or plastic. That was why his was wrapped in chunks of magazines that he didn’t give a shit about, their words slowly being burnt away and ferried unto the fan above on a wisp of smoke.

Mohe had none of that stuff at the moment, however, and it wouldn’t be until another four hours until his block would be allowed to process out onto the yard. This meant that he was essentially doomed until then to more mulling-overs of old books, endless calisthenics, and silent meditations under the cycling clicks of the overhead vent.

Instead of committing to any of these monotonous activities, Mohe instead opted to walk over to the mirror that laid above the cell’s sink-toilet amalgamation. He looked at himself in the mirror, and noticed that the orange jumpsuit he wore covered the spanning tribal tattoo that originated from the core of his chest. His platinum teeth glistened underneath the sick white light of the cell, and were a good change to the otherwise blandness of his white skin and the ugly orange that his jumpsuit sported. His physique, muscular and toned, was one necessary for survival within the penitentiary, for two reasons: the first was the obvious, with a need to have a body built for defense and offense alike against prisoners who sought to shank you at any possible chance that they’re given. The second, less obvious reason was to train the mind to pay attention towards a goal in the otherwise boring hell that prison was. This meant that Mohe called the gym and the floor of his cell home, using weightlifting equipment and committing to cardio and calisthenics alike whenever he could. Over the course of several years, this yielded a man who was able to stand among the veterans of this massive penitentiary and demand respect. Sure, he wasn’t the true old guard that have been serving their life sentences for utter decades, but he knew his capacities and what to do or not do.

As he grinned and flexed his biceps into the mirror in an act of confidence, a sudden bleep emanated throughout the room that snatched this expression off of his face. Turning instantly towards the front of the cell, he noticed a hologram dancing in front of the normally locked door console. Its red holography flashed an exclamation mark encapsulated within a pyramid, with the words “PREPARE FOR TRANSPORT” orbiting it like a moon. Mohe stood there dumbfounded, but rushed to quickly shove his pipe underneath the mattress of his bed and assumed a position where his face and frontal body were pushed onto the wall, hands splayed on both sides and above his head as procedure. He did not want to be thrown into an iso-cell again; the last time that happened, he almost bashed his own head in against the walls of that cramped box out of boredom.

His eyes now staring at the minuscule roughed details of the gunmetal cell wall, all he could do was anticipate what he was being “transported” for as he listened to the sound of his autodoor opening. However, instead of the usual dull thuds of a corrections officer’s boot, he heard the rough slams of something metallic against a similarly steel-plated floor. When he realized what it was, Mohe’s body briefly surged with adrenaline as a means of a fight — or, more rationally, a flight — but he nevertheless kept his composure.

“ATTENTION, PRISONER S-A-P NINE-ZERO-EIGHT-FOUR-SIX-NINE-DASH-FIVE. PLEASE FOLLOW TRANSPORT PROTOCOL AND LOWER YOUR HANDS.”

Complying for fear of getting smacked over the head by a robotically-held baton, he drifted his arms down to his hips. At once he felt an immense force tug them backward before having a pair of heavy duty cuffs magnetically lock around each of his wrists.

“TURN AROUND AND STEP FORWARD, IN ABIDANCE OF TRANSPORT PROTOCOL.”

“Alright, alright — protocol and shit, I get it.”

Mohe begrudgingly turned around and noticed the tall corrections droid that had slapped the cuffs onto him, baton in one hand and a beckoning metal gesture upon the other. He stepped forward and noticed the droid go behind him, seizing the cuffs directly and forcing him to march through the open auto-door.

“Can you be careful, eh? Is that too hard to ask of a fuckin’ gov-bot?”

“NEXT AGGRESSIVE VOCALIZATION MAY RESULT IN CHARGES. PLEASE BE SILENT AND FOLLOW THE ASSEMBLY.”

“The assembly? What the fuck are you-...”

Mohe stopped speaking once he walked past the threshold of his cell and into the spanning, seemingly infinite gangway and greater atrium. Levels upon levels of auto-doors hiding cells similar to his were stacked across the gulf of empty air between his gangway and others, with each and every single one filled with prisoners being escorted by either human officers or androids. Everyone was heading towards Mohe’s right, and he was subsequently shoved in that direction by his “entourage” and forced to march in a column along with hundreds of others on his level.

“The hell is happening? This doesn’t seem like fuckin’ gym time to me — and that’s not supposed to happen for a few hours, is it?”

“YOU ARE BEING TRANSPORTED TO A TEMPORARY PROCESSING FACILITY. THESE ARE ORDERS OF THE SOUTHERN ALBION PENTITENTIARY WARDENS.”

“What!? I didn’t ask for no goddamn transfer, you dickhead—!”

The slam of the droid’s baton into Mohe’s side made him buckle slightly before the strength of its arms hoisted him back up and immediately into marching position.

“VOCAL AGGRESSION CHARGE WAIVED. WARNING: WAIVER WILL NOT BE ISSUED AGAIN.”

Mohe did nothing but keep his mouth shut, albeit in a silent rage, and marched behind yet another corrections droid hauling its own prisoner in front. His charge for armed robbery was to end in about four years, and he had most of his charges for “self-defense” against other prisoners pardoned. Whatever was happening was clearly way beyond his control, and he didn’t like the feeling of it in any way. Such a massive movement of prisoners meant to him only one thing: transport off-world. Hyperion, despite being the planet he was held on for over a decade, was alien to him; yet the thought of being shipped off to a truly alien world to do god-knows-what was unnerving, to say the least.

As he walked, he noticed in the void between the two portions of the penitentiary block the flight of several camera droids and other spherical machines in flight. He habitually turned his face away from them, but overhearing the shouts of prisoners nearby, he was proven right in doing so.

“WHY THE FUCK’RE THE NEWS HERE? HUH!?”

“I ain’t consented to bein’ shown to millions of people, pendejo!”

“Fuck you, and you, and you! I hope y’all get this, you journo fuck-wits!”

For the life of him, Mohe could not understand why corporate news stations out of all things were being let into the block and given the right to broadcast to potentially millions, if not billions across Hyperion.

He would find out soon enough.

---

What was once Mohe’s block’s designated yard had now become a massive field of nothing but cheap pre-fabricated cubes, all of which being organized in a grid format across a massive concrete field. Despite it apparently being the afternoon, the sky was already cloaked in a sea of gray overcast that threatened rain at any given moment. In between the thousand or so cubes that lied upon the yard were tens of thousands of prisoners, standing in haphazard lines and being guided or watched by squads of corrections officers and droids everywhere that Mohe could see. He was being guided to the yard in a massive platform that took him and dozens of others down from his cell block on a slope downward towards the crowded masses that waited on the floor below.

Soon enough, the platform stopped, with its yellow gates flinging open automatically. The droids and officers pushed their respective prisoners out onto the crowded yardspace before shutting the gates behind them, having the platform ferry the corrections officers back up in order to possibly clear out more of the block.

Mohe tapped the upper arm of a scrawny prisoner, scaring the smaller man at first. However, Mohe’s neutral demeanor allowed the prisoner to turn to him amidst the cacophony of voices and alarms.

“Hey, d’you know what the fuck’s going on?”

“I have no idea, man. We’re all in the same boat, confused as hell.”

The shrill blare of a nearby siren was accompanied by the arrival of several officers and droids, with the humans among them sporting fatigue beneath the visors of their masks. One of them, a human senior corrections officer, stepped forward.

