Transported Page 55 (Patreon)

Media: Comic

Main Characters: Rico

Chapter 2: A New Life

Page 55

Cue a montage of Rico asking questions around the city. He asks any random alien that doesn't look particularly menacing for directions. They typically point him to specific roads or reference landmarks he doesn't know, but a helpful few give him vague enough directions to head in.

Rico eventually finds himself outside of a palace of neon and shiny chrome. He has found a laboratory.

Rico gleefully hurries through the bubble, happy enough to almost skip.

As Rico enters, he scans the facility and it is filled with nothing but robots. They're machines with round bodies and wheels or treads for locomotion, numbers of wirey arms with claws and grips, and a large giant eye planted on a wirey stalk on top of their bodies. They continue to work and bustle without notice of Rico.

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Author's Notes:

You can't have sci-fi without some cold, heartless robots rolling around!

I pictured the Standard as dividing jobs into robot-jobs and people-jobs. Anything important, precise, or corporate is done by robots, while low-level jobs are done by the people that are interested in them. Not quite the socialist utopia of Star Trek where people only work because they want to but not quite the capitalist hellscape of Futurama where people still work menial jobs despite their technological advancement. Everybody still needs money in the Standard, but you have some freedom in how you get it.

Unless, you're Rico and you're tailor-made for escorting or alien game shows.