Frustration and annoyance filled my very being, negative energy darkened my way of thinking. Thorsten slammed his fist on the table with a force that echoed out of the breakroom and down into the service tunnel behind. His locks swung like a pendulum when he threw his fist onto the table, his scrunched-up face matched his anger to mine, there was no way he was backing down. Thomas leaned against the door frame while observing the confrontation. Why is he just watching, he should be backing me up!

Watching Thorsten, I noticed his accent grew heavier whenever he got excited or energetic. It was like watching a re-enactment of a typical Kulmar Crusader using their only tool: A show of primal, barbaric strength, all he was missing was his oaken shield and iron axe and leather clothes.

“You have no idea what you are on about, you little shit!”

I straightened my posture and leaned against the chair support with my arms crossed and wore a smug grin on my face. “Judging by your reaction and how much you are trying to disprove me suggests that I am indeed right.”

He huffed, and stormed away from the table only to immediately face me once more. “You are clearly not as intelligent as you claim. If you were then you would’ve factored in the fact that the AZ-13 Mobile Assault Platform cannot withstand temperatures of thirteen hundred degrees. Even a young novice dragon could melt the chassis till it’s no longer mobile or until the wires have shorted out. However, the Aurora Class’s chassis is made of a Carbon-steel composition which can protect it against intense fire and take a beating.”

I rolled my eyes in disappointment at his argument. “Of course, you would pick a machine from your homeland, you commie bastard.”

Benji and Thomas and Jerome broke into a hysterical fit of laughter over my retort.

“You fucking savage!” One of them yelled in between fits of laughter.

“Firstly, the Nordsjöunionen is a Socialist state not a communist one. Secondly, have you perhaps forgotten that the Aurora Mech has a chromium layer embedded to withstand all magical attacks?”

“It’s heat and magical resistant properties do not matter” I continued “The AZ-13 has more fire power and has self-guided missiles and an Anti-tank rifle. Dragons wouldn’t get anywhere near it. And it has a tri-barrelled gatling gun that can spit three thousand rounds per minute, it’s a buzzsaw of Death!”

“Yeah, only for two hours before it’s battery runs flat!” Benji chipped in. “And for the next ten minutes it's vulnerable while it’s getting a replacement.”

I sighed exasperated, for the last fifteen minutes we have argued over a hypothetical war scenario between the U.N.S.K and the A.L.N. Which collective of nations had the better chance of winning? Our argument turned from weighing the pros and cons to debating which collective possessed the better equipment; Thorsten rebutted how in his home nation, typical mechanized infantry tactics involved sending Mechanical assault platforms along with an entourage of tanks and artillery aided by the platforms laser guidance systems. Thus, making them harder to attack in close combat and from a distance.

For the last five days I had worked with Thomas and Benji, Jerome and Thorsten. In that time, I had gathered enough information from watching them interact with each other to learn how to behave around them. During work it was quiet and professional until the customer was outside the door. Throughout the working week, I helped the others and observed them replace entire limbs, debug faulty coded implants and even consulted customers on products. Benji at one stage suggested I read a catalogue to better inform myself on product specifications. During lunch earlier today, Thomas curiously disappeared for half an hour. A wave of defeat conceded over me when I lost the argument. Thomas glimpsed over to the clock on the wall and he let out a sigh. “Alright everyone, fuck off and have a great weekend!” he ended with a chuckle.

Everyone was quick to leave, I stayed behind while I waited for Thomas to finish locking up the clinic. “We don’t work on the weekend?” I was puzzled.

“Nah,” Thomas shook his head. “The amount we earn, we can afford not to work on a weekend. Oh, before I forget. Come to my office, I want to show you something.” I followed closely behind him as he walked into his office, he reached into the desk and pulled out a small metal box that rattled with each movement. Removing the lid allowed Thomas to fiddle around with the contents inside for a short time before pulling out a stack of brightly coloured rectangular paper notes, folded the notes in half and then secured them with a rubber band on the desk before he handed it to me.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s your pay, your pay for this week.”

