To make it easier for dereggers to escape oppression, several galactic traders begin to offer to build trading ports on deregger places that "will guarantee a great profit for the leadership" because the leaders won't have to pay for building the facility, and part of the fees the trading groups agree to pay for maintaining the places as well. Odd, though, the "security", while seeming to do their job, sure love to slack off! -- Lessons
The CRC had a loophole that helped immensely in helping oppressed Dereggers escape their tyrannical corporate overlords. So long as those overlords turned a profit per unit, they didn't actually give a crap about what happened to their human resources. Thus, the CEO's never questioned why the Galactics offered to build Alliance Standard Trading Stations in their space for free and then leased staff from the polities at an inflated price. It was a sweetheart deal and everyone knew the one about gift horses and mouths.
Fortunately for their citizens, they've forgotten about the one about Greeks and gifts. As the astute may have already guessed, all the stations the Alliance installed were Trojan Horses of the best kind. Instead of smuggling soldiers in, they were smuggling the trapped out. It will be quite some years before they realise this.
Indentured Servant 24601404 kept his head down and stayed out of trouble. When the CEOs told him to get in the shuttle, he got in the shuttle. Crammed in like the zardeens of legend with his fellow indentured. Standing room only. Please wait your turn to breathe. Don't ask questions, do what you're told, and pray you don't break a rule you've never heard of. Believe, implicitly, that if you keep your head down and work until you drop, that your ship will come in and you'll finally make it as one of the big shots.
They were ushered into the new trading station as loaders and recycling sorters. Counted off into tunnels by a neater IS with a clipboard. The first shock was the warm water and effective soap in the showers. The second shock was the full physical at no cost. The third was the accommodations. He got three rooms to himself. Public area, private area, and a garden that was already full of food plants.
"There's gotta be some mistake," objected 24601404. "This is a palace."
"These are Standard Single accommodations according to Galactic Alliance laws. The station was made by the Alliance, so you have to put up with it." The IS made some notes. "Would you like to register a complaint?"
"Am I allowed to say no?"
"Yes."
"Then I'm not complaining." The sleep nook was not just adult size, but it had room to move around in it. It had room to stretch in. So did the personal hygiene booth. The biological waste facilites were as comfortable as such facilities could get whilst also remaining functional and relatively easy to use[1].
There was even free entertainment, including an education channel that paid him for watching it. Not believing his luck, he dialed up the orientation documentary: Your New Habitat and You.
He could also learn how to cook the food plants in his garden. For Minutes against his debt. At this rate, he could be free of his indentures in a month or two. Even without working for the ludicrously small hours that Alliance law allowed him. Flakk, working under Alliance law gave him unheard of wages.
At these exchange rates, he could be free in weeks.
With that realisation came the question, And then what? He could make a million Quatloos. A billion. Buy an island. Buy a planet. Buy people.
...buy... people... like him.
Would he keep his former neighbours like he had lived? No. He wanted to treat them to a place like this. Just the private space would have held him and nineteen others. None of them would have been allowed to keep so much as a spot of mildew in that space.
He couldn't be like the bosses he had worked under. It... it wouldn't be right. Not when places like this existed for free. He didn't need to slave and sweat for every conscious hour just for a some snatched time hunched up stiffly in a festering alcove trying to at least snatch some rest. Or the same for a meal that tasted like it came directly out of waste recycling with minimal filters to take the toxins out.
His first apple convinced him. Everyone on his world deserved to live like this.
So he worked off his indentures like a good citizen. Learned all he could absorb while he was at it. Applied for Galactic Alliance citizenship, and contributed a share of his Time towards freeing other working stiffs like him.
His former home didn't even try to contact him when he flew off for other work in other spaces. They didn't know him by his new name. They only knew him by his number, which would no longer find him.
He was Human Jo Freeman, now. Freed by the belly of the Trojan Horse.
[1] Nobody approaches the lo-grav accommodations for waste elimination with confidence.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / EvrenKalinbacak]
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