[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

This thread details the average thing the average person can expect from day to day. Surveyors aren't considered average, so they get their own section in this too, so you can know what they expect to see as well. Note that this is very generalized and that each individual will be a little different.

Table of Contents
Waking Up (talks about job hours, housing, what's provided by the government in regards to housing)
Transportation (talks about common methods of transportation, lots of talk about trams)
At Work (talks about common experiences and beliefs about work, job expectations, government interventions)
Leisure Time (talks about societal pressures, entertainment, hobbies, shopping, and money)
Surveyors (talks about common experiences for surveyors, both jungle and wasteland)
Death (talks about common causes of death and what happens to the body after)

[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

Waking Up

For most people, their schedules revolve around their job, or school for younger people. While there are several people that work odd hours in order to keep the city functioning at all hours, most people work from either 8-5 or 9-6 with an hour for lunch. If the person chooses not to take a lunch, then their day is one hour shorter. School for every student regardless of age is from 8-3 with an hour for lunch that must be taken. Most people work five days a week, from Monday to Friday, and have Saturday and Sunday off. Students also get Wednesday off unless they're taking additional classes. People that work odd hours often work less hours to compensate.

Exactly when they wake up depends on their commute as well. It doesn't take too long to get to most parts of New Sumatra, but some areas of the industrial district can take up to 3 hours to get to. The jobs at the far end of the industrial are the only ones with this problem due to the distance and the frequency of dangerous machinery that trams need to navigate carefully through. Too compensate, those workers generally have longer days, but work fewer days than the average person. The people that work in the wasteland have similar problems, but they aren't allowed to work two days in a row because of the nature of the wasteland.

Every citizen of New Sumatra is provided with a place to live. For most people, this is a small, one room studio style apartment with no kitchen or bathroom. The apartments are rectangular with a small area cut out for a closet. It's only intended to be large enough for beds, a place to put clothes, and a few possessions. Most people do not spend very much at their homes for this reason, there simply isn't very much to do. Thus, spending a lot of time at home is viewed as even stranger than it is in the real world, and the only people that can really do it are people that spend a lot of time on the computer or a lot of time watching TV or movies.

Because most apartments don't have a bathroom or kitchen, there are several communal kitchens and bathrooms throughout the residential district. Each floor has a bathroom large enough to accommodate all the people on the floor, though not all at once. Attached to each bathroom is a communal shower with individual stalls, much like the toilets. Each apartment also has a corresponding medicine cabinet of sorts for them to store things like their toothbrush or any special soaps or anything they might need in the bathroom. They're about the size of a regular medicine cabinet, and are secured with a number pad lock. There's no mirrors on them, as they're off to the side and not directly in front of the sinks. The mirrors are behind the sinks, much like they are in public bathrooms in the real world.

There's one large communal kitchen on every 10 floors of a building. It includes numerous stoves, microwaves, cooking utensils and appliances, and plenty of counter space for preparing meals. Though, much like the bathroom, they aren't big enough to support everyone in their area at once. During high traffic hours, especially around dinner time, people often have to wait for open space so they can cook. This is often true for stove tops, but tends to be less true for ovens. Instead of having a combined stove top and oven, the ovens are stacked on top of each other in the wall, in order to fit a lot more. The refrigerators are located in a separate room, and there's one for each apartment in its field of service. They're small, roughly the size of a high school locker in the real world, and are secured with a number pad lock. The top part has a freezer as well. Just outside the cooking area is a large cafeteria where people can eat. It's structured with long benches, not unlike a school cafeteria in the real world.

People are expected to sleep in their apartments. If they fall asleep elsewhere, they will be taken home by the police, unless that elsewhere is the jungle or the wasteland in which case they probably won't be found (by friendly humans at least). Thus, when a person wakes up, they'll wake up in their bed. The government provides a queen sized bed, one overhead light, and one dresser for every apartment. Anything else must be purchased by the owner. The bed provided uses a simple metal frame, a box spring, and something reasonably comfortable to sleep on so that people can get a good night sleep and not wake up with a sore back. Most other types of mattresses aren't necessarily advertised as being 'better' than what's provided, but rather different in case someone prefers a softer or harder mattress, so the default is considered pretty comfortable. The dresser is just a basic wooden dresser with three drawers. It's more than enough for couples, but people with children might want a second one for their children.

