The walk down the hall of his floor in Spire 7164A-3 had never been so wonderful. Kaelon marched alongside his parents, his hands in his pockets. Nodding a greeting to anyone who happened to be peering outside their door, mostly they ignored him but stared at his parents with a strange intensity. Kaelon wasn’t surprised. They were supervisors at the assembly and a word from them could end a career. For all their importance, they never visited save for once a year to inspect his cubicle and make sure it was properly maintained. They showed so little interest in him these days that it had been noticed by his neighbours. Once he had been showered with praise and checked in on or offered a slice of a flavoured nutrient cube, but ever since he had been old enough to give up his caretaker bot, he’d been practically abandoned. His parents were practically strangers – their faces were as memorable to him as the backs of their heads, which was all he could see right now. All they did for him was grant remote approval for him to be treated at the infirmary whenever he fell sick.

If I died, would they even notice?

His mother glanced back with a reproving expression before shifting her gaze ahead. “The shuttle leaves shortly, we best hurry,” she said to his father. “We’re losing out on production time.”

Kaelon winced.

They could at least pretend to be happy to see me.

Looking at the ground, he noticed their worn safety boots capped in slightly dented titanium. His own shoes were soft, the soft grey shoes of a child. His expression brightened. This wasn't a time to be down, it was the day of The Exam.

When I get my new shoes, they won’t be brown—it’ll be the white of the Binary Institute.

He grinned to himself, regaining the jump in his step.

His father looked back at him, noting the hands in pockets. He frowned before turning away. As long as they made good time, that was all that mattered.

The gravity lifts were quite faraway and the only way to get to the roof where shuttles could land. If they missed the shuttle, there wouldn’t be another one.

“Hurry up!” his father barked at Kaelon.

Kaelon flinched but quickened his stride to keep up with his parents’ gait.

***

The shuttle that landed on the roof of Kaelon’s home spire was white with chrome embellishments. Not even the hovercars of Sector 11 were white let alone had chrome. Several others, Kaelon recognised from the service shafts, stood in line to board. They whispered excitedly among themselves under the attentive gazes of their parents. Many looked proud and constantly nudged their children to keep their backs straight and stop them from fidgeting too much. They were all going to the same place: The Iron Gate. No one would say much more, but everyone knew of it. When it was mentioned, it was with reverence. Folk who even so much as whispered a rumour of what lay beyond it would end up vanishing and a new person would suddenly be living in their cubicle. Even Kaelon’s parents wouldn’t dare say much more other than when he would be going there.

A man in white stood to the side, marking off names on an invisible list that only he could see. He tapped in the air and swiped almost elegantly with an impassive expression.

One of the parents, a buxom woman with a pinched face, tried to praise her daughter in front of the man, but he simply glared at her until she fell quiet and looked at the ground. If she glanced up, he immediately stared her down until she lowered her gaze again.

Kaelon watched him intently, feeling some kind of affinity with this man well up inside.

Meanwhile, a girl in grey tried to catch Kaelon’s eye. When he looked at her, she blushed. Kaelon looked away with disinterest, which earned him a scowl. When she noticed Kaelon’s father glance at her, she stiffened and hurriedly averted her gaze. After that, the girl ignored Kaelon, refusing to pay him any more attention. It was like he no longer existed.

Inside the shuttle, the seats were covered in a spiral of vibrant colours that looked garish. The air had a crisp scent like that given off by a medical droid, which were notorious for spraying disinfectants when you least expected it. Trips to the infirmary in his spire were his least favourite pastime. Sometimes, you’d forget how unpleasant the experience was and look forward to it. There was nowhere else save the streets for anyone to go. It wasn’t just that folk weren’t permitted to travel, but that they had no means to do so.

Kaelon took his seat in the back with the other children and frowned at a boy who elbowed him by accident. Looking away, he could see his parents had gone up ahead and sat directly behind the official in white so he couldn’t ask them about anything he was curious about. Kaelon didn’t need to. He discreetly pinched his fingers activating his holographic terminal. His gestures were noticed by the other children, but they scoffed at his display.

“Thinks he’s an official,” a boy whispered.

