It had been yet another 12 hour day, standing at his station in the stuffy factory floor where Randa earned his meager pay. He expertly but mindlessly assembled the piece in front of him, tossing the completed part into a large bin of completed parts. He was never quite sure what the final product was that he contributed to, the Floor Supervisor never let him get that far, and in truth Randa never thought to ask. He just knew without the paycheck he recieved, no matter how small, kept him housed and fed. He assembled another piece, and tossed it to the completed tray on his workstation just as the quitting bell sounded. All the Dims around him began to look up, as if awoken from a trance, awakening to their sentience once more. A large group began to fill up close to the double doors that led outside, waiting for the overseer to come and unlock the large chains that kept them "Safe" while they worked.
Randa had found himself about in the middle of the crowd, standing a head taller than most he was able to identify the glare shining off the overseers bald head as he pushed his way up towards the door with a large keyring. Over the mindless chatter of several dozen Dims, the sound of a metal chain could be heard collecting on the floor as the doors opened to a flood of daylight, enough to cause some to squint as the less than orderly egress commenced. Randa yawned, being pushed along with the crowd as they filtered out into the early evening. Finding his way away from the majority of the crowd, his ears folded back slightly as he lit up a cigarette, one of his only luxuries in this life.
He hated his job. He knew what it was, or at least he had a good idea. They keep you busy doing mind numbing tasks for half the day so you dont have energy to question the inequalities the other half of the day. Or... Thats what he thought, at least. Taking a drag of his smoke, he thought that of course he could be wrong. He had never seen any other way of living, especially not the human side of things. But he knew things had to be better than this, somewhere in the world. A place where the only water on tap wasn't lukewarm and brown, where the electricity wasn't shut off at 10 pm, where the streets weren't patrolled by paramilitary forces, always watching you, always begging for you to mess up so they could have some fun.
But what could he do? He was only one soul, in a sea of complacenty, under the boot of these hairless apes. Finally getting enough distance away from the crowd, Randa leaned up against the outer wall of the complex, taking another long drag of his cigarette before flicking it away. He supposed there was no reason to keep thinking of what could be, night after night, and just accept his subservience and quit asking the difficult questions. But something in him simply wouldn't let that happen. And it was getting louder every day.
Despite all this, Randa began to walk in a northerly direction, towards the dividing wall. His friend Zonia usually met him here, seeing as they lived in the same apartment building and worked the same shift, they usually accompanied each other home. The dividing wall was the very edge of the city, or at least the Dim side. On the other side of that 8 feet of concrete was where the human side of the city lay, heavily guarded and completely off limit to any without a work permit. Randa had never been, but had heard stories of the luxury.
The skinny maned wolf walked towards the barrier, once again leaning against the nearest wall, looking around haphazardly for Zonia as the sun began to hang low in the sky.