On Saturday afternoon at 4:30 PM, Pei Xuan stood in the starry sky above the Mirage-Moon Sector, his clean gray robe fluttering as the projection of his Rank 9 Dry-Well Inner Galaxy revolved slowly behind his shoulders.
Below him, the four hundred planets of the Mirage-Moon Belt and three hundred neighboring commuter worlds formed a vast, natural ring spanning one hundred light-years across the middle of the Orion-Jade Spiral Arm.
“Young Master, all fifty Wormhole Shortcut Tunnels from the outer sectors have been linked to the central ring,” Abacus Su reported over the communicator, his abacus clicking cheerfully. “From the farthest mining planet on the edge of the Spiral Arm to the center of the Mirage-Moon Belt, the commute time on the Light-Year Sword-Rail Express is now under twenty minutes!”
“And the thirty-foot Titan Engineering Corps has finished bolting the safety guardrails along the entire 100-light-year skywalk!” General Tie Zhan boomed from the construction platform below, wiping sweat from his forehead with a towel. “Not a single loose bolt! Even if ten million people jump up and down at the same time, the sidewalk won’t shake by half a hair!”
Pei Xuan nodded with a smile.
Ever since the first week in Dry-Well Village, when Old Guo’s ten-mile potato stew drew desert nomads out of the sand dunes, Pei Xuan had known one simple truth: nothing brings people together like a warm, brightly lit night market after a hard day’s work.
