Meteor Fall Master in the 'Starry Abyss'

Woo woo——

The armored train slowly entered the station, and the workers of the Eighth Construction Bureau of the Underground City cursed as they knew they had to toil, scrambling up from the ground to start work.

"Get to work, get to work——hey, where's your safety officer? Put on your vest, wear your helmet, wear your helmet! I've said it several times, you need to wear a helmet to start work! Anyone not wearing a helmet will be fined."

"The new supplies have arrived, hurry up and unload! President David Lyn has ordered that the 21st phase of the Underground City must be delivered by the end of the year; if we don't finish, Lord Entropy will crush us, and we'll all die!"

"Is anyone around? Our drone central system has malfunctioned. Get some people over here, the logistics port is about to explode!"

"A worker at Port No. 2 fell into a pit!"

"Move the stuff first, we don't have enough hands…"

Toil, busyness, danger.

Forty years ago, when people cheered for the assassination of old Madeleine, the workers never imagined they would end up like this.

Clearly, His Excellency President David Lyn implemented many reforms, abolished laws of gender inequality, and dissolved family structures.

But why has life become even harder?

Endless underground cities need to be excavated and constructed; in an atomized society, everyone is without dependence, apart from the nation, enterprises, and fellow citizens, there are no closer relationships.

The desire to fall in love is mocked; hoping to marry yet there isn't even one marriage law to support it, companies bear 90% of population births, people continuously work and pay taxes, raising public children.

Nominally, everyone can have genetic heirship of their own, but until death, you won't meet him/her even once.

Galactic Era, Year 268, October 10th.

This year's theme is: Why do we live?

Kalem Wenzhuo, the excavation worker, finished his day of work, handed in his shift, but only had six hours of rest.

Six hours later, to cope with the emergency engineering committee's inspection, they had to work another shift, the emergency shift would last 12 to 18 hours, and doctors would come to administer sedatives and nutrient solutions to help them work until the last moment.

Covered in mud, his feet soaked in water for too long had festered, emitting a terrible stench from the heels. When he left the pit, he took the monkey car—swing-like single-seat suspended transport, bumping at a speed of 60km/h, unprotected, to the surface.

"Ugh!"

Just disembarking from the monkey car, a worker next to him collapsed on the ground, foaming at the mouth, followed by two prosthetic eyeballs popping out with green smoke. The safety officer, wearing a gas mask and gloves, walked cautiously over, checked with a machine, and waved his hand:

"Worked too long, the prosthetic chip overloaded, thermal expansion and contraction, blood vessel rupture necrosis, carry him away, remove the organs for other people."

"The organ banks at the First Engineering Hospital are full, and the other hospitals won't accept them, there's nowhere to store them."

"See if the Red Arrow People want them, if not, sell them to the Outer World, we can't waste the nation's property."

Finding the Prosthesis Master, asking them to remove the exoskeletal engineering equipment, revealing skin full of needle holes.

"Ouch, my neck."

A man supporting his cervical spine, unknowingly bitten by an insect, causing a large area of necrosis, grimacing in pain, was quickly escorted away by the overseer, afraid of spreading an epidemic.

"Those finishing work, this way, one at a time, no quarreling."

The foreman in yellow-black uniform shouted, holding an electric baton, commanding the flow of people to merge, walking together into that enormous four-hectare facility.

Kalem, bare-chested, followed the long line into the decontamination chamber, where every worker, regardless of gender had their heads shaved, all body hair completely shaven.

Forty thousand workers squeezed forward in the S-shaped corridor, people pressing against people, sticking to one another.

Here there is no gender differentiation, only between excavators, operators, mechanical workers, medical workers, and management workers.

Only at this moment, people are grateful for the precise gene matching from enterprises, selecting odorless workers. Otherwise, so many people squeezed together, even a dung beetle would find the stench unbearable.

"Orderly progress, no shoving!"

Just as the foreman shouted these words, in front of Kalem, a bald woman immediately screamed, one hand covering her chest, questioning the man behind her:

"Hey, why are you touching me?"

"Sorry, it's too crowded."

The man apologized.

Yet the female worker remained relentless, her vermillion eyes glared at him, suddenly saying:

"Are you trying to molest me?"

"Psh—save that routine for the White Plum Army."

The man dismissed it, poked her ribs, and they both burst into laughter, casually joked:

"In this day and age, do you really think men created from repeated gene editing still have interest in women?"

"Well, I still look forward to it." The woman laughed: "I heard that although there's inequality between genders in the White Plum Army, they can freely enjoy love and marriage—what do you think it's like to have feelings for the opposite sex."

"How should I know, but I do know, White Plum Army workers earn less than a fifth of what we do, probably because they spend it all supporting a family."

"I'm really envious of them, although they earn little, they have family and love," the female worker sighed.

The male worker insisted: "What's the use of love, each of us has offspring, and everyone was born for Frost Plated, those conservative families will eventually vanish."

"But they're so free, they can be affectionate, can love and be loved, love and family, it sounds so beautiful."

"But they are poor. How can humans forsake money and status to pursue family and love? Offspring, such things, as long as you have money, perform well, you can buy weight from the government, then biological descendants can be born from a better womb and embryo."

"That lacks any sense of ceremony, it's not romantic at all."

"Romance can't put food on the table, my friend."

Male and female workers, bare-chested, queued in the sultry decontamination room, discussing beings that they had never experienced, enthusiastically talking about life under the White Plum Army's rule.

There is no gender difference between them, women are also keen to discuss politics, weapons, and football, male workers are also pondering whether their wages are enough to buy the latest fashion,

The new generation of Frost Plated People, filtered out, gender is no longer important.

The Frost Plating Federation implemented many reform measures, following the changes in gender groups, Frost Plating also improved its economic policies, switching to a productivity-based system, forming a massive interest group between enterprise-workers alongside large orders of federation underground cities, allowing customized Frost Plated workers and enterprises to become one of the most important forces in the federation.

Because the workers themselves have no family demands, and the nation promises to provide biological offspring rearing, workers no longer need to devote most of their effort and money to family, turning instead to meticulously cultivating and rewarding themselves, wildly consuming to drive internal circulation.

And David Lyn, in the early years, upgraded all colonies to affiliated republics, giving Frost Plated nearly inexhaustible resources.

Customized Worker-Enterprise-Nation

Bureaucrats are no longer selected from elections and civil servants but by Frost Plated workers through purchasing 'weight', seeking the perfect match within a gene pool, evaluated by intelligent agencies, then following a period of nurturing and loyalty implantation, they rise to power, governing the nation.

In a sense, apart from not directly putting a computer in an official cap, adding a natural selection process, this is indistinguishable from AI governance.

No Family Society

AI Selection for Governance

Free Trade

Kalem saw it on the news, a scholar had a new term for the new Frost Plating Federation of the era.

To delineate from the past capitalist Frost Plated Republic, now, this trinity state of the Frost Plating Federation, is called 'Creditism'.