“Yay, Mom, are we going to the Zoo today?” Frito asked his mother.

“Yes, Frito! We are going to see your sister!” Jane answered. Frito was a fresh-faced, red-headed boy who looked so much like his older sister. He really looked a great deal like her in the face.

“Oh boy, I can’t wait to see Sissy,” Lexus said. She and Frito were about the same age. Lexus had long blonde hair and was adorably precocious.

Today Jane would take her kids to visit the Central City Zoo. Central City is one of seven designated domed Archologies. It was built on the ruins of the old Central City that was once New York City. It is a planned community with spacious gardens, sidewalks, and ideal mass transit. There are adequate schools, shopping, and the air is clean and fresh.

Less than 1% of the world’s population has the luxury of living in this city. It is considered a privilege to have citizenship rights to even enter the archology as a free person. Jane’s family has lived here for five generations in a stately recreation of George Washington’s Mount Vernon home.

We’re in Central City, the State’s Capital. The year is 2276, and mankind has progressed beyond automation. The industrial revolution brought machines and technologies to reduce work, but it also brought pollution.

You will not see automation inside Central City. All of that is stored in Industrial centers that are always out of sight of the citizens. Human servants and slaves, however, are commonplace.

The majority of the world is now covered in massive mega-cities that make the movie Blade Runner’s darkened cityscape look quaint by comparison. A single state government has eliminated war and now governs all aspects of society.

Housing centers routinely hold a million centers in a single building. People usually are born in the center, educated there, and work in the same massive complex.

Mankind developed beyond simple automation and explored genetics and cybernetics. They found that it was cheaper to augment humans to serve specific purposes than it was to create machines and computers for labor.

The zoo features artificial creatures approximating the appearance and behavior of the natural ones from Earth’s once-thriving environment.

These efficiencies did not come without cost. It was cheaper to purchase genetic materials and repurpose them for labor than it was to pay salaries. Wage stagnation had reached a point where many were forced into high debt.

As mankind progressed, they also decimated the world’s ecosystems. 99.99% of all wildlife has been eradicated. The Zoo that Jane is visiting today has been modified and filled with approximations of animals that were once populous on Earth. There are educational kiosks that recorded most of the animals before their extinction, but seeing them live even at this Zoo is a privilege reserved for the rare few citizens of Capital City.

In 2070, the State Human Resources Department began a program allowing debtors with significant debt and criminals to be repurposed as what some may call “Slave Labor.”

Augmentations and mind-control triggers were placed into this labor force to keep them docile. They were modified for specific functions and programmed to obey at any cost. This workforce became known as augments. They were superior in every way to artificial intelligence and robotic workers.

They were cheaper to produce and maintain. They were also able to perform functions that robots simply do not do well such as provide companionship and pleasure.

In a post-scarcity world, there was not much need for unskilled manual labor.

The slaves were primarily repurposed as entertainment. Courtesans, Sex-bots, Human pets, were quite common. Those who were not attractive could be assigned menial tasks that no one else wanted to do or assigned to high-risk assignments in the security field.

Slave labor became commonplace and society’s morals waned. Popular game shows brought back gladiatorial games where nude contestants fought to the death in stadiums. Game shows where slaves were forced to play sadistic games for the entertainment of the masses were quite popular. These game shows were broadcast in all languages in state of the art 3-D Holo-vid channels that could be directly sent to ocular implants of the audience. It gave them the impression they were in the stadium watching the event live.

However, in time a growing desire for organic slaves has emerged amongst the wealthy elites. There are two classes of human slaves. “Augments” are people who must be controlled through traditional mind control techniques and given triggers to perform certain functions. “Organics” are more highly prized. These are people who have voluntarily or through other means are controlled and must obey simply because they choose to do so. Only the wealthiest individuals have organic slaves.

Jane escorts her children outside to a tram. She summoned it using the ocular implant she and all citizens have implanted at birth. The Tram resembles a large golf cart. The weather is climate controlled and perfect today as it is every day. There is no need for doors on the Tram as there are never any traffic accidents thanks to the city transportation network.

A topless woman is integrated into the hood of the vehicle. She is fairly attractive and probably about twenty years old. She is an augment and looks straight ahead with the empty-eyed stare of someone who has no concerns for themselves or their modesty. Her arms are permanently bound behind her back, but she would not use them even if she was not bound. The crack of her ass is just visible above the hood-line of the Tram.

“Take us to the city zoo,” Jane sits in the front seat with her kids. She presses a button that sends an electrical shock through a dildo inserted in the anus of the girl embedded in the Tram. The girl barely notices and feels no pleasure or pain from the shock. Her neural network has been integrated into the Tram, and her brain is used to power the Tram’s navigation system. There has never been an accident in over seventeen years on the Central City master road grid due to the redundancies of using a human brain for navigational computation.

The Tram whisks them away along a lovely cobbled street resembling a Parisian sidewalk. There are artificial trees that look almost real and to people who have lived here all their lives this is all they know of trees. The wind blows hard against the girl’s nipples and they grow hard with excitement. Her purpose is to be a tram, and she only feels fulfillment when people ride in her Tram. She smiles and begins to look normal.

