If this were before, these people would have a gun barrel pointed at their heads, forcing them out of this slum.
Many of them just couldn't understand why they wouldn't stay in a perfectly good dormitory and insisted on huddling in this stinking, poor hellhole.
"Implent at the grassroots level" — these five words are easy to say, but hard to actually practice.
The ones who truly make it from the grassroots, ten out of ten, have real skills. The rest are ground down by endless trivialities and noise into listless souls, appeasers, and old hands at waiting things out.
"Commissioner, can I apply for a job change? I want to transfer back to Dragon Field to the Engineering Departnt, I want to go ahead..."
Jiao Ao, with his green mohawk, wore a bitter expression; he just couldn't continue any longer.
"Going up there won't help."
"I Eat Fujian People," who was in charge of managing the residents' committee, didn't look too good either but still advised,
"There's also an Engineering Managent Committee up there. Trust , the work over there won't be any easier than it is here."
He was just a slack-off civil servant. Who would've thought he'd be assigned this kind of hard task even in the ga? If not for the allowance, no one would co here.
Jiao Ao: "This work is inhuman."
"How is it inhuman?" "Fujian People" rolled his eyes, showing disdain for Jiao Ao's complaints.
"You haven't seen truly difficult work."
"Once you've experienced what poverty alleviation entails, you'll know what difficult ans."
They had sowhat expected this; lacking guidelines, lacking true consciousness, relying rely on the adrenaline from past courses was far from sufficient.
"Alright, it should be about ti; everyone from Group A, co back."
"Fujian People" rembered the task he had just received.
From a box he'd brought along from the morning, he took out a dozen or so Super Dream Headbands.
"Co on, each take one. This is today's freshly arrived goods, top-secret high-quality stuff. Seeing it gets all fired up."
"Huh?"
Jiao Ao was stunned. Ever since entering the Dragon Field, the Super Dreams they watched no longer had any R18 content. SEX and violence had been stripped away, leaving at most so boxing.
Half a year wasn't enough for them to abandon all their old habits. They were still in a formative stage. Hearing "Fujian People" ntion excitent, he couldn't help himself.
Instinctively, he accepted the headband, moved his chair to a comfortable spot, and put on the headband.
Seeing no reaction from "Fujian People," he initiated the Super Dream as a matter of course.
After a blinding flash, his consciousness traveled back 200 years.
In his ears was the grating noise of gears shing, painful to hear, and the nauseous stench of mixed lubricating oil and sweat assaulted his nostrils, brutally torturing his sense of sll.
Looking around, ancient steam machinery whirred relentlessly. The belts buzzed, and Jiao Ao found himself standing at the assembly line, wrench in hand, responsible for tightening bolts, wearing filthy overalls.
What the heck about this is enjoyable?
Just as he was lost in thought, a foreman approached with a rubber baton, imdiately giving him a sharp hit.
"You lazy bum, who told you to stop?"
The sting reminded Jiao Ao of his character profile.
A worker in the Chicago Harvester Factory, working 16 hours a day, earning a daily wage of 1.5 US Dollars.
What?
What do you an, a daily wage of 1.5 US Dollars for 16 hours of work?
Damn it, even in the Chaotic Blade Association days, by lazing around, he made more than that. Is this how beggars live?
1.5 US Dollars couldn't even buy a glass of water in Night City (he hadn't learned about inflation yet, and the official term for Euro Dollars is Orokin).
The soreness throughout his body indicated he was physically exhausted.
Yet, the foreman kept striking him with the baton, urging Jiao Ao to hurry up with his work.
Simultaneously, Jiao Ao knew what ti it was at this mont.
The ti was July 1886.
He was a worker in a processing plant, who had participated in multiple protests and strikes, demanding better wages and conditions from employers, but each was t with brutal suppression, and each protest ended in failure.
Bribing strikebreakers, infiltrating and dismantling striking crowds, deploying police for ard suppression, bribing dia...
Everything bore such a resemblance to what was happening in Night City and even the entire cyber era.
Under the influence of the neural adjuster, a kind of rage began to swell within him, with each strike from the foreman adding fuel to the fire.
"I'm done!"
The words were Jiao Ao's, but also not his; it was more precisely the worker he was playing. At this mont, both shared the sa thought.
"For such little money, and we're working overti day and night? Why?"
Jiao Ao's words quickly garnered support from more workers, clearly having long been bitterly resentful, as each worker grumbled, more or less.
The foreman, who had been exceptionally harsh just monts ago, saw he couldn't suppress the anger, imdiately pressed the alarm, while the production foreman in the office dialed the police station with practiced ease, as if everything had been rehearsed thousands of tis.
Soon, the police arrived on the scene. After a brief standoff, they fired at the striking crowd.
One dead, four injured.
This strike was swiftly suppressed.
The next day, under Jiao Ao's lead, over two hundred workers and anarchists took to the streets in protest speeches, hoping to rally more people to join the march.
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