In the news today, the question of slavery was brought up by the ambassador of the Micronesian Federation, Yoanna Gumataotao. She complained that many Federation citizens were now slaves within the city-state of Santa Onofre and could not leave.
The ambassador of the council of Santa Onofre, Kaneshiro Satomi, took issue with the language Gumataotao used, calling it malicious slander directed at the city-state. In a statement released by the public relations office, they said, “We do not have slavery in Santa Onofre. Slavery is completely illegal within our city-state. However, we have a contract labor system called an indenture that know-nothings construe as slavery. Our contract labor policies are the most enlightened in the world. You only work for as long as your contract stipulates, and it isn’t hereditary. You can also choose how your labor is compensated, paid in wages, or with services like housing, education, or healthcare. You decide whether a contract is for you on not. You do not have to sign it. If you don’t like the terms, you can walk away. You can even pay off the contract and leave early.”
Gumataotao rebutted, saying that contracts often included penalty clauses that reduced the signer to debt peonage for the rest of their life for minor violations of the contracts. “Our citizens have been trapped there for years, with their contracts being bought and sold without oversight. A missed shift because of being sick may add a month or even a year to a contract’s time. All for a temporary job that was only supposed to last a year so they could send money home to their family. Santa Onofre is a honey trap set to lure in people and keep them forever. It is slavery in all but name!”
Vanguard InterReality News Network
December 1 st , 2138 ESC
Agua Hedionda Dock District
City-State of Santa Onofre
Reality of Erde
February 4 th , 2192 ESC
Santa Onofre was a beautiful multicolored jewel during the evening. When the buffer state/free trade zone was declared in 1984, soon after the independence of the Republic of Texico in 1978, no one had envisioned the city becoming an influential city-state. Holographic advertisements lit up the night, along with the logos of dozens of companies and divisions within those companies. Sentients from dozens of Realities went through her ports and skyship fields. Green lightning and storm clouds would bloom regularly as skyships entered and left the Sky Hurricane. As a result, the once-dry desert of the southern Kalifornische coast was as green as the environs around Smaragdstadt, at least around the immediate areas of the skyship fields. However, the hills and older areas of the city-state were still deserts.
The city-state took up roughly thirty kilometers of the coast and about twenty inland. The city itself was broken into sections among all the hills. Santa Onofre was mainly nestled into the flat areas between those. The areas facing the ocean were taken up with housing for the very wealthy. They were bounded to the north by the fusion power plant that ran the city and the desalinization plants that kept fresh water flowing. To the south, the ports of Agua Hedionda accepted huge sea-landing skyships and also cargo ships from Imperial Japan and many smaller nations. Tall corporate towers could be seen just north of there in the neighborhoods of San Luis Rey, stretching from the ocean to the interior valleys.
The City-state was governed by a council of elected officials drawn from the three participating governments and corporations that helped fund the city. Infrastructure and services had always been private paid services here, with only the courts, ports, and power grid maintained by the government. Everything else was a private enterprise in an attempt to bring in corporations to fill the niches. Even the sanitation, security, fire departments, and local hospitals were all paid services, and several companies competed for the right to be your service providers. Police would show up, but they usually just picked up whoever private security gave them and let the courts sort it out. In addition, criminals were housed at city expense but owed the city for their incarceration. There were only a few things you could be arrested for. Private contracts governed everything from a night of prostitution to long-term jobs. If you agreed to it, almost anything went. In Santa Onofre, everything was legal except for the destruction of property, murder, violation of private contracts, or permanent indenture of people. Any attack on the city’s infrastructure would get the government’s forces involved,
Santa Onofre’s main focus was commerce, which showed in its laws and city motto, “The duty of government is to preserve contracts.” Therefore, all contracts were to be honored, and most people would sign one before doing business. These were usually boilerplate contracts with well-known wording. They became even more critical once the city had opened up to traffic from the Sky Hurricane, and the inhabitants of different Realities came to sell things and look for work. Most contracts were handled with dataslates through third-party companies that filed the contracts through the main city database. The database filed and checked contracts for anything illegal, such as agreeing to be indentured indefinitely. When these were found, the contract was voided. However, breaking a contract usually carried a penalty for the one breaking it. For example, a worker sometimes had to pay for their training or work for the company for a certain period to pay off the penalty at a reduced wage if they broke their contract terms. This was the indentured servitude a lot of residents found themselves working under. Such contracts could be bought and sold, and you often found yourself working for someone other than you had originally signed the contract.
