I swapped my Jedi robe for an average business-style suit.
Noted that it was getting a little tight.
Growing like a weed.
I tucked the identity card issued by the grateful citizens of Padishaal into my inner pocket.
What did you expect?
Honorary citizenship isn’t just a status — it comes with appropriate documents.
According to them, I’m twice as old.
Thank Pif — when the Padishaalers contacted him to get my personal data for filling out the relevant fields, he made arrangements.
A smart, loyal AI is a very useful assistant, and just having a conversation with him is often interesting.
In short, nothing but pluses from such an AI.
Anyway, I got ready to head out into the big world, and then I went.
Why drag it out?
A cable car line ran directly from the spaceport to the city center.
A brand-new white-and-blue car, with a cabin finished in leather and huge panoramic windows, lifted me several hundred meters high in about half a minute.
After that, the ascent became smoother, and I could enjoy the views of the skyscrapers.
The first thing that caught my eye was the abundance of greenery on the upper floors.
They were all drowning in some kind of greenhouses and winter gardens.
I even spotted a couple of pools.
Thanks to the artificial lighting, it was bright and vivid.
“Maybe it’s not so bad here after all?” a timid question filled with hope visited me again.
The fact that some of the skyscrapers served as support columns for the dome didn’t stir any particular emotion or interest.
I noted the rationalism at the edge of my consciousness and shifted my attention to the passengers.
Not only was it morning on the planet, but a work decade was just starting.
The natives were hurrying about their business, and most of them were already getting to it during the ride.
Every other person was talking on a communicator, and every single person was working with a datapad.
A projector installed in the car displayed a hologram of a pleasant-looking announcer reading the news summary.
I just twitched an ear and snorted softly.
It was like news from the fields — except instead of grain yields and other agricultural stats, the lady was informing about quantities of mined ore, volumes of alloys produced, and the like.
There was also something like a ticker that duplicated the same information while throwing in stock quotes from local resource giants.
Interesting and unusual.
Nevertheless, I clearly felt a dissonance between the external and the internal.
Behind the liveliness and bravado, beneath the veneer of busyness and business-like hustle, hidden behind masks of artificial tans, fears lurked.
Panic terror sat in the soul of every passenger.
They all feared, to the point of trembling and convulsions, losing what they had.
Ending up below.
Literally descending to the surface.
Anyone sitting nearby was ready to do anything, just to keep starting each morning the same way as today.
My fur involuntarily tried to stand on end, and my claws wanted to come out from the realization that any one of these nice ordinary people was ready to kill.
Even things like lying, setting people up, and stepping over others — that went without saying.
That was the absolute norm of life here.
At least a third of my neighbors were thinking about how to screw over their fellow man and advance a little further up the career ladder.
Climbing higher was the goal and meaning of existence for these beings who found themselves in the white-and-blue car gliding past the greenery-drowned peaks of skyscrapers.
“And don’t even get me started — because of these Sith-cursed elections, I couldn’t even rest properly,” a woman who’d sat down next to me distracted me from my thoughts with her far-from-pleasant voice.
“Yes, they’ve started dragging that rabble from the lower levels up again!” the lady squeaked.
“Can you imagine, I waited a whole month to get into the Sphere, to relax on the island, and they flooded it with a whole crowd of orphans!” she stamped her foot.
“It wasn’t a vacation, it was pure torment.
I had to watch my things the whole time — who knows what diseases those descendants of whores and junkies carry!” The worked-up passenger even waved her arm, nearly knocking a datapad out of her neighbor’s hands.
That sobered her up.
Apologizing, the woman cut the conversation short.
She put away her communicator, unhooked her datapad from her belt, and started furiously poking at it with her finger.
What struck me most about this short scene was the complete approval and acceptance of her words by all the other passengers.
The only slight dissonance came from the thoughts of a few girls, and even then — it was purely envy mixed with schadenfreude.
Rounding another skyscraper, the cable car carried me toward my destination, which was also a local landmark. Find the original chapter at g.com.
Two enormous structures, forming either pincers or horns intersecting at the base, propped up the highest point of the dome and served as a visible symbol of the corporation controlling the planet.
“And this is just a branch office,” I twitched an ear in response to the thought that came.
Actually, if you squinted and used your imagination, you could see the company logo in these mega-skyscrapers.
Either some architect who designed this marvel sucked up to the client, or the client wanted it that way from the start.
Either way, it made a strong impression.
I’d even say — overwhelming.
This kind of titan.
Symbolic.
The heavy foundation tramples the earth, while the horns hold up the vault of heaven.
Something about those associations made me feel disgusted.
I’d bet my tail that with the money spent on building this, they could have fixed the planet’s ecology twice over.
“Good afternoon, sir, how can I help you?” a clerk jumped up to me as soon as I crossed the threshold of the firm that provided intermediary services in trade.
“Good afternoon,” I nodded to the man who, actually, had been riding in the same cable car as me.
I wouldn’t say he was radically different from everyone else — it was just that in his thoughts and emotions, joy over his new job was clearly discernible.
So, in a sense, I’d involuntarily gotten a recommendation.
Actually, that’s exactly what determined my choice of the firm I was going to work with.
No, of course, I could register on the trading platform myself, but all the mandatory fees and processing of various permits and licenses cost money.
In the end, it wouldn’t have been much cheaper than paying intermediaries.
Besides, I was only planning a one-time transaction.
“I need help selling food products.
Mostly concentrates and briquettes, and I also have a limited selection of standard ration packs.”
“We’d be happy to take on selling your goods, sir.
Rest assured, by evening everything will be sold at the best prices.”
