The dockboy, always sure footed and obedient, is an enigmatic character in the urban environments. Leaping from canopy to hull to canopy and ultimately pier, their quiet deftness at mooring the crafts can be amusing if not awe inspiring. They’ll take any ship large or small and steer it about the pier with great facility and speed. It’s often wise to tip the nearest dockboy before tying up; just press a bill against the window and he’ll give a jaunt nod and point you to a great spot close to a café or service station. If you get close enough he may surprise you by leaping onto your canopy, and, using a handheld thruster, take control to maneuver you into position (often with better skill than you). Just be sure to tip him again for a good push-off out into the flyway.

These octopus-like extensions extend their reach from nearby buildings or infrastructure into vast openings in the city. They are the hovering and cantilevered hangouts for drivers and the general denizenry. Each pier is labeled with its address on its underside in flat red once and repeatedly on the top surface. The name of the operating firm is usually holographically displayed above each pier arm. The decks are smooth and heated to accommodate those who are out bare-pawed in the city. One can always find warmth and a good snack or drink at the cafes on these establishments, where sometimes, multiple levels can serve refreshments over a service garage. At 4 kilometers up, the air is always cold, and while mitigated by intense heat-island effect, one should mind their fuel lines and the occasional gust as the outer piers can be quite inclement and sometimes dangerous. Typically the pier tips are reserved for experienced pilots and large cruisers.

Overhead are the arm-bots which glide along rails and convey an appropriate fuel line to your position. The two bar-indicators just to the right of every fuel door tells of remaining weight capacity and the ratio of fuel weight to horizontal range. One can travel much farther on ¾ of a tank than with a full tank which would be better suited for high-power or more vertical movement.

“Pumping gas” may have been on a par with flipping burgers several millennia ago, but in the big cities today, there is often no better way to learn the behavior and taxonomy of atmospheric spacecraft – not to mention the delicacies of good fuel mixture. While in secondary school, one may opt for the job in the warm seasons in preparation for a career as a space pilot or crewmember. Superb knowledge of a free-body diagram hardly stands up to a good sense of inertia and gyroscopics relative to a given mass.

A good dockboy gets to know interesting people during his year on the pier – all of the best stories are let out in this place of eternal downtime, where nobody is listening except the dockboy. Still, we hardly will know him. Many of us have taken the job some vacation period for some pocket money, but the identity leaves us and again we are strangers to the dockboys – having grown out of our former selves. It is a place of mind that wanders freely in all the spaces in time afforded by the mindless work of pushing out, pulling in, and fueling. It is a place to dream until our lives move on.

Each morning as the sun rises, one dockboy will return to that familiar time alone, out in the airspace, perching on the cusp of a bottomless canyon, and will watch the sunrise shine between the tallest towers. Amidst all the mounting whir and hum of the floating cities at dawn, the moment of transition from night to day is one so sublime that the mind slows and thoughts inevitably run deeper. Awareness of the immediate reality is transcended by the cold touch of the canopy, and the fine grained buzzes of electronic equipment in the chilly air, and slowly the solemn glow of all components, indicators, headlights, and the infinite sea of windows, gives way to the warming sunlight – and the dockboy’s consciousness starts again as an impatient driver barks “keep it light and long, and gimme a push!”.

The dockboy answers, “yesir”, and takes a healthy tip.