A Working Day of an Ordinary Ruler

by Gledkoom

The soft red light of the bigger (should I say hugger) of the twin suns that every day hung on the orange-painted sky of Icemania woke me up. Since last moth, my life had become a real mess as I had been appointed Head Administrator of the major planet of the empire, and that means to carry a heavy weigh.

After a quick breakfast, I met my secretary to have a look to my agenda; The first thing to do was visiting and inaugurating a brand new deep core mine, that would boost our metal production in a few months - I must confess that putting a greasy and dirty helmet on my head were not one of my favorite ways of spending that sunny morning, but what can one do?

I jumped into my new fusion-powered limousine to get as soon as possible to the next meeting with trader's labor union. It seemed that they were going on strike, due to high taxes applied on the transported goods and the increasing and worrying insecurity ( they were constantly held up by space pirates) so they wanted an escort service for every commercial trip. I replied that at the moment, we were not able to supply them with such escorting frigates, because our military plans were firstly focused on defending other weaker and strategic planets, and our resource incoming was not high enough to quickly made the amount of warships that their escorting plans demanded. So the traders would have to wait. As for the taxes reduction, we rapidly reached a reasonable agreement.

I took all that discussion as a warm-up to my next "course" of the day: the Imperial Space Army (ISA) wanted to develop a new cruiser ship project, with more fire power and some kind of reinforced hull; the problem is that everyone thinks that credits fall down from the sky, and I wonder if our loved workers would admit another raise in their rather high taxes without protesting only to enrich Military industries and high classes ( which, obviously would generously make a "donation" of some amount of money to my next electoral campaign).I told them that the project must be passed by Empire's senate , and I saw some frowning , annoyed faces staring at me, because that will mean that money for their war toys was going to take a little bit longer than they expected; " the former Administrator was a more reasonable man!" they mumbled as they were leaving my office.

After this, I decided to take a break and have some meal -it was about time! The second twin sun was raising and that means "noon" in my planet. I like having a look at my HNB (Holo note book) to find out about galactic economical affairs. I noticed that colonist price on Milky way's trading post was incredibly low, contrasting to soldier or robot values, that was more than 10,000 times the price of colonists. "It's amazing" thought I " how a cheap machine can be worth more than an human life" but it is the law of supply and demand, I guess.

A meeting with Foreign Affairs minister started the afternoon; we had to study a proposal of local alliance in my sector. To me it seemed a good idea, but the minister was not so sure about that; he doubted if that pact would interfere the global alliance we firstly signed . We resolved to present the plan on our Alliance forum- although I was totally convinced about the handiness of that local sector alliance.

My working day was ending; I relaxed and faced my armchair to the majestic large window from where I could see the whole city. The second golden sun was slowly setting, and on the now dark blue sky two of the three moons were appearing. I closed my eyes and slept. Tomorrow was going to be another tough day!