Althea was working under one such contract for an import-export company in the port section of Santa Onofre. She diligently organized and cleaned the back of the warehouse to the contract’s exact specifications. No bit of dust was safe, not even stains on the floor. Everything was in its place according to the contract. She had gotten this job from one of the many job-searching apps that populated the work scene in Santa Onofre. She had been hired for the week through an app called Lime Baitoran to clean the back of a warehouse near the port district. The contract was for one week in which she was to clean the entire warehouse from top to bottom. However, she had seen the clauses that had her set to work for a month at half wages if she couldn’t clean it according to specifications. She suspected that most couldn’t fulfill the contract, and that was how the smaller company with a bad reputation had gotten most of its workers. She had seen several low-level warehouse workers with temporary indenture tags in their personal dataspheres.
Despite being so predatory, the company had pitiful security on its internal computer systems. Althea wondered why no one had yet breached it and reported their practices. The cameras and mobile drones the company employed to watch the workers were easy to infiltrate and co-opt temporarily. Using them, she could record the management undoing her work in the morning and watch them try to file complaints to the temp work company. She intercepted the false reports and attached the correct files with unaltered video evidence. She had learned about keeping this kind of evidence during her stint as a guard on a cruise ship five years ago, and the recent miserable discharge with The Storm League forces forced her to record every event she could. These humans were not to be trusted where her livelihood was concerned.
Case-in-point, ten private security guards were gathering in the morning outside the warehouse around the morning shift manager Moro Kon. The sallow-skinned man had a long, drawn face, slightly bugged eyes, and protruding teeth. He had been an annoyance since she had met him seven days ago. The manager kept trying to change the contract terms and have her work outside the contract’s scope. She has steadfastly refused, knowing there was a clause saying she was liable for damages if Althea damaged things outside the work she was contracted to do. The cameras showed her the men gathering around the manager, and she heard snippets of the conversation.
“So, like usual, just surround her, and we’ll say the work was unsatisfactory, she’ll sign the new contract, and we’ll have a new toy for the boss,” Kon said quietly. “She’s an elf, so it should be easy. She won’t know all the rules.”
One of the guards said, “Awfully big for an elf, boss. Ain’t they usually like a meter and a half tall? This one’s nearly two.”
“Yeah, and she has muscles. I seen her move a box the other night like it was nothin. I couldn’t move it.”
“Eh, probably a barbarian elf. Maybe a physical mage. I got a mana absorption crystal. She’ll be as weak as a kitten after we touch her with it,” Kon replied, holding something in his hand that Althea couldn’t see.
She let out a little growl and wrinkled her nose as she directed the robots to finish. Better make this quick, she thought.
In the warehouse, automatic forklifts and sorting robots performed the last of the organizing. Finally, everything was in place, and the floors were clean enough to eat off of. While ordering the robots back to their charging cradles, Althea saw that the security guards were entering the warehouse, followed by Mr. Kon. She let out a little sigh and quickly sent the completion of her contract to both the warehouse’s computers and the job company’s server. Moments later, the Lime Baitoran and warehouse company’s servers responded with an affirmative and sent a bulk contract completion file to the city computers.
Shutting the janitorial door, Althea’s senses picked up the unpleasant man and his entourage. Her ears twitched in annoyance, and her skin would have colored if she hadn’t covered it up in a layer of foundation and concealer on her face, ears, and hands. She had also dyed her shoulder-length hair light brown and tied it into twin fluffy ponytails, but the pale silver roots were starting to show now. It had proven more trouble than it was worth if people saw her patterning or hair, so she had concealed them.
