There are many theories on why so many of the human countries that went through peak industrialization during the early parts of the 20th century began to embrace democracy or civil liberties, and began to reject hereditary authoritarianism. One of them is rooted in the very economic nature of industrialization:

A society can't industrialize without basic education.

It is very difficult, not impossible as there are certainly exceptions, but very difficult still, for a government system to allow the level of education required by rapid modernization and still manage to maintain an iron grip on its people.

When the humans introduced a brand-new lifestyle to the galaxy, rulers and governments everywhere loved the products that they brought.

What's not to like? They made wealthy families feel like they were finally living in luxury, and quality of life clearly went up. Maybe they didn't need the labor saving devices as much given that they had servants, but no army of servants could build you a human automobile that went from zero to sixty in four seconds. Or entertain you like the latest blockbuster movies straight from Hollywood.

And many of these rulers did somewhat care for the needs of their people; that's how they kept their regimes going. They would like the ability to produce more food than their people could ever eat. To do so, farmers need to learn to use more advanced tools, which may require training.

They would like the ability to produce consumer goods in factories. They would like to be able to mass manufacture industrial goods. They would like to have engineers innovate and develop new technology to compete on the galactic market.

To achieve all of that, they needed to provide more education for their people. And people who have learned reading, writing, sciences, math, history, or even philosophy tend to start reading and even understanding some fairly dangerous ideas.

They start asking questions like:

"Who makes the rules for everything?"

"How are these beings chosen and what gives them the right?"

And the most dangerous question of all, "why is life so much better on other planets?"

Even before the blockade, the people of Zakabara Second had started asking themselves these questions. And when their genetic cousins on the homeworld were restricting their ability to trade with others for the prosperity they wanted, the Seconders were beginning to find some very uncomfortable answers to these questions.

Gakrek Low Orbit

"Gophor Tower, T-two one-four-eight, request clearance for landing pad," N'har said professionally into his microphone.

"T-two one-four-eight, cleared to approach pad eight," came the equally polished voice of the space control tower.

That was quick. Must be a slow day.

"Grayin, how's it going down there this early morning?" he asked, taking a bold little chance. Although every single space traffic controller in the galaxy tried very hard to practice their personalities out of their voices, he could tell by the smallest husk in the accent that it was her down there.

N'har could almost hear a smile in her voice as she replied, "not bad, N'har. Traffic's light so far. Clear skies, no wind."

Pushing his luck, he said, "I wasn't asking for the weather report Grayin, but thanks. How about you, my pretty Gak friend, how are you doing this fine morning?"

A little pause at the other end made him think maybe he'd gone a little far on the radio, then Grayin replied with a much more casual tone, "pretty good. My big sister and her husband are having a baby soon, and we had a big feast at their place last night. She roasted a whole chicken for the family! We even had some spices from Earth: paprika, pepper, rosemary, garlic…"

"Nice, nice," N'har chuckled, "if you reserve me a good pad next time I come by, maybe I'll bring you a real Earth chicken."

"Shhh N'har you know that's not allowed. We can't just give you a better landing pad, it's all about first come-" she started to recite official spaceport policy.

"It'll be one of those big, fat, juicy rotisserie chickens, straight from the Costco vendors," he continued without missing a beat, "I have a food warmer in the back of my ship, and it's just gonna smell-"

"Alright! Alright, if you come early tomorrow, maybe I can get you pad four," she replied before he could get into a more detailed description of the aromatic and mouth-watering nature of his cargo.

While N'har celebrated the little victory silently on his end, Grayin then asked, "speaking of food, have you heard of the new food store we have?"

"You mean that thing Enrico's been working on with his girlfriend for months?" he prodded, hoping she'd have some unique gossip he could tease Enrico about later. "He keeps asking me to bring things for it."

"Yeah, they just opened for business today," she said, looking out her window at the golden arches down the concrete spaceport near where the trader tents are, "it's called McDonald's… any idea why?"

"No idea. It's a human name. How does the business look?" N'har asked.

"Looks pretty good, they've got a line I can see all the way from here," Grayin said, squinting at the crowd in the distance, "actually, that's a really long line. I'm not sure if it's even open yet."

McDonald's, Gophor Location

It was a really long line. And it had just opened. More than a thousand creatures lined up in several long snaking back-and-forth columns, most of them Gaks. Luckily, the locals had a lot of experience lining up for food thanks to their experience with the Red Cross during the famine so there was no trouble there.

