“Wake up Joe, your alarm for the ‘495th shift of the 89th cycle of the district lord Erret’ has arrived. This message will repeat in 2 seconds.”
He tried to mentally strangle the damn worker system alarm the second he took a step out onto his building's 8th story exit platform. After a few seconds of fruitlessly raging against the alarm he finally used the proper hand motion to deactivate the thing. It had taken him nearly twenty minutes to get ready. By the time he ended the suffering message it started repeating before it was even finished. Joe leaned against a wall, tired from practically running out to the platform.
Joe sighed heavily before talking to himself, “passed a few people who looked like they wanted to talk back there. Screw it, if they wanted to talk bad enough they could come find me before the light way turned on.”
He looked down at himself and started a gear check. He had been in a rush, but it would be a bad shift if he got to work without being prepared for the forge.
He padded the straps binding his thick leather forge clothes, tightening a few and generally rearranging some things he hadn’t taken the proper time to do right. The leather armor-like clothing offered great protection from external heat and sparks by covering literally everything up to his cheeks, while also having the option to seal up to preserve internal temperature if he worked over into the cold half of the shift. The tightly bound black leather made those who worked in the forge districts very distinguishable from other worker types. However, for as much as he loved the outfit's quality, getting it on right took nearly ten minutes every morning.
He checked that his respirator was in its bag tightly bound to his thigh. He took out the mask to do a full ten-point safety check on the lifesaving piece of equipment.
“Feels weird to not be doing this in my room,” he thought, “maybe I could start doing last checks here in the future. Might save some time.”
The mask covered the nose and mouth and was specifically designed for the rare, but extremely dangerous, times when the smog clouds above break their magical containment and descend on the area. Anyone outside without a mask would be as good as dead in less than a minute without something to clean their air. Because the forge buildings were not enclosed the mask was an absolute necessity for anyone who could not get inside quickly.
Lastly he checked his heavy steel boots. He loved his boots. They were a dark black, unimpressive looking set of worker boots. But he had paid a lot of money to have a ankle and foot cage especially made for him. The cage added amazing protection, ankle support, and would not let anything crush his foot before he had time to get his foot out. He patted them happily, confirming they were on perfect before walking completely out onto the platform.
He moved away from the side nearest a large pipe releasing a stream of fire fifteen meters tall. He liked the warmth of the fire, but there were too many people over there and he wanted to check his backpack in peace. As he walked, he took a moment to reflect on how literally the system had taken his instruction to, ‘Keep reducing the time the message repeats after the second time the alarm goes off until it is deactivated.’ Joe had a long-time suspicion that the worker system was operated by an underpaid secretary somewhere, and he added this encounter to a growing list of clues.
Joe waved his hand to activate his menu, waving through morning advertising when he noticed the morning governmental shit posting, or the news as some would call it. Joe wasn’t a fan of the government. He looked towards the center of the district where lord Errets’ estate was located. It was a massive, sprawling estate lit by hundreds of massive braziers of blue fire. It was made almost entirely of dark-steel and rough marble pillars rising up in layers to make a massive pyramid.
“What a waste of resources and space,” Joe thought, “a building a fourth that size would have been fit for a king, but no, they had to make it over a kilometer and a half tall. It doesn’t even match the rest of the district.” He didn’t know why that fact bothered him so much, but the entire district could be easily described as; many massive ten to twenty story tall warehouses. Most built out of ordinary steel with the design philosophy of flat, soulless, rounded corners, and when asked how many pipes should be visible and going everywhere all over the place the lord himself just said, yes.
“Why does he have such a weird building…” Joe's gaze moved to the massive three hundred meter wide column that protruded from the top of the building to eventually pass through the smog cloud far overhead. “I bet that thing is what keeps the lord's estate from collapsing. But even dark-steel has its limits, right?” To Joe, the idea that dark-steel and some marble, the strongest building material Joe knew of and a rock, could create such a ridiculous building was almost scary to imagine. Just the footprint of the thing was two kilometers across.
