Planet Erie, Pennsylvania System. It is January of 817 A.S..
"Hey, Robin! Think the work'll do itself if you stare at it long enough?" The mocking cry cut through the air and startled Robin Green out of his reverie. Lifting his chin off his right fist, Robin rose from the pallet of Copper filaments he'd been resting on and pulled himself to his feet.
Claustrophobic, yet oddly comforting, the cramped albeit well-lit and clearly delineated hallway in which he found himself was characteristic of the small, family-owned shipyards of Planet Erie, constructing spacecraft primarily to commission (Pennsylvanian shipbuilders possessed a well-earned reputation as artisans and craftsmen and, as such, were frequently approached with special orders) or, to fill the gaps between commissions for Interspace Commerce executives' luxury Yachts, to power the Civilian growth industry (the blueprints for constructing an Eagle were firmly welded into Robin's brain). Robin's father was one such craftsman, a builder of space ships for paying clientele both here, in the breadbasket of Liberty, and beyond. Unlike the vast corporate shipyards of New York, namely Baltimore and Norfolk, Green Senior and his fellow tradesmen possessed little in the way of lucrative or long-standing contracts, and so simply produced spacecraft to suit demand on the fluctuating Sirian market.
Robin, naturally, worked for his father, assisting on the assembly line, fitting hexagons of High-Temperature Alloys together, clambering like a monkey over transport frameworks, or, as he ought to have been doing at the moment, simply moving materials from place to place within the shipyard proper. Heaving a sigh, the Libertonian bent and slung his pallet over his shoulder.
"Well done! Once you've finished unloading the supply freighter, I'll need you to come assist me with Congressman Hurrell's Griffin," laughed the man addressing Robin, one of the shipyard's foremen. "We're beginning with the armor-plating, and we're shooting for painstaking effort here - robots won't do. All right, get a move on - I sent Jacob and Rhys to help clean out the freighter's cargo bay."
"Just as you say, Mort," Robin replied. Damnable labor, he muttered, and set off at a less-than-brisk pace for the storage chambers, pallet weighing him down. Oh for the Erie life.