“Alrighty, you dumb bastards, here’s what you’re gonna do: you gentlemen are going to join that big ‘ol fuckin’ line right there,” he said, pointing to an already bloated line of prisoners crowded between various droids armed with yellow-painted riot stun rifles. “Once you join it, you keep goin’ forward until an officer, droid, or whoever the fuck else flags you down to enter one of these boxes.”

He tapped a nearby box with his baton, clinking against what seemed to be a plasteel structure. “’Ooh, what goes on in there?’, you’re probably asking yourselves. We’re not probin’ you here, if you’re scared of your asses gettin’ any more loose. Y’all are going through parole hearings right here and right now. No bullshit, no funny shit, no horse shit, you hear me? Now don’t cause any fuckin’ problems, or you’ll regret what you miss.”

Mohe couldn’t believe it. He stroked the buzzed top of his head with both of his calloused hands in total surprise, and even a bit of gleeful anticipation. Finally, the time had come for Mohe to get the hell out of the hell-hole that he had got himself in for over ten years; he was truly attesting such a miracle to God and the spirits of his ancestors that he had reconciled with after finding out of his ancestry while in prison. He had to break a few skulls for people to stop calling him a “redskin” every time he was in the cafeteria, but it seemed to have slipped away under the radar enough for him to be escorted to what stood before him now.

He and several other men joined the nearest queue, which was guarded by several heavy riot droids that stood vigilant in shield formation. Their sensors seemed to follow Mohe and the others as the minutes rolled by, with his walk past several of these pre-fab structures allowing him to see men both stepping out in total joy, in broken sadness, or in absolute rage — the latter having necessitated the intervention of the overwatch riot droids.

“Parole... fuck, can you believe it?” asked a dark-skinned man behind Mohe, sporting a similar muscular physique beneath a white t-shirt that rose from a blossomed and unfurled orange jumpsuit around his waist.

“Me? Well... I’m a spiritual guy, so yeah, I can,” Mohe responded, his head angled so that he could both pay attention to the conversation and if an officer were to be flagging him down.

“Shit, man... I’ve been in this joint for fifteen years. Fifteen-motherfucking-years. My son’s already an adult out there... I was supposed to be in here for thirty.”

“For real?” Mohe replied. “The fuck did you do?”

“I was caught runnin’ a shit ton of illegal cybernetics and upgrades outta Ningzhou, to those chop-doc and underground surgeon types. Judge gave me thirty years in the pen; way too fucking much, but I guess this is God tellin’ me that wasn’t to be after all. What about you?”

“I’ve already served eleven of my fifteen years in this shithole... I got arrested after trying to rob some expensive microprocessors during transport on some hyperhighway that I can’t remember. I was eighteen.”

“Got-dayum... you’re twenty six!? Man, you’re built like me, and I’m forty-five! Don’t know if that says something about you young motherfuckers or about my old ass...”

As their conversation went on, an officer stepped out of the various CO formations and walked up to Mohe directly, prodding his bare chest with the end of his baton. “You, with the fuckin’ heya-hooya tattoo; go in that box there.”

Despite an initial sense of rage building up at the officer’s remark, Mohe nevertheless shrugged it off and entered one of the innumerable prefabs that were set up. With the metal door locking behind him, he looked around at the cramped space and saw only a scant few things; namely a droid in silent posture next to him at the door, and a clearly bored man sat at a bare white console on the other side of the room. A bare stool was left open for Mohe, to which he walked to and sat down in anticipation of what came next.

“State your prisoner identification and your birth name,” the man said, the circular glasses on his face reflecting a warped version of Mohe’s expression right back at him underneath the glare of a white halo light.

“Uh... S-A-P-C nine-zero-eight-four-six-nine-dash-five... legal birthname’s Jaxon Kende.”

The man said nothing in response as Mohe fell silent. Instead, he was typing away on a portable computer with a one-way glass screen, the glow of whatever lied on the other side of the glass’s surface being shown as a multi-colored spectrum over the man’s glasses.

“Age twenty-six, English-Hungarian. Born on Deimos, in the Solar System, on the thirtieth of December, 2675. Unknown father, deceased mother, no siblings, no listed contacts of any kind on the planet of Hyperion or the greater Hathor star system. Is this correct?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“According to Coalition-wide parole regulations, you are required to have proof of a possible residence or career opportunity prior to discharge. However, with the recent planetary mandate, you are being extended a parole offer due to the fact that your charge is considered to be within the field of regulatory waiver. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

“...Why did you apply to change your first name to ‘Mohe’?”

“A new change of identity, you know. Something to get away from the shit I did in the past.”

“Does it have something to do with that tattoo?” the man asked, his brow furrowed as he pointed at the tribal tattoo that stuck out from his chest and was left open after the prior officer’s baton-prodding left his jumpsuit in a messier state.

“Yes, sir. I descend from American Natives; specifically the Mohawk tribes—”

“I... don’t really care. However, I have the ability to change your name right here and now, given that you don’t exist anywhere in the Hathor system other than ‘908469-5’, and this can cycle up to your Coalition supra-citizenship. Do you want it changed or not?”

“...Fuck, yeah, that’d be appreciated.”

After some moments of typing upon raised holography from a keyboard projector, the man adjusted his glasses and looked back at Mohe, who was in the midst of fidgeting on the stool and sizing up the droid that stood guard.

“You seem like you know how to carry yourself, and your crime wasn’t major. You have no family or any goddamn connections whatsoever here, so this is cleanest slate you can possibly build on. I deem you valid of parole as of the 1st of January, 2698 and approved for discharge.”

Mohe’s head bobbed down in relief. However, before he could send off a prayer, the man before him still had a few words to say.

“Parole isn’t a get-out-of-jail free card, though. The Hathor system banned surveillance tech for prisoners on parole, so you’re going to be assigned a parole officer who will report to your residence at the first of each month until your charge is fulfilled, and you will provide a concise report of your activities through the month. Since you, well, don’t even have a place of residence on Hyperion, you are required to find one before February 1st, and are prompted, but not obligated, to take state housing under the parole committee. Failure to do so will result in your re-imprisonment due to a failure to qualify for continued parole. Do you understand these terms?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Your case is henceforth considered approved. Take one of these,” the man said as he popped open a hidden console to reveal a circular tag. “It’s your ticket off this rig and back into society.”

---

Mohe and thousands of prisoners alike stood assembled at one of the hangars of the Southern Albion Penitentiary, which was a slot-like space that hanged several hundred feet off of the raging and choppy sea below. He never truly knew the extent of the SAP until then, and it came into his mind that the prison was nothing but a massive ocean rig smack dab within hundreds of miles of turbulent and polluted water. The thought gave him a slight pit in his stomach, but such a feeling dissipated when he slipped off his prison jumpsuit in instruction of nearby officers and donned a generic gray shirt with matching pants. They felt like utter shit thanks to the cheap synth-thread fabricwork, but it was better than being out in the real world with an orange prison uniform on. That was property of the state, anyway.

The air rumbled as a large, delta-winged hovercraft idled near the entrance of the hangar prior to taxiing in with the aid of droids waving their amber guiding lights in straight angles. The word CORRECTIONS was written in a bold white font amidst the craft’s otherwise gray superstructure, and as it entered the hangar, Mohe could feel the force of its engines from his waiting postion that was cordoned off by hexagonal-linked fencing.

