Chapter 8 -- Dust and Sweat
Four years of university in the Republic of the Houses, a degree in systems engineering, and this was where I'd ended up.
Not designing grids. Not building research cores.
No — wiping down VR pods for cash.
Fate had a sense of humour.
Back when I first arrived, everyone said the Republic was the future. The new frontier. Tech rising so fast it made other nations scramble, Houses pouring silver into contests and research programs, graduates walking straight into six-figure contracts. It was supposed to be a golden ticket.
Instead, I was twenty-five, broke, stuck in a rental shop scrubbing sweat stains out of other people's dreams.
The morning shift at Wall Pod started like every other: fluorescent lights humming overhead, the smell of disinfectant mixing with stale recycled air, and Jamie's voice cutting through the quiet like a blade.
"Hey, asshole, what are you doing? This pod isn't cleaned. You're lucky I gave you this job!"
I kept my expression neutral, hands steady on the cleaning rag. "It's Christopher, sir. Christopher Xiong."
The name felt heavier here than it ever had back in the Southern Commonwealth where I was born. There, Xiong was just another family name stamped on documents and school records. Here in the Republic, it carried weight — House of the Bear, one of the eighteen that founded this nation.
At least in theory.
The truth was more complicated. I'd never been inside the Bear House gates. Never sat at their tables or worn their emblem. Never been sworn into their ranks or acknowledged as anything more than a genealogical footnote. To them, I wasn't a son of the House — I was Commonwealth-born, a trace on paper, blood without recognition. The ancestry was real, documented in the Federal Registry, but connection? None.
"I don't care what your fucking name is," Jamie snapped, jabbing a finger toward the pod. "Just clean it properly or I'll replace you with someone who will."
Jamie was my shift supervisor — ex-Federation military, washed up here after too many overseas contracts that had left him bitter and broke. The kind of man who'd commanded squads in desert wars but now managed teenagers and dropouts in a strip-mall VR shop. For him, Wall Pod was business. For me, it was survival.
I pulled on fresh gloves and bent back to work. The disinfectant stung my nose as I wiped down the neural interface contacts, scrubbed the headrest where some customer had left a greasy smear, and cleaned the sensors that would read their brainwaves. Another smear of dried sweat, another tang of citrus cleaning solution mixed with the metallic scent of electronics.
Deep Virtual Reality. You couldn't escape it in the Republic. Pods lined malls, schools, cafés, even mountain towns. For everyone else, they were escape hatches into wonder — fantasy worlds where you could be a hero, a warrior, a lover, anything but what you actually were. For me, they were microfiber towels, chemical rags, and aching wrists by the end of every twelve-hour shift.
The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd studied systems engineering specifically to work on VR infrastructure. Grid design, neural network optimization, reality synthesis protocols — all the bleeding-edge tech that made the Republic's economy hum. Instead, I was on the wrong side of the glass, watching strangers slip into dream worlds while I cleaned the seats they drooled in.
"Don't screw with me," Jamie's voice cracked like steel on stone. "Do the work, get the cash. That was the deal."
"Yes, boss."
The morning crawled by. Pod after pod, customer after customer. Executives taking lunch-break adventures, students burning credit on fantasy simulations, tourists experiencing Republic-exclusive content they couldn't get back home. Each one emerged glazed and satisfied, having touched something beyond the mundane world.
I kept telling myself this was temporary. A stopgap until something better came along. But six months later, I was still here. Still scrubbing. Still watching my engineering degree gather dust in a folder on my desktop.
"Chris, you done yet?"
I looked up from pod seven to see Mark Berry leaning against the doorway, already peeling open another cup of noodles. His Southern Commonwealth accent made every sentence sound casual, even when discussing the grinding reality of our shared exile.
"Just about," I said, giving the neural cap one final wipe.
"Lunch break."
Mark had been here as long as I had. Six months cleaning pods, fixing cables, running errands for Jamie's increasingly erratic demands. He was older than me, maybe thirty, with that easy drawl that made people underestimate him. We'd bonded over being Commonwealth expats trying to make it in a Republic that seemed designed to keep us on the margins.
