The months roll by, and soon four years have passed since Cyryl was sentenced to the bureaucracy.
Surpassing the expectations of Tymon and all the other convicts, Cyryl has retained his extra responsibilities, and the telenel is still spreading music and news reports to the ears of every peldak in the office. His plans and tricks to make the work less boring have all failed -usually resulting in errors so egregious that the warehouse complains- and Cyryl’s been forced to give up those pursuits and deal with the situation he’s been dealt.
Settling into a stable routine, he’s accepted his fate and doesn’t complain anymore.
Every morning, an hour before his shift starts, Cyryl wakes either in his bed, or on the couch of one of his many friends across the city.
“Aaaaah,” Cyryl yawns as he stretches his limbs. He’s currently at the apartment of one of those friends, Aleks. Aleks works the second shift, while Cyryl works the first, so they’ve made an arrangement where Cyryl can come over and crash in exchange for feeding his pet.
It’s a small, fluffy creature called a Northern Actian Gato, since it comes from the north of the planet Actias, and it’s called a Gato. Aleks picked it up on deployment to the city in the second war, and it’s currently curled up in a ball on Cyryl’s chest, purring.
“Come on, Gato, time to get up.” Cyryl’s large hands gently shake the creature awake, and he begins stretching his long back.
As Cyryl sits up, Gato jumps to the ground then walks over to his food bowl, sitting next to it and staring back at his temporary caretaker.
Cyryl takes a deep breath and runs his hands through his short brown hair. Despite being resigned to his life in the bureaucracy, he’s determined not to let his hair or beard run wild like some of his coworkers. Stay presentable, stay clean, stay in high spirits.
“Rrrrraaaaaaow.” Gato yells from his position.
“Haha, sorry.” Cyryl hurries over to the apartment kitchen and cooks himself a breakfast full of eggs and meat. He makes what the peldaks consider a small portion, then pours the extras into Gato’s foodbowl, where the little creature scarfs it down greedily. By the time Cyryl finishes eating his quiet breakfast, Gato is already back on the couch, laying in the warm spot where Cyryl was sleeping.
From there, Cyryl cleans the house a little, grabs all his stuff, then leaves his friend’s apartment for the bus station. The station is a large, concrete platform with dozens of metal benches, pillars holding up a curved roof to block the occasional rain, and warm orange lights built into the sides of the pillars. To the right of the station sits a long suspension bridge that crosses over a deep valley, with a shallow river at the bottom. To the left, after about a mile, is a train station. Behind the bus station is a residential district full of parks, apartment complexes less than five stories high, and various monuments dedicated to Protectorate history. Ahead of the station, past the road, sit trees that lead to a steep drop off towards the valley below, and beyond that valley is one of the many steep mountains, with rows of buildings built into its slope.
The sky is dominated by grey clouds that hang high in the mountains, and there’s no nearby star to give off light. All the light in Heaven’s reach is either artificial, or comes off the glowing leaves and bark of the trees. Due to the particulars of Peldor, Heaven’s Reach is in the middle of winter, and summer won’t come for a few more months. The air is chilly, everyone is bundled in layers of thick clothes, and their breaths are visible.
After Cyryl sits on one of the benches, he looks to his left and nods at the man sitting there. Then he glances to his right and nods to a man reading a newspaper.
“So, what’s going on?” Cyryl asks the man on his right.
“A lot of boring economic stuff with the new territories. I didn’t read it.”
“Any battles?”
“Just the usual, fighting insurgents and the like. Some convoys getting ambushed.”
A girl leaning against a pillar laughs, “just savages being savages, am I right?” A tired laugh spreads through the concrete station.
Heaven’s Reach, after the introduction of space travel almost 600 years ago, has found great prominence as the administrative center of the Peldak Protectorate. Because of this, and the natural peldak aversion to desk work, the city has a much higher ratio of criminals than any other location on Peldor. Everyone in the bus station is a convict headed to a desk job.
Someone in the station speaks, “you ever think we should just hire some cirathans to do this crap?” Someone always asks that. Sometimes Cyryl asks it, hoping he’ll get a different answer.