When the hovercraft parked in full, the gate to the hanger itself was opened by a pair of corrections officers who, in assistance with droids, guided the prisoners out and towards the craft, its engines still on and sending a turbulent wind throughout the hangar that flapped Mohe’s new clothing to and fro from such power. He carried an almost empty duffel bag in his hands, which only held the Christian annotated Bible he was fond of highlighting within and the bare essentials of his newly-minted identification cards. Noticing other hovercraft entering the hanger in tow and creating an even more violent atmosphere within the hangar, he and hundreds of other prisoners jogged along the indoor tarmac towards their craft’s own open side doors. There, Mohe boarded the craft upon its skeletal extended stairs, and met the interior atmosphere of dim yellow lights and no benches of any kind in sight.

“Those coming in first, sit with your backs to the walls. Come on, we ain’t got all day!”

Mohe and the others gradually heeded the instructions of the onboard officers, and he found a spot near one of the craft’s windows. He placed his almost-empty duffel bag beneath the window and sat on it, with its center depressing from the empty air within being displaced. Soon enough, other parolees followed suit, the large interior of the fuselage growing with impromptu bag-benches of their own. Two men sat to Mohe’s left and right, with the one on the left immediately closing his eyes as if to sleep. The one to the right had his left arm entirely gone, with only a cybernetic implant slot visible near his shoulder.

“They took your implant off before you left, huh?”



“Damn, I have no idea; I lost my home in Porto Saudade a long time ago, so they sure as shit ain’t bringing me there. As long as its far, far away from here, I’m good!” the man replied, chuckling as he raised his right fist in the air. Mohe noticed that it sported a tattoo of an eagle surrounding a planet; one that many veterans came into the prison with tattooed on their bodies.

“You were in the military?” Mohe asked, pointing at the man’s tattoo.

“Oh, this shit told you that? Yeah, I was. Terrestrial Army; my tours were during the last years of Belial. Real rough fucking shit.”

“The hell did an old geezer like you do to get locked up in here?”

“Some implant-scalping little cunts tried taking my old arm off me near where I lived. Shot them dead in the middle of the street; the fucking homeowner’s association that owned the apartment block where I shot ‘em didn’t like that. Said it lowered property value. This planet — no, this country — has no respect. All about money.”

Mohe simply nodded in acknowledgment as he mulled over what was said. Soon enough, however, the hovercraft began to be turned to face the outside world due to the assistance of the rotary platform it laid upon. With the last of the prisoners to be stuffed into the craft taking their place in random positions in the center of the fuselage, Mohe settled in for the flight from the place he begrudgingly called home for over a decade to... the real world.

---

Mohe woke up from the nap that he had inadvertently taken to the rumbling of a landing craft. He could have sworn that he already felt such a thing before, but in the haze of waking up, he could only preoccupy his mind with the shouts from the onboard officers that emerged into the fuselage from somewhere in the front of the hovercraft.

“Alright, gentlemen, get up! We’ve arrived; don’t forget anything here, because you won’t be getting it back!”

Mohe grabbed the sling for his bag and hoisted it over his shoulders before waiting for the craft to come to a standstill. Peeking out of his windows during such a process, he noticed that night had finally graced this side of Hyperion, with the neon skyline of the city all around the utterly massive aerospaceport glowing in a comforting amalgam of purple. He never got the chance to appreciate cities like this for all of his life, since he spent one half stuck in a moon’s interior and the next in prison. Now was such a time.

With the craft coming to a full stop before a terminal with a crown of green glass, he and the other parolees began to meander towards the exits. Mohe took the skeletal stairs of the corrections hovercraft down, and arrived in the pitter-patter of a light rain that fell against the charcoal black tarmac. The petrichor, carrying a slight caustic smell to it, was soothing to Mohe after spending years under the recycled air of his cell and the confined concrete musk of the yard back at his old prison. He stretched his body and his aching back muscles before continuing on towards the comforting green and white glow of the terminal before him.

The corrections officers that were escorting the group stopped at the entrance of the terminal, where an assembly of regular police officers stood vigilant to receive the parolees. Entering the terminal itself soon after, Mohe felt the cool air of the air conditioning inside flow unto his dampened shirt. Looking around, he saw many families assembled on one side of a partition, where some of the parolees were taken and reunited. Having lost sight of the veteran he talked to on the craft, Mohe shrugged and continued on with the rest of the lone parolees into a more barren side of the terminal atrium. There, he cashed in the tag that was given to him by the agent who approved of his parole to an attending police officer. In return, he was given a transparent rainjacket and complementary umbrella, a currency card, and a basic InfoScape-accessible prepaid phone. He slid on the rainjacket and gripped the umbrella in his left hand as he shouldered his bag with his right, before looking back at the officer to ask a question.

“So, how much is on that money-card?”

“One thousand and five-hundred Coalition notes, exact. Don’t lose it, or else you’re not getting it back. Same with the phone.”

“And the umbrella...? The jacket...? What’s with this shit?”

“It rains a lot here, if you didn’t know beforehand.”

Mohe’s right eyebrow raised as soon as he heard that statement.

“Where exactly is... ‘here’?”

“Did they not tell you on that hovercraft?” the officer responded, shaking her head. “Well, you’re in Jade City — consider yourself lucky, since its one of the less shitty places to be discharged into.”

Mohe lingered in the line for a few moments before walking away and to the other side of the terminal, giving thanks to the officer with a curt nod.

He’s heard of Jade City before, specifically from the prisoners that originated here. It was one of the larger cities in the southern portion of the Albion continent, and that placed him within the city-spanning Jade City Aerospaceport. If he wanted to get out of there before the sun came up, he had to catch a train out of the area — something he experienced only ages ago.

---

The train that Mohe took out of the Jade City Aerospaceport was surprisingly barren of any civilians at the time that he took it southbound, with its cars only being populated by the sprinklings of parolees that drifted away at various stops. When the clock on his phone read 11:00 p.m, Mohe found his train arriving at a district known as Rochefort. He exited the lowly-populated traincar and stepped onto a train platform protected by the pouring rain by a metallic overhang. With his bag and umbrella still in his hands, he exited the platform and walked towards an overhang that showcased a sprawling street avenue before him.

It was true; he was free. Well, as free as a parolee could be.

He brought the bag’s sling over his arm and held it in his shoulder as he leaned on the railing, his eyes drinking in the neon sights before him. An endless sea of storefront signs and holographic advertisements poured out before him, scintillating in innumerable colors and combining into a chromatically amorphous soup in his retina. Combined with the pouring rain and the headlights of cars that drove beneath and flew above unto the hundreds of stories of stratascrapers and skyscrapers, it was a testament to the strength of the Coalition’s economy and the insignificance of Mohe amidst such an ocean of concrete, metal, glass, and neon.

He left the railing in order to purchase a pack of cigarettes from a nearby autovendor, choosing one with a menthol flavoring due to its cooling effect and assistance in having a smoke after countless years. Pocketing it alongside a purchased lighter, he rode one of the station’s elevators down to the ground level and exited unto a sidewalk that bustled with the walk of people out for their New Year’s celebrations. He walked down the street for some time, noting the variety of pedestrians abound — from full-on synths in nothing but stretched t-shirts to various cyber-goths and preps alike crowding before side stands and storefront displays. Looking up, he saw a miscellany of civilian walkways that criss-crossed through the next sky, peppered with hovercraft traffic inbetween.

Mohe, after soaking up the sights in full, opted to use his phone to digitally flag down a nearby taxi. He jogged for some time before he found the taxi parked in a sequestered parking lot hidden between two massive designer clothing stores; hopping inside, he noticed the thick bulletproof glass that partitioned the front of the taxi from the back.