Larger apartments are available, but they are not very many, so they tend to be quite expensive. Even then, the largest ones have a main room that's slightly larger than the default studio apartments, an attached kitchen and bathroom, and two bedrooms. There simply isn't enough space in the densely packed city for something larger.

[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

Transportation

While the city is quite small, it's not so small that people would want to walk everywhere on foot. Thus, getting large amounts of people from place to place is very important. The city is so dense, and there's so little space to be used, that individual cars are completely unheard of. The only place small vehicles like that exist are in the industrial district for transporting people through the wasteland, but even then high speed trains are more common. Larger vehicles are used for transporting goods and waste in the industrial district, but those are the only places cars and trucks are seen. Even more expensive personal vehicles, like helicopters, aren't used because there's no place to store them effectively. A few are still kept around to handle medical emergencies since a few can be kept on top of buildings and a good pilot can safely land them on several buildings.

Instead, most people get around by using a series of high speed trams whose tracks wind around the outside of the skyscrapers. Because the buildings are so close together, and because people so rarely go outside, there's plenty of space for rails and they can easily get to most parts of the city. The tracks are circular, and each loop of track has multiple cars on it ensuring that there's not too much of a wait to get from place to place. The trams are on a strict schedule, both to make sure their schedule is predictable and consistent for passengers, but also to avoid accidents. Because there's multiple cars on the same track, it's important that the other cars know where each other are at all times so that they keep consistent distance from each other and don't run into each other. Accidents are so uncommon that they're almost unheard of, and the rare occasion that it does happen, it's typically because human meddling. There's only been two accidents that haven't been a result of sabotage in the century the trams have been running, and there's only been an additional ten if the intentional sabotage is included. They're very safe, and heavily monitored to prevent disasters.

There are two types of stations. The first type takes people places with in the same district, and the second takes people to other districts. The cars of the former are smaller than the cars of the latter, only being comparable to the size of a school bus in the real world. The ones that take people between districts are prepared to have a much higher volume, and even have two floors instead of just one. The cars are narrow so they can easily fit between the tightly packed buildings. As a result, there isn't any standing space and people are expected to sit instead. There are bins both under the seat and overhead for people to put their bags to make travel more comfortable. The seats are on the fluffy end of things so people can stay comfortable riding. The walls are covered in windows so people can look outside, and there are a few TVs posted throughout the trains so people can watch the news. The news is the only thing those TVs ever play. The goal is to make travel pleasant as possible.

Regardless of type, the trams are scheduled to arrive at the station 20 minutes apart to get people around quickly. Stations are generally small since they only service on rail line to avoid accidents. Instead, buildings tend to have multiple stations to accommodate the numbers that come through them. If one stations is too crowded, it's common to just go to a different one. Stations also tend to have small cafes in them, so some people might just wait and extra 20 minutes and get a snack or something. The exception to this is the big station in the residential district, dubbed Central Station because of its traffic levels and proximity to people. Something similar to rush hour happens weekday mornings in the residential district as people try to get to work. In order to encourage community, and to make it easier for children to get to school so they only have to remember one or two station locations instead of several, one huge station was created in the residential district to take people to the other districts. It's size is comparable to a department store in the real world, and it's even multiple floors like one. Central Station was built to handle the large volumes of people trying to get to work in the morning, so it mostly focuses on getting people to other districts. There are a few smaller trams that take people to other places in the residential district though, both for the people that work in the residential district, and to make it easy for people to get home. Like most stations, Central Station has cafes and the like, but they tend to be a little larger and have more room to sit down. It's made Central Station a common place for people to wait for someone or meet up.

