The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 65
Anderson was a very ordinary worker. The factory had been shutting down more and more often lately, and that left everyone deeply uneasy.
It had begun last year, with the factory stopping work for one week out of every month. Now it had reached the point of one week working, one week shut down. A kind of panic was spreading through every worker’s heart, especially ... after he heard that the factory seemed on the verge of no longer being able to hold on.
It was not that the factory was operating at a loss. In truth, it was not losing money. It was simply that the things it produced were selling more and more poorly, while more and more goods piled up in the warehouse, slowly gathering dust.
If goods could not be sold, then there was no income. Add to that the cost of inputs, storage management fees, workers’ wages, and various other losses, and all of it had become the factory owner’s greatest headache.
Though he had always assured the workers that he would do everything he could to keep the factory alive, everyone had the same feeling, the day they would have to find new jobs was not far off.
Today was payday. Anderson had tidied himself up first thing in the morning and come to the factory gates. People stood about in groups of three or five, chatting over ordinary topics, most of them about who had suddenly struck it rich, or how many nearby factories had gone under again.
They had not felt before that life could become this hard to endure. Especially back in those earlier years, when the factory ran from morning to night without pause, and by the end of the day the workers were so tired they could barely lift their arms.
Those days had been exhausting, but they had also felt full. So long as one worked, there was generous reward. The factory owner had even expanded the workshops because of it, adding more jobs...
Everyone was talking, recalling the past, or quietly fearing the future, when all at once a commotion broke out near the factory finance office.
The noisy uproar instantly struck every person’s already frayed nerves. Most people immediately stopped what they were doing and hurried toward the entrance to the finance office.
Only when Anderson got closer did he realize that it was several workers arguing with the factory owner, their boss. There were two reasons for the quarrel.
First, beginning next month, the factory would shut down completely. As for when work would resume, everyone was to wait for notice.
That was no different from telling them the factory was finished. This so-called resumption of work might not exist at all. Federation wages were based on hours worked. You did so much work, and you received so much money.
That system had always been considered fair, especially by diligent workers. The more they gave, the more they got. Everyone had thrown themselves into contributing their strength inside the factory.
Once the shutdown became total, it meant these workers would not earn a single dollar next month.
The overwhelming majority of ordinary Federation households had no habit of active saving. Add to that the fact that the savings interest offered by the Federation’s six great banks had been steadily reduced in recent times, and the difference between keeping money in the bank and keeping it in one’s hand had become negligible.
That only weakened people’s impulse to deposit money in banks.
Money had a very peculiar quality. When you had money in hand, it gave rise to a strange desire to spend. The more money you had, the stronger that urge became.
Perhaps it meant buying an expensive hot dog one would normally never buy, just to satisfy the mouth a little. Or perhaps it meant buying a pack of better cigarettes than one had ever bought before, just to enjoy the mellow scent of money going up in smoke.
Without savings, life depended entirely on wages. And if even wages were gone, then many households would immediately fall into the terrifying state of being unable to function at all.
Worse still were the payment deadlines on all sorts of installment plans, including houses and cars. Those would become crushing weights hanging over ordinary lives.
A few years ago, the whole world had begun stabilizing after emerging from prolonged chaos and war. The Federation, which had remained outside the wars all along, began developing with great speed.
A great many things had been renewed and transformed, including methods and ideas of consumption. Not only could houses be bought on installments, cars could as well. So long as one had a social security card and lawful citizenship, even a television could be bought on installments.
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