Right outside the main gate of Orbit Pier #1, Old Guo had already set up a row of low wooden tables and bamboo stools on the warm golden boardwalk of the new Floating Nebula Paddy Fields.
A big red banner hung between two stalks of giant glowing rice: DRY-WELL STATION NOODLE & RICE STALL — FREE FIRST BOWL FOR ALL NEW CITIZENS!
Pei Xuan sat on a simple bamboo stool at the corner table, holding a pair of wooden chopsticks while a bowl of steaming beef-broth rice noodles sat in front of him. Beside his stool, Old Yellow lay curled up on the warm boardwalk like a thirty-foot golden hill, happily munching on a pile of freshly dug Meat-Belly Giant Potatoes—peels, mud, and all.
Out in the first terrace of the golden rice paddies, fifty figures in bright yellow Galactic Debtor Work-Suits were trudging knee-deep through the rich nebula mud.
“Pull harder, Captain Kuang!” Hong Ling stood on the ridge between two paddies, tapping her golden abacus against her palm while her two braids bounced. “You still owe four hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand Grain-Notes for your littering fine! If you don’t finish plowing these fifty acres of sweet-spring fertilizer before your Third Young Master gets here, Abacus Su says he will add a ten percent late-plowing fee!”
