So it is done

Mantle

Mondays.

There were very few people in the world who liked Mondays.

People who work for a living hated Mondays. There was always too little time to rest on the weekends, while work continued to pile up over the weekend before breaking out in an unstoppable stream of urgent questions, reports, and other such minutiae on a brand-new Monday.

Robyn Hill hated Mondays too. She hated them when she still worked in the garment factory, she still hated them now.

The army and police were always particularly prone to beatings on Mondays, while on weekends the number of patrolmen would decrease. And the few that do remain were more willing to let things slide to finish their shift earlier, everyone in Mantle knew that. And coincidentally, for no particular reason, the weekends would also see a stark increase in crime, where Monday's officers had to deal with the sudden increase in crime over the weekend in addition to their usual routine.

So, on Mondays, Robyn kept to herself and her corner of the house.

Taking a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, she flicked her lighter before lighting a cigarette and inhaling the smoke, calming herself a little.

On Mondays, she did not visit her contacts and quieted down for a while.

On Mondays, the police, the army, the whole colonial administration, acted particularly embittered, and unfortunately, more effectively.

Robyn Hill knew that Mantle had never been on friendly terms with Atlas. Maybe once, so long ago that only the history books remembered it, but never in memory, did Atlas treat Mantle in any equal standing. Atlas had always spat on Mantle, the poor people dragged in the mud and forced to work twelve-hour days to supply another oh-so-important rich man his breakfast in bed and dust for his brand-new car.

Whoever decided to create a floating city must be out of his goddamn mind.

The Flying City is not only a symbol of Atlas supremacy, it's a logistical nightmare. Resources? Food? Building materials? Everything had to be shipped either by air, which raised the price of everything ridiculously high, or required an incredible feat of engineering. Like the one the Schnee had made by running bloody pipes to bring dust to Atlas from Mantle.

Robyn Hill had not completed her studies at any university, but she had enough school knowledge to know just how much resources it costs to build, let alone maintain, the pipes. How much material does it take to make a pipe four kilometers long, big enough for a shipping container to pass, and thick enough so that it would not break at the slightest whiff of wind? How much dust does it need to be spent for maintenance, or for the mere creation of force to pull the iron containers stuffed with dust, two kilometers high? How much time, effort, and expense?

Anything sold in Atlas cost many times the price one would find it on Mantle. Not that anything sold in Atlas would be so 'plebeian' that anyone on Mantle could afford them.

And for Atlas, that was a mark of quality.

What was the point of selling cheap products if they would become that much more expensive just to sell? Wouldn't it be much easier to initially ship things that are so expensive that the cost of shipping would only be a fraction of their cost?

This was the case with everything at Atlas.

If it was food, it was exclusively the most expensive. If a vehicle, exclusively high-end. If clothing, exclusively premium.

Robyn held back her anger, trying not to break her cigarette, a rare quality in Mantle, imagining the golden spoons in Atlas would bring anyone on Mantle to rage, and took another drag.