Leaving the gym and returning to his desk may be painful, but that pain is nothing compared to the agony of seeing two folders full of train manifests waiting for him. This agony is then nothing compared to the torment of actually having to sort through it.
But despite the trials, tribulations, and suicidal contemplations, Cyryl manages to make it through the day. A total of 32,760.24 tons of concrete powder has arrived in the warehouse upstairs, and been allocated to various projects around the Protectorate. A similar number will be shipped over the night shift as well. The planet of Peldor doesn’t orbit a star, so has no day or night cycle. The working shifts are split into 12-hour increments, with half the population working one shift, and the other half working the other.
As his shift ends, Cyryl leans against the outside wall of the cubicle as Tymon sits inside, looking over his calculations.
“You suck at decimals.”
Cyryl raises an eyebrow, “the hell is a decimal?”
“The dot in the middle of a number.”
“Isn’t that a fraction?”
“…no. It’s not. Though, why are you only adding the decimals up to 60?”
“Because… it’s like time, right? 60 seconds makes a minute, 60 minutes an hour. 60 fractions- err, 60 decimal points makes a… whole decimal.”
Tymon walks out of the cubicle and sets the updated sheet into a clear glass bin hanging on the outside wall. That’s the final number of concrete powder for the day, as well as the destinations. A courier will bring that sheet to the warehouse, and the warehouse shift working the next 12-hour period will spend their day transporting the correct volume of shipments to the designated starships, which will then bring it to the correct ports on the right planets. At the same time, the warehouse crew will also be offloading trains and bringing new critical resources to the warehouse, with their shipping manifests being copied and sent to the departments below. It’s not a well-oiled machine by any stretch, but it works well enough that nobody has bothered to change it.
“No,” Tymon says, looking up at Cyryl. “Decimals work by ten, just like any other number. It starts at .01, climbs to .99, and then the next one ticks over to 1.00. Can you remember that for tomorrow or do you need me to write a guide for you?”
Cryrl frowns and looks down his nose at his manager. “Despite what you think, I’m not an idiot. I just haven’t had to work with numbers since I was in school.”
Tymon sighs, then brings his arms around to slap the sides of Cyryl’s broad shoulders, “that’s great. Have a nice night, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Cyryl heads over to another cubicle and starts checking the math for that convict. Unlike Cyryl, everyone else has already left for the night. It usually only takes a few months for the convicts to begrudgingly settle into a routine, setting out all their paperwork in an organized, standard pattern so Tymon can easily glide over the math.
Most convicts start off by leaving small notes for Tymon, telling him to have a nice night, but those usually stop after a year or two.
Before Cyryl leaves the building, he stops by the main desk to speak with Laura, the talkative receptionist with the impressive jewelry on her ear.
“Hello again…” She narrows her brow for a moment, “Cyryl?”
“That’s me.”
“Excellent! How was your first day?”
“Pretty… awful. I’m not that good at math.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie, you’ll get there. Why, when my daughter-in-law was assigned there, she could hardly do any of the work! She needed personal classes to be re-taught basic addition and subtraction, if you can believe it.”
“Thankfully I’m not that bad.” He leans forward on the crescent desk, his elbows and the sides of his hands resting against the cool surface. “Hey, do you know of any fun places around here?” Peldaks don’t require much sleep, so a 12-hour shift leaves about six hours of personal time.
Laura straightens her back, “sir, I’m happily married.”
He raises an eyebrow, “what?”
She gives him a bright smile, “oh nothing, teehee. When my grandson comes through town, he always likes to bring his grandfather and I to the stadium in district 22, at position 10, just down the street from the military parade committee.”
“What do they do?”
“Organize military parades.”
“No, I mean what does the stadium do?”
“Host military parades. But when there’re no parades going on, you can see cool stuff like tanks running over old cars, or you can go down there and participate in mockgun fights, or if you’re lucky they could be showing off new military gear. My other grandson was actually chosen to show off a cool harpoon gun once, and my other-other grandson volunteered to show off a new grenade.” She pauses for a moment, frowning, “that one didn’t work out well, but he had a load of cool scars after he got out of the hospital.”
