There are devices and a group of men, both known as desiccators, that are central to this brutal society. They are essential to urban civilization in its modern form, and thus every city of any appreciable size must have at least one. Those who this device is used on shrivel up until, totally dried out, they become a living mummy with a complexion akin to leather or jerky. This doesn't, however, kill them. Instead, they become stiff and slow, as if severely arthritic, and suffer from severe pain and discomfort. Not all effects are wholly negative however, they also lose the need to drink, eat, or sleep to survive. They become the perfect underclass, machine-like slaves who work twenty-four-seven without the need for breaks to rest or any sustenance at all. In addition, they are too slow and weak, too atrophied, to physically resist or leverage force in protest of the deplorable conditions in which they are forced to labor. The desiccators thus transfigure water from life into money. The poorest segment of society, the day laborers earning minimum wage and crushed under inescapable debt inherited from their parents since birth are forced to undergo desiccation in order to sell their own fluids and to escape the need to pay for basic necessities. Saving money by going without these things, by giving up basic human necessities, is necessary for these people. They can’t even keep up with paying off the interest on their debts if they need to pay for food, water, or a place to sleep as well. If they fail to pay up an enforcer will kill them, and if they try to pay off their debt without undergoing desiccation they’ll die from thirst, starvation, or exhaustion. Nobody is paid a living wage, the only way to live off of it is to give up actually living in favor of just surviving as a shriveled-up husk. They must give up drinking water in order to spend it instead. Desiccators dress in white climate control suits which look like a cross between a dung beetle's exoskeleton and an astronaut’s suit. The tool which is the desiccators namesake is a metal mask, with an appearance very similar to Mycenaean death masks, placed over the face of the target and connected by a corrugated hose to a blue balloon-like sac that inflates as water from inside the body is drained into it, like a big water balloon. These sacs become perfect spheres when fully inflated and detached from feeder hoses, and are rolled around by desiccators like a dung beetle and its haul. At full size these sacs are larger than cars and streets are built with curved indentations to allow them to be rolled from place to place in a controlled fashion.
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