Arwin fled from the blue bloods as fast as he could, heart racing from the danger and the pace, vaulting roots and gullies, swerving between trunks, and trying to find the most difficult terrain that might slow down the horses hot on his tail.
A thunderous crack sounded from above.
Arwin looked up into the pale, clear-blue sky. Something tumbled towards him. It seemed to grow larger as it fell. At the last moment, he threw himself to the side. Looking at the ground next to him, he blinked. Huh? A bolt of cloth?
Another sharp crack resounded through the forest. Arwin looked back and saw the nobles gesturing towards the sky. He looked up and more specks appeared out of the blue. They fell towards him.
He threw his arms over his head for protection and continued to run as bolts of cloth, all kinds of steel bolts, and even bolts of lightning slammed down into the forest floor around him. Bolts from the blue! The way the men had cast their hands towards the sky, Arwin was sure they were some kind of magic users. He was being attacked by spells! Apparently that was a lot less exciting in person than when it happened to other people in books.
Steel bolts painfully ricocheted off Arwin’s shoulders and back. A bolt of cloth caught the side of his head, stunning him. He slowed and stumbled around the forest floor. A bolt of lightning just missed him, splitting a nearby blue spruce instead. The tree moaned with despair as it fell into two pieces, one of which caught Arwin and knocked him to the ground, trapping him.
Arwin clutched his aching head and looked up at the three horsemen reining in above him.
“Let’s gut him!” the monocled man enthused with vicious glee. He was obese, with a fleshy face and small, pig-like eyes.
“No. I shall grind him into paste and turn him into fertilizer for my flowers,” growled Azamont.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen. Control your savage urges,” the third man said with icy calm. He was tall and reedy thin, a calculating look in his eyes. “Waste not, want not, as they say? He’s a fine, strapping lad. Look at the muscle on him. Why kill him when we can put him to work as one of our slaves? The livestock always needs replenishing.”
Monocle nodded reluctantly, double chin bobbing, looking like he’d prefer to see blood spilled. “Ah, make a blue collar worker out of him. I like it. Though it means the chase does lack a satisfyingly bloody ending.”
Azamont snarled with resignation, evidently seeing the other man’s good sense, although not happy about it. “Very well. Always the voice of reason, Tremblée. I suppose we should be grateful.”
Tremblée reached a spindly arm into a saddlebag and pulled out a blue, metal ring. He dismounted and snicked it closed around Arwin’s neck. It was a collar, much like a dog might wear.
Arwin heard the lock click shut and an immediate change came over him. This was worse than the blue field had been. Now, he wasn’t just melancholy, he felt downright beaten. He felt lower class. He felt hopeless. When they hauled him to his feet, his shoulders sagged and his back stooped. His only method of walking seemed to be the trudge: the slow, weary, depressing walk of a man who has nothing left in life and who moves only at the behest of his betters. He’d been transformed into a blue collar worker, and their slave.
They herded him through the evergreen (everblue-and-green?) forest until they came to a large, open area that looked like a dirty scar carved into the natural landscape. Other men in blue collars chopped down pines and spruce and hammered rocks to smithereens. Insufferably smug-looking men in suits with white collars stood above the blue-collared workers, the whites armed with whips and lethal-looking calculators. They moved and spoke in a way that that proclaimed their superiority to the world. Although, when then they saw their blue-blood masters, they transformed into weaselling brown-nosers.
Azamont kicked Arwin in the back, propelling him to his knees before a white-collared manager. “Put him in the blue man group. Work his fingers to the bone. Make him bleed.”
The white collar manager fawned up at the noble on horseback, his posture self-deprecating. “Yes, my lord. Of course, my lord.” As soon as the nobles had their backs turned, the demeanour of the white collar man changed. He became domineering and pushed a very sharp pencil into Arwin’s chest, drawing blood.
Arwin winced. But he made no move to defy the pencil pusher. For some strange reason, his will to fight had been sapped. What would be the point, after all? This man was a manager. Therefore, he was Arwin’s natural superior, wasn’t he? If Arwin fought back, he was sure to lose. It was inevitable because blue collar folk were naturally inferior. They were incapable of rising up against their betters.
The man thrust a business card in Arwin’s face. “See that, maggot? I’ve got a title. Says Middle Manager. Can you read that? You know what that title means, you pathetic worm? It means I’m better than you. It means I’m more successful than you. It means you’re just a lowly, inferior, no-good, nobody. And you’ll always be a no-good nobody.” He pushed the pencil into Arwin’s chest again.
Arwin gasped. That really hurt.
“Get your ass up. I said up!” The man’s whip cracked, eliciting a sharp sting from Arwin’s leg and drawing a fleck of blood.
Arwin rose, feeling empty of happiness, like his soul was a barren void of despair. What else could he do? This was his lot in life, wasn’t it? It’s not like he could ever hope for anything better. This is where he deserved to be. It was just the way he was born. He’d been made lesser than other men. He was stupid. Lazy. Incompetent. Incapable of anything in life. He could never become one of the white collars. And he could certainly never become one of the blue bloods. He was just a simple worker. It was his function to be used, a tool for others. Disposable, if necessary. Just like he’d been back on Earth.
The manager cracked the whip again. “Get your sorry, blue-collar ass over there and start breaking rocks, maggot.”
Arwin meekly complied. He found a sledgehammer and started on a small boulder. For hours he complied without question. The hammer went up, then it came down. Stone chips flew. He repeated the process. It was back-breaking labour. Though he was no stranger to such work, his hands eventually grew red and blistered at the unending rhythm. Each swing drew power from overworked muscles. Sweat poured off his body, soaking his clothes. He became as filthy as all the other blue collar workers.
As they worked, an obese, blue man, totally nude, periodically streaked the blue collar workers, rolls of fat jiggling in waves as he jogged. He’d run up to each slave, turn around, bend over, and bare his backside the poor worker. The sheer size of the nude man’s buttocks made for quite a full moon.
The white collar workers, probably because they were never targeted, did nothing but laugh and encourage the uncouth behaviour.
“Here’s your free astronomy lesson for the day, boys,” a white collar worker howled.
“Any of you want to have at it with your telescope, you just let us know,” roared another.
When the mooning happened to Arwin, he found himself much closer to the moon’s crater than he wanted to be and threw up his arm to shield his face. He fervently hoped nothing would emerge from that crater. Luckily, it remained quiescent, with no signs of volcanic activity.
A whistle sounded. The middle manager came over to Arwin. “Eating time. You’ll need the energy for your next shift.”
Arwin dumbly nodded and shuffled off towards a crude wooden canopy that the other blue collar workers were gathering under. On the way, he watched as the white collar workers met in a picturesque white gazebo. Eating like gluttons, they downed ice-cold lemonade and feasted from a buffet of succulent delights: barbecued steaks, stacks of corn cobs, bowls of caviar, lobster tails, a dozen kinds of bread, and an array of pastas. There was so much glorious food laden on their tables that it could have fed all the whites and blues together twice over and still remained only half touched. Much of it would go to waste.
The blue collar fare was much less appetizing. It consisted of luke-warm gruel, one ladle per bowl. No seconds. Arwin took his and planted himself in the dirt under the wooden roof next to his comrades.
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