Potentially a darker storyline than my previous series. Like when reading any work on here, productive comments really help in knowing if you enjoy our work or if there are any ways I could improve. Suggestions for future works also welcome! ; )
Enjoy...
In the last three decades, the wealth divide across the globe has grown exponentially. Governments became increasingly powerless as international businesses could simply move their money abroad if countries did something they didn't like. With the conflict between the west and Russia pushing the country into poverty, the few left with money knew they had to do something drastic to avoid falling into poverty themselves.
With lots of internal turmoil causing a new political party to take control, the war ended and everyone hoped for a new dawn and integration with the outside world. Instead, what blossomed was something far darker than had ever existed before. With their borders remaining almost completely closed off and their economy sliding into the dark ages, people were desperate to get any work they could.
Desperation allowed for the rich to employ people to do whatever they wanted for less and less money. Within five years of their new regime, people were working for the rich simply for basic food and accommodation. The rich claimed regions of land like it was a couple of thousand years before and the peasants had to farm their land.
The country became self-sufficient, buying nothing from the outside world. They did however officially export one product, and unofficially another. They continued to supply oil and gas, whose prices continued to rise. They also started selling slaves. Although this soon became common knowledge around the world and remained illegal elsewhere, so many countries were dependent on their petroleum that no one did anything.
Over a decade after the new regime took over, the country started exporting a couple of other products. Without the stringent human rights most of the rest of the world stuck by, Russia was able to make technological developments that were beyond the availability of the others. At first that allowed them to develop new drugs.
With foreign money going into the country and little to no money leaving, the country started to recover its economy. This didn't reflect in the way of life for any but the rich though, as all the money from abroad went straight to them. Another decade went by and they started rebuilding their factories.
Human rights groups started getting angry at the way countries were encouraging trade with Russia despite its lack of ethics. The rich however, realised that they could learn some things from the Russians. Soon, laws started to relax testing of drugs on people. At first it was paid volunteers, then prisoners and eventually people on benefits. With robots replacing more of the workforce, more people became reliant on benefits.
Two centuries after the wealth divide started growing, less than 50,000 people now share over 90% of the globe's wealth. To be on benefits in my country, you need to get onto drug trials, participate in scientific studies or have been employed in the last six months. With over half the population unemployed, it is a fight to tick one of these boxes. With almost no requirements to run a medical trial apart from paying the government, getting involved in drug trials or medical studies is becoming ever more dangerous.
Although it had been decades since official stats had been released, from my experience, about 20% of drug tests have bad side effects. I had even known of a few people to have died shortly after their tests. I was once bed-bound for a week after taking a drug that was supposed to make your skin more elastic and it didn't have any effect on my skin. Supposedly the idea was that pregnant women wouldn't have as many stretch marks or someone getting breast or butt implants would look more natural. I have always managed to stay employed, only ever taking part in order to get some extra money as it was so hard to come by.
School had changed dramatically, even from my parents' day. We still had exams at 16, these were predominantly to select our best subjects, which we then continued for another two years before our main exams. To solve overpopulation, people who were in the bottom 50% of results in this second round of exams got made permanently infertile. Obviously, like all laws I will ever mention, this didn't apply to the rich. The top 20% got an extra three years of education whilst the next 60% had to go find work.
The bottom 20% was where no one wished to fall. They fell into the same category as criminals, essentially government property. Whilst officially slavery was still illegal, it was considered enough payment for people who fell into this category to be given food and accommodation. Criminals were required to perform well in order for each year to count towards their sentence, the average person being 'enslaved' for twice the sentence length. Meanwhile, those who are less inelegant, or simply poor at exams, are 'government employees' until they are fifty.
Officially referred to as labour, the general public simply referred to these people as slaves given that is the term for people working and not actually being paid. To further degrade and humiliate these people, they were each chipped and given nose rings to show their status. It also meant that employers, or owners, couldn't mistake others for these people. Although they had some more rights than animals, they could be used as test subjects, kept in living spaces that only needed to be safe and sanitary, and could be made to do almost any work with only one day off a week. So essentially, they couldn't be raped, tortured, or killed.
Sadly, I am not one of the rich so I have to work in order to avoid being "enslaved". I work in a science lab trying to develop a drug that slows ageing. So far, we can make the heart last longer and skin age slower, but the rest of the body still struggles, and the mismatch actually results in earlier deaths. This we found out the hard way.
With no real success for over a decade, I'm not overly shocked when Sarah, one of my colleagues, comes to me saying they heard a rumour that our team would be shutting down soon. Without any actual successes on my resume at almost 30, it will be hard to find a new job. While going through my own personal panic at this news, I have to keep a brave face and support my friend as her younger sister, Annie, had failed her final school exams a week ago. Having been on track to be in the top 20%, no one expected the 18-year-old to be enslaved. It never rains but it pours as they say.
What made it worse was Sarah didn't even get to say goodbye to her sister as she had already been employed/bought. It normally took a month or so between getting grades and the government employing or selling them. Sometimes though, a rich person would visit a school in the lead up or even during exams and make a claim on someone to the government should that person fail. I can't say I am too surprised by the news she had been preselected as despite her intelligence making it unlikely she would fail her exams, like her older sister, she had a beautiful curvy body. What did surprise me though, was that she had failed. Having spoken to her a couple of times, she seemed as smart as her older sister who, like me, had been in the top 20% of her year.
