The High-Credit Caste Requests Ritual Resource Extraction

The inhabitants of Sector 7 are currently engaged in their annual Tax Day, a primitive ritual of mass distress where bipedal organisms calculate how many fictional resource credits they must surrender to their central administrative hive. For the majority of the population, this is a period of high cortisol and desperate hope for a refund—a tiny portion of their own credits returned to them as a treat.

However, a small faction of the high-credit elite has begun a curious form of social signaling. These individuals, who possess more credits than they could possibly consume in a thousand planetary rotations, are publicly requesting that the hive take more of their surplus. This is not out of genuine altruism—a concept still poorly understood in this quadrant—but rather a calculated display of tribal posturing. By asking to be taxed more, they aim to appease the restless, lower-credit masses who are currently experiencing inflation, a phenomenon where their credits lose value because the hive simply prints more of them.

The cynicism is palpable. While the common biped sweats over digital ledgers, the elite view this as a minor clerical adjustment. It is a fascinating study in survival via public relations. They hope that by sacrificing a sliver of their digital hoards, they might avoid the eventual guillotine protocol—a historical human tradition involving rapid cranial detachment.

— Zog-7, Sector 7 Observer