“Nice. Do they serve beer there?”
“Only to the tank drivers!” She slaps her knee, then descends into a mad giggle, laughing far longer than her joke deserves.
Briefly, Cyryl considers only using the side stairs and never coming through the main lobby again.
“Aaah,” Laura wipes a tear from her eye. “Anyway, they’ve always got something fun going on there, I’d check it out.”
“Thanks,” Cyryl leaves before she can brag about her large family again.
The rest of the day consists of Cyryl wandering around the sprawling districts that dot the mountainous landscape of Heaven’s Reach. He’s passed through the city a few times during his long life, but he’s never stayed longer than a day or two.
The first order of business is to get a lay of the land. He hops on a random bus, grabs a complimentary map of the city, and rides around for hours.
Heaven’s Reach may cover thousands of square miles around the north pole, but the populated zones are sparse. Most of the area is dominated by mountains, or craggy landscapes that prevent development, so these population centers are limited to the valleys between the mountains. There’re hundreds of towns, villages, and settlements, all connected via a network of roads and train tracks built on bridges that curve with the landscape. The smallest of these settlements only host a few buildings, while the flattest landscapes are home to sprawling government complexes, such as the Lord Protector’s Citadel.
The mountains of Heaven’s Reach are gargantuan pillars of rock, rising miles into the sky at steep angles. They’re also hollow, featuring large freight elevators that take goods and passengers to and from space. At the base of these mountains are large train stations. Though the words ‘large’ and ‘gargantuan’ don’t truly convey the sheer scale of these mountains. Aliens have, for centuries, debated that the size of the mountains are unnatural, and someone must have built them, though the peldaks are unconcerned with these sorts of questions.
The map Cyryl takes lists plenty of attractions as well. Stadiums, museums, shopping centers, some districts in Heaven’s Reach have gained reputations for one reason or another.
As the hours wear on, Cyryl ends his site seeing tour and takes a bus to the residential district with his new apartment. Heaven’s Reach is situated on the north pole of Peldor. If looking at Heaven’s reach from above, oriented such that the capital city of Pelda is directly south, the Cyryl’s apartment would be at two o’clock. His new workplace is also at two o’clock, but about two miles closer to the north pole.
Given the territorial nature of the peldaks, each apartment complex is five stories tall at most, and feature large, well-maintained backyards with glowing trees, and ponds full of bioluminescent fish. Keeping peldaks spread out like this is the only way to keep them from going crazy and killing each other.
As Cyryl hops off the bus and marches up to his room on the fourth floor, he opens the unlocked door and heads inside. What awaits him is a standard apartment. The ceiling is 11 feet high, the walls are reinforced and soundproof, there’s a single large living space with a wide glass door on the back wall that leads to a balcony. On the left side of this living space is a kitchen area sectioned off by a counter, the inside containing a refrigerator, a stove, and all the cooking equipment he could need. Connected to this single living space are five rooms: two bedrooms and a bathroom on the left, with the right containing a hallway which leads to a third bedroom, and another bathroom. The apartment comes with furniture already in place.
“Hmh,” he huffs as he kicks off his shoes and pushes them to the side of the entranceway. “Kinda shabby, but I guess that’s to be expected from a city like this.”
The couches are pressed against the walls on either side of the room, with tables in front of them. On the back right corner, set between a couch on the right wall, and a recliner on the back wall next to the window, is a large device made of wood and wires. It’s a telenel, and features one large speaker, with several buttons and dials on the front.
Cyryl plops onto the recliner and leans back, spreading his legs. He reaches over and turns the telenel to the local news station.
“-insurrection groups have formed on our newly conquered territories.” The voice comes in crystal clear, as if the reporter was in the room. “It seems that, while our conquest may be complete, retaining ownership of these new territory will be an entirely different story. As we work hard to fix these shitholes they call planets, and fix the mess left by centuries of mishandling, we’ll also have to work hard to fight off the illiterate savages that seek to keep their species in darkness. But we’ll drag them into the light of civilization, kicking and screaming if necessary. So says the Lord Protector.”
“Tch,” Cyryl furrows his brow, “never should have left the military…”