Besides the trams, there are some a couple of ways to move around with in the same district. The first are stairs and elevators to take people between floors of one building. Stairs tend to be tucked out of the way in winding stairwells, though they're not tucked behind doors in order to encourage people to use them. Most of the time they're even carpeted with smooth handrails to further encourage use. Elevators are large, roughly the size of a small studio apartment, so that many people can use them at once. The elevators tend to be the preferred way to get around as most buildings have well over 100 floors.

The skyscrapers of the city were built very close together, so most of them are connected via enclosed bridges. Those connections are one of the big reasons that people rarely need to go outside; between the bridges and the trams it's possible to get just about everywhere without leaving the indoors. Their interior is nigh indistinguishable from the buildings they're connected to, so even though it's not true for most of the bridges, most of them look like they were built into the skyscrapers from the beginning. Most of the time, they also have the last common form of transportation: a moving walkway.

Moving walkways are common in areas with long hallways. If there's not much going on in the hallway, as is common in the bridges connecting skyscrapers, they'll be long with no breaks. If there's stores or something people may want to get off for, there tend to be several in the hallway with places to get off instead of one long stretch. The walkways themselves are narrow black walkways with moving handrails that resemble a flat real world escalator. They don't serve much purpose other than making people walk a little faster while they get from place to place, but many people appreciate that little bit of extra speed.

[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

At Work

The exact experience will vary wildly depending on the job, but there are some common experiences regardless of job. The first, rather than being the job itself, is the way people think about their jobs. It's viewed as the way people support the city, and a lot of people have an almost patriotic fervor about it. It's viewed as more than a means to an end, or a way to get money in order to survive. It's how the city grows, and how quality of life improves for everyone. It's how civilization has as much as it has now, and is the best opportunity for everyone to have more than they already do. No one is good at everything, but everyone has key talents they can use to better society, and because everyone's talents are watched so closely while they're in school, they're put in a job that can make good use of their talents. Thus, even if everyone doesn't always like their job, it's viewed as much more important than it otherwise would be. It's not just a means to survive, it's a way to save the world.

That said, it's ultimately still something people have to do, and have to do often. Most people work either from 8-5 or 9-6 with an hour for lunch, from Monday to Friday. Some people work odd hours, or longer days with less days worked, but that's the norm. It's still a long time to be spending doing one thing, and it's still something people have to do day after day. It still gets annoying and some jobs are still frustrating. The feelings around jobs are generally positive, but that doesn't mean people are smiles 100% of the time, and there are some people that really dislike their job. For some people, that feeling is strong enough that they venture into Twilight Jungle so they can get magic and become a surveyor instead.

Every adult over the age of 20 will have a job. After finishing school, young adults have 2 years to find a job on their own, and if they don't by the time they turn 20 they will be assigned one by the government based on talents they displayed in school, even if they're disabled or have other circumstances that makes working difficult. Having a job (or being under the age of 18) is the only requirement to get government benefits, so despite all the work the government does to make life comfortable, working is still a requirement to live. Because it's a requirement for benefits, the government actually watches job performance and listens to employer complaints. Doing poorly in a job is a good way to get reassigned to manual labor or a very tedious job, and doing poorly in that is a good way to not have a job at all. Given it's illegal to sleep outside of a living space, and not having a job means that the person won't have a living space, which means they'll almost certainly end up in prison sooner rather than later. It's why the government itself promotes the idea of jobs being useful and patriotic.

As a result, people are watched closely. Their metrics aren't released to the public, and no one is compared to their peers, but everyone does have expected quotas and performance metrics of some kind to meet. Most people are only vaguely aware of this, as most people are assigned to roles they have some affinity for, so most people do well. The metrics are generally reasonable as the government doesn't want to stress people out too much (it's unhealthy), so it's not an issue for most people as long as they show up on time and don't take too many unauthorized breaks.