“What a child,” a girl who looked younger than all the other children added.

Kaelon ignored them. He prompted a scan of the seat, quickly navigating the interface. He’d done similar actions a thousand times now, and it was like second nature to him.

The pattern and colouration reduces the visibility of stains . . . it is utilised in public transports that carry low tier citizens.

Kaelon swiped the display away and looked over at the official. He sat on a pristine blue chair and opposite him was another that lay empty. No one dared sit in it. Kaelon sat back and let out a forlorn breath.

The shuttle expunged pressurised air as the rear loading door closed. Moments later a voice carried throughout the cabin from all directions.

Kaelon knew it was due to audio modules that were the size of a fingernail embedded in the ceiling. He’d read about a lot of things and poured over their schematics. He snorted at the way the other children gaped with open mouths and looked around in awe.

With a subtle vibration, the shuttle began to rise leaving them all with a sense of moving without moving. Everyone save for the official looked out the continuous window that afforded them a panoramic view of the techspires. Up they rose into the swirling fog until suddenly they broke through it. At this height they could see the tips of the tallest spires.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Kaelon almost pressed his face up against the glass as he noticed a massive aperture above the spires. Around it were millions of lights, some dark or flickering but most functioning properly.

So that is how they simulate days, Kaelon mused.

The shuttle wasn’t the only one. Hundreds of other white shuttles rose up out of the fog, all making a beeline for that great aperture. As they zoomed silently through it, Kaelon’s mouth fell open. The shuttle was filled with gasps. Beyond the opening was a great hazy expanse illuminated by an azure light. The aperture they came from was rapidly shifting away, it was part of a great inner curve of a much larger structure. Kaelon suddenly felt very small. Despite all his study and digging into the databases, nothing could prepare him for this. There was so much more to the world than he had ever realised. It was far bigger than he imagined.

“It’s an orbital ring,” he said softly. His voice carried in the quiet cabin and even the parents turned to look at him. Kaelon quickly slouched in his seat and lowered his head. A quick glance at the official told him that the man had no intentions of explaining any of this to any of them.

Everything is so vast, and here I thought Sector 11 was big . . .

Kaelon stared out the window afraid that if he blinked, he might miss it. How anyone could build something so monstrous was beyond him

Where did all the resources come from?

Streams of spaceships with polished silvery hulls, many times the size of their shuttle, created long lines of traffic through what must be the outer orbital ring. There were so many apertures like the one that they had just come from. Kaelon didn’t think he could ever find his way back on his own. It was all too big. There were even clusters of spires that made the biggest buildings in Sector 11 look small. They were everywhere. Everything was in motion. He had no idea he’d been living in a place that was constantly moving like that. It was a little unnerving.

The shuttles curved up towards another ring: the inner orbital ring. They made a beeline for it making good time. It seemed official transports didn’t have to stick to the traffic lanes. Kaelon smiled at the thought. He liked the idea that they weren’t being held up like others were. As they neared the lip of the inner ring, he could see vast a sprawling cityscape of elegant spires that made all those they had seen before look crude. The ships in that zone were far larger and more impressive as well, like works of art zooming across the expanse. Their plating gleamed and gave off brief flashes like a scattering of diamonds under intense lights. The sight was the one of the most beautiful things that he had ever seen in his life. Kaelon gazed at them with fervour for some time before he noticed they were homing in on a wide docking hub on the lip. They had to wait a moment as a tractor ship towed a sizeable asteroid off towards a different bay where droids with multiple arms swarmed over it.

There’ll be time to explore this all later . . .

The shuttle swept into an empty docking bay with barely a tremor as it landed on the pad. Men and women in blue were engrossed in the displays of large holographic displays that anyone could see. Kaelon wondered why they didn’t have bionic eye implants. He watched them bow their heads in brief conversations with various droids before making adjustments at curved consoles. It seemed to be that robots did all the heavy lifting. Kaelon had no idea who these people were or to what division they belonged to, he had limited access to the databases. He quickly realised that he also couldn’t look up things if he didn’t know they existed.

I better study harder in future.

