A Day in the Life: Cyzican Steamworks

Dear Readers,

This marks the second week that I provide a fictional narrative that represents a "slice of life" from a time stream that has captured my interest recently. Like everything else I've written this week, today's Day in the Life focuses on neo-Aegea.

Originally I thought I would write a story of one of Aegea's soldiers, but I decided instead to write about a slave in the vast steamworks and factories of Aegean industry. This one takes place in Cyzica, one of the more industrial of neo-Aegea's city-states.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

"Olive, you all right?" he heard his mother's voice yell from the other room.

He wanted to say, "No, I'm not all right. I'm coughing up black soot and snot into our tiny-ass sink, Mom, because I'm a slave in a weapons factory." Instead, he coughed up more of the charred mix into the steel basin, as the glowstrips above his head flickered at the end of their lives.

"Olive?" his mother yelled a little louder.

Olive looked at the grey mess he had made. That damned Prometheus Engine caused all this. He cursed his own blasphemy as soon as he thought it. Second Engineer Odysseus would no doubt prescribe a penance. There would be no Aegea without the titan Prometheus's fiery gifts and technology.

He coughed once more, and yelled in answer, "Yes, mother, I'm fine, just...tired from work, I guess." It came out raspier than he hoped. Maybe she would not notice.

In the sheet of polished plastic his family called a mirror, Olive looked at his pale face and tried to wipe away any collateral black streaks. He also tried to fix the places where sweat matted his dark hair. Both efforts were a little bit futile; everyone in Cyzica's dregs looked like that. Slaves could afford little else.

"Olive, we need to go to the Ceres Engine, come out of there." His mother again.

He sighed into the mirror. Dinnertime. He did feel colossal hunger, so he decided his hair would have to wait.

"Coming, mother!"

He opened the rickety metal hatchway and flopped over the threshold, into the other room of their quarters. Its dishevelled space served as bedroom, kitchen, sometimes hospital. Again, the lot of a slave. In the middle of the room, his mother, in her usual sackcloth, stood ready to leave. At twenty-nine, she might even have looked pretty with her copper hair. If she could afford to wash it.

"Let's go," Olive said.

She half-smiled and turned to leave. The Ceres Engine was a short walk from their quarters, though by this time there might be a long line, so they rushed there. Even so, about a hundred other slaves, just off of their day's work, waited ahead of them to receive their daily bread.

At the head of the line, two Brothers of the Gasket assisted the local parish Engineer, First Degree Artemis. They removed the bread from the Ceres Engine as she addressed the crowd, "Thank Ceres, the great goddess, that your food comes this day. Only by her magic does her Engine bring your portion into this world, and so only by her magic, do you live. Rejoice, slaves of Cyzica. The gods do not forget you!"

Olive tuned her out as she continued to preach the faith. As he neared age fourteen, he focused more on Artemis's extremely physical, exotic appearance and less on her words. He heard that speech every night, anyway.

"Don't stare, Olive, it's too dangerous." his mother chided him. He knew she was right. The gods forbade all non-Engineers from lustful stares on their chosen clergy. Slaves, especially, could be killed for leery gazes at young First Degree Engineers.

Still, as he stood in the line of dirty, broken slaves, Olive felt nothing fair in that rule. Everyone around him, just as worthless as he, saw not even a shred of anything holy or clean, save Artemis and the Brothers who supported her. Tomorrow, and every day after that, he would go back to his work in the steamy weapons factory, where much harsher Engineers, like the older Second Degree Odysseus would drive him to repair and feed the Hephaestus Engines. All to make more weapons for Cyzica and her allies' armies. He saw no justice in it, but then just was scarce this deep in the City's levels. Olive shrugged and returned his gaze to the back of the person ahead of him in line. At least he would have bread soon.