The driver himself was an old man who seemed to sport Spanish heritage. His grumpy expression was visible through the rear view mirror, and his phrases were short and curt.

“Where to?”

“...Shit. I’m new to town, you know?”

“...No, I don’t know. Where do you want to go?”

“...Uh,” Mohe shortly responded, “...a motel? The closest one.”

“Hope you like roaches, pal.”

---

An hour later, Mohe found himself shirtless and sitting on the patio of his room within the motel that the taxi driver had located and driven to. Not far off from the very train station that he had came from, Mohe could still hear the rumblings of their passing through the echoes of the streets. Distant police sirens and car horns blared in the distance as Mohe smoked on a menthol cigarette, his eyes entirely focused on the busy nature of the streets below him and the designated flying lanes for hovercars above him. He let out a puff of smoke from his mouth before returning the cigarette to his lips, getting up from the rickety patio chair and returning inside with the sliding door still wide open.

He opted to sit at the foot of his bed, the duffel bag with his belongings strewn to the left side and his umbrella and rain jacket to the right. Mohe simply sat there in the silence of the room and the distant ambiance of a living, breathing megalopolis, his mind running only with the thought of relief for freedom and a chance to live the way that he wanted to again.

That way? Well, it wouldn’t be one that he would report to his parole officer.

Mohe smiled at this notion, before leaving the squeaking mattress to return to the outside and to ash his cigarette against the tray that was present.

“Fuck... it’s good to be back out.”

Ragz-n-riches Pub, Jade City, Southern Albion Continent
Hyperion, Hathor System
6:55 PM Albion Standard Time, 3 January 2698

---

The passing between the cold, humid outside and the warm, dry interior would have done wonders to Mohe’s skin - if he wasn’t already hiding under layers of synthread copped from a thrift shop some hours ago.

Stepping into the pub that Kaden had told Mohe to meet up at, with a lit cigarette spooling forth the tastes of cinnamon onto his tongue, his eyes shifted to and fro in order to soak up the sights. The Ragz-n-riches Pub was but one of thousands of similar pub venues that were shoved into every nook and cranny that their owners could afford in Jade City, with each of them trying to differentiate themselves from each other by the use of thematic gimmicks. The gimmick of this particular pub was the intermingling of the proles and the bourgies - after all, it was situated on a nice side-highway that was nestled between the commercial side of Jade City and its sprawling residential arcologies or super-blocks. This meant that alongside the usual ruffians sat more dignified office drones, and even an odd corpo or two that had assembled a corporate entourage unto themselves.

Mohe exhaled the cinnamon-flavored smoke from his nostrils as he headed further into the venue, his stature either towering over or being towered upon the diverse crowd that were in attendance. Those who were not yet called to work following New Years were spending their final leisurely hours here, meaning that the venue was rather packed; a great time for a meeting, given that there was space to even do so around.

The two-story pub had a subtle amber ambience to it, one that was continuous and much different than the discontinuous neons that infected the Jade City skyline outside. In sound, various noises of conversation blended into the saxosynth music that was on play, issuing a tune to each step that Mohe took as he walked past the crowded bar and up the stairs towards the dedicating eating and smoking areas. The faux-wood aesthetic that the pub had going on played very much to Mohe’s personal tastes, since he always thought that the organic textures of wood beat that of the monotony of steel or the broken nature of weathered concrete.

With his synthetic cigarette’s cinnamon cartridge running out, Mohe switched it out with a similar clover flavor as he reached the top of the staircase, rounding its corner and walking along the railings as he searched for Kaden. The man was not as easy to spot as Mohe would have liked - the Fiftieth Jackal hid all his art underneath layers of jackets and coats, and the dermal augmentations the man sported on his face had been already covered up by an underground dermatologist with faux-skin tissue. Even so, Mohe eventually found his new “friend” by being flagged down by one of Kaden’s boys, who led him towards two concave booths and a table arranged to form a shape of an eye that sat right above the entrance to Ragz-n-riches. Several men of varying appearances were already seated between the two booths, enjoying beers and different saltine foods as they waited for the impromptu meeting to start - one of them moved and allowed Mohe to join them, allowing him to have a full sight of the entire pub.

“There’s that fuckin’ penno! Mohe, my brotha, how’re ya holdin’ up?”

Mohe sighed as he sat down, puffing twice on his synth-cig before placing it down on a shared ashtray.

“Yeah, I’m good, Kaden. Say, are all these your boys too?” he asked, cocking his head to and fro in indication of the various tattooed and augmented men around him.

“Half of us are from the Fiftieth Jackals, same as the boss,” one of them replied, taking charge in place of their present leader. “Other half are like you; pennos with experience. That right, ain’t it?”

“Truuuue,” blurted out a man in the midst of finishing his joint, his blond dreadlocks seemingly brushing off of the shoulders of a much smaller man sat next to him. “We all ‘ere for dem notes... Mohe, Kaden’ ere say you a beast ‘n d’ pen. You a real beast?” the dreadlocked man asked in an audibly Jamaican accent, pointing his joint at Mohe before finishing it in one massive, savored inhale.

“If you’re asking me if I can handle my shit, I can. Cadmium knows the bull I had to do in the pen to survive. A job here is easier to put in my mind, if anything.”

“Good!” Kaden exclaimed, cheering him with a raise of his beer before slamming it down onto a coaster after sipping it. “That means we are all accounted for in knowing how the fuckin’ game goes, yeah? Now, we ready to talk business, or are half of you too fried to understand jack shit?”

As Kaden looked around to take stock of the mens’ states, Mohe noticed that the man’s irises glowed a dull violet. It was a strange sight - most likely being the result of an optical implant.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then... alright, let’s talk biz.

“Now, as y’all know, me and Cadmium know our shit when it comes to running untraceable augs for any client that hires us. The thing is, Hathor’s Prez has been up the ass of every aug-servicing corp from here to Thoas and back because of those new cyberization laws. That means it’s now harder to get shit for our clients from systems outside of Hathor, and this also means that black market rates for ‘em are through the fucking roof. We can’t peddle our products like good fuckin’ tradesmen, which means we gotta get our hands dirty. Y’all get what I’m saying?”

His question was responded to by nods across the booths, Mohe included.

“Good, good. There’s a aug-manufacturing corp that just got bought up by Chen Wu recently called Poros Bodyworks, and the great thing is that their plant is straight outta home turf - smack dab in southern Jade City. The purchase for it was in the tens of billions of notes, too, which means that if we don’t hit a lick on this soon, Chen Wu is going to roll in and dump their usual deal of asset protection and evaluation services. In other words... that shit is gonna be locked down like Guantanamo.”

“What’s a gwantanmo?”

“...It’s some fuckin’ jail from Earth, Klezzy. Look,” Kaden said as he rubbed his forehead, “the point is that we gotta hit this subsidiary soon and hit it hard, or else these new laws - courtesy of our beloved President Foulke - is gonna bury us in the damn dirt. Can’t have that.”

“You got a timeframe for this lick?” Mohe asked, picking up his synth-cig as he spoke. “If you know what Chen Wu’s doing, it means that we can plan accordingly.”

“You one smart nut, ain’t ya, penno? I did have one, yeah... but... I got sold out.”

Whispers rounded the booths as the men looked between themselves and Kaden.

“Let me explain what the fuck happened first, okay? Klezzy, roll me a blunt while I talk. I’ma need it.

