A VALUE OF YOU

Before there was an Entemat, there had been a world of roses and light. That was how it was described: A place where everyone was free and nobody was forced into the forever hell of Contract Labor.

That was the trick the companies played: Once a Contract was signed, the signee was never allowed to go free.

Everything cost credits with the companies. From food and water to the gear required to complete their labors. They charged for everything, and people swiftly found that their dents would never be paid.

A short five year Contract swiftly became a life sentence.

Ryan had signed his Contract with the idea that he would be able to save up for supplies and get a colony land grant. It hadn’t taken him long to realize the mistake he’d made. That he would never save anything. That the whole of his life would be spent in backbreaking labor with nothing else to look forward to. This would be the death of him: a lifetime of legal slavery followed by a cremation charged to his “estate.”

He had regrets, but company Contracts were ironclad. They took advantage of the ignorance of the unsigned and the inability of the Contracted to mention what went on within the companies.

The Implant wasn’t something he would have agreed to if he’d known about it. After signing the Contract, there’d been inoculations he hadn’t objected to, and somewhere in there the med techs slipped in a little something extra. Maybe nanotech or maybe something less advanced, whatever it was he found himself bound to the limits of his Contract.

He’d been able to shake his head when his young cousin had asked if signing a Contract with the company was a good idea. But he hadn’t been able to say the words. Hadn’t been able to vocalize or write a warning. Hadn’t been able to describe the hell he’d relegated himself to.

Sometimes he dreamed of what his life could have been if he hadn’t signed a Contract. He imagined living in the slums and it brought him a sense of wistfulness. Because even with the filth and squalor, he’d still had the freedom to dream.

Now there was just this. Day after day. Week after week. Forever.

All of his dreams had been expunged by a signature across a printed page. And he’d been shipped as cargo to an unsettled world where he was put to work in the mines. A piece of equipment cheaper to purchase and maintain than heavy machinery. Paid in food and water and tanks of oxygen he earned through hard labor.

The value of his life had been distilled into the double—or perhaps single—digits that were the future years ahead of him. And when they passed… he would be replaced by another broken dreamer. Some other poor soul that dared to dream of something more and made the mistake of trusting their future to a company as cruel as his.

He smoothed down the front of his maroon coverall and joined the rest of the chow line. Not thinking about the contraption he had made from bags of sugar and the ignitor he’d jury rigged from parts scavenged from the junk pile.

As long as he didn’t think about the purpose of the thing he’d assembled…he’d been able to put it together and leave it where it needed to be. Where it would do what it would do… and set him free.

Ryan’s lips twitched in an unfamiliar smile. And he didn’t think of time ticking down. Of the meeting about to take place and the visiting board members beginning to assemble. Focused instead on the moment he was in. The value of a life as measured by the food chit in his hand.

And he was hungry. Ravenous even. Thought he might take a double ration just because he could.

=END=