I reached for the stack of notes. The thickness alone amazed me before noticing the bright red colour of the notes indicating their value of two hundred Escudos each, I was breathless, amazed.

“Th-thank you, Tom. I don’t know what to say. H-how much is this?”

His lip curled upward slightly. “Five thousand two hundred Esses.”

My eyes widened, caught off guard by the amount in my hands. And it was all mine. “Wha- five thousand escudos !?”

“And two hundred” Thomas added with his index finger extended.

I gawked at the wad of cash in my hand, I couldn’t help it, I heard Thomas chuckling while watching me process the amount in my hand was equivocal three months’ worth of Basic Allowance, with this money I could have a decent second-hand car in a month on this weekly wage. Thomas snapped me out of my hypnotic stare and I followed him to his car in the garage below.

During the trip home I was beyond belief at the amount in my hands, I began a ritual of counting each note, studying each one in some vague attempt to convince myself that the money wasn’t real, that I would find some kind of inconsistency that would prove this was a dream. Each note I studied proved to be uniform in all but their serial numbers; Federal Republic Reserve Bank of Balko. Faintly I heard on the radio the crime statistics from overly cheery radio presenters talking about how the police got involved into another gang war on the other side of town.

Thomas pulled over to the side of the road to let me out. Blankly he stared out the window for a moment before I noticed he was using the telephone embedded in his prosthetic eye, its golden glow dimly lit the dark cabin inside the car before returning to normal and he turned to face me “Give mum my love.” Was all he said.

Emotionally and physically exhausted for the first time in a long while I was amazed at how working felt. So much so I truly valued sleeping past nine in the morning and the concept of not doing anything, I almost wanted to quit and go back to the dull and uninteresting life I was accustomed to. Carelessly I threw my bag on to the table and slumped into the couch letting out a long sigh of relief. Mum walked in from her bedroom still in her cleaner’s uniform and greeted me. I barely grunted in acknowledgement.

“Tired already, trust me, you’ll come to learn to appreciate breaks and weekends.” She sat down next to me with her hands on her lap. “Alright, hack it up.”

I stood up confused. She had her hand out. “Come on, Thomas messaged me a few minutes ago, I know you are holding on to a thick wad of dough. So let me take a look!”

I rolled my eyes, frustrated. That explains why Thomas was on the phone earlier, “you sneaky bastard!” I sneered.

“Oh yes he was sneaky, but like I said before, you are going to have to contribute to the finances around here.”

“Fine, how much?” I said as I stood up to reach for my stack of cash in my bag. “Give me fifteen hundred and the rest of it you can keep.”

Damn you, Thomas!

I flicked through the notes one after the other and handed it to mum. She smiled as she counted through the notes to make sure I didn’t skimp out by withholding one note. “Thank you, sweety. With this we can afford better stuff around here. I can finally get the food rehydrator fixed.”

I put the remaining cash back in my bag. I barely remember the last time we even used the Rehydrator, it’s been so long I have become accustomed to not using it.

“Just make sure you don’t wave that around to anybody else” she continued. “People here catch a whiff of that much money makes you a target for being robbed or taken advantage of. You should deposit that as soon as you can.”

“Thanks mum” I said nodding. She closed the distance and brought me in for a kiss on my forehead. She proceeded to stand up and head back to the kitchen to fix up dinner. “I’m proud of you for putting aside your beliefs to get this job and look at how much you made in a week, your brother is a good person for doing this.” She leaned on the kitchen bench as she looked at me with her elbows supporting her. “So what are you going to do with all that cash?” she said with a smile.

I told her I was going to buy something to eat and she smiled, “sure thing, don’t be long.”