“I had what seemed like a real good fuckin’ contact in Poros, named Hando. He had access to the comms between his managers and the Chen Wu corpos that were supervising the transition of leadership and assets through apparently sucking some off, and gave me access to what I thought was their timetables, itineraries, the works. I send a few of my boys to verify this, and as half of you know... they never came back from that shit, except in bodybags.”

“Woah, woah - your boys got iced by fucking Chen Wu?” one of the ex-cons asked, his cheeks being decorated with taoist trigrams. “You serious?”

“Of course it was fucking Chen Wu, penno! Who the fuck would whack a bunch of gangboys like that for just messing with timetables? Hando was feeding me false shit, and now I have no clue if I got a bounty on my fucking head. So, here’s what we gonna do first. I need two of you to ice that fucking fag, search his place for anything related to this deal, and take it back to me here,” Kaden said, rolling his eyes in interaction with optical GUIs before sending an address to each of the men at the table. Mohe received it on his phone, and he eyed it - 746 Faulkner Court, Puerto Magnifico Arcology. It was probably a trap house of some kind, but Mohe wouldn’t know unless he was the one that had to report to it directly.

“Say, Mohe, Cadmium knows you fuck shit up - how ‘bout you go and help my boy Klezzy here?”

Fuck, Mohe thought. Wonderful luck’s what I got. Committing a hit with a fucking stoner.

“Sure,” he responded, exhaling his synth-cig’s smoke while seeing it conjoin with the clouds of exhaled weed that already floated about underneath an amber lamp. “Klezzy, you got iron?”

“Shit, bredren, y’know we ‘redy,” the blonde Jamaican said as he reached underneath the table and placed a gun near to the plate of chips that he was entertaining beforehand. It was a street-legal Proskurin SA2566 from what Mohe could recall, and Klezzy’s pistol already had a suppressor affixed to it.

“Mohe, I know you and the rest just got out of the pen, so you ain’t got shit but your fists. God knows that I already can tell you specifically can wreck shit with ‘em, but you never go do this kind of stuff without the steel to back it up. That’s why I brought some guns for all of you pennos; Ricardo, get ‘em acquainted.”

One of the Fiftieth Jackals who were previously straddling a metal box in their arms, unlatching its top before opening it and revealing four other pistols inside - all being SA2566s, with suppressors and magazines alike lying to their sides inside.

“Pub owner is friends with Cadmium; he won’t rat to cops about this little distribution. Y’all go ahead and take one.”

“Ain’t these six hundred or so notes a pop without even counting ammo and the supps?” another ex-con asked.

“Bro, don’t worry about the price; it ain’t going on your tab. Besides, if we do this shit right, all these guns are gonna be payed a hundred or more times over.”

Mohe put his cigarette back in the ashtray and reached into the box with his fellow ex-convicts, pulling out one of the SA2566 in one hand and a suppressor with two magazines sandwiched between gloved fingers in the other. He pocketed the two extra magazines in the underside of his jacket as he inspected the Proskurin, checking that the safety was on before unloading it to see another magazine already loaded inside.

“For those not acquainted, SA2566s run fifteen-round magazines - thirty if you’re brave, forty-five if youre accommodating for something. Perfectly street legal. God bless Hyperion, because you don’t need a license for this shit. Easy. However, I expect you all also to not fucking flash them around like a bimbo’s fake tits, or else you’re going to attract heat that we don’t need.

Mohe, Klezzy, I’ma send you the deets of this shit later. We can’t make a move without those timetables, so there’s no point of stressing about any other shit now. Let’s get shitfaced, yeah!?”

---

Mohe stepped outside of the pub with a slight buzz, having treated himself to some rum at the bar. It was already nine, and the neon streets of Jade City shone in full effect all around him. Being sober enough to walk without a stumbling gait, he lit a cinnamon flavor in his synth-cigarette once again before walking down the crowded sidewalk towards a place where he could easily catch a taxi.

Before he could enter a full stride, however, he felt a hand grasp him on the shoulder. Turning reflexively with his hands clenched, ready to punch, he instead saw the blonde dreadlocks of Klezzy.

“Shit, it’s you? Man, I almost clocked you right in the fucking face; my bad.”

“Is all cool ‘ere! You roll wit Kaden, you bredren t’me, no bad blood, seen? Since we roll soon, I fig’d we talk ‘bout each o’ ourselves. Can’t roll good if y’bredren ghosts.”

“Yeah, I understand,” Mohe replied. The two walked over to a railing on the sidewalk that gave full view of the location they were in - in essence, the sidewalk was a raised platform that was hoisted over and under hundreds of similar platforms that snaked around the mega-block that Ragz-n-riches was a part of. Hovercars flew by as the men smoked their respective cigarette and joint, smoke billowing away from their subsequent, forceful wake.

“Mi ‘ear you in the pen for how long... ten?”

“Eleven. Locked up for stealing microprocessors... somewhere on this planet. I can’t even remember, but it was somewhere in South Albion, that’s for sure.”

“Ah, seen,” Klezzy responded. He coughed for some time before returning to the conversation, probably as a result of the hefty drag he did prior. “Me ‘ave been locked up for tings out’ere - nothin’ big, though. Mi serve ‘bout seven years total for peddlin’ cannabis witout license, for puttin’ shots in a bitch-boy car, other tings... gangbang shit, y’know?”

“Yeah,” Mohe replied. “You know how to handle your iron, then, I take it?”

“Mi gun mi wife, mi spirit ‘n d’metal. Aim true.”

“Good shit, then,” Mohe said, turning to face Klezzy and raising his left hand with his palms open. Klezzy, knowing what Mohe was doing, switched his joint to his left hand and slapped his right on Mohe’s hand, dabbing him up before patting each other on the shoulder with a friendly hug.

“You’re gonna have to teach me some shit about Hyperion, though. Over a decade in prison and I can’t understand this place...”

“Seen. Kaden ‘ready sent d’ address of dis batty-boy, so mi ready t’ride whenever you’re true.”

Mohe and Klezzy both took their last drags before tossing them over the railing, with each of them parting and looking at their respective phones for the details that Kaden had sent them.

＊２ New Messages sent １ minute ago.
＜ＫＫＡＤＥＥＮ＞: 1947 SW Sisyphus Interstate, Accordion Apartment Complex, Apt 3958
＜ＫＫＡＤＥＥＮ＞: show this fgt fck how we roll👹

---

---

Poros Bodyworks Manufacturing Plant, Jade City, Southern Albion Continent
Hyperion, Hathor System
9:45 PM Albion Standard Time, 3 January 2698

---

Octavia was at the brink of snapping.

The woman stormed down the snaking halls of the plant towards the employee lockers, a stoic stare planted on her face as a means to not attract the ire of her supervisors for having a “poor workplace attitude”. However, as soon as she entered the room that hosted such lockers, her demeanor turned into that of a simmering rage.

Normally, Octavia would have been held up at work until seven for some inane reason, but on the whim of her manager Joachim, she was now forced to work almost five entire hours past the time most clocked out. Opening her locker with force, she tugged out the duffle bag that contained her spare change of clothes, various baubles necessary to carry with her while on parole, and equipment to maintain her two cybernetic arms - sitting below of her two natural, organic ones.

Both sets of arms sported similar dense musculatures, but her cybernetic pair used for work were attached to a neuromuscular port that sat below her deltoids, thus being slightly longer than her organic pair. Due to corporate regulations, they were colored in metallic orange, and thus shone underneath the sickly white lamps in such a tinged glow. These arms hoisted the duffle bag over her back while she stood silent, head down in thought.

