A Life Half Lived

[Dusty Lens]

= Much like the Antimatter, this is a short bit of prose I wrote in the long past to attempt to frame some of the ideas I was crafting... If not for the character but at least for the environment. Again, for the sake of posterity, I'm going to store it here. =

I still remember that tram ride, after all of these years it remains one of my most vivid memories. Racing through the heart of Liberty, through the heart of Sirius, from the spaceport that brought me here to the distant corner where I was to take up my post. The floods of people filtering past was as overpowering as the views that screamed by the windows when our journey would pull us from the earth and into the light.

I remember, for a brief moment, spotting the towering relic of the sleepership that brought us here and was awed, before again we were pulled beneath the earth to the next transit point.

My post had been a humble one. Teaching positions were still valued in spots around Liberty where AI instructors couldn't compete with the operating costs of by poor servants such as myself. If I found myself beaten one day on the way home by a pack of Rogues I would haul myself back to work, or find myself without work to return to. The vandalized machine would simply die, it lacked the need to struggle.

Of course this invariably meant that such dangers were very real. Neighborhoods such as that one where petty crime syndicates doled out living spaces and men worked one day to the next in depression in full knowledge that they were an executive penstroke away from ruin. Tempers were always quick to flair and tensions high, where anyone thought to have an un-libertonian accent could find themselves on an unforgiving slab being verified by family members in short order.

Communities of stacked apartments nestled between silent factories, as LPI vessels slowly drifted overhead, shining lights through the cracks of crumbling towers. Home to thousands without a living soul for miles.