For once, more out of fear than anything else, he took a moment to carefully control his tongue to prevent his thoughts from becoming words. He knew the government either couldn't track what everyone said, or didn’t care, but Joe liked to play it safe when talking bad about the lord directly, sometimes.
“Glass the stupid lord, he’s just as absent from responsibility as my parents. Just dropping orphans together and making us work to be treated like real people.” Joe's thoughts continued to darken looking at the abomination of a building visible only by the strange blue flames in the distance. By the time he was done thinking of the rich fancy moron of a man who ruled the district with all the care and compassion his birth parents showed him, Joe was fairly sure he had not missed any of the plethora of verbose curses at his disposal.
Joe was well in the majority with his opinions of the man. So much so that over the years many people tried to derogatorily turn his name into a slur or general insult. The efforts never really caught on but there was always someone trying to make something stick.
Joe, however, was content to stare silently at the man’s manner while trying to imagine the building lighting on fire.
The burning hate of the people comes from the only thing he ever said to the district, nearly 90 cycles ago, and the same reason Joe hated to go to any major government building unless he absolutely had to. A magic the government uses called holograms are used inside every one of them. One of those devices, usually in the main lobby, constantly replays the speech given by the lord and Kawlin, his representative ninety cycles ago.
“Attention people of Forge city. Here is Kawlin, my representative to you all. I expect you to treat his words as though they came from myself directly.”
“That was it.” Joe thought, “Then he left us in the hands of someone named Kawlin who laid down some challenges and laws. That guy has practically been the actual lord the whole time. And his idea of rule was about as effective as my room's hole at giving me a good view. Ugly, with a painful start, and with a lot of bad side effects. But annoyingly effective once you accepted it.”
The lord’s image is never shown but his representative was shown as a painfully thin, small man, floating in obsidian robes that looked well over ten meters long. He possessed an immaculate, white, waist long beard and a reflective bald head. He had dull gray eyes that made whoever looked at them know he was not looking at you, but who you could be with his help. His voice boomed through the halls of every building it was replayed in. A powerful voice that had no need to yell to be heard, and carried the feeling of aged wisdom and confidence.
“This district will be changed; the decree of our new lord is now law. Listen all. As this district is inhabited by the innocent spawn of the vile criminals held in the lower districts of this dirty city, our kind lord has decided to be lenient and kind to your plight. The laws have been created to give you all the opportunity to prove yourself better than the criminals that have birthed you. Prove yourself by rising up into the workforce. Raise your citizen tier to be given the opportunity to leave this place behind. Rise up to join the districts above as true citizens of our great city. Many buildings in the district will soon be occupied by government officials. Go to them, and prove your worth to obtain your worker license and be granted access to the powerful system created to aid you in your rise. Whether you are a guard, a farmer, a manager, or even a cleaner. If you serve the government in its great work force your life in this district will be improved. You will be respected. You will also have access to opportunities not available to your lessors. Those with the worker system will be the only people allowed the honor of operating the major facilities given to the district by the powers of the government. Only those who have proven their abilities and loyalty in this great work force will be allowed to purchase goods from the government. To all who do not rise to better yourselves, you will be at the mercy of those who have. These are the only laws to abide. Self-govern yourselves and rise. Or rot in the darkness and die.”
“I can’t believe I remember that speech verbatim, or at least I think I do… Enough, back to why I’m outside so early. “Joe took a moment to organize his thoughts while standing near the railing of the platform. His mind tended to wander but so far today his thoughts were particularly scattered by everything. Old memories, current annoyances, and life itself, felt like they wouldn’t be ignored.
“I'm all scattered today,” Joe thought to himself, “Looks like this is going to be an interesting shift.. I hope the dice roll well.” Joe could usually tell when his luck strayed from average by how hard it was to stay on any one topic. The problem was, without a dice roll he had no idea which way that leaned. Of course even a good roll only meant the shift would be a net positive. Nothing stopped a good shift from being him getting stabbed in the gut then finding a thousand chips.
