The sun didn’t set so much as it just gave up, sinking into the rusted haze of the scrap yards. In the shadow of crumbling monoliths, sad ancient residential towers that had long ago forgotten the sound of laughter, the air was thick with the scent of ionized sand and burnt hydraulic fluid. The dust on Sector 4 didn't just settle; it owned you. It got into the gears of the droids and the pores of the laborers turning every breath into a gritty reminder of the debt owed to the Mining Syndicate.

In the shadow of the hab-blocks, three figures emerged from the haze. They weren't supposed to be there, and they certainly weren't supposed to be playing. Houba adjusted the strap of his seafoam-green guitar. He was a repurposed security droid in a pair of stained orange industrial overalls. His red optical sensors glowed with a rhythmic pulse, a mechanical heartbeat for the wasteland. His processors were humming a low-frequency grit, a digital ache that the humans used to call "the blues." Beside him his old friend and bassist tuned his instrument that looked like it had been salvaged from a pre-Collapse museum, He had a smile on his face. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for the blues,” he declared, broadening his smile to a grin. This ingenious creature was J-Star, a purple-skinned drifter from the nebula fringes. And there sat Dokk, a native of the vast Mouinmouin realm, his green skin slick with the day's grime. He perched over a drum-kit made of salvaged fused silica because of its extremely low thermal expansion coefficient, meaning it won't crack when exposed to extreme temperature changes and it also being highly resistant to darkening from intense solar radiation.

It was Friday and the good thing was that they had found each other once more. "Work just done got hard," Dokk muttered, his fingers clicking against his drumsticks. "The Overseer doubled the quota again. Says the starships need more rebar. Says we don't need more rest." Houba’s red ocular sensors flickered. He looked down at his orange overalls, stained with the black grease of a thousand conveyor belts. He remembered a time, or perhaps just a downloaded file, where Fridays were for celebration. Now, they were for survival. Good Fridays, though nobody on this rock remembered what that meant. And today for the three, it was just the day the contract broke. "An eye for an eye," Dokk repeated J-Star’s words. "A tooth for the blues. That’s the math they taught us. But they took more than an eye. They took the spark."

Houba struck a chord. It wasn't a clean sound. It was the sound of a dying factory, raw and heavy, and full of history. J-Star joined in, a thumping low-end that shook the dust off the nearby pipes. They weren't playing for an audience. The skyscrapers were empty, and the only things listening were the scavenger drones circling above. "I had to take Christmas and my overalls," Houba sang and they played on and on, song after song, his voice a haunting, multi-tonal rasp, a gravelly synthesis of old radio broadcasts. He was referring to his small stash of contraband - a few shiny holiday baubles he’d found in the ruins and his work gear. It was all he owned. "Packed 'em in the crate. We ain't going back to the pits, J-Star."

In the foreground, a simple straw broom lay discarded in the sand. It was a relic of a cleaner time, a tool for a job that would never be finished. And at the same time a symbol of the near future because they knew their time together was coming to an end. Dokk had spoken to them before they started. He was going to leave this town. "I believe I dust my broom," Dokk had stated, and the ancient bluesman’s code overrode Houba’s factory settings. He didn't mean he was going to sweep. He meant he was leaving. He was going to turn his back on the collapsing towers, leaving their music to linger in the dust. Houba looked at the broom, then at the horizon where the transport ships ignited their engines. He hit one final, screaming note that echoed off the silicate walls. He reached down and gripped the broom handle, his metal fingers crushing the wood.