I’m going to strangle my parole officer, I swear to God...

Octavia slammed a fist into the metal chassis of the locker in frustration before walking away, the silence of the halls and their relative emptiness echoing the isolation that followed her. Ever since she was released from prison a year ago from her assault charges, Octavia was effectively entombed to slaving at Poros Bodyworks as a part of her parole contract. The only “positive” was that it allowed her to be augmented with a secondary pair of arms free of charge, sure, but having this be done in exchange for a pittance of a salary at a shitty company with shitty managers and supervisors felt more like a death sentence. In prison, Octavia was at least spared the farce of maintaining a professional relationship with those superior and inferior alike.

As Octavia trudged throughout the labyrinthine of halls towards the entrance to the facility, she was stopped by one of her female coworkers, Vicky. She hated the woman with all her heart and soul for being an insufferable bitch to work with, but Vicky’s attitude now lacked the annoying texture that Octavia was used to. Now, it sported hesitancy.

“Yeah? Do you need something?”

“Well, um... have you seen Hando lately?” Vicky asked, clutching a burning cigarette between her fingers.

Octavia’s brow cocked in response. “He works in a different department than us; general admin. The bureaucratic bullshit - you know this, why are you asking me?”

“Well... I was told to give something to him. Records and stuff from those people from Chen Wu; they said he had to review them immediately. I’ve been asking everyone here, and no one’s seen him at all! Not even the people from general-”

“Then that means the lucky fuck is spending his sick days doing the weird shit he usually does. Right?”

“I guess... but I don’t know where he lives!”

“Shit, and you think I do, Vicky? Look, I gotta catch a bus back home, so good luck with your... stuff, okay?” Octavia said, inching away before breaking off the conservation and heading through the entrance. She didn’t want to get involved in anything relating with Chen Wu or its employees being in the area. Everyone knew this, and it was simply the sensible thing to do. Vicky was probably digging her own grave, and Octavia thought better than to get involved.

As she waited for the entrance doors to be automatically opened, she noticed the two security guards shooting the shit in their allocated interior guardhouse. She waved two of her four arms at them and gave off an irritated expression, forcing one of the guards to lazily scoot in his chair and fiddle with something hidden that allowed the maw of the entrance to finally give way. Walking through, Octavia found herself in a cold and humid night, with the chill flowing over her arms and her exposed midriff. The company attire she was supposed to wear indoors was already hanging off of her waist, and Octavia didn’t want to exactly advertise where she worked as she went through the city. She’d rather bear with the cold.

Octavia walked down the somewhat quiet streets that ran parallel to the Poros Bodyworks plant, her amber eyes bouncing to and fro different neon signs that she already saw hundreds of times. Strip clubs, bars, shops, the works - it wasn’t surprising that these were located only a few hundred meters or less from a major augment manufacturing facility. Nothing was surprising in Jade City, or Hyperion as a whole.

Soon enough into her travels, Octavia was able to rest at one of the miscellany of bus stops strewn throughout. As the hoverbus that ran the route near to her house landed, she piled in alongside dozens of others - many of whom were gawking at her for the obvious display of arms, in addition to her defined physique. Women and men alike shot her gazes, but Octavia was not in the mood for it - she simply settled into the back of the bus, using her duffle bag as an impromptu pillow.

Settling in for the drive, her eyes slowly sagged with the weight of sleep as she looked through the window. The bus lurched forward and set off unto the night sky, with the neon lights of Hyperion’s innumerable cities swallowing the starlight above and thus rendering it a murky light-blotted void. Octavia could make out one specific pinprick of light in this soup of darkness, however - the orbiting ring station known as Paradise, where the top one-percent-of-the-one-percent resided in all of the luxurious glories. She didn’t care for such monumental dreams, but always thought about what living in space with all needs accounted for would truly feel like.

These thoughts lulled her slowly into the grip of sleep, but she was ultimately roused by the beginning of a conversation near her. In the seats in front of her, two men had begun to light their cigarettes and speak to one another about... something. Cueing her ears in, she gradually picked up what they were saying.

“...I just don’t understand, man. Corps funding gangs in the streets? Nah. Can’t be true.”

“Oh come the fuck on, man! Stapleford, Chen Wu, Hinata; do you think they just sit with their thumbs plugged up their asses when their private securities can’t fight for control? They go get cheap, expendable, reliable soldiers - gangs. Cliques. The works.”

“How the fuck did you get this information?”

“I mean... to be honest, there ain’t no concrete evidence of this that the news’s just gonna pass to the public. Thing is, there’s a lot of shit floatin’ ‘round on the Net that show how these corps distribute money, weapons, and all sorts of other shit.”

“Now I gotta believe everything the Net says? Really now?”

“Well, Mark, if you don’t believe me, then maybe...”

The conversation began to bore Octavia, but she soon noticed that the hoverbus was approaching the destination that she needed to disembark from. She slowly rose from her seat, bag in hand, and waited for the bus to finish its approach to one of the many aerial platforms for the megablock that she resided within.

Unit 4385, Albatross Residence Bloc, Jade City, Southern Albion Continent
Hyperion, Hathor System
10:45 PM Albion Standard Time, 3 January 2698

---

The sound of crumpled cans hitting plastic resounded throughout the cramped apartment as Octavia finished her third beer of the night. Stifling hiccups as she stumbled from the open kitchen to the bedroom-living room combo, she flopped onto her folding bed with an audible sigh. Her cybernetic arms were already put away near the foot of her bed, leaving the neuromuscular ports open with their metallic lips attached onto nothing. The crappy television screen that was hoisted on the other side of the room was turned on with a flick of a free hand, allowing Octavia to see a newscast babbling on colors blended in from a mess of pixels.

“...in other news, many are expressing their shock with the decision that President Foulke approved earlier last month. Known as the ‘Parole Re-evaluation Procedure’, the Republic of Hathor has validated for the release of hundreds of thousands of convicts across the planet of Hyperion. Some fellow Presidents across the Coalition of Congressional Republics have decried Foulke’s move as a dangerous attempt to feign populism, while others across Hyperion see it as a chance for a new, redeeming life.”

Octavia watched the newscast as it teetered on, nursing her fourth beer of the night without a particular care for the consequences tomorrow. She already filed for the day after to be one of the very few days off that was spared, being so as an indirect revenge for being shoved into work for so long into the night today.

“Beginning our opinion segment is a particular metaconservative politician hailing from Masay Harbor, Niels Angstrom. Mister Angstrom, I wish you a warm welcome to the show, and I want to open with this: what do you personally think about President Foulke’s most recent act?”

“Thanks for having me, Claye. Well, when looking at this from a policy perspective, it is quite strange for even someone as conservative as Foulke... I mean, rehabilitation bills and the like are the things that many metaliberals and sociodemocrats fling at congress all the time. Thing is, though, like all laws and acts, there’s a good and a bad to them. I don’t see much good coming from this, personally, given how many ex-convicts have been released without any support structure. They really should not have been released in the first place, as now the public sphere is going to be saturated with a metric ton of parolees.”

“So, would you say that this move was unwise from President Foulke?”

“...No, not necessarily. Hyperion labor markets right now are in a slump for employment, and this has already showed function as a major labor force injection. Corporations are already headhunting parolees and hiring them en-masse if they don’t have a parole contract already. It is just that, from my perspective, the President just did not weigh all the consequences properly before enacting this thing.”

