CW 47

To no one in particular,

Luxuries are what you had before they were taken away. 

My new perch continues to be a good observation platform.

In the mornings, before heading to my cabin, I sit on the swing. I drink a warm soluble energy solution and watch what's happening below.

I've noticed a curious practice among my richer neighbors in adjacent habitats, those with terraces: they climb to their terrace and get their daily exercise there. They walk at a rapid pace, back and forth in straight lines if their terrace is narrow, or along the walls of their terrace if it's square-shaped or rectangular. They exercise vigorously, religiously everyday, lapping their terrace every 20 or 30 seconds. For those who aren't privileged to have a terrace, they take the elevator down and walk against the walls of the compounds, walking a lap in about two minutes, and counting them on the knuckles of their fingers. 

A great many people walk to work and ply their trade at the street-level. But those moments spent walking or working are stressful and dangerous. Shuttles, heavy haulers and conveyors, and personal transporters whiz by loudly and at dangerous speeds. In their infinite wisdom, the first settlers here decided to do away with intelligently-controlled traffic systems and decided to utilize the first batch of natively produced resources to pursue highly-individualized transportation systems rather than common transportation. Consequently, most of the planet developed to accommodate those transports creating significant hazards not only to the immediate physical safety of pedestrians, but also ensuring long-terms hazards to everyone's health and the planet's ecosystem.

Walking is a luxury.

In fact, it's a selling point for compound-builders and managers. The richer strata of the population compares wealth not by discussing art collections but by comparing the evenness of their footpaths and how little they suffer from traffic. Of course, they also compare the size of their transporters and how close they scrape by the poor sods who walk on the side of roads.

For newcomers, mobility is a struggle. The new gods are development, growth, and the well-being of a small but growing consuming class, everything else be damned. The rich make the comfortable journey to the shrines of their gods and prostrate themselves before zooming into pedestrian traffic. Power is showing that you're capable of mowing down people on the side of the road, but not. Because well-being is a luxury.