“Can’t trust em,” another convict says. “What if our alien ‘allies’ decide to betray us? Then we’d be out of luck. We have to do it ourselves.” It’s a simple reality that none of them can escape, or talk their way out of.
“Plus, we’re supposed to be punished with doing ‘this crap’. We’re supposed to hate it. So as long as it works, it works.” Nobody would dare suggest intentionally sabotaging the bureaucracy and forcing the Protectorate to bring in more professional workers; not that any peldak would volunteer as a professional paper pusher.
The bus arrives at regular intervals, accurate down to the minute. Peldak buses are necessarily tall to accommodate the massive peldaks when standing, with the seats spread enough apart to give each occupant leg room. They hold less than half the passengers than the busses of other races, but it’s a necessary accommodation.
When Cyryl’s bus arrives, he’s the last to get on. The moment his shoe hits the first step, he’s blasted with a wall of heat, since the heater is on high.
“Eyy, Cyryl,” the driver says, holding out his fist. “Stayed at Aleks’s again last night?”
Cyryl punches the man’s fist, hard. “I was too drunk! He had the closest apartment.”
“You could always just call me; I don’t start my shift until after you go to bed.”
“Well,” Cyryl shrugs as he heads to an open seat, “when the operator can understand my drunk-voice, I’ll take you up on that.”
He plops down on one of the open seats, then takes off his jacket and throws it over his shoulder. Peldak buses have single seats with dedicated arm rests, two connected together on each side, and angled at a 45-degree angle towards the center isle. This is to give the passengers more leg room, and promote conversation.
The drive to work isn’t long, but there are a few stops along the way. Cyryl takes the opportunity to chat everyone up, keeping a smiling face, hopefully brightening their day before the start of their 12-hour torture. He’s a personable guy, and quickly gets everyone laughing at his slightly exaggerated tales of his time in the second military advance that ended with the full annexation of the former Leonid Empire’s worlds.
“So I was in the airship brigade, right?” As he talks, Cyryl looks around, making brief eye contact with random people. “Giant metal airship, floating along above the jungles of Basugio. The tribals didn’t have any artillery or anything, so there was nothing they could do. Now, I enlisted shortly after the Dismantling of the Leonid Empire (the first war) ended. There was the big military build-up to finish what we started, and annex all the nations that popped out of the Leonid Empire’s collapse. I originally signed up for basic infantry, but I did pretty good in training, so I was selected for the airship corps. Basically, we fly forward, in front of the main advance, then rappel down with these super long, thick cables. Like, the airship is a big balloon of hydrogen, and a little compartment on the bottom. So, in that compartment was enough room for two squads (20 soldiers), the crew, so that was another three people, and a little medical bay in the back for when we got injured. On the sides were these giants spools of thick wire, connected to these pulley’s a few feet outside these doors. So, we’d put on the harness, click our latches onto the wire, then rappel down a hundred or two hundred feet into the jungle, immediately into the fight. Now, in preparation for the big invasion day, I had been training for the airship assault for about five years, and I had rappelled down thousands of times in practice. It was like second nature. Everyone in our airship knew exactly how to do their job, all the emergency procedures, all the contingency plans, we had it down to a science. So then, the first day of that second war arrived. I’m sure a lot of you were part of that initial assault too, right?”
About half the passengers on the bus cheer and stomp their feet. The driver stomps his feet too, which makes the bus swerve a little.
