Lang Jin couldn't sleep that night.
Pawa hadn't done anything to him. After completing the strange "Long-Tailed Lizard" coded exchange, he vanished into the curtain of rain. Lang Jin ultimately made it home safely, but he tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep. The secretive Pawa and that code phrase had stirred up a tide of memories buried deep within him.
Lang Jin was a typical member of the "Reclamation Generation." In other words, ever since he could remember, the Solar System Reclamation Corps had hung over his head. He had lived as a so-called "native of the colony," as though that were simply the natural order of things.
However, the old generation had not died out completely. The elders who had survived the Third War and the Aberration Era would still speak of the past—of the days when that arrogant human civilization had run wild on the tiny, bullet-sized Earth. Things had not been perfect then either, but at least people had not been born a head shorter than everyone else, as they were in this new era.
The young people of the new generation inevitably yearned for it, but reality taught them a harsh lesson. They understood early on that there was no going back.
Like many people of this era, Lang Jin had never received a complete formal education. The turbulent, chaotic environment had not afforded him that opportunity. As a child, he learned a little here and practiced a little there, picking up scraps of knowledge and skills. His original dream had been to work in the mines—at that time, East 725's gold mining industry was still thriving, and that was a legitimate job that only one in a hundred thousand, perhaps one in a million, could get.
But before he even came of age, he