I moved with Derek as we trudged through the worker lines. The thousands of people crowding the main street as we bustled around with others.

“Let's see if we are lucky today,” Derek hollered as the ebb and flow of the crowd could easily drown out the words of a single man.

“Lucky indeed,” I hummed as rubbed at my poor man’s beard. Not my fault that I had Asian heritage. A full beard was not in my genes, and I didn’t care to spend the work credits to change that.

The two of us moved with the crowds until we broke away. A side street that cut the traffic in half. With it came the peculiar silence of individuality. Here the people could talk easier, but they rarely needed to.

We walked deeper into the suburbs of the core. The districts shifted from the popular monolithic clean architecture, and into more shabby buildings. They popped with odd ticks. Different paint schemes, odd nicknacks, and street signs were illegal on the principal streets.

We eventually reached the Black House, a drinking pub. The path to the door was bare. We cheered!

“You are Lucky!” Derek cheered as he pushed open the door. The well-crafted hinges whispered as they gave way to Derek’s brawny arm.

“That’s my name, blah blah blah,” I replied as we walked in and found a booth. A server quickly came by, two tankards in hand. The sweet honey mead of the Black House was quite renowned.

“Let me know when you ready to order, Sugar,” Elaine said with a wink.

I smiled, and Derek grinned from ear to ear. He was sweet on Elaine. Which made me the only one able to think clearly.

“Can we start with some fries? House Spiced. I also need some chicken wings, Onion, and Sesame,” I ordered, and Elaine gave me a smile before she sashayed away.

We glued our eyes to her rear as she worked her magic. Elaine was a draw to the Black House. A Half-Elf she was. Beautiful enough to stare at, and graceful enough to make her boundaries known. Else Blueberry will show you those boundaries.

“You gonna ask her out?” I asked as Derek only found himself after she vanished into the back. Blueberry, the bartender gave us a wave, and I waved back. He raised his hands to me, two fingers up, and I nodded.

Blueberry smiled and got to work. Being a regular had its perks, but left us far poorer.

“Haha… ha…” Derek sighed as he thumbed his tankard’s lid and drank. I did the same.

The rich, nutrient-heavy, honey-flavored meat filled our mouths and settled into our stomachs with a dense warmth. The hint of meat was present. Our bodies needed a lot of calories, and this provided a chunk of our day’s worth. Each tankard was some thousand kilo-calories.

“Factory’s ramping up production,” I began as I leaned back. I rotated my wrists, and they cracked. Body mods be damned, constant work wore everything down. When was my physical again? I needed some joint boosters.

“Tell me about it. The Foundry has been running day and night. The freaking machines can’t keep up,” Derek complained as he placed his arms on the table and let his head drop.

“Yeah, well, I hear it’s going to get worse. Machines or not, there is higher demand on Venus and Europa. They say that we're going up to shifts-and-a-half,” I said as I took another drink of mead. Overtime hours gave overtime pay, which was always nice.

“Ugh, need more boosters. How much was a rebuild again?” Derek moaned into the table.

“You serious?” I asked. The rebuilds were nice, but they were also expensive. A full-body refresh was tens of thousands of work credits.

“No,” Derek sighed. “Credits are tight again.”

I looked at my friend. We were best buddies for some eighty years. “Serious?”

Derek chuckled and rubbed his head.

“You still owe me work credits, you damned leech,” I wanted to brain myself. Today’s meal was going to be on me. I just knew it.

“At least I am not Aether, right?” Derek joked with a half-smile.

“Thanks, Elaine, I needed these,” I said with a smile.

Elaine gave me a bright smile in return as she placed the two dishes onto the table. The two big piles of food and the various dips were there. We didn’t even need to request them anymore.

Elaine stared into my eyes. Her green into my brown. “What can I get you, boys?”

I looked at Derek, who was currently doing his impression of a ghost. How this idiot couldn’t smell the food, I did not know. Hell, the kitchen was to my back.

“I will take a Filet Mignon, medium rare, and a potato salad. Derek will have his usual Shepherd’s Pie,” I said with a chuckle.

“No usual soup for you two?” Elaine asked as she tilted her head. It was cute, as her Elven ears somehow became more prominent. They began to lightly wiggle. It was adorable.

It was all a carefully mastered ploy. A bigger bill meant a bigger tip. The Black Soup here was their signature dish.