“Right! So the day came, and, from our stronghold on Basugio, I was part of this massive airship assault. Directly to the north of our territory there was one tribal nation or another. To the north of that nation, there was another one, and so on and so forth until the northern coast of the continent. The plan was for our ground forces to invade that first nation and capture it within a week, while our force of fifty airships (100 squads, 1,000 soldiers, a full brigade) swung around over the ocean and attacked that second nation. We were gonna soften them up and, hopefully, make it easier for our main force to invade once they were finished with the first nation. Very simple plan, there were thousands of things going on like that all over Basugio, and even more plans going on around the other eight worlds. There were like 10 million soldiers taking part in the advance on all the planets, and a lot more logistic staff who helped keep the momentum up. I even saw a fairy once, when I was training! She was part of a scouting unit who made a lot of our maps. What I’m getting at is that all hands were on deck. So, the entire trip over the ocean. We’re all laughing, we’re partying, we’re cracking jokes. Victory was assured before we even started. Then we get over the land, ride to our designated point, and the crew members start opening up the outside doors. Warm air starts whipping into the cabin, it smells really sweet, and clean. I’ll never forget it, I glanced out the window and it was this crystal-clear blue sky, with an endless expanse of green below us. We were so far inland that I couldn’t even see the ocean anymore. The captain turned the red light on, and we all got ready. Then he hit the green light, and that’s when everyone started piling out, clipping their harnesses to the wire spools and rappelling down. Well… it gets to be my turn. I got my backpack, I got my sword, I got my rifle and pistol, I got my harness, and I got way more morale than maybe I should have… then I just fucking jump out of the airship and completely forget about clipping to the wire.”
The bus howls with laughter, the driver slips, and the bus nearly smashes into a guard railing.
“You idiot!”
“Five years of preparation, and you’re about to die without even seeing the enemy!”
“Way to fumble on the first step.”
Cyryl waits for them to calm down a little. “So, I’m falling through the air, wind brushing around me, and for the first two, three seconds, I don’t even notice anything wrong. I’m getting close to the jungle, what’s the issue, right? Then it finally hits me, and everything just starts slowing down. I’m freaking out, I’m screaming, my mind is running a million miles a second. How do I not die? Well, falling through the air, I’m trying to angle myself, catching the wind right, subtly getting closer to the wire. I pass by one of my guys, the man who jumped before me and actually remembered to attach himself,” that gets another chuckle. “I get close to the wire, and there’s maybe 30 feet between me and the top of the trees. My fingers move perfectly, I grab the clip, I attach it to the wire, and then I squeeze the breaks. There’re sparks flying, my harness tightens, and then I slam into the branches far faster than I should be going, breaking wood, ripping leaves off the trees. My thighs tightened around the wire and all that friction melted my pants. All my ears can hear are the splintering wood as my butt is smashing through them, I’m getting bruises, and then WHAM! I slam into the ground.”
“Oh my gosh.”
“Did you break anything?”
“Well,” Cyryl says, kissing his fist, “thank God, this was a jungle and it had just rained, so the ground was all muddy. I slam into a deep pit of mud, and it splashes everywhere, a giant splash like ten feet high, and there were no roots! Again, thank God, the guy before me had literally just released his clip and gotten out of the way, I missed him by about a foot. So I’m lying there on my back, in the mud, dazed, and then the guy before me comes down. He had seen what happened and slowed himself further, a nice, gentle descent, and he planted his boots in the mud at my sides. He and the other guys started laughing, ‘nice jump, idiot’, ‘maybe remember your clip next time’. But then they helped me up out of the mud, and we started the rest of our mission. But man, my knees and hips were aching for like a week. When we got back up to the airship later, the medics looked at me and I was a mess of bruises, cuts, and I still got the scars from where I burned my thighs. Imagine a single, deep purple bruise going all the way from the back of your knees to your lower spine. I looked rough. But, regardless, I continued with the rest of the invasion.”
“How were your other drops?”
Cyryl shakes his head, “never made that mistake again, I can assure you of that. In fact, the captain of the airship even pulled me in front of everyone and made me tell them what happened.”
“Wait a minute!” One of the men jumps up from his seat, “I got training for the airship corps a little after the invasion started. Maybe a month after, since I impressed my commander and all that. Every time we practiced, the instructors kept saying, like, ‘oh, you know, don’t jump out and THEN clip your harness, always clip your harness BEFORE you jump’. Everyone kept making jokes about, like, what kind of idiot screwed up so bad that they had to stress that so severely. But that was you! You’re the idiot!”
Laughter rips through the bus yet again, Cyryl slaps his knee and has to wipe the tears from his eyes.
Someone starts telling a story of when he saw an airship through a gap in the trees, and it used its cannons to attack entrenched enemy positions. Another peldak tells a story of his time in the first war, how his unit got ambushed, again, and it was an airship that came to his rescue, but the Leonid forces had artillery and blew it out of the sky, the hydrogen inside setting ablaze and eventually burning a portion of the forest where it crashed.