Enrico and Rey were not expecting this many creatures. The main target of the restaurant was supposed to be traders, not locals! In fact, Enrico didn't even remember this many people at the spaceport ever in all his time there.

The cost of a full meal was almost a week's worth of pay for a skilled worker! But they came anyway. Most of them were there just for the experience of ordering a hamburger from the human food store. Seeing the commotion, many of the traders with their spaceships on the landing pad also got in line.

N'har got in line, and asked one of the more enthusiastic Gaks in front of him, "how long do you think this line will take?"

The friendly looking creature looked back at him and replied, "the folks in front have been waiting since last night."

"Last night?" N'har gasped.

"Yeah, but the store just opened a while ago. The line is moving really quickly now," she hastily added, "you'll see. They call it fast food for a reason, right?"

Goripli had never seen a crowd this big waiting to buy from him before. His entire crew had been training for the past couple weeks to fulfill every order within sixty seconds of the customer getting to the front of the line, but to actually have to do it is a whole nother matter.

A new order lit up on his screen, another medium coke. Cup, ice, press the button, wait, lid, put it on the tray, straw. Repeat. He could do this in his sleep.

It wasn't exactly fulfilling work, but having this many people as customers was exciting. And the dream of the new battery operated toaster he was planning on getting after his first paycheck was very fulfilling.

After a while, he moved over to the fries station. Everyone who's ever worked a fries shift at McDonald's knows that it's simultaneously the easiest shift yet with the highest experience ceiling. The actual mechanical task is so easy it's usually the first station new fast food workers get stuck with. You just load the basket with frozen potatoes, dunk it into the oil vat, and when it's done, unload and pour some salt on it.

Once every few days, the oil needs to be changed, but not very often because it's so expensive that some restaurants call it liquid gold.

In the McDonald's handbook, the six enemies of oil are: carbon buildup, air, salt, heat, water, and detergent. The maintenance of the oil vat is a complex task that usually falls upon the manager to facilitate; it very often has a large impact on the profit margin of the business.

McDonald's oil used to be a substance called Formula 47: egregious amounts of frozen beef fat that looked like butter, mixed in with a small amount of the far more expensive vegetable oil. Some even credit the deliciousness of this formula as a big part of the success of McDonald's in the first place. Unfortunately, it was also prone to giving people heart attacks, so over the years they gradually switched to one that was mostly vegetable oil with a touch of beef flavoring, except in India.

Rey had looked at the possibility of bringing this beef tallow formula back given that her customers were mostly going to be aliens who may not be susceptible to the effects of saturated fats, but Chicago rejected it outright on the basis of liability. Oh well.

The most complex part about managing the fries shift for line workers, though, is not the cost of each ingredient. It's being able to anticipate and stagger the cooking loads, so they are fresh and ready right as customers order them. On Earth, this is done with a variety of methods including more recent experimental attempts at using AI. But mostly it's just done by workers checking the parking lot camera to see how many people there were.

Today, this was no problem. Goripli was just making as many as he could as fast as they could be made. The line outside stretched around the corner beyond the food tents. And almost everyone wanted the fried potatoes.

Traders Only

New Thread: New McDonald's opens at Gophor on Gakrek. First offworld restaurant!

Comment: I was there this morning. The line was long, but well worth the wait. I've heard one of my human friends describe one of these to me, but it just isn't quite the same as visiting one in person. 5/5

Comment: The fried potatoes are great. I wish I could give this more stars. 5/5

Comment: Had a full Big Mac meal while waiting for my reactor refueling. Gophor is now my new lunch spot. 5/5

Comment: Did they have the chicken nuggets they do on Earth?

Comment: Superb lunch. 3/5

Comment: I'm a vegetarian seriously regretting my species' choice of dietary restrictions in our evolution millions of years ago. This is not fair. Why don't Earth vegetarian chains open up offworld as well?

Comment: Haha you aliens are just discovering McDonald's and treating it as a gourmet food revolution? What's next? A Denny's on Bohor? Unbelievable!

Comment: Dude, you're making us look bad. Just let them have this one.

Thread restricted to non-human traders due to flame war.

Comment: I might have to actually go try this out tonight. Who's with me?

Enrico took a turn at the registers while one of the shift changes was going on. He hadn't done as much training as the crew, but order taking wasn't that hard. And Rey said it was important that he stood where the aliens could see him, as if to advertise that a human who knew what he was doing ran the restaurant.