“I don’t doubt it.
I’ll also need help purchasing some popular raw materials.
I’m planning to fly to the sector capital system.”
“In that case, you should definitely look into heavy metals.
It would be best to take ready-made alloys.
They take up less space and are worth more.”
“I’m limited by the funds I’ll get from selling the food.”
“That’s not a problem, sir,” the clerk nodded understandingly.
“Are you considering a backhaul cargo option?”
“Absolutely,” I twitched my whiskers and leaned forward slightly, feeling something akin to a hunter’s excitement.
Or rather, sensing it in my interlocutor.
“In that case, I’ll try to find you a suitable shipment of alloys, and perhaps I can even get you a discount on part of the purchase.”
“In that case,” I emphasized with my voice, “you can count on a bonus.” I correctly read the expression and intonation of the intermediary.
“Let’s draw up a contract, and I’ll start working immediately,” the clerk smiled completely sincerely.
* * *
Having traded time for money — in other words, having dumped the work on the intermediary — I contacted the teacher.
I briefly reported and said I was planning to check out the local attractions.
In response to his perfectly reasonable question about whether there were any here, I said I’d always dreamed of visiting a water park.
The response was a meaningful grunt and a wish not to drown.
My feline nature really does mislead people.
They just sense that someone like me doesn’t belong in water.
Naive.
For the record, I swim excellently and can even dive without any problems.
For peace of mind, I went online and found the water park’s portal.
Apparently, the same one the lady in the cable car was talking about.
At least, there was an artificial tropical island there.
Along with a month-long queue and sky-high ticket prices.
No, no, forget it.
I’ll manage without.
I’d rather compare life at the top and the bottom.
There simply wasn’t any below that.
“Mildly speaking, unusual,” I noted, standing at the edge of the platform, “admiring” the mist swirling below.
It wasn’t particularly thick, but there was something like steam mixed with cigarette smoke, slightly dispersed by the wind.
Only these peculiar clouds smelled of burnt plastic.
Not sharply, even for my sense of smell, but quite perceptibly.
Frankly, I had absolutely no desire to descend into that suspension, and if not for the vague sensations the Force was giving me, I’d probably have preferred to find another way to spend my time.
So I took a breath, reduced my nose’s sensitivity as much as I could, and headed for the monorail station.
The car’s time-worn, peeling gray paint, hard plastic seats, the smell of sweat and alcohol fumes.
A stark contrast to the white-and-blue cable cars of the upper levels.
Not that I’d expected anything different, but I hadn’t counted on such an obvious disparity.
Since morning was already over, there weren’t many passengers.
A few late workers in grimy coveralls and a flock of gaudily made-up girls hurrying to school.
Yielding to an inner instinct, I got off at a station and froze.
Alright, dirt.
I didn’t care about the barely functioning droid trying to maintain order and cleanliness.
What struck me was a graffiti-covered wall.
Or rather, one specific picture on it.
A man with an emaciated face, a sad, knowing gaze, and bloody tear tracks on his cheeks.
You could feel the soul-wrenching pain of whoever created it.
Judging by the fact that none of the other graffiti had been painted over this portrait — even the locals weren’t left indifferent by it.
In principle, this could have been the end of my acquaintance with the lower levels.
But the Force objected.
Shaking my head, I threw off the trance and, entering a light meditative state, set off to wander aimlessly through the local streets.
The faded colors of overalls.
The stench from junk-clogged air vents, most of which were already on their last legs.
Kids chasing a battered ball, slapping through puddles filmed with a suspicious oily sheen without a trace of fear.
The depressing contrast between the gray faces of people who’d never seen the sun and the bright signs of cantinas where the dregs of society found fleeting comfort.
Alcohol, drugs, the embrace of cheap whores — whatever suits you and your wallet allows.
It wasn’t just hopelessness here; hope itself had no place.
By evening, the streets filled with faceless masses of beings trudging home from hated jobs.
You couldn’t bring yourself to call these bio-robots people.
A gray stream poured from the monorail station, flooding the streets, where it split into countless rivulets that in turn flowed into entertainment establishments and cylindrical hive-houses.
I stepped into one of those, supposedly to rent a room, and ended up recalling my twelve square meters in the temple with fondness.
Probably, if they didn’t need the buildings as supports for the dome, they’d just build spheres here.
Why not?
Maximum volume with minimum surface area — serious savings on materials!
Something keeps dragging me and my teacher into some dump for the second time straight.
Weren’t we flying through perfectly decent planets just recently?
It can’t be this bad everywhere in the Outer Rim, can it?
I’d skimmed the atlases, read the brief world profiles.
Most planets, though fairly backward by Core standards, were still quite respectable.
I definitely need to calm down.
My nerves are acting up and my tail’s lashing.
I got a ton of impressions today.
Even the message from the Shadow Broker, informing me that the goods had sold for slightly above market value and that he’d arranged for a side cargo — though without a discount on the metal alloy purchase — didn’t cheer me up at all.
Pif’s report about the start of loading couldn’t lift my mood either.
And my teacher, it seems, had a bit too much.
Though honestly, I’d been seriously considering knocking back a couple of glasses myself.
I managed to resist the temptation, but not without effort.
“Boo-hoo,” my stomach said, hinting that we’d been walking a lot and a long time, and had only eaten breakfast.
“I’ll go stress-eat,” I growled back, and, following the will of the Force but guided more by my own nose, stepped into a cantina that had caught my attention.
The smell from inside was more appealing than the others, and the sign clearly indicated they had meat dishes.
There was even a note claiming everything was made from natural ingredients, not chemicals.
Guess I’ll find out.