All these bureaucrats love passing around their old war stories. Given how often peldaks enlist, many of these stories date back hundreds of years ago, in different wars of expansion. Every so often, there’s a rare story from someone who took part in the Unification Wars of Peldor. But peldaks that old are relatively rare, and tend to be better behaved, thus wouldn’t be sentenced to the bureaucracy.
But eventually the bus reaches the valley with his workplace, and the passengers start filtering out. Cyryl steps out into the brisk winter air, and sighs. When the bus pulls off, he turns around, heads across a bridge that curves over the river, and makes his way into a coffee shop.
When the shop was first built, the owner planted a sapling to commemorate the event. That was 500 years ago, and the tree is now thick and tall, its leaves glowing a gentle, sun-like yellow. So thick is the trunk that the coffee shop has been adjusted to grow around it. The main bar circles the trunk, with stools on the outside, the baristas on the inside, and the coffee equipment attached to the trunk. Soft music plays from a telenel, and all the patrons are regulars who come to hang out before their shifts start. As such, Cyryl walks in and passes from customer to worker, chatting.
After about ten minutes pass, the cute barista clears her throat. “Cyryl! Your order!”
He perks his ears, “coming!” He quickly finishes his conversation with his friends, then heads to the counter to grab his drink. It’s the same order he’s gotten every shift for the last two years, and it’s the same order he’ll get for the next three decades. Two hard paper holders stacked atop each other, each with six holes for paper cups with lids. “Thanks,” he says to the barista with a nod.
She gives him a wave and a flutter of her long ears.
Cyryl walks back across the bridge and makes his way to the Protectorate Bureau of Critical Infrastructure. He raises his leg and hooks his foot behind the door handle, then pulls it open. A gust of cold wind follows him into the lobby.
“Cyryl.”
“Laura.” He walks to the crescent desk and sets his double tray of coffee down.
Laura, wrapped tight in a blanket and listening to a song playing from the small telenel on her desk, reaches out and grabs a cup. “Thanks dear.”
“Is Julita (one of Laura’s great granddaughters) having fun with the piano?”
Laura lights up and subtly turns down the telenel, “oh my goooooooosh! She’s so good! Not even half a year playing and she’s blah blah blah and blah blah! I’m gonna ask her to play at the new year’s family gathering, and I’m blah blah sure she’ll blah!”
Despite it all, Cyryl’s getting good at absorbing the critical details, and ignoring the pointless rambling and tangents of the receptionist.
“Oh, but where are my manners?” She finally says. “Go on, get those coffees delivered before I talk so long they go cold, haahaa!”
With just a nod, Cyryl heads to the back staircase and walks up to the gym floor.
“Howdy,” Eliza the gym girl says. Her feet are propped up on the desk and she’s filing her nails. “I’ll call you 10 minutes before your shift starts.”
“Thanks.” Cyryl sets the coffee tray down on the tray, then whistles sharply to his fellows working the various machines, or boxing in the ring. They all take a break from their work out to come drink, and Eliza grabs a cup too.
“Hey, Cyryl.” One man says as he exhales sharply from the workout.
“Cheers, Cyryl.”
“You wanna try a sip this time?” A woman smiles.
Cyryl shakes his head and waves them off with a smile, he hates coffee.
From there, Cyryl heads over to the bench press machine, placing 400 pounds of weight on both sides. Unlike most men trapped in the bureaucracy for decades, Cyryl is determined to exit his sentence stronger than when he entered.
Veins bulge through the skin, muscles pop, sweat drips down from his forehead and arms. The press bar is bent slightly from the weight, and his lungs burn with each deep inhale and exhale that accompanies his movements. Once he gets around rep 15, his arms start wobbling and his elbows start clicking. By rep 22, it takes a dozen seconds of accumulated struggle to push the bar back up. Reaching the point of failure without a spotter, he sets the bar back on the pegs and lets his arms fall to the sides. After a break, he repeats this process two more times, though only able to achieve 20, then 19 reps on the following sets. His current goal is three sets of 25 reps on 800 pounds. Once he achieves that, he’ll add more weight, with the ultimate goal of achieve so many reps on 1,000 pounds.