“You talked me into it,” I gave an exaggerated sighed and Elaine giggled as she turned and walked away.

I hatefully ate the spicy fries and began stripping the wings. The Black House had premium licenses for their food. Best vat meat and veggies money could buy on the surface.

Between Derek and Elaine, my upcoming payday was going to be tight. At least I paid off my housing cube, which meant easier credits until the renewal some six years from now. I did not care what others said, the ten-year lease was always best.

I stared at Derek, who was staring at Elaine’s back as she left. She didn’t acknowledge him at all.

“You idiot, you know Elaine is proud of her Aetherial heritage,” I said between bites. The fatty dips were delicious.

Derek looked at me. His expression was crestfallen. A boy who realized he had made a big mistake.

“Cheer up, you cover the tip, and she will know you have good intentions,” I blubbered and Derek nodded. He then ate, but I had taken exactly two-thirds of the food here.

Our food came, and I waved my thanks to Elaine as I dug in. I had nothing against her, but I know where a dwarf such as I stood in her eyes. Aetherials were celebrities here on the surface.

Beautiful, long-lived, and highly intelligent. History said that we were born of the same stock, but science had divided us. We were now biologically unique from our ancient humans ancestors.

I stared out the window to my left. The afternoon sun was already at its height, but it would never reach this window. The Core’s tower perpetually blocked out the sun in its massive solar tree design. All power to grant us the means to work, and to live.

I tensed my left hand and rotated it at the wrist. My digital screen appeared, the daily news came up. They held another rally today. The African Core was buzzing with protests. Their Aetherial lords were ramping up production, but the pay wasn’t there.

I burped, a guttural sound. Our American Core was far more lenient. Approved overtime was everywhere as we were trying to play catch up to the two Asian Cores. Our workforce was pricier but more stable and consistent. It should pay off in the end as we processed the raw materials into the needed products.

Insider nonsense. I flicked through the news and settled onto the daily memes. The various posts curated by hundreds of millions of votes.

“Your drinks, Sweety,” I looked up to Elaine dropping off two shot glasses. I gave her a smile, and she left, giving Derek a lip quirk. The man quickly perked up.

My favorite B-52s. I downed one and returned to the world of shit-posting. I flipped through more until I found the thread I was looking for.

[African Core, Foundry 89 in the 6th day of protest. Aether silent. Soldiers expected to deploy tomorrow.]

The thread was a riot of opinions. Votes were tallying in crazy numbers. The various options for support, denounce, and neutral were blazing. So many bandwagon votes were being recorded. It was enough that I wondered if the bot prevention system broke.

“You think they have a fighting chance?” Derek asked as he read what I saw. He had access to my feed as a close friend.

I looked at him. His eyes were serious as they stared into mine. These protests were getting more common. A hundred years ago they were once a decade of things.

Today? This was the third one this season.

“No,” I whispered. We had no weapon rights. The good stuff, the military stuff, was locked away in black boxes stored in the Aetherial Communes above.

“Even if we have numbers and weapons… They have more than we can imagine,” I stared back at my long-time friend.

If this idiot felt we should resist, he was a fool. He didn’t know how merciless the law could be. Of what they had developed to ensure their supremacy.

The Aether were not fools. They built their Communes into the defensive orbital rings. The system could repel a full space fleet, protecting the planet below. They could also turn those weapons planet-side.

The official statement was to destroy any forces that had landed. The unofficial statement was sheer power. A nuclear weapon from a place we could not reach. Not without heavy sacrifices.

Even if we could fly up to the rings, what would we get in the end? A ruined world, and more wounds than we could imagine. The death tolls would be a nice footnote in history.

Then the Aether on the other planets could finish us. Rendering us into little more than a history lesson.

“They bound our lives to work. Work credits. Work and save. Spend, and then die,” I repeated the phrase my father used to say. A phrase that kept me out of trouble more than once.

“Lucky, there is more to life than just work,” Derek said as he finished his mead. His eyes took a faraway look as he drank and stared out the window.

I stared at him. They named me after the last full-fledged human in my family tree. An Asian man who had been the child of immigrants from the Asian Cores. Immigration that occurred so long ago.

“War is no joke,” I repeated this tired old argument. “I am not ready to die.”

“Then you are not ready to live,” Derek rebutted.

