Omake: Morning Routine for the Furniture
Yacov
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Adapting to horrible living conditions brought about by a lack of domestic infrastructure investment.
Omake: Morning Routine for the Furniture
POV: Succora Nucai, Sentient Server, Service Housing, Byavoes City, Dubrillion, Myto Sector.
Succora awoke to the insistent beeping of her alarm. Her efforts to stretch her legs stymied by the walls of her Cube Hotel room. Squashing the desire to hit the snooze button, she began her morning routine.
Rolling off her bed brought Succora face to face with the Cube's entryway. The mirror she had placed there showing that she still wasn't getting enough sleep to maintain her complexion naturally. The bags would be a permanent fixture and a death sentence for her employment if left alone.
Taking out her daycare kit from the side cubby, Succora applied the necessary creams and makeup to look presentable for her job at the restaurant. The application process was relatively long and the chemicals stung a bit, but that was the price of job security on Dubrillion. Serving the assistants of the assistants of the attendants of some of the richest people in the sector was what allowed her to afford rent.
Turning around Succora began to fold up her bed into its desk format while reaching underneath to unfold the desk's seat. Unzipping her breakfast brought a modest meal of chopped up ration bar with a side of vegetable protein straws on a disposable plate and some bottled tap water from her workplace to wash it down. Getting water from the floor's common room wasn't an option after the Vacuum Huffers claimed it as their territory and were extracting tolls to visit.
Succora had to work her teeth to break up her meal even with the water to soften it. Only the reminder that the alternatives would likely be worse made the food somewhat enjoyable. She had only thought about taking leftovers home from her job once, right until she saw what management had security do to Frestila before tossing her stained bag down the laundry chute.
If she lost her job she would lose her Hotel room and be forced into the Cargo Pod Town outside the city limits. The slum was Byavoes City's dirty underbelly secreted away behind a wall of advertisements, strategically placed buildings, and some publicly funded holoprojectors. Only shipments of expired or discontinued pet food from the city for "recycling purposes" kept that place fed. Trying to add that stuff to her meal would only make her breakfast worse.
Succora gave one last attempt at a stretch before tossing all the trash from her morning routine in a bag. Thankfully she didn't need to use the hospital bottle before heading out. She always tried to hold it in until she got to work since the bathroom was in the common room for taken over. Her neighbor Groska was an angel for smuggling those out from the Senior Center she worked at.
With trash and her workbag in hand, Succora opened her Cube's door and dove into the throng of residents heading down a seemingly endless hallway. Timing her movement, she made a practiced throw into the floor's trash chute while avoiding the other thrown projectiles.
The stream of commuters pooled into large elevators at the end of hall. Meant to haul freight rather than the residents the building had been converted for. Injury was only a possibility near the edges and Succora had found herself closer to the center today.
Being disgorged from the elevators led to a collective mad dash towards her building's doors. Succora would turn around to admire the tacky attempt by the city to beautify the building's outside walls if she wasn't scrambling for whatever public or private transit was available. She managed to snag a standing position on a train with a stop a few blocks from where workplace. A reward for spending nights memorizing routes, logos, and indicators for the morning commute.
On a cracked HoloNet screen the morning headlines were scrolling across the bottom. Apparently Moff Hiral was vacating his position and the new one was arresting a bunch of people. Succora didn't care to read the rest. Not like the last change in leadership changed her life all the much. Maybe it will lead to an uptick of customers visiting for a short while to congratulate the new Moff at his welcome party.
——
The passengers poured out of the train before the sparks even died down. A tide of flesh trying to disperse out into the street before the inevitable pull of onboarding passengers charged for the train. Succora had long since learned to traverse with the rhythm.
After dodging her way through pedestrians, speeders, and droids, Succora managed to make it to her job at the Drunken Manka Cat, a restaurant inside a low quality offworlder hotel. She entered through the worker's entrance so as not by seen by hotel's guests. Being seen inside the hotel was swift way to get punished by management.
Stopping by the employee lockers, Succora deposited her workbag, took out her decoy bag, and put it on top. She only hopes nothing gets stolen by the time she came back. They were not allowed to use locks after an employee was caught smuggling cutlery and spices out of the restaurant.
The final item on Succora's morning routine list was a visit to the restaurant's refresher before they opened. Staring into the smudged mirror let her notice and fix anything out of place from her travel to work. Succora slapped her cheeks to give herself an appealing blush before setting out to survive another shift.
——
Tourism brings a lot of rich folks to a place, it doesn't necessarily make the folks in that place rich. Especially if said place has large amounts of inequality. Some planetary rulers (like I imagine Moff Tarry) just don't invest into infrastructure the amount Las does. Byavoes City represents the darker side of having tourism as your main industry while investing into the city's more permanent residents is ignored over a long period.
I think the average Ugean probably has better living standards than the average Dubrillionian despite the vast gap in age of settlement and the ridiculous luxury of the latter's upper class. Inspiration for Succora's horrendous living conditions comes from Cyberpunk RED's lifestyle system descriptions. Her Cube Hotel room is a very compact 1.7 meter by 1.7 meter by 1.7 meter room. A Night City style Megabuilding could fit in well in a populous Outer Rim planet known for high rise cities and servicing offworld tourists.
Crossposted on SB and SV
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Be aware of alien infiltrators posing as house-pets