As the sun began to dip toward the horizon on World 19 (Copper-Dock Planet) and World 20 (Iron-Loom Planet), two million exhausted dockworkers, crane pullers, and bricklayers wiped the sweat from their foreheads and lined up outside the newly expanded Star-Train stations.
All day long, these two million local workers had been hired by General Tie Zhan’s engineering corps to widen the station plazas, lay drainage pipes, and stack cargo crates.
Usually, at sunset on Worlds 19 and 20, payday was a miserable affair. Factory overseers working for the Star-Belt Merchant Bank would sit behind iron cages, tossing out handfuls of dusty gray Shaved Stones while deducting “tool rental fees,” “breathing air fees,” and “stone-weighing fees” until a worker who had labored for fourteen hours walked home with barely enough crumbling pebbles to buy three bowls of watery bran gruel.
Today, however, there were no iron cages and no whip-carrying bank guards.
Instead, right outside the main Star-Train terminals on both World 19 and World 20, Abacus Su and Hong Ling had set up fifty long rows of bright red wooden booths topped with brass signs reading:
[DRY-WELL GRAIN-NOTE WAGE & EXCHANGE WINDOWS — 0% HANDLING FEE!]
On the left side of the plaza were twenty-five Wage & Currency Windows, where Abacus Su and his team of sharp-eyed clerks sat behind stacks of crisp green 1-Jin Notes, blue 5-Jin Notes, and red 10-Jin Notes.
