He was in a good mood for a while, inattentively watching the various fires of the district under him as he flew by. He knew that each small fire that wasn’t a towering pillar had to have been made by someone down there. But Joe wasn’t sure what his block's street life was like. He didn’t like dealing too close to home. He was far more familiar with places like the textile block, or the food block. The less an area had to do with metal the more he liked it. Partly for a variety of goods, mostly because the steel he buys from work with his chips is worth a lot more there.
“Forget trying to barter steel in the steel block,” Joe said derisively, “The only product’s I can buy aren’t worth anything here.”
The entire district only had three laws from the government: Workers were allowed to spend chips to buy some of whatever product the place they work at made. No one else but the government could buy a product from a factory. Anything not bought by workers was taken by the government to other districts.
“Gotta keep incentive to work alive,” Joe muttered. The workers were the only source of legal goods, including food, in the whole district. The government did not give anything out. If no worker worked the farms and bought food, no food for the district, The same goes for everything.
With less than thirty percent of the district’s population having a worker license; the workers were the upper class of the district. They were the people who controlled who got what, where, when, and how much of literally everything. That power got to some people. The other seventy percent of the district were called maintenance personnel by the locals, the lessors by the government. The system of workers created a massive need for mercantile trade between the few people with worker licenses and those the government deemed ‘lesser.’
Joe, being the pillar of the community he was, spent a lot of his time moving high quality steel from his work to various places around the district that did not get enough steel for their business needs. He would then find the best locations in those areas and proceed to gamble every last bit of it for hours on end. Of course, Joe only did this on shifts when he rolled high on the dice, usually ninety and above.
“I should probably head to some of my hot spots with lower rolls soon. Can’t be getting banned from the best places just because my luck is so good. Too bad I can't afford to lose over there. It would be really really bad if I ran out of chips for the light way so far from home… I just jinxed myself… I'm doomed… No no. I got an eighty today. Even if I get stuck it will be in my favor. Unless of course today ends very well and I get stuck tomorrow. I need to stop thinking about this right now. Activate random tangent distraction.”
Joe frantically tried to think of something to get his mind off bad horrible bad thoughts. For a minute nothing could distract him from his mental faux pas until he remembered something he was very proud of in his travels around the district. He brought up his map and looked at the textile block and smiled at how many different places he had explored over there. He decided to take a moment to plan out his next trip to the block, smiling at the thought of all the things he had purchased and could still get from the wonderful place.
“Good,” he thought, “It's working, just keep talking.”
“I do love me the soft things in life,” Joe said. He looked at the map again and started to draw a line through some of his favorite areas. Using the system and the map he was able to create a path with markers that would be overlaid onto his vision. Now he could easily take a fun stroll through his favorite places.
“The map may be one of the only well-designed features of this whole system,” Joe said uneasily. He was happy to have the convenient tool, but it always filled him with concern. Compared to everything else the worker system could do, the map was just too well made. It made him think of all the possible reasons the government could have had to spend so much on it.
The map automatically filled out and updated itself wherever someone with the system traveled. This created very accurate up to date maps of most of the district. But the map could only update what is in line of sight of the wielder, and only within thirty five meters. It meant system users could be tracked very easily, and by people just looking at the map paying close attention to the real time updates.
Some of the, less than upstanding, people in the district would purposely have non-workers quickly change a lot of small things in an area to track other people. Sometimes, to track where exactly a target is by changing things far in front of someone and track the changes they automatically make to the map to follow them. It's not the most effective method with three out of every ten people being a worker, but they are possible, and in Joe's travels he has seen a thing or two.
“Distracted as I may be sometimes,” Joe thought, “a healthy dose of paranoia is my trump card to any situation. Ugh, who am I kidding, I only survive because no one knows where I live and I'm good at running away.”
The textile district was Joe's favorite place to shop, and gamble. Almost no one at Joe’s level ever used the light way, and people without a worker license of some kind could not even use chips for the light way at all. They were all forced to use whatever type of currency their block leaders or local gutter leader decided was money. Usually it turned into bartering. From the steel block to the textile block you have to pass multiple major security checkpoints and multiple shift time restrictions to get through. With the total commute time, without even carrying a large amount of stuff, being an average of five days. For Joe, using the light way bypassed all of that, making his trip time a little less than two hours. Letting him move his goods to places where he could double their value without the long time wasters and expensive trade taxes between local rulers. Add to that a good shift for gambling and he could take two chips of steel and turn that into nearly forty five over a few shifts roaming different gambling halls.