The kiosk had plenty of pictures and wasn't designed to be hard, and none of these aliens were having that many custom requirements. If they tried to add a round egg to a big mac, he'd have to look around a bit, but most of the orders were simple.

Hamburger with meal.

Hamburger without meal.

Just the fried potatoes, please.

Would you like this for here or to go?

That'll be 7.25 credits. Thank you.

Move on to the next customer. It was pretty mind-numbing work, and the smile he had to put on his face was quickly becoming a permanent feature-

Enrico looked up and saw the next customer in line, and put on his best smile, "welcome to McDonald's! What can I get for you?"

Rey started the morning working the lobby and kicking herself inside for not getting one of those portable tablets that would allow her to take down orders from the long line stretching out the door. At least she could make herself useful greeting newcomers and making sure that they had someone to go to if there were complaints.

Not that they had any. The novelty of the restaurant, along with the high standards to which her employees trained, took care of that. The only slightly awkward moment was when a Gak child looked at her and asked why all the workers in the restaurant were smiling so hard.

Sometime around midday, she had to take a break, slinking off to the back of the kitchen near the storage area.

Enrico spotted her, and concerned, walked over to ask, "Rey, are you alright?"

Years of saving. Almost a year of planning and hard work. And going to bed in a sleeping bag on a hard mud floor. Her lifelong dream. It all caught up to her at that moment.

For once, Rey just didn't have the snarky words to describe her raw emotions. So, she settled for just hugging him in and dabbing the corner of her eyes on his apron.

He was surprised, but didn't hold her back. Their camaraderie ran far deeper than their official relationship of owner-manager. Returning her wordless embrace and gripping her tightly, he repeated, "I know, I know."

They did it.

Grob and Grood came in during the afternoon. The line still stretched beyond the tents, but a fresh shift and well practiced employees were quickly processing all the customers they had.

Before the opening, the pair had volunteered to be the subject for training for several of their employees, so they knew exactly what to order and what to expect. Several of the workers behind the counter who knew them gave them a knowing nod.

They managed to find a quiet two-person table near the entrance, where they sat, played with their food, and Grob pointed out various parts of the spaceport to his wife, who doesn't come down here often.

"Grob, Grood! Nice to see you guys make it," Rey smiled as she saw them, exhausted but still managing to put some excitement into her voice, "you guys got the usual?"

"Rey!" Grood was her usual excitable self, gesturing around the filled restaurant and line, "this is fantastic! Good work!"

"Thanks Grood. How's the food?" she asked, knowing what Grood would compare it to.

"Not bad, not bad at all. Not as good as my cooking of course," Grood winked mischievously, and then said, "but it's very, very filling."

Rey had been hearing this a lot. For a people whose supply of food was not guaranteed before, this was the best compliment Grood and the locals could have given her restaurant.

Gordorker and his clan showed up as well. It took multiple trips of cramming Gak children into the back, but the new pickup that they'd given Ghili helped. There was no special drive-through window, so she parked in an empty spot right next to the building and dropped them off.

As they entered the line, they started reading the menu off the big sign on the outside of the building. One of the difficulties in running a restaurant on Gakrek was that the lower than Earth levels of literacy made a large menu hard to explain to people. Luckily, there were many pictures, and all of Gordorker's children had learned to read at his insistence.

When it was their turn in line, Enrico saw them and came over. Nodding at Gordorker, he said, "your meals are on us." He typed in a code on the ordering machine and allowed them all to order however much food they wanted.

When they got their meals, they jibbered and jabbered over which item was whose and took in the smell of it all. Ghili and Garns critiqued the bun breads with professional eyes; they couldn't help themselves.

The younger kids loved it. Even though Gordorker and the valley was no longer as poor as he was before the famine, getting a large variety of food was still difficult. They often ate bread and potatoes for dinner. Meat or even other imported vegetables was an occasional treat.

Enrico had a fleeting image in his head of obese Gak children stuffing their face with fast food, but immediately discarded it out of his mind; there was certainly no risk of that on this hungry planet.

He cleared some space for the kids upstairs, so they could all sit together at a table. It was important to keep their future suppliers happy. Soon, they're going to need all the supply they can get.

Garber, the spaceport manager, got in line too. Enrico saw him and gave him his meal free, of course. Looking at the line and prices of food sold on the menus, it became obvious to him that he'd way undercharged the "donation fee" for this lot, but it would be dishonest for him to change it now.

It didn't matter anyway. As long as he could bum some more free meals off this restaurant in the future, he wasn't the kind of Gak to make a big fuss about it. Besides, the food portions were good.

