"You are a breaker!"
Sam tried to calm his new friend before the Butler came to see why they were so loud. The punishment wasn't bad the last time it happened, they were just sent to their rooms without finishing dinner, but it was Sam's experience that if you have to be punished for the same thing twice then the punishments start to get worse. And he didn't want to see what was next.
Since meeting nearly seven mornings ago, the two boys spent what little free time they had together. The majority of each day was spent attending to their duties as assigned around the manor. After breakfast, Sam would head into the kitchen. Sometimes Sam wondered if his new friend could be right, that everyone accepted their jobs willingly. He couldn't remember doing so, though. And he couldn't imagine leaving his family behind unless there was a good reason, of which he had none.
Freetime was mostly meal times, but the interactions were welcome and looked forward to. Back home, Sam didn't talk much with the other kids. They were too serious all the time, and Sam felt an itch that made him want to poke fun at things. Sometimes, he would converse with the pater's boy. That didn't always turn out well. Waking drunk in the pig pen was not the only trouble the two had gotten into.
Mostly, the boy, Chiro was his name, tried to figure out what area of Io Sam came from. Sam's head spun trying to understand all of the names and...well... everything the other boy spoke about. But as the days went on, he started to feel like maybe the other boy was not blessed. He might be telling the truth, at least about some things.
His belief started when Chiro showed him a lump behind his ear and had him feel the bit of metal that was embedded under the skin. Chiro said it was a tracking and data chip that his parents had inserted the year before. Before they died in an explosion, and he was sent off to the orphanage, that is. He had tried to explain to Sam that none of his family could take him in even if they wanted to because of something to do with politics, and extortion, and a bunch of other words that Sam didn't understand.
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The orphanage was alright, he said, but they never got enough credits to feed all the mouths. They kicked out kids for the slightest infractions, as had happened to Chiro just last week. Sam couldn't help the curiosity that was tickling his brain every time they talked. He asked what Chiro was kicked out for, which he had figured out meant he was expelled from the town. When the other boy said it was for making out with another kid after lights out, even though the kids were supposed to keep a distance from each other at all times, he said so bitterly. "I was the only one kicked out. The other boy was headmaster's favorite, and I bet they were doing stuff together, too..."
Sam had shifted uneasily in his seat. Kissing another boy wasn't a sin, per say, but boys couldn't make babies with other boys, so they couldn't help to expand the town population. It was no wonder they were in trouble when they were caught. Selfishness was a sin. He told Chiro that and obliged when the boy asked to explain what that meant. Chiro got a weird look on his face, like he was thinking hard about something, but he let it drop.
That lasted until the next day, when Chiro slapped his hand down on the table and exclaimed, "You are a breaker!". Sam got him settled down, and when the butler did not seem to have heard what was said and only gave them a cold scowl, they continued in whispers.
"Hah oh, how did you get off your planet? I thought your people were not allowed to have any contact with the outside?"
Sam furrowed his brow, confused. "What do you mean? What is a breaker?"
"We don't get taught much in schools about them. The confeds don't want anyone else to get the idea of breaking off. A few hundred cycles back, a big group of people decided they didn't want to pay taxes and protections anymore, so they went off and colonized a group of unmapped planets somewhere out in the dark. They wanted to build their own empire, but word has it that they couldn't get it going, and they eventually regressed to no tech when their tech failed. The books say that contact fell about fifty cycles back when their comms broke and they didn't have the materials to fix them, but everyone bets that at least one of the confed families are keeping track of them still. Did your planet make some kind of deal to get people jobs off planet? No one is going to believe me when I tell them back on Io that I met a ready truth real breaker!"
Sam didn't answer, because he didn't have any answers to give. It all sounded like nonsense,but he kept thinking about the time he got punished for asking about the weird materials of Master Douglas' house...