From there, he cleans his sweat off the bench and shifts into squats, 825 pounds of weight on his back. The goal here is to accomplish four sets of 50 reps. He’s positioned in such a way that he can watch his friends box. Both sides have protective gear; padded helmets and gloves, and only punches are allowed. It’s not a game for developing muscles, or combat skill, peldaks just use it for stress relief. For a man like Cyryl, who’s settled into a comfortable routine, it’s not something he takes part in. Though, watching two men beat the hell out of each other will always be entertaining.
“Hey, what’s that clicking noise?” Someone at a nearby bench says.
Cyryl starts snickering, his chest convulsing to the point where he almost crumbles under the weight.
“Whoa, Cyryl, is that your knees?”
“Haha!” He stands up, then puts his bar on the pegs. “Yeah, yeah. That’s me.” He brings his right leg up until his knee touches his chest, which brings about a loud click. Then he does the same for his left leg. “My legs just started doing that a few years ago. No idea why.”
“Does… it hurt?”
“No, not at all. That’s why it’s so weird. I even went to a doctor, and he said it shouldn’t affect how much I can lift.”
A few minutes later, Eliza whistles. “Cyryl! You’re done!”
No groan, no sigh, Cyryl just calmly wipes the equipment down then puts the weights back. Following that, he heads to the showers built inside the back wall of the gym floor. Soap is provided by the bureau, and Cyryl always keeps a week’s worth of folded clothes in his locker. The lockers are double sized, with enough space for a medium-sized peldak to squeeze in, if the shelves are removed first.
Though there’s always a worry with using the public showers. Cyryl opens the door slowly and looks to the right, and there’s a few peldaks, only men. He scans his vision to the left, and there’s a few more men occupying the showers. Showerheads occupy every few feet of the shower room, metal stands jut up from the floor and provide a platform for soap, and there’s drains set in divots on the floor.
With a sigh, he enters.
Due to grievous casualties taken in the first war for the nine new planets, the Lord Protector, the leader of the Protectorate, instituted various reforms with the goal of increasing the birth rate. One such reform was a mandate that forced all state-operated buildings, such as military bases and bureaucratic facilities, to switch to co-ed showers. The logic behind this reform wasn’t exactly well-reasoned, everyone hates it, and many peldaks say it flies in the face of public decency and morality. Most of the time, the peldaks simply create unofficial timeslots for male and female showers.
Thankfully, there aren’t any women in the showers, so Cyryl is free to head inside and get the sweat, grime, and stench of booze off his body.
With that finished, he returns to the lockers and gets dressed for the day. His hair is still a little damp, but his mind is clear, his body is tired, and he’s ready for work. He’s wearing a set of knee-high black boots under a clean pair of dark grey pants with two blue stripes up the side, and a black belt with a silver buckle, held in place by suspenders. His shirt is thick, white, long sleeved, with a row of buttons up the belly, a large collar and cuffs. A blue jacket over this, with flaps in the back and on the right side which extends to his mid-thigh. It looks like a military uniform with all the medals and ribbons stripped off, but that’s been the men’s fashion for the last century.
Based on cultural standards, nobody could say he doesn’t look sharp, though some peldaks would argue that the look is gaudy, or out of place for a job in the bureaucracy. Compared to the shmucks who come in wearing simple t-shirts and jeans, perhaps that’s true, but Cyryl just wants to feel like he still cares. Shower every day, shave, wear clothes that you don’t just slap on in the morning.
He heads up the stairs and enters the office the exact minute his shift begins. The telenel is off, the lights overhead cast a bright white glow, and Cyryl’s ears perk at the sound of Tymon scratching down notes with his pencil. The strictness of attendance varies from bureau to bureau, but Tymon doesn’t have the time or energy to keep track of it, so long as the work gets done. As the shift starts, they’re the only two men inside, and the rest will filter in over the course of the first hour.
Cyryl sits down at the concrete powder cubicle.