“Very interesting, mister Angstrom. Now, to hear the opinions from the other side of the aisle... miss Tiyana Hakodate, chairwoman of...”

Octavia grew bored with the opinion segment, soon shutting off the television with another lazy swipe of her hand into the air above her bed. She sat up and lumbered over to the small window affixed to the right side of her apartment, giving forth the glowing lights of the distant commerce sector of Jade City hundreds of kilometers away. She stood there, staring forth, in deep thought.

Once she was off parole, Octavia did not have much of anything to come back to. Her father didn’t exist anymore in any record she was aware of, and her mother had already died some time ago to the innumerable diseases that rippled through the overcrowded planet. In the terms of friends - co-workers certainly not counting - she barely had any. The rigors of her schedule disallowed Octavia from participating much in social events, and her friends from high school were already spread far and wide across the breadth of Hyperion’s city-addled surface. She did not have the pang of wanderlust in her heart, nor the taint of true lust - she desired something more close and less superficial from a man. She knew no one that could love her like how she wanted, and thus Octavia naturally grew to give off a vibe of confrontation and competition to everyone around her.

Octavia sighed as she hit the lightswitch to the apartment off, bringing the light present down to only the faded neon streams through the window and the silent glow of activity statuses from her television and other electronics. She threw her last beer can across the room and flopped onto her bed, grappling with a mind that desired more from a life barren of true opportunity.

One day, she would find something worthwhile to latch onto and prosper.

One day...

---

---

Maogang 錨港 (Anchor Bay)
Chen-Wu Shipbreaking Site
Jade City, Hyperion, Hathor System
9:00 AM Albion Standard Time, 3 January 2698

---

Miata Hughes was standing atop a city which didn't feel real at all.

An icy wind cut through her like a blade, but the surrounding ambience was silent—deathly silent. Standing over the edge, she saw that the ground ended in a milky white void, with the sky above her a solid blue. All around her, the buildings seemed to stretch downwards into an infinite blank nothingness, and the sun reflecting off their windows gave the impression that the buildings were glowing.

She knelt down, as if to test if the cool metal roofing beneath her was real against her fingertips.

Real enough.

She stood back up as sirens suddenly filled her ears, along with the familiar loops of drum 'n bass breaks and electronic synths. A police hovercraft rose up over the other side of the building, its sirens blaring as red and strobe lights flashed in her face.

She assumed a stance likened to that of a runner about to blast off the starting block, and without any more hesitation, she blasted off the side of the building.

She was flying. She felt weightless, and as the music intensified around her, she—

"*BIIIIING BOOOOONG Now approaching: Maogang. Please hold onto the hand rails and watch your step as you exit the locomotive. Have a great day at work!*”



”Fuck.”

Miata grumbled and shrank into her seat, watching as her reflection on the window was immediately replaced by the corporate city Maogang.

As they exited the tunnel, Miata removed her earbuds and looked out the window, watching as the city flew past her at breakneck speed. For as many times as she had immersed herself in fantastical virtual reality settings, she never had thought about taking the time to inspect her own home—and for good reason.

Maogang—Jade City as a whole, even—was very different when one wasn’t practically submerged in VR or AR tech. It was more or less a shithole; much less flashy and optimistic, more dark, rainy, and depressing. Miata could see a web of maglev monorails and hovering buses zipping atop routes that crisscrossed the city; some shot through gaps between skyscrapers, some blasted over neon-lit streets, and others passed beneath dark tunnels that seemed to lead to nowhere.

Gigantic viewscreens broadcasting big name products were practically everywhere, plastered onto practically everything—even onto the goddamn seats in the monorail. Miata at least had a bit of breathing room when it came to these all-pervasive advertisements—if she had the proper AR ocular implants, they would’ve been be right up in her face.

As the train approached Maogang, her eyes slowly drifted away from the massive skeleton of a partially-disassembled CFA vessel far off in the foggy distance, to the throng of street vendors beneath the bridges made from the monorails. Her eyes passed over them, watching as they bickered, bartered, and argued in the open, as if they had no care for the rain at all. Most of these people were just lowly tradespeople and scavengers that sold pirated tech, all while the actual shopkeeps across the street stared at them contemptuously from inside of their establishments.

It was a bit of a sad relationship, really. The people on the ground had practically no idea how infinitesimal they were compared to the guys up top, such as her bosses with Big Chen. At times, Miata also felt small, but she always had to remember that there was always going to be someone smaller than her, and in much more destitute conditions. Sometimes, it paid to stay grounded.

As they continued moving, the buildings around the shipbreaking yards gradually transformed from the recognizable blocky office towers to squat squares made of corrugated metal sheets and concrete. The screens on these buildings were cracked or otherwise non-functional, and the occasional burn barrel hidden in an alleyway lit up stacks of trash and debris, which formed scrap walls that separated small shacks from each other.

It became readily apparent to Miata from the passover what these shack-villages were: homeless communities, hoping to leech off whatever tech that the Chen-Wu workers came out with, where they could sell it in the markets for whatever measly profit they could. If life was hard for the street vendors, it was even worse than the people out here.

As the monorail began to slow down, Miata stood up from her seat and shuffled her way over to the doors, practically melting into a crowd of a hundred other workers packed like sardines onto the hovering train. The train soon came to an abrupt stop at the station, the momentum nearly knocking her off her feet as it slid to a halt. Then, the doors sheathed open, allowing the throng to step out onto a wet metal platform leading down to the ground level.

Miata hopped off the train and had no time to look around as she was pushed by the human wave down a flight of metal steps, totally exposed to the elements. The wind blew freezing cold air and mist into her face as she followed the crowd in a tight file, reaching into her jacket pocket for her ID and earbuds again.

Her usual combination of VR and binaural beat music was pretty much useless here when she was exposed to so much stimuli. She felt a little upset that she wasn’t on such a relatively quiet and smooth train anymore, which meant that finding something to distract herself from the cold and hellish workplace she was about to enter was a task easier said than done.

Soon, the throng had reached its destination, the front gates of the Shipbreaking Yard of Chen-Wu’s Maogang site. The armed robotic guards on duty stood like statues, unfazed by the rain or wind, and unmoving as if they were completely unaware of the massive amount of Chen-Wu workers shuffling into the site. However, Miata knew better—if someone was to step out of line or get uppity with another worker, two of those robots on guard would be on them before she could even blink. She figured it was best she kept her mouth shut, her ID up, and her face forward at all times.

Passing through the security checkpoint and clocking in was a breeze, and before long, Miata finally had some breathing room as she entered the corporate city. Maogang, in essence, was a walled off community built by Chen-Wu, which meant that practically all stores and housing were also owned by Chen-Wu, or a Chen-Wu subsidiary. The place was filled with stores, places of worship, markets, recreational facilities, and even schools, but if one had more than one brain cell, they’d know that living here was exploitative and controlling as hell.

Miata had opted to stay off-site, a decision she thought paid off, even if it meant taking the train in to work every day. The luxury of staying in an apartment one could personalize themselves in an area where things didn’t cost as much as one’s salary was something that was truly underrated, even if things were generally less quality the further away she went.

Miata suddenly stopped as she found herself at the front blast doors of her place of work: the Chen-Wu shipbreaking yards. The imposing neon sign up front in English and Chinese, and the tired appearance of the previous shift workers exiting made her hesitate on stepping in, but a buzzing sensation on her hip prompted her otherwise—she quite literally couldn’t afford to be late.

