Vignette 048

“When my brother and I visited Duchaine, we went to the same planet, but very different worlds. His naval lieutenant's uniform got him admission into the polite society and wealth of the thousand families who owned and ran the planet, and he moved through a world of elegant receptions, excellent food, and ubiquitous servants catering to every whim.

My work as a journalist took me into the underside of Duchaine's arcologies, where millions thrown out of work by the automation of its industries tried to survive on inadequate or non-existent welfare. Law enforcement was brutal when it was present, but mostly it wasn't, since the thousand families just wanted the slum-dwellers kept out of sight and out of mind, and didn't much care what they did to each other.

A job as a servant upside was a dream come true for most slummies, even if it only paid three meals a day and a bunk in a dormitory, and they'd do almost anything to get one. A recruiter came through while I was there; at least two men were knifed in the resulting queue riots, and what some of the women were willing to do to be selected turned my stomach. My brother couldn't understand why I got furious when he described his wonderful shore leave, and it took several months for our relationship to heal”


(Author's note - This is obviously a world intended for characters to visit. The contrast between affluence and poverty should be played up, or the characters can just have to find someone in slums as brutal and lawless as the rookeries of Georgian England)


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