We took our lunches into the narrow alley behind the shop. The air was thick with humidity and the smell of burnt solder drifting from an electronics repair stall. I cracked open my rice box — cheap takeout from the corner vendor — while Mark stirred instant broth with a plastic fork.
"How's the Republic treating you lately?" he asked, the question carrying our usual bitter humour.
"Six months since I finished uni," I muttered, picking at the wilted vegetables in my rice. "You tell me."
He laughed, but there was no real joy in it. "Yeah, about that... remember when I said I finished my degree back in the Commonwealth?"
"Yeah."
"Didn't." He grinned, sheepish but unashamed. "Got hooked on Deep VR my second year. Spent more time in simulations than lectures. Never graduated. Never left the pods long enough to try."
Of course. That explained why he never talked about job applications or seemed particularly bothered by our situation. This wasn't a detour for him — it was destination.
I shook my head, more amused than annoyed. "You know that's how people here actually make money, right? Not degrees. Not connections. Inventions. You create something, register it in the Vault, and collect royalties for the rest of your life."
"Vault?"
"The Federal IP Vault," I said, leaning back against the alley wall. "It's the foundation of everything here. They call the whole system Vaultism — the idea that intellectual property is the only true wealth."
Mark frowned, noodle-laden fork paused halfway to his mouth. "Sounds like government theft to me. You hand your work over to bureaucrats and they toss you scraps."
"That's Commonwealth thinking," I said. "Here, ideas are sovereign property. You register something in the Vault, and it's protected by the full weight of the Republic's legal system. Enforced globally through trade agreements."
"Enforced how?"
I warmed to the subject — finally, something I could discuss that used my actual education. "Royalties. Automatic, calculated as gross revenue, not net. A tenth of a percent goes to the original creator. One and a half percent to their House, for protection and market access. A small slice to the Vault itself for administration. The rest gets licensed across the Republic, then exported worldwide."
Mark smirked, steam rising from his cup. "So the Houses are just protection rackets with better PR."
"Guardians," I corrected. "Try chasing patent infringement on your own. Unless you're aligned with Bear, River, Stone, or one of the other major Houses, international courts won't even read your filing. The Houses don't just collect fees — they enforce your rights with legal teams, trade pressure, and diplomatic leverage."
"Still sounds like a racket."
"It works," I shrugged. "Deep VR? That was a Bear House innovation from fifteen years ago. Just that one IP family pulls in billions annually. The inventor — some researcher named Chen — still gets his cut from every pod manufactured worldwide."
Mark leaned back, considering this. "And after you die?"
"Twenty years of exclusive licensing, then it opens to derivative works — but you still earn from the original patents. After forty years, it goes fully public domain and gets integrated into the global commons. But even then, if someone builds on your foundation work, you get attribution fees."
"Even after you're dead?"
"Royalties flow to the household fund. Spouse, children, registered dependents. Keeps families stable across generations." I took a bite of rice, thinking about the elegant brutality of the system. "It's why people immigrate here. In the Commonwealth, you invent something and hope some corporation doesn't steal it. Here, you invent something and the Republic turns you into nobility."
Mark laughed, sauce dripping from his chopsticks. "What about side chicks? They get a cut?"
"Not unless you marry them first. The Registry is strict about legal relationships."
He shook his head, grinning. "I'll stick to games and noodles."
I stretched, looking up at the narrow strip of sky visible between the alley walls. A solar drone adjusted its panels with a soft metallic click, part of the endless mechanical ballet that kept the Republic running efficiently.
"Suit yourself," I said, standing and brushing off my uniform. "I'm going to walk through the demo plaza before break's over. Maybe today I'll see something worth stealing."
"Go chase your genius," Mark called after me, already focused on the bottom of his noodle cup.
As I walked back toward the street, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in Wall Pod's window — just another face in Republic work clothes, indistinguishable from a thousand other young men grinding through service jobs. But inside, something was stirring. The conversation about Vaultism had reminded me why I'd come here in the first place.
I wasn't just cleaning pods. I was studying them. Learning how they worked, how they failed, how they could be improved.
And someday, maybe sooner than I thought, I'd stop being the one who cleaned dreams and start being the one who built them.