He almost reached for his dice when he remembered his experiment with the alarm. Navigating to the personal notes tab he continued muttering to himself, “Need to make a personal note that strict alarm settings prevent opening noncritical menu options until the alarm has been shut off, and never make an alarm with an impossible shutoff criteria.” He shook with disgust at the idea of having to walk into a government building with his head hung low needing his system restarted because he set a stupid alarm setting.
Before he even started typing his note, he idly thought out loud, “Do the wealthy have better system guides, or just better systems.” He turned his head up to the smog clouds and continued muttering, “probably both, someone had to have made it. So, money could get a better one, right?”
“Still dramatically talking to yourself Joe?” The familiar voice of Luke spoke from only a few feet away, making Joe jump in surprise. “Woah, calm down. Didn’t mean to scare you, that much.” Luke said, as he chuckled to himself before continuing. “You’re gonna get yourself in trouble one shift if you keep doing that spacing out thing.”
Joe visibly winced at the foreshadowing, annoyed to have reacted so strongly to Luke’s simple comment, and Luke’s voice. Joe hated that everything Luke said sounded like a radio host narrating with the voice of an angel.
“Why is his voice always so annoyingly smooth,” Joe thought, “and I can’t help it, karma and fate are both real, and real bastards. It's not my fault other people can tempt the world without consequences while I get reminded why I live in a room with a hole in it.” Joe thought back to that shift when he had rolled a four on his morning dice and then proceeded to make it so much worse for himself.
“Glass you dice,” said the fool, Joe. “I’m gonna make this shift at least an average one.” He had made it nearly the whole twenty hours too, he was even starting to feel smug about it. Then, without warning, the building rocked.
He remembered screaming, in a very manly voice, “What the hell is going on!” The next second it felt like the whole building jumped half a meter into the air, throwing Joe to the ground, before starting a jig.
“It’s a fight,” Joe realized. He jumped to his feet to throw on his clothes as fast as he could. “It's a mage fight! I have to go watch. Or hide. NO! I have to see it for myself!”
The sound of mage combat was nothing like what he expected. Instead of explosions, or fire, or lightning. All he could feel or hear after the building settled was the strange sound of whispers. Like a thousand voices speaking a hundred languages at him, from everywhere. He barely had a moment to marvel at the incredible sound when a hole appeared in his wall.
Joe stared down the sixteen story drop for a few seconds before coming to terms with the fact that the sucking force that destroyed his wall, pulled him out as well. As he fell he was shocked to realize that he was not afraid. He was not scared of death. He had never thought of himself as a courageous or fearless guy, but he just… wasn’t afraid. He had no desire to die, in fact he had always held on to the hope that he could still become something more than just a worker before he died..
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“This is my poor man’s last flight,” he thought, “why am I not afraid?” He was falling fast now, too fast to survive contact with the ground.
“I’m not going to die.” The thought was fact. “Why am I so sure I’m not going to die? He couldn’t understand why he was so sure he would live all the way to his meeting with the cold steel ground.
An hour later Joe woke up on the ground with a medic splinting his shattered right arm. He heard people talking about the amazing and powerful mage fight they got to hide in fear from. Not seeing a damn thing either.
“You can’t fight the dice.” He thought.
“Stay still,” the medic said, “You have a concussion and a busted arm, but you’ll be fine.” The medic patted my shoulder and ran to help someone else. But I noticed he looked at my arm strangely right before he turned around. Like he was scared of something. I wanted to call out to him, to ask what that was about. But I knew that wouldn’t accomplish anything.
Joe couldn’t stop his mind from wandering, lying there on the ground, “It is a gorgeous sight.” He thought while looking up the sheer wall he had just fallen from. For all he hated the place he called home, sometimes the district's beauty was hard to ignore. It was not the beauty you found from an artist, or the beauty of nature he so often dreamed of. It was beautiful because it felt like something humans should never have dared to make.
He couldn’t afford magical treatment, so the doctors kept Joe's arm in a cast for five weeks after that. Thankfully, Joe's arm healed fully.
