Early the next morning, Central Station #1 at the eastern edge of the Milky Way was packed shoulder to shoulder with fifty million excited commuters.
Farmers carrying baskets of live chickens, blacksmith apprentices holding heavy iron hammers, and young students hugging their Furnace-Blood Scripture schoolbags stood behind the yellow safety line on the platform, craning their necks toward the center tracks of the Unbreakable Inter-Galactic Wormhole Expressway.
“Do you think the rumor on the noticeboard is true?” a young bricklayer named Little Liu asked his wife, shifting a sack of pickled turnips onto his shoulder. “Your mother lives all the way out in the Andromeda-Sector (Galaxy #38). When we married five years ago, it took us two whole years on a cramped refugee barge just to cross the dark void! How could a train possibly get us there in fifteen minutes for two copper coins?!”
“If Lord Pei posted it on the Dry-Well noticeboard, then it’s truer than gold!” his wife replied firmly, pointing at the shiny brass ticket booth where Hong Ling was stamping paper tickets with a cheerful thump-thump. “Look at the ticket price—All-Galaxy Commuter Pass: 2 Copper Grain-Notes (Children under four feet tall and elders over five hundred years old ride half-price!) Even if it takes a whole day, two coppers is cheaper than feeding a donkey!”
