An Argument Between Friends

“I’m telling you,” Abdullah said, his face lit up with excitement, “if you read the announcement properly, the empire’s planning to make all of us six-figure earners, if not outright millionaires.”

“How so?” Mussa replied, skepticism etched into his expression. “We’ll only be able to access that fund after retirement, and I don’t see us hitting that age anytime soon unless we retire early. And even then, the empire hasn’t set a clear retirement age. It’s only been a decade since they extended our life expectancy to two hundred years. Some people aren’t even sure that claim’s real, since no one’s lived that long yet to prove it.”

Mussa, a former American and part of the Black minority community, belonged to an even smaller group within that community, those who still harbored deep institutional distrust, rooted in the historical mistreatment of Black people during slavery and unethical medical experiments.