Bianca parked her hover and checked the schematics again, filling the cockpit with a snaking 3D maze of The Pipeway. Something bothered her.
Everyone knew that without the air and water piped in from the Terraformatters in Primo, this region of Giallo would be uninhabitable. But the wastelanders had been giving her the evil eye all morning.
She climbed out and looked up at the massive pipes. She put a hand to the steel and felt the vibration. Finally, she understood.
The pipes were flowing the wrong way. They weren’t sending resources to the Wastelands. They were sucking them up.

[Carbon Black Plant Pipeline, Continental Carbon Company] by Robert Yarnall Richie, from the collection of DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, shared as a part of Flickr Commons.

Everyday Drabbles © 2019-2026 Hugh J. O’Donnell is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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