Beyond that, the government also watches things like wages and making sure people are being appropriately compensated for their work, safety, and comfort. Wages are based on the difficulty of the job, how easy it would be to replace the worker, and how dangerous it is with taxing jobs, specialized jobs, and dangerous jobs receiving higher pay than the others. Some jobs will always be dangerous, but some safety measures can be taken. This means mines should be sturdy, people shouldn't work in the wasteland for too long or for two days in a row, and sanitation workers should get proper protective gear. Comfort is based around having proper tools, being able to sit periodically, and having proper breaks for physical labor or work that requires someone to work with mean people as is common in customer service positions. The conditions are watched to ensure people are at least as comfortable as they can be and they have as little to complain about as possible.

Work itself is based around doing things well and inconveniencing people as little as possible. Making as much money as possible typically isn't the goal. Because of the way people view jobs, the goal tends to revolve around doing high quality work and making things better. Thus, people tend to work more like people work in bureaucracy in the real world. People are more afraid of making mistakes and inconveniencing people or not making their performance metrics, so it's rare for people to take risks. It's easier to simply do what they're told and try to do that well.

It's technically possible for people to work more than one job if they want, but it's not recommended. Part time positions aren't offered, even for students or people under the age of 18, and working two full time jobs is very difficult. However, some people choose to do it anyway, whether it's because they want extra money or because of patriotism or some other reason. Most of the people that do this work jobs with odd hours, as those tend to have shorter hours to compensate for the odd hours. Those people often end up working in the wasteland as those jobs can't be worked two days in a row and tend to have shorter hours for safety reasons.

[Kitten4u Only With A Long Name]

Leisure Time

There aren't too many society pressures on people in New Sumatra. They key is to be useful, be polite, and don't inconvenience people. The first is accomplished by having a job, but some people try to do more. The others are more character qualities where the only work required is having some amount of patience for people. There was an overpopulation scare in recent history, so there isn't much pressure on people to get married and have children. There's a cultural belief in unity, everyone having a place, everyone being good at something, and people not needing to be good at everything, so there's no particular pressure for people to learn specific skills. Obviously there are exceptions; there will always be overbearing parents that want grandchildren, or a family with a tradition of doing something, but these are not common. As a result, people are, for the most part, free to live as they want with minimal judgement.

Most things that exist in the real world also exist in New Sumatra. People can go swimming, they can still go to an amusement part, they can go shopping, talk to people, get on the internet, paint, write, etc. While the options all exist, there are often less options for a specific thing than there are in the real world. Entertainment isn't as highly valued in New Sumatra because it's not considered as useful as building something. Because people have to work full time jobs, there are less people trying to make money off of art or writing or anything else. Thus, while there are books in New Sumatra, there are less books written because there are less authors. While there are movies or video games, less exist because there are less actors, directors, or programmers that make video games. The internet is smaller because less people can make money off of forums, blogs, or streaming (plus, there are less people in the world and thus less people contributing to the internet). Industries exist for this, so there are some people that have a job in entertainment, but there are a lot less because entertainment is so undervalued. The only reason they exist is because of a small acknowledgement that sometimes people need breaks (they guess).

Shopping is still popular, and while there are less stores, there are enough that people can find whatever they're looking for. The entertainment and commercial districts are quite large, and getting to every store in both in a single day is not physically possible.

About 50 years ago with the invention of the internet, physical currency was abolished to help cut down on organized crime and counterfeiting. All purchases are made with credit card-like cards that deduct money directly from the owner's bank account. Everyone has a bank account as well, it's given to them at birth and their bank account number acts as an identification number (similar to that of a social security number in the United States), so their money is directly linked to their person. To cut back on crime and fraud, everyone's accounts are monitored closely, and everyone is given a text message after every purchase made with their account. If they don't have a cell phone, then mail will be sent to their house every day they make purchases with a list of things bought. Thus, stolen cards and fraud are normally caught quickly, and is dangerous to do. Stores have security cameras that get the face of every buyer in their shop, and every transaction will have a timestamp down to the second associated with it. Illicit transactions will very quickly be found out and the perpetrator punished.