With that his mind drifted back to money and his mood soured. “Plus nine chips for a full fifteen hour shift,” he muttered to himself, “Subtract sixteen chips for the two way trip. It usually costs two chips worth of goods for a lesser room for four shifts, and some good food. Minus six chips for a set of three sleep reduction pills so I can stay awake long enough to finish the run. Then another sixteen chips to travel to the food block and back home. An average of four chips spent on a lot of food to take home. Up to six chips just to access, bribe, and move around those blocks. Plus forty four chips for a good block run. All in all I average a net positive of seven chips in those four days. And an ungodly lack of sleep I spend a whole shift sleeping off.”
Joe knew he could technically make more money just working instead of doing his ‘runs,’ but he believed that a life must be lived to make it worth anything, so he would live. If he ever wanted a lot of money in hand, he would just sell his excess stuff.
Joe smiled very happily to himself while thinking about his stuff. “I have much better food, blankets and general quality of life goods than would normally be impossible to afford even for the most driven tier one workers. For the steel district, my room has more money in it in just pillows and blankets than I could normally make in a whole cycle.”
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Enjoying the thoughts of his success, he continued his flight through the district in the bubble of aurora light. He enjoyed a breath of fresh pure air made possible by the light shield around him. It barely did anything for the wind, which was weird given it blocked solid objects, but he liked it that way. The feeling of the warm air in his hair and across his face never ceased to make Joe happy.
After a few minutes of quiet bliss his traitorous thoughts drifted back to money again as he rode through the sky. “Too bad I’m just a tier One worker.” He thought. “But it could be worse, At least I have a worker license. Tons of people don’t have even that. And I save most of my spare money for rainy days just in case.”
“Okay I save some, I like flying.” He grinned wide about his excessive use of the light ways. “If Luke knew how much I actually used the light ways he might have an aneurism,” Joe said chuckling, “but I love flying way too much to ever stop, but damn is it expensive.”
Joe remembered how much his teachers had tried to turn him into another normal cog in the economic machine. Another person to help the people on top get stronger while dying one day at a time in the factories. Some days he wished he had never become a licensed worker. Their lives might have fewer things to be happy about, but they had so much more time to themselves.
“I still can’t tell if getting a license was the right choice for me. It has its perks, but there was something simply enjoyable in the action of living day to day as a gutter merchant. All though, maybe that's just childhood memories making something bad seem better than it was…”
The teachers when he was a kid spent hours telling them of how much better the life of a worker was. How important it was that everyone struggle to rise out of the gutter. They spoke of the enormous increase in the quality of life and the respect you would get.
“Respect my scorched ass. Workers are seen as nothing but walking handouts. The workhorses of the district. We work two to five times as long as anyone else, inside painful, sometimes dangerous conditions. And every prick just as smart and strong as me without a license expects us to just hand over nearly everything. And for what! A pat on the back and a bedroom made out of steel the same size as everyone else. The same food. I swear if one more person says the duty and the respect that comes with it is our reward I’m going to scream. I literally see gutter workers and civilians work four to six hours and go to a bar to drink the night away! MOST REAL WORKERS WORK FOURTEEN HOURS A DAY FOR DOZENS OF DAYS AT A TIME!” Joe had to take a moment to recover from his shouting. He loathed going anywhere near gutter rats if they knew he had a license. He felt abused and taken advantage of. The only reason he lived any better than other workers is because he knows when to let the dice roll and when to walk.
Even thinking of his teachers almost required him to repeat their lessons in a mocking squeaky voice. He repeated the words everyone his age was taught at the tender age of whenever they learn to talk, “Everyone of a given tier of worker makes the same amount of income to balance the quality of life to the quality of work given to society. In this way the government that rules us can make fair payment and just decisions easier. Those who cannot work to serve the government must work to serve the people. The quality of their lives will be subject to those who can afford to support them.”