“Ah, Miss d’Argus,” Kon began in the common German that the GmbH taught in its schools. “I see you are just finishing up the work.” His voice was simultaneously smarmy and nasty in a way that grated her nerves. “I need to check it for accuracy. I hope you understand.” The guards were all larger humans; many had cybernetics, from eyes to total limb replacements. Most of them were looking at her with similar smirks as the manager.
With deliberate movement, Althea pulled her dataslate from her pocket and looked at it. She had finally been forced to get one as she had no wish to place poorly written applications on her own bodily systems. She could control the little device at a hardware level, so it was just an extra step. There was an added bonus of the external screen so she could share what it was doing with others. The dataslate made a chirp of contract completion moments after her own systems received it from the city government with the green seal of Santa Onofre with a checkmark of completion.
“There is no need to check the work for accuracy, Mr. Kon. The city has already checked the work,” she replied blandly. She held up the dataslate with the glowing green seal of the city with the checkmark covering it. “My contract is complete. I shall take my leave.” She looked at the guards, who were looking at one another in confusion. This was apparently not how things were supposed to go.
“Boss?” one of them asked quietly, “Aren’t we supposed to hold down the elf and make her accept the indenture like usual?”
The manager made shushing noises and waved the other man to quiet down. Kon walked over and grabbed the dataslate from Althea’s hand. “Let me see that!” he snarled and stared at the screen. He pulled out his and, bringing up the management screen of Lime Baitoran, he wrinkled his nose at the satisfactory completion checkmark by his company next to Althea’s name. He checked it, and it was from the company’s central AI, with a time stamp of five minutes ago.
“This has to be a glitch. I have to approve this for checking, and I don’t think you did a satisfactory job,” Kon snapped with a little smile.
Althea shrugged noncommittally. She had learned that expression over the last year and was proud that she had mastered it. “My contract stipulates that I may have it approved by the artificial intelligence if I so wish. So I asked your central computer, as per section four, clause twenty-five d of the contract to authorize it,” Althea said without changing her tone or expression. Still need to work on that, she thought. I don’t want to seem mocking, though. He started scrolling through the contract. “I have been checking in with it hourly to make sure I was doing everything according to the contract for the last seven days,” she supplied helpfully.
Kon’s eye twitched, and Althea leaned over to pluck her dataslate out of his other hand. He pulled back, startled at her action. The security in their blue jumpsuits and guns moved towards them a step, but she quickly straightened up and retreated several steps back.
“Well then, I shall take my leave,” Althea said and moved to her left around the man. The bully boys tensed up, and hands fell to truncheons, including stun batons. She would be in a bit of trouble if one of those connected with her. Althea took in a big breath, getting oxygen into her bloodstream for any action that may happen in the next few moments. I don’t think they’re stupid enough to try… Finally, one of them pulled his stun baton out, and she breathed a sigh, going to combat mode 1.
“Grab her. Subdue her and force her to sign the new contract,” Kon said as he turned around. “Elf indenture contracts go for a high price, so don’t hurt her… too much.” He stopped and handed one of the men with what looked like speed enhancements a small black crystal. “Use this.” The men parted and let him walk away towards the offices.
Althea let him leave as the men tensed and pulled clubs out. She relaxed her stance and watched them try to surround her.
“Ok, girl, this ain’t nothing personal,” a very large man said. He was almost as wide as some of the Kondarrians she had known. He held out a pair of handcuffs in one metallic hand and his stun baton in the other. “Are you gonna make this easy or hard on us?”
Althea noted that the smaller man with the black crystal had moved behind her. Her systems had already re-connected with the warehouse cameras and had tagged them all as combatants. She casually placed her dataslate in her jacket pocket, making sure she zipped it shut.
The fast guard took that moment to lunge at her with his stun baton and the crystal. He was moving fast for a human. She gave him credit for that as she sidestepped and plucked the baton out of his hand, dropping it. His eyes widened in surprise as the baton fell in slow motion to their senses. He twisted and pushed the crystal into the back of her hand, which she let happen. A smile formed on his lips, and she returned it, her fangs showing, periwinkle eyes with huge predatory pupils focused on him. Blinking in surprise, he looked at the crystal, now smeared with makeup and falling slowly, uselessly to the ground. The back of her hand showed the leopard patterning of her combat mode.