Inside the building, she made her way into a small meeting room on the first floor, where a collection of individuals had been gathered—most notably, her supervisor. The man had to have been an ethnic chimera, his face practically unrecognizable to any ethnicity she knew of, which meant that he was perhaps an off-worlder. The one thing that never seemed to change about his face, though, was a scowl that seemed to judge everyone he was responsible for.

Regardless, she knew very well of the man’s attitude and was prepared for it—he had to be a hardass on them because his paycheck depended on it.

Entering the room, she hovered the PDA in her pocket over a scanner by the door, which let out a single beep in approval. ”Sorry I’m—”

”You’re one minute late, Hughes.” Her supervisor sighed, his hands on his hips as he watched her enter the room, shuffling into place beside another identically clad worker. He then checked a vintage chronograph on his left wrist—something Miata knew probably costed him a paycheck and a half. ”Make that two minutes. Anyone else decides to come in late gets written up. Let’s get started.”

She didn’t protest at all as she just stood there, unable to defend herself at all. Miata watched as he placed his hands into his jumpsuit’s pockets, then looked towards a screen behind him. "Synth, bring up, uhhh, the cross section of the Captain Deckard. Highlight command deck and, uhhh, conning tower.”

Miata watched as a synthetic worker behind her tapped something on a small console built into the drywall. The screen behind her supervisor eventually powered on with some effort, showing a gridded cross section of the gargantuan starship they were currently dismantling outside. The ship’s profile enlarged, emphasizing the bridge and the conning tower directly above it, which contained a plethora of obsolete electronics and sensors likely used to detect enemy vessels during the Captain Deckard’s prime.

”Okay... let’s, uhh, see here. Here’s the job for today:” her supervisor began unceremoniously, scrolling through a small holographic notepad built into an implant on his wrist. ”We’re bringing in the big guns tomorrow, folks. That means heavy gear, salvage hovercraft, big cranes, et cetera.”

He paused, his finger passing over Miata for a moment. ”That also means everything tech-wise on that dump has got-to-go. First group, you’ll be goin’ to the bridge and taking the computers to reclamation—I swear to Christ, you break them, it’s goin’ out of your fuckin’ pay. Corporate apparently says that we can re-use ‘em or salvage old components, so long as the physical data banks and computers aren’t busted.”

He paused. ”They, uh, also don’t want you guys selling any scrap or copper wire ‘n shit to the tech-scavs outside Anchor Bay limits—’breaking corporate policy’ or something. I don’t really care, just, uhhh, don’t get caught doin' it.”

Anchor Bay, Miata repeated to herself, a quick reminder that Maogang went by two names. Anchor Bay was only the Anglicanized method of saying the city, which some people still used out of personal preference.

Her supervisor then realized where his finger was pointing and lowered it. ”Oh. Uhh. Hughes, today, you’ll be on topside duty again on the conning tower, buddy paired with, uhh...” He paused to check a name on his holo-notepad. ”Clancy.”

As if her gaze was linked with her supervisor’s, Miata turned to a slender blonde woman with a pixie cut who stood in the corner, someone whom she had never seen before in her life. The woman looked up, giving a nod and wink to Miata, which only caused her to shiver. Normally, she’d be assigned to working alone, but for whatever reason, today was an exception.

I'll manage, though, Miata thought to herself, sighing. Right?

"Alright, folks." Her supervisor clasped his hands, turning off the screen as the lights automatically brightened. "Need that conning tower and the computers in the bridge out by COB today. Let's get it done, folks."

With that, Miata stood up and started for the exit, only remembering that she had a partner when the "Clancy" woman stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder, smiling. Miata's face scrunched up almost automatically as she turned to her. "What?"

"Just going to say..." she began, "It's gonna be nice working with you, Hughes. The name's Kiera, by the way."

Miata still had a poker face as she gently moved Kiera's hand off her shoulder. "Miata. Don't get too comfy—we don't get paid to sit around and talk, after all."

”Right, right. We’ll have our chance to talk after.” Kiera nodded.

Miata scoffed, starting for the door and immediately making a right turn for the lockers.

Yeah, right.



Miata paused halfway on her descent down from the conning tower, turning to Kiera and squinting her eyes at the woman while dangling from the rope, seeing that she had said something out her mouth that was unintelligible. ”Whuh?”

”I asked, ‘how’d you get this job,’ Miata?” Kiera repeated a question that had apparently fallen on deaf ears, and quite literally. Miata removed her earbuds as she rappelled down the conning tower, a hovering carryall drone following her that carried the more sensitive and delicate electronic equipment that Miata had salvaged.

In response to the woman’s question, Miata just... shrugged. How did she get the job here anyways? As far as she was concerned, she simply had just finished high school and some college before dropping out and ending up here, but with time feeling so blurry lately and work being so all-encompassing, she never really had bothered asking that question.

"Um." She paused. "I don't know."

"Your parents work in the shipbreaking industry? It’s a huge, imposing industry that sometimes traps entire families. I wouldn’t be surprised."

Miata shrugged. As far as she was concerned, she wasn't aware of what her parents were up to nowadays. There were rumors of some family connections to her job here and there, but she doubted someone like her father had any say in Chen Wu affairs if she was working from the bottom here.

In response, Kiera just frowned. "You know, you're a real tough cookie to crack, Miata. At least you're honest."

Miata finally lowered herself down atop the upper deck, where the magnetic boots on her equipment locked to the metal plating with a loud and hollow clank. In response, she just glared at Kiera, not even bothering to look back at the climbing equipment she was pulling back onto her suit. "What? What do you mean I'm a 'tough cookie to crack’?"

"I mean exactly what I say, Miata," Kiera responded, reaching atop her head and flipping a protective visor down over her face as she began to cut a large piece of metal in half with her cutting torch. Above the flashing lights and harsh noises, Miata could still hear the woman's voice: "You're introverted as hell!"

Miata waited patiently for Kiera to finish cutting the piece of metal, watching her pass it over to a larger carryall drone to be shipped down to the surface. She just rolled her eyes as this happened. "The fuck's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," Kiera paused, flipping her visor up, gesturing to her ears. "You've gotta talk more. I think you playing that music in your ears so loudly blocked out any chance of small talk I had with you today, and we're almost done. I like to talk when I work, and I like to make friends!"

Miata frowned, sifting through a pile of some of the smaller sensor arrays with her boot, as if to kill time. "I don't. Sorry I’m not so chummy. Company doesn't pay us to talk, they pay us to work."

"And look at what we've done." Kiera gestured to the deck they were on, which had been almost completely stripped of its remaining electronics and sensors, and in record time. Even Miata was a bit surprised at how quickly they had accomplished everything—either she was working extra diligently today, or Kiera was almost as fast of a worker as her.

”We worked.” Miata just said, emotionless. ”What’s it to ya?”

”I’ve got the feeling that we’re going to be working together more in the future—its just an inkling with the boss I had. So...” Kiera paused, standing up from her impromptu workstation. ”Why don’t we get to know each other more? I know it’s creepy, but—”

”The way you put it makes it creepy.”

”Touche. But, either way, there’s an arcade in Jade City that I want to take you to after work. It’s pretty cool.”

”I do enough gaming already,” Miata sighed, packing up her things as she made her way towards the access shaft they had entered topside from. ”What makes this one different?”

”...What about secret bars? You like those?”

Miata stopped, turning her head over her shoulder as she raised an eyebrow. ”You have my attention...”