“Joe! Where do you go man?” Luke spoke from less than a foot away, making him jump in shock, again.
After taking a step away from Luke and collecting himself, Joe finally responded, “I was just thinking about the attack last cycle.” Joe looked at the man. There were not many people Joe had to look up at but Luke stood at a staggering six feet nine inches tall, and built to blot out the sky. He is not really someone that should have been able to sneak up on anything, especially with his loud guard uniform on, yet here he was doing just that for the second time in as many minutes.
Joe paused for a moment, debating whether to tell Luke to not tempt fate by saying stuff like that. He eventually decided to go for it, but not before getting another stare from Luke for pausing so long. “You know you really shouldn’t tempt fate by talking like that.” He finally said.
Luke responded with a chuckle, “Tempt fate? Buddy the only thing in this world messing with you is you, the government, and you,” after a small pause Luke looked at Joe with a big smirk on his face, “and me of course.”
“I want to comment on how you said ‘you’ twice, but it's an obvious trap.” Joe said. He was still a little concerned about the foreshadow but tried not to let it show. As for Luke messing with him, he did have a tendency to treat Joe like a younger brother.
“Look man, I’m sorry, I know you take that fate and chance stuff pretty seriously. But you really have to get out of your own head, meet some people, get a hobby. A hobby other than blowing all your money on the light way and talking to yourself in public.”
Joe’s eyes went a little wide, “I hate it when people look at me like I’m crazy,” Joe thought, “I am by no means the only person that talks to themself or gets distracted.” He quickly looked around to see if anyone was staring at him weird but didn’t see anything but a grav-train and a few groups of people gathered exiting and boarding.
Joe realized what Luke had said about hobbies, remembering the alarm note he wanted to make. He turned away from Luke for a moment. He lightly flicked his hand while extending his pointer finger to get his menu opened. The small transparent screen appeared in front of him with the section selector wheel. When he noticed Luke looking at him with a disappointed arched dad-brow, Joe could almost hear Luke saying, “Really man, right now?” Joe withered under the stare, but he had to get his note on the alarm in, before he forgot.
After a few seconds of furious typing Joe glanced at Luke and saw him preparing a mighty lecture. Joe started to explain himself before Luke could speak. “Your comment about hobbies reminded me about a system test I did.” He clicked on the daily journal section and began to type his experience with the alarm.
“I do have interests other than being in my own head.” Joe intoned sarcastically. He looked over at Luke with a small grin and said, “I just don’t know anyone that shares my interest in magic research.”
“And It’s not my fault,” thought Joe, “the only magic I have to study happens to be the stupid worker menu, my odd and sometimes painful connection to luck, and the extraordinarily expensive light ways.”
With the note made he tried to wave away the menu failing to make exactly the correct motion. After getting the motion right the second time, adding a few colorful expletives about lazy system workers and their intelligence for emphasis, the thing closed.
“C’mon Joe,” Luke said tiredly, “Language, there are kids here.”
Shocked, Joe looked around the soot covered exit platform, just noticing a group of kids barely talking distance away. It looked like they had exited one of the grav trains, “Funny,” He thought, “I didn’t notice the train even arrive.” He scratched his chin in confusion, “How did I miss a huge grav train pulling into the station? Oh, I was probably in my own head then. Crap, Luke might have a point about me getting distracted. Am I distracted right now?” He peeked over at Luke, who was staring at him with a flat unamused expression. “Yep, time for plan: tangent the conversation to protect my pride.”
Looking around for a tangent of some kind he barely noticed a short girl, maybe sixteen years old, with pink hair in a ponytail down to her waist. She was with a group of younger kids, all about five.
“Oh,” thought Joe, “those must be the kids Luke was talking about, perfect distraction time. I’ll ask about what the government has been brainwashing kids with these days.”
Joe was actually curious to know what they were being taught these days, mainly to hear what kind of new things the government has been adding to the script. He leaned over to Luke and asked, “Hey, how do we explain the no glass thing to these kids, what’s this year’s cover story?”