After I had finished in the shower to freshen up from work, I felt relaxed knowing I would enjoy the temporary sensation of cleanliness after working. Afterwards I proceeded to leave the apartment in baggy pants and a thin jumper over my button up shirt and kept my hands in my pockets with my fingers firmly touching the few notes I brought with me, it was an unnecessarily large amount of money for inexpensive food but I had the mind of swapping them out for a lower denomination. Mum had asked that I pay for dinner using my money before I left, I chuckled at her being opportunistic so I sought out a place among the street vendors and restaurants in our suburb, an oriental diner nearby was perfect in that it sold some of the best and affordable spicy noodles in the area. The plastic bag I carried was filled with containers of food, the weight had begun digging its way into my skin after ten minutes of carrying it. I was glad to finally get back home from outside, it had been a while since I went out at night. I can remember why now; along the streets I felt paranoid and insecure seeing gang members gather in groups, some of them caught eyeing me as though they knew of the cash I had in my possession. Several “exotic” workers were ogling me and offered their services in darkened obscure alleyways between buildings.

Back inside the living room, Mum had spent the time setting up the table, adorning its surface with white plates and placed a singular fork next to the plates; she even took the time to pour chilled cola into the glasses, the crisp orchestra of sizzling carbonated gas leaving the dark brown liquid could be faintly heard from across the room. Setting down the plastic bag in the centre I proceeded to remove the contents and placed them next to each other then removed each lid. The white rice let out a thick plume of steam when I removed the lid. We ate together in silence, through the walls we heard couples arguing; we looked at each other and smiled as we heard the neighbours yell loud enough to almost be less muffled. The feminine voice sounded annoyed about something, I distinctly heard her yell about something regarding her partner seeing somebody and gambling away large sums of money. Mum started to giggle and we both shared our annoyance when their argument ended. Above us we heard the muffled footsteps thumping through the roof, we both tracked the movements around and giggled to ourselves listening intently.

With our meals finished and our bellies full we began to pack our plates and utensils away, mum cleaned the plates and utensils while I wiped down the table’s surface clean, shortly after, I sat down on the couch, my breath still reeking of the spices used in the meal. Mum had tended to some boxes I noticed in the corner of the living room. She spent some of her spare time throughout the week cleaning out the apartment of stuff we no longer needed so I investigated the contents to make sure she wasn’t getting rid of anything of mine I considered important.

Rummaging around I noticed a sharp corner of a photograph jutting out of scrunched up filler paper. I grabbed the photograph and pulled it out to see what it was; a younger version of my mother in the picture with her arm around the waist of a man roughly the same age as her. This must’ve been my dad. He died when we were young and so I never really got to meet him. Nowadays I struggle to remember his face and yet here is a photo of him: square jaw, beefy arms and hair as black as night and well groomed.

The two of them looked so happy.

She came over to me and saw the photo in my hand “I remember getting that one taken when your father was working on the Barrier.”

I noticed in the background the barrier seemed unfinished as evidenced by the tower cranes in the background, it looked strange seeing the rebar and steel infrastructure protruding outward rather than the blocky concrete exterior everybody was accustomed to.

“Your father called me,” She continued. “In the middle of the day, during his lunch break he told me he got a raise because he got tradesman of the month or some kind of silly award like that. He had this plan on moving us to a proper home somewhere.” Her eyes wore a sad expression as she reminisced, I sympathised with her, she lost the love of her life. She tried her best to hide the sadness beneath a mask of confidence.

I still remember her telling me how dad died, how she was widowed and a single mother. Dad had gone to work on the Barrier, the plans for it were in the final phases of construction when the accident happened, according to the investigators, a faulty capacitor released an electrical surge and it ignited a nearby leaky gas pipe causing the area to be filled with flames resulting in the deaths of several workers. I still remember the day when men in suits claimed to be from the insurance and construction company claiming to offer forty thousand escudos as compensation; I never understood at the time why she cried or what the men were talking about. I just remember her being sad.

“Why did you want to get rid of this picture?” I asked.

“It's an old, old photo and I need to move on. I loved your father dearly but I cannot keep everything, I am still keeping some of the better photos except this one.”

“But why get rid of them?”

Lowering her head with her eyes closed, my mum let out a heavy sigh. “Michael, I am fifty-six years old, I do not want to be alone forever and I will eventually want to find somebody else to be with and if I am to move on then I will need to get rid of things like this to truly move on otherwise I am being held back by the past.”

“Are you actually considering going back to dating?”