The next restaurant on his spaceport, he thought, now that was an opportunity. After all, these kinds of businesses don't stand alone for long.

Laniers was a trader from the close planet of Olgix. Despite the recent ethnic conflict flare-up between the two species on her homeworld, they were still very much tied together by the space trade.

She liked the food, but that wasn't what really blew her mind. It was the lines out the door despite the prices on the menu. She realized right away that the business model targeted traders, and she suspected it would hold without an issue. Many space truckers were here, and more would come.

There was a lot of money to be made, and it didn't all have to be made here on Gakrek. Other planets could do this too, and the fact that most of the employees in the restaurant were Gak told her that this wasn't a human-exclusive venture.

Laniers sat there at a stool counter seat on the second floor for a while, and she decided that there was nothing about this place that couldn't also be replicated by the Olgs. It was just a big building that cooked imported goods and served them to more than willing customers with an even more enthusiastic crew.

And she was absolutely right. Despite what some humans thought about the aliens due to their initial lack of economy, they were certainly not stupid. If there was an opportunity humans could exploit, it didn't take that long for them to catch on.

Goripli finished his third consecutive shift and collected his free meal. After standing up all day and looking at his customers' food, he was getting hungry. Officially, he wasn't supposed to take any food from the kitchen, but that didn't stop anyone from sneaking a fried potato once in a while during his shift.

It was tiring work, but he knew it was good, honest work that paid a lot. Even on a good day when he was selling bagged soda, he didn't make nearly half as much as Rey was going to pay him today.

I'm going to work hard, Goripli decided, and maybe one day, my children will start one of these of their own.

It was an odd experience, Grayin reflected. The workers behind the counter were all smiling and extremely friendly, far more than any trader or vendor she'd ever met. Which contrasted hard with the speed and assembly line characteristics of every part of the operation that all seemed designed to get her the food she ordered and out of the store as quickly as possible.

Because they were.

As for the food, she almost regretted ordering the triple cheeseburger. It was massive: larger than her paws can hold! And then it came with a box of fried potatoes. And then a drink. They'd said that she could refill her drink, but she was worried she couldn't even get to the drink before she was full.

Was this how normal humans ate on Earth?

For a minute, she just sat at the table, staring out the second floor window at the spaceships taking off and landing in the background, contemplating what sort of culture and resource abundance would produce such a business. What kind of species would encourage such excesses-

"Oh hey, Grayin, you're here for the opening too?"

Grayin turned, recognizing the speaker, and said, "ah Zarko, no I actually didn't know it was opening until I got to work this morning. Just came by after work to see what it's all about."

"Aha. I was invited to the opening by a friend who saw an ad on Traders Only," Zarko pointed downstairs at where his friend was ordering their food, and said, "I've been to one of these before on Earth with human friends, but this is my first time seeing one of these this busy."

"So it's not always like this, for all of them?" she asked, almost disappointed.

"No, well, maybe it's different for each," Zarko conceded, "but this is definitely the most non-human customers I've ever seen in one place. This is a good business. Maybe I should consider opening one like this on Zeep-zep."

"They must make a lot of money doing this," she said as she stared dreamily out the window. She'd never been off the planet, and like many other Gaks, she too dreamed of one day reaching the stars. In this booming economy, if she tried hard enough, maybe her children-

"Oh yeah, if what Enrico told me a while ago about the prices were true," said Zarko oblivious to her daydreaming as he did some math in his head, "this is gonna make them a lot of money."

It did. Far more than they expected on day one. From the customers and feedback they were getting, they didn't need that more data points to know that they had a business, not a fad. The franchise became the most affordable restaurant to have 4.5 stars or above on Traders Only, and they didn't even need to pay for the rating.

"How many customers?" Enrico asked incredulously.

"Just over ten thousand," Rey looked as if she didn't believe it either.

"We're gonna run out of our initial inventory in less than a week! We didn't plan for another shipment until week three!" Enrico almost wailed. He'd learned a surprising amount about the management of logistics just from talking to Rey, and he could operate and make these predictions on instinct now.

"Oh hush that's a great problem to have," she said, "we'll just order more tomorrow. It's not like Earth is running out of fast food ingredients anytime soon even if all of Gakrek wanted to take a turn."

"It certainly looked that way," he said, smiling, "there were many new faces from out of town, and it looked like a whole village from down south came over."

"And our imports are still pricier than we want it to be," he added, "we'll have to get our local production lines going as soon as possible."