“Oh fuuuuck,” the man was saying slowly. “She ain’t no elf.”
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Althea kicked off the ground, away from the circle of guards and to her right. Then, lightly gripping the warehouse rack with a hand, she pushed down and flung herself higher across the aisle to the next rack. The guards under her were moving, and some pulled illegal stunners from their overalls. Those might ruin her day, so she kicked in combat mode two and sped up, randomly bouncing until she reached the top of the racks ten meters over their heads. Carefully she leaped with just enough force to propel herself forward but not disturb the products she had carefully placed there over the last week. There was a zing-zing sound as some of them fired at her. They ran between the aisles, trying to keep up with her, but they were too slow, even enhanced.
She leaped to a skylight she had a drone open earlier to try to get some fresh air into the warehouse and quickly shimmied into it. The night air and fog of the port surrounded her as she ran across the roof, rocks crunching underfoot. She leaped from the roof, jacket billowing behind her, a fifteen-meter fall. Althea landed on outstretched hands and feet, her chin barely kissing the ground as her limbs took the impact. She pulled her legs under herself, pushed against the parking lot’s asphalt, and took off running toward the edges of the property. Moments later, she bounded off of a car and cleared the security fence, waving at the cameras.
The street was deserted except for a few workers and huge automated trucks known as Schlepps navigating the roads. Althea heard the guards behind her yelling and looking for her in confusion. Running through the streets towards the edge of the warehouse district, she headed towards the more public areas where this security detail had no jurisdiction. She avoided heat plumes that she saw as light glows in the fog, most were homeless people, trying to find any scrap they could sell, but a few were muggers.
Several blocks later, she slowed down near the public transport terminal at the edge of the warehouse district. The large transportation terminal that looked like a cross between an open-air train station and a bus terminal was owned by SanOno-Bus. The blue-green platforms were lit up and clean, guards patrolled the property, and the small automated busses and trams were always on time. Slowing down, she walked up to a guard and showed her dataslate with the bronze plan she had purchased earlier in the month. The woman in the heavy tactical gear and small compact submachine gun nodded and checked Althea’s small 12mm pistol sidearm, letting her onto the property.
As she was settling into a seat to wait for transport to her neighborhood, Althea heard a chirp from her dataslate and checked her internal display. The money from the finished contract was deposited into her Lime account, which she quickly moved to her own funds. However, there was an addendum where Mr. Kon registered a complaint that the contract was not properly completed. Althea uploaded the camera footage and recordings from her internals of the last moments after the contract was signed until her escape. She also forwarded a copy to the legal AI that oversaw contracts in the city. It would probably take a few days to clear her name from his complaint, but the sooner she filed and attached evidence, the less time she would be out of work. The last time this happened, she was out of work for two weeks and had spent the time doing odd jobs for her neighbors for meals.
The bus arrived within half an hour, punctual as ever, with a route floating in both virtual and holographic real worlds on the sides of the large silent twelve-wheeled vehicle. Althea heard a commotion on the edge of the property. Looking over, she noted that two of the guards from the warehouse were there staring and pointing at her. The transit guards rebuffed them and pointed them off the property. Althea entered the climate-controlled bus and found one of the bronze seats near the back. Settling into the seat, she brought up the social media feed of Lime Baitoran and wrote a small review of her time working for the company, giving it four stars out of ten. She pointedly wrote that the stars were for the company’s AI, who had fulfilled her contract. Additionally, she detailed how to follow the warehouse contract and deal with the AI in charge rather than with human management.
The bus pulled out and started into the fog. She checked her own rather low ratings, having only a six. They noted that Althea would always fulfill contracts but often refused to do anything not stipulated. That was the point, wasn’t it? She was there to do what they asked, not extras she wasn’t being paid to do, or that would cause her to break her contract and end up in a lower-wage indenture that would keep her for longer than she wanted.