“What a load,” Joe thought, “The government just wants to cut costs and keep us as cheap labor. One chip every three hours, or 5 chips in a standard 10-hour run with one chip per hour worked beyond 10 to a maximum of 9 chips per shift. Then we are still required to pay whole chips for ‘worker quality products.’ One chip per shift for housing equal to your worker tier, one chip per shift for worker rations that barely make up for calories used at work. One more chip to fill your stomach. One chip per shift for all basic transportation. Leaving most with one chip left over at the end of a ten hour shift, if they wanted to be shamed for not working enough to ‘help the needs of the district.’ Then most needed to save for the end of cycle government tax that could be anywhere from two chips to three hundred chips! The less time you worked in the cycle the higher your end of cycle tax.” Joe was furious by the time he finished his thought and realized he had been talking out loud for the last half. He couldn’t help it; he hated the district's money practice. Even if it benefited him, a lot. Except the way he did things he would always have to pay the full three hundred tax. But it was worth it.
A few minutes of quiet in the sky later, Joe stared ahead as his destination came into sight. A nine story, two kilometer wide, ugly, grimy, ash covered forge complex.
“Can I afford to just not go in today?” he asked himself. Just looking at the place made him move a hand over the growing pit in his stomach to attempt to soothe the hollow aching he started to feel growing there. But the pain continued to grow as the building grew larger in his vision. He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned over as the hollow feeling threatened to swallow him from the inside.
Work at a forge factory was difficult. But Joe worked at a dark-steel recycling factory. The mental trauma and pain caused to mortals like him for working dark-steel was one of the reasons Joe so desperately wanted to become a mage. Just to avoid the pain of dark-steel. Even the factory guards like Luke suffered just for walking around the factory.
He pushed his hand hard against the fear growing in his stomach. “I want to stay on the light.” He spoke slowly and steady to himself. “I want to stay on the light. I’m free when I’m not on the ground, but to be free I must make money. To make money I must work. To work I must go to work. To become free, I must first be a prisoner.”
“It’s all just temporary,” He told himself, “I have severe emotional and psychological issues due to abandonment and childhood trauma, leading to pathological behavioral issues, and multiple odd and invasive mannerisms. And-” he added with a pained smile,” I almost know what most of those words mean.”
Barely a minute later he finally calmed down. Work was closing in and he didn’t have any time left to let his mind wander, not that that ever stopped him. He spoke in a quiet, hoarse voice, “It will be fine. My thing with dice is obviously magic of some kind so it’s only a matter of time before I find a way out of this life. With any luck I will finally learn how to control it and see other people’s luck instead of just my own. I could sell that alone for a fortune. If I could avoid getting kidnapped for it.” The last part made him a little uneasy. He had never heard of his gift before and was a little afraid of what people might do to him if they found out.
He shook off the idea and took a slow and exaggerated deep breath. Trying to feed the hole in his guts with enough air to satisfy it for a while. After only a few breaths he sprung up with a huge smile on his face ready to face the world head on again. Immediately slamming his head on the bubbles’ stone like interior. The hollow thud reminded him the bubble was still there, but he had long since learned to act like minor inconveniences like physical and emotional damage were not there. Even if he very much felt them.
Joe smiled and said, “Hell yea, at least today's roll was great, it's going to be a good day. Maybe I’ll even make a run of it.”
“Oh right, I forgot to check my shift guide.” Joe quickly opened his menu before arriving at the building to see what he would be doing today. Then something ahead of him caught his eye. On top of the recycle yard he noticed a group of people he couldn’t quite make out near one of the large fires. If they hadn’t huddled close to the fire it would have been impossible to see anyone in the district from that far away. But there they were, on the top of his work building, near where he would land…
“That’s weird,” he thought, “I picked this spot because no one ever goes here. It takes like five minutes to get anywhere useful from there. I mean come on the damn building is half a mile wide, why are there people right there! Why was there anyone even remotely ne-” He paused his rant when he could finally make out roughly who they were. As his shoulders slumped, he slowly finished his sentence, his face sagging “nearby…”
“I rolled a damn 80,” he thought, “if my shift starts with these coal junkies then there must be something pretty good waiting to happen. Or maybe this won’t go that badly.”
The group did not perfectly guess where he would land, and as he passed over them, he heard one, particularly gross hunchbacked ogre of a man with a voice that told Joe he needed to blow his nose, say. “Hey, look boys,” he took a moment to spit out a dark black glob of mucus, “we found our cheater. He spending the boss’s m- “Joe flew out of ear shot, unable to hear the rest of the man's accusations.
“Oh look,” he said wistfully, “they have bats.”