"That we will."

She snuggled into his warm chest with her sleeping bag still wrapped around her, feeling him stiffen as she did. Then, after what must have been a minute, he gently brought his arm down around her shoulders and then slowly stroked her hair.

Rey smiled tiredly and fell asleep, dreaming of a very different future than she imagined when she boarded that spaceship. A less lonely one.

Governor Palace, Zakabara Second

Things were not going well.

Mollikutta, the Governor of Zakabara Second, cursed the dark clouds for her bad luck. When she got appointed governor five years ago, she just wanted a cushy job where she just signed off on ceremonial documents all day, gave a speech once a year, and then retired in a spacious country home, leaving enough for her descendants that they may be able to leave this cursed planet in three or four generations.

Then, the humans came.

At first, it was great. Traders flooded the markets in Zakabara with cheap Earth food, many times cheaper than those produced by those backwards proles back on Prime. Her people began to be able to buy other things from the humans, like their well-made and very much affordable clothes and shoes.

Mollikutta did well herself. She started getting paid in credits, which was obviously superior to barter. With all the salaries and bribes adding up, it was even looking likely that she'd be able to retire with enough to buy an older model spaceship!

Some craftsbeings were put out of business, but they eventually found work in the new factories popping up, and the cheap prices of everything softened the blow of their decreased income. Most other people benefited from this influx of goods, and few complained.

Prime quickly issued a directive to stop it all. No more imported food or clothing from Earth. In fact, no more of anything from Earth.

People grumbled, but things could be worse. Zakabaran food was not selling well anywhere else, so their farmers had to sell them to each other and to Second for much cheaper than they normally would. The price of food did not go up that much. More people were annoyed about not being able to buy the goods that were coming from Earth before that.

A black market appeared. The shoes, clothes, and furniture from the humans began to be sold at a higher price. Prices spiraled high enough that alien traders just decided to sell these goods directly to the residents of Second and began doing so without permission from Prime. They also brought food, consumer appliances, and occasionally imported machinery for the new factories that were popping up on the colony. Things were not cheap, but not unreachable to the growing middle class.

This went on for a while. The spaceport authorities were Seconders, and they knew which side of the bread they put their butter on. Traders that were known to land with contraband Earth goods were directed onto landing pads out of sight from the security gate, where they could be ignored.

By the security guards, not by the buyers. Their goods usually sold out in minutes.

As more and more traders saw this, more began "smuggling" goods to Second as well. An unenforced ban on offworld goods was almost as good as no ban. Prices began to drop, and some goods even became affordable. In rare cases, they could even be called cheap. Locals stopped buying as many goods from Prime, but that was their own fault for charging these exorbitant prices! Some human food was starting to get brought in as well.

Then, the Prime rulers had to ruin everything again. They actively started to enforce their draconian rules from space. News began arriving: trader ships were starting to get shot down or inspected in the space over Second, and the shipments stopped coming. Only Prime shipments were being allowed through, and those traders had the audacity to start charging an inconvenience fee for being subjected to the blockade!

To make matters worse, if that were even possible in Mollikutta's opinion, Prime started making less food because they couldn't sell them outside the system. As the surplus went away, food prices were slowly going back up to what they were before the humans arrived.

Now, they were stuck with the tiny variety of goods and food from Prime, which were sold at well above galactic average prices.

Was life still better than before the arrival of the humans? Yes, probably. But now that the people of Second had a taste of consumer goods and the galactic common market, they were not about to stop. They wanted more; they deserved more!

Mollikutta had not been happy with being stuck with this conundrum either, and as the representative of Prime on this planet, she had been noticing dirty glances her way whenever she would go out into public.

At the market. At her daughters' school. She stopped getting invited to social events.

It wasn't even her fault! She begged with Popptaw to allow in some trade from outside, but Popptaw was insistent. They were not going to let their citizens spend their hard-earned credits on mere trinkets and sustenance from those alien traders. It was bad for local factories and bad for the species, she'd say. All goods must go through Prime.

The expensive blockade was also taking a toll on the Primer merchants, and being the geniuses they were, they passed the costs onto the people of Second. Inspection fees became protection fees. Protection fees went up. Popptaw even started levying high taxes on the production of goods! People weren't starving. Not yet. But they didn't have any disposable income either.

Pretty soon, Mollikutta noticed that the dirty looks her subjects were giving way to straight up defiant ones.

This was not a good sign. Things were really not going well.