“You sent four people to gun me down.”
“Yes. We thought you’d like to die doing what you most loved, fighting for bloody survival.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Tania?”
“There’s no need to be rude,” she says, sounding genuinely offended.
I blink the call away again. The chips under my skin linked to my brain are convenient in so many ways, but times like these, a girl starts to wonder if she should have voluntarily irrevocably jacked herself into a network controlled by corporate state interests.
I can’t stay here, and when I say here, I mean I can’t stay on this fucking planet. There’s nowhere to hide. Nowhere they will not find me. Right now, they’re probably sending a dozen more agents to my location.
All I’ve got to work with is a knowledge of secret, terrible, illegal, and immoral things.
I know where the aliens snatch women from this world.
And that’s where I go.
Getting the hell out of Earth’s orbit was only the first step. I breathed a very real sigh of relief when I realized we’d left the solar system. The neural implants stopped humming almost as soon as we left orbit, but I was worried they’d somehow call the ship I’ve stowed away on back before they got far enough away to be out of communication range.
The ship contains an export load of high quality ladies bound for some distant lady slave auction. That’s a secret, of course. But nothing’s real back on Earth anymore, so nobody believes anything or does anything. They loaded these women onto the spaceship in plain view of cameras and people complained about it and then it was all fine anyway.
That’s probably a cynical take. If it didn’t matter what they did, I’d never have had a job in the first place. It’s more that what matters isn’t what people think matters. Public opinion isn’t worth anything anymore. But corporate opinion reigns supreme.
This might seem a strange ship for someone like me to sneak onto, but I needed out and off and away at all costs. The world as I know it isn’t safe for me. In addition to being burned by the Sudo Corporation, I’ve caused some problems. I’m on some radars. I have a few prices on my head.
I need to get away to a corner of the universe where nobody knows me, and I guess, if it comes right down to it, I’m not above the concept of seducing some poor alien idiot to get a fresh start.
The ship docks after what feels like years, but is actually only a week. Aliens have much better tech than humans do. They’ve given us enough to continue to survive even after what we did, sort of like an older sibling letting a dropout little brother sleep in the potting shed until he sorts himself out.
They can traverse lightyears of space at speeds we can only dream of. Meanwhile, we are living in floating bunkers, dreaming of the world we’ve turned into a dumpster fire.
The girls who have been sold are kept in the hold. I am hiding out in one of the storage bays. Fortunately they’re also transporting some plants, which means they have to keep the temps at a reasonable level and also provide water. I’m not even particularly hungry because the plants they’re transporting are bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, oranges, grapes, and more. It’s basically a vegan week. By the time we dock, I’ve never felt so healthy.
The aliens who have been trading us are a sort of slimy wet species who mist themselves down often when in low humidity environments. They slide around on one big squishy foot. Sort of like slugs, but with arms and big soulful eyes. They’re adorable. And they’re evil human traders.
I wait until the girls have been unloaded. Then they open the bay with the plants in it, planning to just wheel the trees off. I sprint out as fast as I can. I don’t know where I’m going, I just know that I am going.
“Stop!”
Someone yells the word in modern Earth language. I ignore it, naturally.
I still have a gun. Several guns, actually. I’m trying not to use them. I don’t want to draw that kind of attention right away.
We’re on a big station, or a planet, or maybe an asteroid. Actually I can’t tell because when you land in a port anywhere in the universe, all you can really see is the port. There’s got to be an atmosphere, because I can see a sky. And there’s got to be enough oxygen, because I haven’t passed out and died without noticing.
I rush through crowds of aliens. This is the first time I’ve ever seen so many non-human persons. They come in a range of shapes, sizes, and textures. They do, however, all seem to share a similar attitude to chaos that happens around them—they ignore it.
I am so relieved to realize that nobody seems to be actively chasing me. The traders have the cargo they thought they did. They’re not out any real product. They are down a few bananas and whatnot, but it’s not worth hunting me down for.
I find a place to hide for a bit, in a narrow alley between two shops. This place has a lot of commerce going on. It also has a lot of aliens who are doing a lot of things they shouldn’t do. Back on Earth, in the floating territories, there are places where the corporates have complete control and there are other nooks and crannies, sometimes a few blocks wide, sometimes independent floating islands owned by the mega-rich or the mega-criminal. They’re not safe, but they are the only places to get away from the ever present surveillance.
This port reminds me of those places. I frequented them often back on Earth. I know what the rules are. Nobody wants trouble, but everybody is looking for it. Everyone is faintly guilty and rebelling against various authorities.
There won’t be any help for me here. I’ll be seen as a commodity to be snatched up sooner or later. If I present myself as weak, they’ll treat me like it. I need to get some money, and I need to align myself with some entities who can help me orient myself to this new reality.
I’m going to have to get a new job. Corporate espionage paid well until I was burned. My employer hung me out to dry with no warning whatsoever. My mind flashes back to my fancy apartment where I lived for months with a white rug that actually stayed white. You need to have a very particular lifestyle to be able to maintain white furnishings. It was definitely a flex, and I was proud of it. I lived like a fucking queen on Earth, and I want to keep doing so here.
When a good hour passes, and I am actually satisfied nobody is coming for me, I start to look for opportunities. There’s a bar across the street from me, thronging with all kinds of aliens. I decide to go there and try to keep my ears open and eyes peeled.