He looks at shipping manifests from the trains.
He extracts the relevant information.
He moves to another cubicle, then repeats the process for all four strategic resources he’s in charge of.
Sometimes Cyryl catches up on his work and can take a break to chat up his coworkers, but most of the day is spent filing paperwork, or being distracted by the telenel. Despite Tymon having a spare set of earmuffs, the previous year never saw a moment of civility between the two for Tymon to actually hand them over.
Not that it matters, since all the math Cyryl does is accurate, and all his resources are sent to their intended locations.
In the rare moment he feels like it, Cyryl picks up request forms and reads through what the various territories are planning to build.
At one point, he takes out pencil sharpener and goes to work on all his writing utensils, absentmindedly leaving a small pile of shavings on his table.
When more manifests come, he quickly does that work too.
Cyryl isn’t a child, and spite is a great motivator. He can force himself to do things he doesn’t want to do. In his 12-hour shift, he only takes a 30 minute lunch break at the halfway point to go down to the cafeteria.
After promptly finishing his meal, he heads back up to the office without delay.
“Cyryl,” Tymon says, initiating their first conversation six hours into the shift.
“What?” Cyryl’s voice is dry and unamused, nothing like the bubbly tone he normally takes when conversing with others.
“Cynthia had to leave; you’re taking up her resource.”
His ears perk in alarm, “what happened?”
“She went to go for lunch, was walking down the staircase on the side of the building, tripped, fell down five stories worth of stairs, and broke her neck.”
“Ouch. I guess that’s as good a reason as any to skip work for a few days.”
Tymon raises an eyebrow, “a few days? She landed on her head and her neck bent 90 degrees backwards. It’ll be months before she can even walk again, and by then, her term in the bureaucracy will be over.”
Cyryl closes his eyes for a moment and lets out a deep sigh, trying to let the anger subside. “It’s insulting that we’re considered the same species. It doesn’t take months to heal from a simple neck injury.”
Tymon clenches his hands tight, crumpling the papers he’s holding, then flicks his arm out, presenting those papers to Cyryl. “A day, a week, a year, I honestly don’t give a shit how long it’ll take. Point is, you’re the one who’ll be doing her work.”
Cyryl’s face sets into a deep frown, “and why don’t you do it?”
“Because I’ll then be back to doing more work than all of you combined, which means I’m turning off the telenel.” Tymon’s face is blank, his voice dry, but his ears are perked, indicating a small bit of joy.
Cyryl’s frown twists into a scowl, and he snatches the papers out of his boss’s hand. “Fine,” he growls through clenched teeth.
Suffering through extra work is nothing compared to the shame of letting Tymon have his way.
Does Cyryl enjoy the telenel? No, it’s a distraction.
Do his coworkers enjoy the telenel? Maybe, but Cyryl hasn’t asked.
Does Tymon enjoy the telenel? No, and that’s exactly why Cyryl wants it to stay on.
Regardless of the extra work, Cyryl takes to the challenge and completes it without verbal complaint. This is how the remaining six hours of his shift pass by.
The only interruption comes when Cyryl decides to make a get-well card for Cynthia, then goes around to all his coworkers to have them sign it. Despite his better judgement, he even gives it to Tymon, who proceeds to write his name in a small section near the bottom, with no kind words attached. After that, work proceeds smoothly, though the final hour does drag a bit. By the time his shift is nearing completion, Cyryl’s final report is completed, double checked, and placed in the correct bin for the courier.
In the last minute of the day, everyone -except Tymon, who’s checking everyone’s work- is piled by the back of the room, looking up at the clock hanging over the door that leads to the left staircase outside. The seconds tick by, causing their long ears to pulse in attention at the sharp noise. As soon as the minute hand ticks and the clock reads 11:30, Cyryl grabs the door nob, twists, then holds it open for everyone.
“Later Cyryl.”
Cyryl nods.
“Night, Cyryl.”
Cyryl nods and flashes a smile.
Urban slaps his shoulder, the giant man accidentally putting in too much force and causing Cyryl to wince, “nice job taking up the extra resource.”
Cyryl smiles despite the dull pain in his shoulder.