Luke gave Joe a disapproving, ‘why do you insist on conspiracy theories’, stare. When Joe continued to stare flatly at him Joe finally said, “You know just as well as me that the government's reason for things change every few years. Why is that? Did magic change again, is the market for glass too volatile, or is it still my favorite. No reason given, just listen.”
After a long-suffering sigh from Luke, he finally responded with, “Just listen to Hailey, she is pretty good with children so you should be able to follow pretty easily, I’ll ask her to explain that part now.”
“Well Glass you too.” Joe thought as Luke walked over to the group. Joe, to this day, wondered why so many people, including himself, used the word Glass for a near universal curse word. The most coherent explanation he ever got was a very long and confusing story involving the previous lord, an apple pie, and an animal called a flicker bird. He did not understand that story. Personally he thought it was because glass was an strange thing to be so incredibly illegal that people got stuck on the idea that it was bad to even speak about.
Odd as it was though, telling someone to get Glassed was enough to get someone like Luke to disappointedly shake their head at you. And Joe, being honest with himself, would use the word for no other reason than to provoke a response like a good curse word should.
Luke spoke a few words to the girl leading the kids, too quietly for Joe to hear. Joe mocked Luke behind his back by wordlessly and exaggeratedly mouthing, “You should be able to follow pretty easily.”
Then Joe noticed the girl, who had to be Hailey, looking at him past Luke with an arched eyebrow and an amused smile teasing at her lips. Joe immediately stopped and pretended to have spotted something very important anywhere else.
She turned back towards the kids before she spoke loudly and clearly. “Listen up guys and girls, I have some important information for you, as some of you have probably noticed, this district is a little different than where you just came from. I’m going to explain some of the things you may have noticed by now.”
She paused to take a deep breath and started again in a formal, yet easy to follow, lecture tone. “It’s illegal to have glass or any reflective surface in the district. There are no windows. No light bulbs. No mirrors. All plastics must be opaque without any reflective value to them. The only lights are the smoke pipe fires,” she gestured to the large fire nearby, “around the district and the soft light from the district above that penetrates the smog clouds.”
“There are no windows,” she continued, “to reflect any of the light or let light into the buildings. None of the district's massive metal buildings are reflective enough to move around any light. There are no light bulbs to illuminate the alleys, or the trains, or a merchant’s stall. But no matter where you go in the district, there is always just enough illumination to live by.”
One of the kids, a girl maybe five or six, spoke up, “How do we see inside? And does everything have to be so dark? I’m afraid of the dark.” The girl squeezed her eyes shut and hugged herself so hard Joe thought she would pop a vein or something.
“Poor kid.” Joe couldn’t help but feel bad for kids already afraid of the dark when they get sent here. Most kids grew up in dark enough places to be used to it by now. But some, whether they had better lives before, or lives so dark their fears live in the shadows, just can’t handle the darkness.
“The other kids are already looking at her like she’s weak.” Joe continued to watch the other kids unknowingly find the person they were going to hurt to hide their own fears. “She’s going to have a rough time being marked the bullied one so quickly.
Joe realized Hailey had started talking again and focused on what she was saying.
“The light from above is just enough to move around safely. The district also has hundreds of smoke pipes scattered around that constantly burned off gasses from the districts below.” She gestured to the large fire near the platform that had been lighting up the area.
“And of course,” Hailey continued, “every forge gives off its own illumination to the area around it. But without anything to help their light spread, they offer very little except pockets of light in the scrap blocks.
“What’s the scrap blocks, miss?” Another kid interrupted.
Hailey smiled at the kid. “Some little brat,” Joe thought, “looks like he’s trying to etch everything she said into his memory. Bet he has a little crush. Looks like the type.”
Without missing a beat Hailey answers the question, “Not every product, or item, is made everywhere. While the entire district is called the forge district, only about eight percent of the factories work with metal. Those factories are all in this block,” She gestured around at all the buildings and fires in sight. “The rest of the city may still have large factories but focus on different goods.