When she was released from the Kalifornischestadt Military Prison in June of the previous year, Althea had been given her civilian clothes, two more sets of extremely low-quality clothing, her medals, ribbons, and a card with her remaining funds on it. Doctor Marcelin had given her an address for a halfway house she could stay at. That had lasted a week after they found out she was Mechanese and summarily asked her to leave. She had bounced around to various hotels, burning through her remaining funds quickly as people had had her go because she was “threatening” the other guests with her presence. Finally, a month in, she ended up in the community of Fallbrook, a shanty town on the eastern edge of the city-state. The small former cargo container she ended up in wasn’t insulated, but it did have a tiny kitchen, a bed, a small unit bathroom, power, and, best of all, barely cost anything to upkeep.
She looked out the bus’s window as they passed through the light industrial area next to the port. Housing crouched atop the small factories that made up a band surrounding Agua Hedionda. Althea had been in and out of several factories, usually for a day or two, as she fixed Mechanese systems that the owners barely understood. She had had longer-term contracts waiting for her after these repair jobs, but she usually spotted the two or three-year indenture subcontracts hidden within the fine print. She had tried several corporate programming jobs that lasted a few months when she started looking for work. They usually withdrew the programming job offer and tried to get her to join their corporate security teams. She had refused these multi-year contracts with recurring penalties that she knew kept most people in servitude forever.
They only want me for my combat skills , Althea thought bitterly. If the older prostitutes that lived near her hadn’t shown her how to do makeup out of pity, she probably would have had to take one of those jobs or ended up as a Stormer. The Stormer jobs were quite interesting, but there was a high probability that she would end up off Reality at the end of a job. The jobs that kept her in Santa Onofre were… less than honorable. Assassinations, theft, corporate espionage, kidnapping, forcing people to take indenture contracts, and various other unsavory jobs. She had joined one job board and gotten her Stormer license. The one job she had taken was an escort job to get a client from Wolfoods to a special meeting with Toucan Group. Unfortunately, there had been a double cross by the Toucan Group’s security, who were actually working for rival Ambrosia Foods.
The ensuing shootout had exposed her as a biofem and left fifteen dead. She had ensured that both her client and the Toucan Group execs had survived with only minor injuries. However, the heavily armed Sacred Heart medivac Aircar that had arrived had treated her like a stray dog, leveling weapons on her to take their corporate clients away. She sat there for an hour until the city police arrived to check all the footage and pay her for a few outstanding bounties. Apparently, some of them were contract violators who had skipped their indentureship. She had avoided going to court, but the entire experience had soured her attitude toward the line of work.
They passed through the decidedly Asian part of town where the corporations of Imperial Japan held sway. Bright holographic signs and hundreds of augmented reality ads floated there, enticing her to come and enjoy all the pleasures and tastes of the quarter. The prices were also beyond her imagination. The few times she had worked in this part of town made her uncomfortable with the number of malicious programs that tried to worm their way into her dataslate and her body the one time she had opened her datasphere for a look around. She had spent the night clearing her systems of the nasty little programs.
The tall towers of the city’s center loomed in the background as her bus climbed onto an elevated highway pointed toward her neighborhood. There the founding corporations and governments of the city-state had their headquarters. She had only visited once as a tourist but was taken aback at the sheer beauty and majesty of the area. Artwork, fountains, well-maintained green spaces, and the ever-present but well-hidden security framed the area’s expensive boutiques and corporate offices. She had her identity checked almost every time she moved, and the one time she went into a shop to look at the prices, she was told to leave by security. Apparently, they had checked her bank account and service record and found both lacking. Soon after, city police came around to question her and gently encouraged her to return to her own neighborhood.
The bus went over the older urban housing areas that housed the corporate workers and the overcrowded sections with their GmbH-style apartment blocks in the middle of the city. Workers and lower management lived side by side with entirely different lifestyles. After that were the shorter and greener suburbs that the better-off middle management and skilled corporate workers lived in. Their contracts usually stipulated condos or housing, or they were visiting from outside the city-state and could afford their own accommodation. Althea knew there were several theme parks on the edges and hills of Santa Onofre. Their fireworks and pretty lights were a nightly background noise that sometimes covered the nightly gunfire of her neighborhood Fallbrook.