After they docked, they were led through the docking bay and down wide halls that could fit several men side-by-side. All the while, they could only gawk at their surroundings. Eventually, they were taken to an antigravity platform that bore them down a dark shaft so fast that a few of the other children became motion sick. One girl bent to vomit, but a glare from the official made her swallow it down. When they finally stopped, the last part of the descent slowing further, it was to face a pair of giant blast doors. They looked heavily reinforced. This was nothing like what was to be found in Spire 7164A-3 and no one ever spoken about what lay beyond them. Kaelon only knew what they were, the Iron Gate, and that The Exam lay beyond them.

A girl gave a frightened whimper, which made the official smile. With a clap of his hands, the heavy gates began to grind as they opened. Kaelon looked at the rungs with suspicion. It was unusual for anything to grind like that.

Is this intentional?

After a few moments, the gates rapidly separated with a loud boom. Everyone jumped including the official who cleared his throat for a moment in a bid to secure everyone’s attention. “Welcome to The Regulatorium!” he said.

Beyond the Iron Gate was a vast bridge that vanished into the distance. Above it were colossal white buildings that joined together some fifty levels up. Many windows were lit with a golden light that only added to the feeling of something almost sacred. As Kaelon stepped out onto the bridge with the others, he saw countless people in white robes with blue-white data cascading down the fabric. Not a single inch of skin was exposed, they wore gleaming white helmets with frosted glass visors. Even the official seemed to be nervous around them as he led them further up the bridge. Below the white paved structure was a dense roiling mist. Beyond it looked like a never-ending world of fog. Still, the air here was the purest Kaelon had even breathed. There wasn’t even a hint of metallic tang to it. It made Sector 11 seem like it was polluted.

The small group of brown garbed folk instinctively huddled together. Kaelon was no different. There were other groups also lead by officials. For some reason they were kept apart. In fact, everyone seemed to keep their distance making it impossible to make out much more than a general murmur of conversations. Kaelon was tempted to pinch his fingers and run a scan to see if he could gather enough data to lip read. Thinking better of it he relaxed his hand. There were more important things to focus on here.

Grand walkways led to the white techspires, and it was upon one of these that they made their way into a long rectangular foyer. The official directed them to queue before a white droid. The robot was remarkably humanoid.

Kaelon watched it closely. He made sure he was in the middle of the line. The last thing he wanted was to miss out on an opportunity or to go first and make a mistake.

One by one, the children were prompted to put their hand into a cylindrical tube built into the torso of the droid. The first to go was a boy who had cried before he realised that it didn’t hurt at all. When he removed his hand, he was left with a barcode on the back of it. His parents blanched at the sight of it but quickly moved to the side under the urging of the official. The boy could only stare at it in shock.

Serves you right for playing in the service shafts instead of training . . . but what kind of exam is this?

When it was Kaelon’s turn, he proudly put his right hand into the opening. There was a flare of azure light. He removed his hand and stared at it. Unmoving. It wasn’t a simple barcode or an assembly code number. He looked at the official’s hands as the man tugged his robes happily. The Binary Institute’s standard mark resembled the orbital rings. No, this was not that either. It was a circular barcode. A barcode was a bad thing. They came in strips. Everyone knew what they looked like. The scavenger crews all had barcodes. They also lived in compact dorms where it was common for members to stab a fellow to death for rubbing someone the wrong way.

Kaelon looked to his parents. “What does it mean?” he asked in a small voice.

The official stepped in proudly and cut off whatever response his parents had been about to give. “You, my boy, are fulfilling a much-needed quota.”

Kaelan's mouth went dry. “What does that even mean?”

“You’re indentured,” the official remarked.

“What?!”

“Did you not accept the bionic eye implant at the infirmary of Spire 7164A-3 a year ago? Well, nothing is free! Now, you get to pay off the debt in the Gridlock Terminus.”

“Wha—”

“Don’t worry! You still get voting rights,” the official said cheerfully.

Kaelon had no idea what to say to that. He looked to his parents. They’d been quiet the entire time.

Did they know?

His father patted his mother’s shoulder. “We can always apply for another one. We’ll get contribution points towards that even if he is a slave.”

His mother nodded quietly.

Slave?