“Tell Cynthia I hope she feels better.”
When the last coworker exits, Cyryl heads to the back of the room and leaves through the main staircase.
He stops by Linda’s reception desk for the last goodbye of the night, and politely stands there for about 10 minutes as she drones on and on about something related to her grandkids. One topic effortlessly slides into the next, going off on random tangents and never returning to the original point, she interjects random thoughts and opinions into her tale. Sometimes, Linda even asks for Cyryl’s opinion, but she doesn’t stop talking long enough for him to actually respond. The only reason he’s here is because the bus heading to his destination comes at 11:45, so he has time to spare.
“Oopsie!” She says, glancing behind him, “your bus is here, sweetie. Don’t let me keep you.”
With a silent wave, Cyryl heads out.
The bus driver, a different one from this morning, meets Cyryl with a fist bump. “Getting drunk tonight?”
With a smile, Cyryl shakes his head, “nah, I think I’ll try getting a girlfriend again.”
“Ahh, so you’ll get a few sentences in, then start drinking heavily.”
Cyryl snorts, then playfully slaps the back of the driver’s head as he finds a seat.
The bus drives to its destination on the 11 o’clock position of the city, making a few stops along the way before Cyryl gets out. The district is built between three mountains, each with their own spaceport inside. The lowest part of the district is a small lake in the center, with concentric circles of roads gradually getting higher and higher until they reach the sheer cliff face of the gargantuan mountains. This district is mostly designed for entertainment, with all kinds of shops, hotels, and restaurants. It’s also one of the few locations where aliens and peldaks can be seen in equal numbers. The stores are full of all sorts of exotic goods from across the Protectorate, and the restaurants are staffed with alien chefs who specialize in dishes from their homelands.
The peldaks do have an understanding of currency, though not a strong one, and many peldaks don’t carry cash. If a peldak can’t pay, the store will make a record of the transaction, then tally those sales up at the end of the month, sending a bill to the peldak state to be reimbursed.
Since peldaks are a fundamentally honest and straightforward people, there’s no check on if these transactions are legitimate, or appropriately priced. The alien businesses get away with incredible levels of fraud, which luckily isn’t an issue since Peldor is an absurdly wealthy planet, with a highly productive population that doesn’t age, retire, or get sick.
Cyryl gets off the bus and heads to the nearest bar, one positioned on a street corner, with a ladder built on the side that leads to the roof, where most patrons are sitting at tables and watching the gorgeous view of the glowing city with a lake in the center. The lights reach all the way up and even illuminate the thick, swirling layer of grey clouds that cling between the mountains.
Heading to the roof, Cyryl looks around the benches, tables, and stools. The building on the right is taller, so a bar was built against the brick wall. Behind the counter, the bar is stocked with lots of alcohol, and there’s a flat metal grill, currently cooking a pile of shredded meat with a few types of vegetables. The cook is a peldak, but the recipe comes from some alien world that the chef was stationed on for a few years. Around this seating space are mostly couples, or small parties with a few members, but there’s also a few scattered women, sitting by themselves. They’re wearing their best dresses, arching their backs, playfully twirling or fiddling with their brown hair, and those with longer ears are flapping them constantly to show off their size. There are various, specially designed cups with imprints for the hand, and the purpose is for the fingers to be spread wide, showing everyone the drinker’s lack of a wedding ring.
Cyryl picks one of those ladies at random and walks over.
“Hey,” he says with a smile.
The woman’s ears perk and she lights up. “Hiya!”
“How are you?” A simple line, but Cyryl is an objectively handsome man with a strong jawline and a muscular body visible even under his clothes.
“Oh my gosh I’m doing fantaaaaaastic!” She says. “You know, I was a little worried that nobody would approach me tonight but blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah! Like teehee, of course someone would blah blah, blah blah cause I’m blah blah! And blah blah-… back from the gym-… but I say to her no to the blue dress-… like, why would I need earrings? And-… but that is to say-… how does a person get that bold to-…”
Cyryl nods along, but never interjects. After about a minute, he glances to the bartender and desperately taps his finger, indicating that he needs a large glass.