The bus crossed the stark divide between the suburbs and the older section of town. One moment there were green lawns, then they passed countless walls into the dilapidated brown area of her home. Older villages, like Fallbrook, had existed before the city-state and were now just neighborhoods, all reached by private transport built in the two centuries that the city had existed. Most older parts of the town suffered from a lack of infrastructure due to an inability to pay for necessary services. What was there was maintained by the residents or left to rot. Residents of these parts of town were usually indigent or people with nowhere else to go. People like Althea.
The bus left the freeway and followed a special road that the locals usually left alone. Automated guns poked out here and there from the three-and-a-half-meter-tall walls of the private road to discourage looting. Finally, they pulled into a large building that was the end of the line for the terminal. Althea got out with a few other people with the look of sadness and resignation she had come to associate with the neighborhood’s long-term residents. She checked her gun, a small pistol with 12mm bullets, and walked over to the area’s bank of payphones. She chose one on the end that was against a wall. After waiting a few moments, she dialed the number for Tiki’s dataslate. She had originally just sent text messages but found that they were being censored or didn’t go through often. The prices on the dataslate for communication were often beyond her means. Besides being cheaper, the payphone was more analog and sounded better to Althea. It didn’t hurt that she loved hearing Tiki’s voice.
Placing the ten-mark coin into the machine, she dialed and waited. “Carmina,” Tiki’s voice came over the phone after five rings.
Althea smiled openly and leaned against the wall, “It is good to hear your voice, ba bîzi.”
“First, are you alright, and second did they try to make you sign a contract?” Tiki asked.
“Yes, to both,” Althea answered, the smile fading from her face. “I managed to escape, but they were persistent. In addition, there was a complaint about my work performance, and I am not certain that my evidence to the contrary will be heeded.”
Her lover sighed over the phone, “I told you that city was bad. It … well.” Ticualtzin paused as if she were finding the words, “It seems like you were forced to go there like some sort of experiment. Like they wanted to see if you could handle this kind of place.”
Althea nodded, then said, “Somewhat. Yes, I feel I would have done much better in your home country. However, I have, yet again, successfully avoided selling myself into temporary slavery. So you will not have to ride in like Pancho Villa to save me yet.”
There was a laugh, “Yeah, but I would look so cool saving you like that.”
Althea smiled a that and closed her eyes to imagine Tiki on a noble horse with bandoliers of bullets and two pistols in her hands. “Yes, you would,” she said. “I truly miss you. I cry at night sometimes, scared I will not see you again.”
“I know, mi amor, I know,” Ticualtzin said quietly. “Four more months, and I’ll get you out of that hellhole. I have the proper files to come to get you as my spouse.” The other woman let out a sigh. “I’m still pissed my brothers chickened out and wouldn’t even visit you. I know you live in a bad neighborhood, but honestly.”
Althea sighed slowly, “Yes, it is bad, but I haven’t had to kill anyone lately.”
There was a barking laugh, “Well after you sent that mugger home with his gun shoved up his ass, I can see why. You didn’t even permanently injure him.”
Althea let a brief predatory smile cross her face, and the few people waiting to use her phone backed away to get in line for other phones. “I have had a lot of practice….”
“Dios Mio!” Ticualtzin exclaimed embarrassedly, “Stop it. That’s not the same!” There was a pause, then, “Be nice, or I’ll talk about all the things you want me to do to you and make you go to bed frustrated, sans techuu.”
Althea let out a tiny barking laugh, “Yes, Ma’am. Though I think that would be a punishment for both of us.” They talked of inconsequential things for a few more minutes before the phone beeped to ask for more money, and they said their goodbyes.
The outside of the Transit station was relatively clean. The armed guards kept away the riff-raff, and small robots scrubbed any graffiti that appeared overnight. She was leaving as the normal morning crowd was starting to show up to head to jobs within the city. Inside the terminal, she knew two or three more busses would be arriving every ten minutes to shuttle their human cargo to work. The area around the transit hub was relatively safe as the local gangs had declared it off-limits. No one wanted to threaten the only way any money flowed into Fallbrook other than criminal enterprises. Besides, at least one person in every gang member’s family rode those buses to work, and unlike the crazier gangs in Pala Mesa or Ridgecrest, the local ones had a modicum of decency.
