Robots built most of the Emirates' first autonomous city, while architects monitored remotely, but humans are still cheap disposable machines. So in the killing heat we toiled, driven by desperation and computer code.
Code our daughters and wives had learned to hack.
Our employers live in their palaces now, in a city closed to us. And we live below them, in places computers forgot were built and infrastructure serves in silence.
We are unknown to them, but not to the desperate of the world. There's a shadow economy for the pushed aside, and we have a useful skillset.