The Birth of Perica
The daily wage was 8,000 Perica...!
"Move, move, move!"
"If you don’t keep order, you’ll get a taste of my bullets!"
Thanks to yet another endless procession of refugees, Roseberry’s population had officially broken 20,000.
The army, swollen to 2,000 men once you included the walker pilots and mechanics, now made up only ten percent of the population, and the five-meter-tall walkers striding through the quarantine zone were enough, by their very presence alone, to keep the refugees from trying anything stupid.
Our little refugees. Got a complaint about the command-minister’s actions? Your complaint has been replaced with the walkers’ guns and rockets. Please always be grateful... that was the gist of it.
Anyone who tried to start a riot in front of the 20mm Gatling had to be transcendently brave, didn’t they?
"My God...! Bread and meat!"
"Uwaaah...! I never thought I’d live to see the day I could drink chilled beer again...!"
But no riot broke out. Because they were fed.
If there was one thing the World Union’s utterly fucked situation had going for it, it was that the refugees’ expectations were so absurdly low that the mere guarantee of food, clothing, and shelter left them ready to burst into tears of gratitude.
Really, they’d spent the last several years scraping by on broken glass and hand-to-mouth survival, never knowing when disease or some thug would kill them. Now they could eat bread and meat again, drink beer, and even get fresh fish. Their reaction was, in a very real sense, perfectly understandable.
It was a little regrettable, but the beer would be sold not in glass bottles, but in 500ml aluminum cans instead. Making tens of thousands of glass bottles consumed more resources than one might expect.
And aluminum cans were easier to recycle. More importantly, when it came time to trade with the World Union in the future, they absorbed impacts far better than glass, keeping the liquid inside safe.
Even though they were brewing 30,000 liters a month, now that the population had grown, consumption was so high that production was barely staying ahead of demand. Once people had gotten a taste for it, they craved alcohol endlessly.
In Roseberry, there was no real entertainment to speak of beyond food, so in the end everything circled back to alcohol, just like it had at the beginning.
Visit request received: Colonel Jeremy.
"Jeremy?"
"He says he has a proposal to make as the citizens’ representative."
"Fine. Let him in."
Hwi-hyun had been sitting there, voyeuristically monitoring the refugees’ movements, when Colonel Jeremy suddenly requested a face-to-face meeting under the grandiose title of citizens’ representative.
Once Hwi-hyun let him in, the colonel took a moment to wet his throat with water before delivering the citizens’ request.
"You want me to build restaurants?"
"Yes, sir. That’s what the citizens asked me to pass along."
"Restaurants... restaurants, huh! Good. What kind of places do they want?"
"From what I heard, a sandwich shop, a chicken shop, a stew restaurant, and a sashimi restaurant."
"Not bad. They’ve got a decent spread."
July 12, 2053.
The citizens had formally requested that Command-Minister Lee Hwi-hyun build restaurants and supply them with ingredients.
It looked simple at a glance, but it wasn’t simple at all. If there were shops, that meant currency would circulate—and the one issuing that currency would, in the end, be Hwi-hyun.
So now he even had to master economics. But that didn’t mean he could ignore a legitimate request, either.
"From now on, workers will be paid a daily wage as compensation for labor. If they can eat out at shops with that money, a basic economy will start moving."
"Good idea. But, sir, how will you set the daily wage?"
"The individual labor time is eight hours, right?"
"Strictly speaking, it’s nine hours including lunch, but yes. You could call it eight."
"Then we’ll count it as 1,000 per hour and pay 8,000 a day. That’ll be the standard, so we shouldn’t set it too high."
"Understood, sir. Then what should we call the currency? Cash? Credits?"
At the colonel’s words, Hwi-hyun thought for a moment, then smiled as if a very good idea had just occurred to him.
"Perica."
The next day, Roseberry Perica was officially issued and began being paid out to the workers.
*
"So this is Perica. Nice and crisp."
"The daily wage is exactly 8,000 Perica. If anyone received more or less, raise your hand."
Their first commemorative payday. Smiles bloomed on the faces of citizens who, for the past several months, had effectively been working without pay.
After all, people wanted to be compensated for the work they did.
"What are we supposed to spend it on?"
"Mm. Since restaurants are opening soon, why not save it up and use it there?"
"Oooh..."
At that, a strange light came into the workers’ eyes. Up until now, they’d had to eat the fixed menu in the communal cafeteria whether they liked it or not, and if they couldn’t make it on time, they went hungry. But if private restaurants separate from the public mess hall were opening, then they could eat whenever they wanted during business hours.
Of course, there was no class in Roseberry currently exempt from mandatory labor, so for most people the real rush hour would be after lunch or dinner. Still, no one failed to rejoice at the news that they’d be able to get back to the ordinary pleasure of a beer after work, something they hadn’t had in a very long time.
It wasn’t just passive rationing anymore. Earning currency as the result of labor, spending that currency, ordering food, and consuming it—this wasn’t merely a change of mood. It was one of the most effective ways to give each citizen a sense of self-efficacy.
When what you receive for hardship isn’t just another day of survival, but capital that lets you plan a future, society begins to form.
*
Heh, just as I expected.
Hwi-hyun snickered as he posted his proud photo of the Perica bundles to the gallery and watched the reactions roll in.
But he hadn’t uploaded it merely to brag. The gallery’s basic creed was voyeurism of information... no, searching for information. Now that he’d laid the bait, he could go fishing through all the currency-related posts that would start appearing.
And, just as Hwi-hyun had expected, those kinds of posts began showing up almost immediately.
And so, just as expected, a classic bottle-cap standard made its appearance, the kind that would leave no one indifferent.
And, as expected, there was also a canned-food standard—something that, if it didn’t show up, would have been disappointing.
In the end, even a grain-based standard from the primitive ancient era—not classic, not even really retro—showed up and left the poor bastards speechless.
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