“I can at least try; I am not getting younger and it gets a lot harder to be with someone at my age.”

Placing the photograph back In the box prompted mixed feelings of confusion and sadness. It felt wrong and disrespectful to my father’s memory by not saving this photo of him even if mum claimed to have much better pictures saved. After rummaging around and shifting the contents of the box to see if there was anything of mine with sentimental value, in the end I found nothing worthwhile of mine worth preserving in the boxes; however, I could not ignore the feeling I had towards the photograph. Without a second thought I pulled it out of the box and folded the photograph before storing it in my wallet. Mum did not see me do it but I do not believe she cared. Perhaps she felt more sentimentality for some photos more than others, it was entirely in the realm of possibility that the others I have seen held more sentimentality to her than I previously thought.

The evening drew on and the city outside had grown still, the sounds of cars driving and the rumble of aerial vehicles whooshing by the building had been reduced to a mere handful by the hour. Outside, brightly glowing through the thick clouds of pollution the moons could still be made clearer than the stars around them. Charybdis was eclipsing over Qamar while the largest moon: Lua was significantly less elevated than its sister moons. It was almost a third larger than the other two moons and almost fifty thousand kilometres closer than them. It made it the obvious choice for the Union of Northern Socialist Kingdoms to declare it as the prime location for their moon colony. They claimed to have built their base in the name of research and exploration to hide the thinly veiled attempt at hiding the obvious military presence they have stationed from the rest of the human world; even their space agency frequently uploaded live camera footage of their Cosmonauts out on the surface or live feeds on the cameras outside the base in an attempt to legitimize the façade.

Mum had begun to retire for the night, she made herself a cup of instant-coffee and rested on the couch with the lamp on. I retired to my bedroom and threw on my pyjamas before sitting down at my desk with my computer on, I browsed my accounts and chatted with a friend of mine in a neighbouring country.

Uriels95: Hey man, u wake?

S1lass: Yea bout to go to bed soon. Too tired from work

Uriels95: Cool at least you got work, now you can buy me fancy stuff XD

S1lass: Nah I ain’t rich. Was your day good?

Uriels95: ya, I did some holo art, then I got distracted by a few adventurous elves. Pointy ear bastards thought they could scale the barrier. Plasma cannons cleaned them off it, really hilarious want me to link the footage?

S1lass: send it through but I wont watch it now anyway I gotta sleep man, see ya

Uriels had sent a link to a recording of the cannons. For the entertainment of many, most of the cannon defences along the barrier were equipped with recording equipment for the viewing pleasure of many citizens. I turned off the computer before going to bed but I did not submit to sleep, I rested on my bed and watched the footage on my phone. The camera stood still with the barrels occupying a third of the view, the rest of the view consisted of open grassland with green hills in the distance. For the first twenty seconds of the video nothing had happened when a few pixels began to appear over one such hill and move queerly against the vista, the pixels grew in size and then red warning lights flashed on the screen with the text “MOVEMENT DETECTED” on the bottom of the screen. The camera suddenly banked right while the audio took note of the gyros whirring as the turret began to track the pixels which soon took shape in the form of lithe and agile humanoid figures; they ran straight for the Barrier. Meanwhile the barrels that occupied a third of the screen began to glow with a bright blue hue as it continued to track four individuals approaching the concrete obstacle, behind them another plasma cannon further away had also taken notice of the encroaching elves. Armed with bladed tools reminiscent of ice picks and a bow the elves had begun the brave task of scaling the barrier at an alarming pace. The audio caught the cannons pre-recorded warning for them to turn away when they approached and another warning at the base of the barrier. A whirring sound escalated then the screen flashed at a rapid pace as the barrels fired superheated plasma at the elves; the first three disappeared in a dark red mist whilst the fourth proved to be more prepared than its cohorts. It managed to avoid being hit, however the combined coverage of the plasma cannons eventually caught up with it. I smiled watching the footage. I let out a snort of smug confidence when the final creature was blasted off the wall and the cameras then moved back to its static position staring outward to an open grassland with green hills in the background. I finally put my phone away and rested my head properly on the pillow.