The streets here were full of one and two-story buildings offering food and services to the local crowds. The only foliage was dry weeds poking through the streets or sidewalks. Older vehicles drove through the streets, burning hydrogen or ethanol, competing for space with pedestrians and the occasional private local bus. The ground fog that had permeated the port was nonexistent. Instead, it was replaced by a haze produced by the machinery and small factories locals had. People headed towards the transit terminal for work, but others wandered about, getting their shops ready for the day.
A group of Los Ojos Muertos was looking at her from across the street. They all had their eyes replaced by the same cybernetics with little skulls where the iris was and wore jackets with Dia de Los Muertos themes. Another group was on her side of the street, the Búhos de Sangre. They all wore their signature red shirts and striped bandanas. A man peeled off the group of red shirt-wearing gang members and approached Althea as she left the safety zone around the business district. He had gold-plated arms and chains, black jeans, a snakeskin belt, and very nice shoes. Slicked back hair and a bushy mustache on his brown face, Elias Tejero, aka Buchon. She blinked and added all of them to her targeting parameters, little red icons highlighted each of them and their possible weaponry listed next to each. She readied her attack protocols and programs to hijack their implants just in case.
“Whoah, whoah, whoah!” Buchon said, holding up his gold-plated hands, “We ain’t gonna jack you, Tayah.” He smiled at her, a single gold tooth in his mouth shining.
She blinked at the name. Oh, right, that’s what they call me. She kept her hand off her gun and tilted her head, “Really? I see two armed groups staring at me intently and carrying enough weaponry to devastate the street.”
“Oh, c’mon, Tayah. It’s me, Buchon. You fixed up the power generator for us two weeks ago,” he said.
A woman from the Los Ojos Muertos was headed across the street, making the traffic stop as she stared the drivers down. “Hey, you don’t listen to that puto, Tayah. We didn’t boost your shit!” she yelled as she was halfway across the street.
Althea blinked and looked back at Buchon. “Boost my shit?” she asked him.
He blanched. “Look, it wasn’t us either,” he said quietly. “But someone took that fucking hambuguesa statue you were making.”
Althea blinked and tilted her head. “My statue?” She had been slowly carving a boulder into a Fess-T-Burger on her way to and from her home over the last two months, but that was just stress relief. Some of the locals had even painted the sections she had finished.
The lady Yasmin Canales, Aka Lil Yaz, reached them and pointed her finger at the man, “You don’t say we took her shit! We don’t touch Tayah, or her shit.” She pulled her hand back before Buchon decided to shoot her for the pointed finger and put a fist out for Althea to bump it, which she did without looking in her direction. Lil Yaz always loved that.
“Please, I am lost,” Althea asked as she looked between them. “Someone has stolen my Fess-T-Burger? Why would anyone want to steal a four-tonne boulder in the shape of a hamburger with no value?”
Buchon spoke up first, “Beats the shit outta me, but someone said a truck pulled up with some corpo-looking pinche cabrons, and they got shovels and a crane to boost it. Old lady Peralta saw it.”
Lil Yaz nodded, “It was all weird and shit, but now there’s a fucking hole in the ground, we gotta fill it in, or someone’s gonna fall in.”
“I shall get a shovel,” Althea said. “I should eat first, though. Maybe I can get a Big Festus now I have been….” She checked her account and froze halfway through the sentence.
Buchon and Lil Yaz looked at her. “Hey Tayah, you ok?” Lil Yaz asked, concern showing on her odd features.
Althea checked again. Her account was frozen for the amount that she had just been paid. She had enough money for a few meals left after paying the bills. She checked again and then Lime Baitoran. An arbitration notification was there. The damn thing had frozen her accounts and stopped her from getting work from them. She scrolled through the other two job-finding apps: ArBeitan and Air Trabajo both had freezes on her getting work.
“I…” she stopped and swallowed. “I seem to have had my accounts frozen and am now forbidden from getting work until the courts arbitrate my case.”