Joe leaned over to Luke again to whisper, “Don’t you think she used a few to many big words for the kids?”
“Shh, she’s not done.” He said, “and don’t underestimate kids these shifts just because you were dumb at their age.”
Joe narrowed his eyes at Luke, “A little harsh, but fair.”
“Of the many quirks of the district,” continued Hailey, “is that there’s one thing many people agree can be unsettling about the district, and new people to the district have a hard time getting over it when they first notice it. There is always some light, even indoors, even with no source, there will be illumination. The dark-steel mages made sure that the lack of normal lighting would not stop anyone in the forge district. However, the sight the Mages made does not allow you to see color. For color you will need a natural light source.”
Joe looked at his hand, as always, he felt like could almost see the white of his hand, but he knew it wasn’t real, he just knew he was white. In the ambient light of the district everything was pale shades of gray, with some things having a soft light blue tinge almost invisible unless you were looking for it. He could see well enough up to about fifty meters without any light source visible, but that distance varied for everyone. Most people could see around forty meters before everything after that quickly becomes nothing but darkness except where there was a light source.
Then, Joe closed his eyes, feeling very stupid. “I’m in fire light right now,” he said, “I can see the color of my hand.”
Luke looked at him and said, “Yea, natural light lets you see color, she just said that.”
Joe carefully made sure he thought instead of said, “I’m so glad he didn’t notice what I actually meant. And I might need to work on that talking out loud thing.”
A moment later Luke looked Joe in the eye and said flatly, “I know you just had a thought so stupid you disappointed yourself. Let me guess, you realized you were actually seeing color halfway through looking at your hand a second ago.”
Joe looked down at his feet, unwilling, and unable to give an answer. “Damn his dad sense. Only that would have let him know exactly what happened.”
A few minutes later the kids were all inside the building and Joe was walking onto the light way that had just appeared for the shift. The small bridge of light appeared at different platforms all around the district at different times to allow wealthy people the opportunity to use the light way at a discounted price. You could call it whenever you wanted but the price to do so was insane.
“You know you have probably wasted enough money on that thing to fix that hole in your room a dozen times over, right?” Asked Luke. He was standing a few feet away from Joe with his best, I won’t stop you, but I highly disapprove of what you’re doing, look.
“Yea,” Joe responded, “but that would mess with my daily routine, and I shouldn’t have to pay for that myself. Making us pay to fix what a mage broke is ridiculous.”
Joe brought up his system map and selected a spot near his place of work. After paying the exorbitant price of 8 chips he looked at Luke and wiggled his eyebrows at him until he was gone, quick as the wind, into the air.
Joe flew away in the bubble made from the light way, wondering to himself why he couldn’t bring himself to be a little more open with Luke, or at least a little nicer. Luke was like the local big brother to a ton of people but seemed to spend a lot of time trying to get Joe out of his shell.
“On one hand,” Joe said thoughtfully, “I’m happy to have someone like him care enough to reach out. On the other hand, though, I hardly knew the guy. I only met him last cycle when I ended up helping some kids get their toys out of a broken bus after the mage fight. I guess that was enough for the man.”
A huge grin spread across his face as he remembered Luke’s comments about hobbies and said, “I do have my own hobbies though. My hobbies just happen to be things like flying through the sky, talking to myself, sleeping, and occasionally gambling on the shifts I roll above a 90.” Speaking of which, he took a pair of dice out of a pocket on his chest and finally made his morning roll.
“Sometimes it was nice to know how the shift's luck would go.” He said as he threw them at the light wall in front of him knowing they could not escape the bubble.
“Not totally reliable for gambling,” he reminded himself as the pair of percentile dice bounced around the interior of the bubble before finally coming to a stop showing a total of 80. “but enough to get called a cheater sometimes.” He added with a greedy glint in his eyes.
He turned in the bubble to face his habitation center to watch it quickly become just a dot in the distance. “Not like I would ever tell a guard like you that.”