Same old, same old. I downed my second and last shot. The sweet drink breaking the bitter taste in my mouth. This has been a rather irritating trend lately. He seemed to be a pro-worker. Which was nice, but unrealistic. If a fight sparked here, then unrest would ensure his participation. That could escalate to a full-blown revolt.

“Bill,” Elaine broke in, her smile bright despite our dour talk.

“Thanks, Elaine,” I tapped the black slate, and the bill appeared. I looked at Derek, and he was staring a hole into the table.

How broke was this man!?!?

I flicked the full tip bar, 10%, and paid. I am so glad I was close to paying off my housing cube. The six-by-five metered housing was not luxurious, but more than enough for me. I wouldn’t have to change my lifestyle even when my lease was up. The six-by-five was standard for all citizens.

“I’ll go wash my beard,” Derek said as he hustled to the washroom. The man ate like a child. How he got potatoes and meats into his bushy beard was mind-boggling.

I watched as the man vanish and grabbed the napkin. The synthetic cotton wiped at my lips. I brushed at my beard, but I was a much cleaner eater than Derek was. I sighed as I look down at my clean hands.

Then I saw Elaine approach. most likely to collect the last of the plates, and give a cute send-off.

Elaine stepped closer, and her soft hands glided down my cheek. Her eyes were intense before she unceremoniously shoved my face into her cleavage.

It was soft, warm, and I wanted to do little more than take a nap right now. She smelled of soft soap, and she leaned her head down. Even as a Half-Elf, she stood some two meters tall, much taller than any dwarf.

“Derek is making some foolish choices. His money is problems are because of his faith. He isn’t wrong, but he is not ready,” Elaine whispered. Her warm and sensual voice had me shiver.

Then the world snapped back into view as she stepped away. Her muscles allowing her to spring with every step. She was taking our dishes back to the kitchen as if she hadn’t talked to me.

Derek hopped back into the seat. I stared at him. I stared hard.

He looked thinner. He also looked really stressed.

“What?” he asked as he ran his fingers through his beard. He sometimes missed a bit.

I smiled and stood up. “What do you think Elaine’s breasts feel like?”

“I bet they are soft and heavenly,” Derek whispered as his eyes glazed over, his body automatically miming mine.

“Yeah, yeah,” I rolled my eyes. Elaine was indeed heavenly. “Let's go home, we both got overtime tomorrow.”

“Ugh,” Derek’s daydream popped, and he trudged out through the door.

I followed at a slower pace. I looked up at the blue sky, and the black tower before me.

Then I looked down at my best friend. A first-tier tech, fixing production machines. I had graduated to the second tier and worked on the more delicate stuff.

He had joined the ‘Workers United’ hadn’t he? The group was prolific and oddly anti-union. I didn’t agree with that stance. If it wasn’t for the Unions, we would have far worse conditions in the American Core.

The African Core didn’t have unions, and neither did the two Asian cores.

Sure, they could make more per hour, but they skewed their averages. The statistics showed that the top performers could actually retire. The same data also had half of their dwarves living under poverty conditions. One by two metered housing cubes. Shared facilities in a cube commune.

I listened to Derek complain about a half-hearted mind. Derek was someone I knew. I could figure this out.

Elaine? The busty, curvy, Half-Elf was a mystery.

“Then, Soothing Wind was checking my droid, and she swears I didn’t fix it!” Derek rambled.

“Let's get ice cream,” I interjected. Soothing Wind was going to murder Derek or rape him. I wasn’t sure which, and I had been working with them for nearly thirty years.

“From 7-11?” Derek asked, his mind shifting gears. He suddenly needed hazelnut in his life.

“My treat,” I said, and the man slung a brotherly arm around me. My words were like magic to his ears.

“That's what I am talking about!” Derek laughed and picked up the pace.

I stared at him, and his quicker pace forcing me to speed up.

I stared at his back. Yeah, if this moron was getting into dirty shit, then I would help him. Unless Elaine was lying. How would she know anyway?

I tensed my arm and pulled up my GPS. The translucent map had already highlighted the closest 7-11, and my peanut butter order highlighted. Ready to get bought and then prepped. When I arrived, I would just grab and go.

I tapped at it as I watched Derek’s Friend Location highlight himself moving just a little ahead. He sent me an emoji of a slow turtle. I absently replied with a man running into a pole.

I sighed. I needed to talk to a mod master. Which meant talking to the Mystic, Crimson Fox.

Which meant a trip to Shanty Town. I hated Shanty Town.