I’m writing to you from my prison cell. They convicted me yesterday of not earning GlobeTech enough money, and the private militia barged into my office and arrested me. They have sentenced me to death. As you know, I cannot plead my case because of my agreement with the corporation when I started working for them. I often wonder if I’d have survived in the wastelands like you. If a life with cheap implants, swords, guns and stealing from mega-corporations and selling things in the nefarious underground would have worked out for me. You called me a ‘corp rat,’ and said I sold out when I took the job, but I’m not you. The job gave me insurance, 3 meals a day, high-grade implants that provided hedonistic pleasure, and security. I doubt I could have traded it in for scrounging and eating bugs, never knowing when someone will put a bullet in your head.
You’re either corp or not in this city, and at least I survived 20 years working, taking my daily dose of pleasure-and-performance-enhancing drugs, enjoying the splendour of virtual havens where I made love to creations even better than the best-looking women, and going on trips to distant galaxies to conduct business in the colonies there.
I have no regrets, except perhaps that you didn’t join me. I don’t even regret hunting you down 5 years ago and slicing you into pieces using the GlobeTech ninjas, my sister. In the end, it’s business. I plug into a dreamjack while I await execution. It fabricates memories of us in a better time, where we work side by side, deceiving other corps and giving the freeloaders what they deserve. Soon, they’ll incorporate my consciousness into a matrix of souls, which will power the AI that fuels many departments in GlobeTech. They’ll harvest my body for parts like I did yours, and they’ll do everything to make sure the system runs smoothly.
Yours,
Jake
Photo by Ray ZHUANG on Unsplash
Ordinary Person 
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