“You will really like the Zoo, Ma’am,” the girl says. She sounds very natural in her tone of communication. Her emotional state returns as she becomes aware of her surroundings while the Tram is in motion.

“Tram silent mode,” Jane has no interest in engaging with the girl. She zaps her again with the electric butt plug.

“Mommy, that was mean!” Lexus is indignant. “Why do you always turn off the trams!”

“I have no interest in talking to a tram, Lexus. We can talk if you like, though,” Jane says.

“Can we see the Leopards right away?” Lexus asks. Frito wants to see the Gazelles first. They begin to bicker back and forth.

“No, we are going to start at the front of the zoo and walk the entire length of the park. Just have fun today and relax,” Jane tells her kids.

The Tram silently treads to the front of the Zoo. The front of the Zoo is an homage to Tiergarten Schönbrunn the world’s oldest zoo. It is magnificently detailed, and there is no need for parking due to the efficient design of the transportation and delivery system.

They are dropped off in the front of the zoo. An older man is naked in the front of the zoo. He has gray body hair and a beard. He looks like he might have once been a college professor. “Hi, I am your guide, would you like me to escort you into the Zoo. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have about our animals,” he says.

“No, I don’t think so,” Jane says. The guide is an augment. He has the same dead-eyes of the tram girl. His pre-programmed warm greeting is simply an automated trigger he repeats any time a new family arrives at the zoo.

“Oh, please, mommy! He looks like a nice guide,” Lexus pleads.

“We’ve been to the Zoo plenty of times. We can find our way around,” Jane says pragmatically. They walk briskly past the naked man. He repeats the same phrase to the next family that walks up. He gets an immediate reaction when they select him. Another guide is sent out of a small hut in the nude to replace him when he does.

There is no need to purchase tickets. The ocular implant in their eyes take care of that. It tracks them at all times. Jane pays the entrance fee simply by looking at the entrance sign and accepting the terms and conditions.

They walk past the various food vendors and stores at the front of the zoo. There are naked men and women who serve as kiosks. A naked woman with dark skin is being roasted over a fire. Her skin is fire resistant, but she is clearly sweating. She has a number of sharp spikes in her skin with savory roasted meat on them. It isn’t real meat, though. Most animals have been eradicated. This meat is artificial protein grown in a vat but to the citizens of Central City is all they have ever known.

“I have Neu-Bacon, Tuscan Steak, and Roast Protosaur,” the augment hawks her wares. She is a living food dispenser and nothing more. DNA samples of various animals are used as the basis to create these meats – no one alive today remembers what the original meat tasted like.

Some say the Dinosaur meat tastes exactly like Chicken. If only they had ever tasted real Chicken before they went extinct in 2158 due to an unprecedented CV-57 avian flu.

The kids ask for something to eat.

“Fine,” Jane purchases the meat just as she did the tickets. She looks at the woman and using the implant pays for three kebobs. The kids grab the skewers and remove them from the woman.

She heals almost instantly, and the wounds close before any blood is lost. The skewers are hot, and the meat is delicious.

“Don’t you ever feel sorry for Augments like that?” Frito asked his mother as he swallowed a bite of food.

“No, she probably did something bad or got into heavy debt. She probably won’t even remember she had to endure this when she finishes her service,” the mom shrugged. She’s grown up all of her life around slaves and has been taught not to pity them.

There were people who used to be outraged about the injustices and humiliations that the slaves had to endure. However, most of them were adjusted by the State Human Resources departments centuries ago.

“I think I would be embarrassed if people from my school could see my butthole while I roasted over a fire,” Lexus joked. She scrunched her nose and laughed at the thought.

“Well then, don’t get in trouble or heavy debt when you grow up, Lexus!” Jane warned her daughter.

The Zoo habitats consisted of carefully re-constructed ecosystems that were self-contained microcosms of what was once naturally occurring earth environments. There was an artic zoo that was chilled to the perfect temperature to resemble the conditions on the artic before climate change melted the glaciers. A pristine ice-covered world has been recreated for the viewing pleasure of zoo visitors.

Inside, the viewing center, there are educational kiosks that feature holograms of what actual polar bears looked like and how they behaved. There is a naked woman attached to a pole.

She has a spike inserted deep into her anus. Touching her nipples will wake her up for her sleep, and she is programmed with all information about this environment and the animals that once inhabited the artic.

There is another woman who was face down in a container. A large funnel is sticking out of her ass. This is a trash receptacle. The kids gladly toss their empty skewers into the funnel. Someone will come later and clean them out. The grease from the meat drips down the funnel into the augmented slave’s asshole cavity. The cavity has been reinforced and stretched to accommodate liquids and run off from the garbage container.

It is chilly in the hallways that cut through this first exhibit. The naked woman’s nipples are extremely hard.

However, inside the glass enclosures, the temperature is much lower. A polar bear can be seen frolicking and chasing a block of ice with an apple inside of it. The block of ice is floating in frosty clear water. The polar bear seems happy and unaware that the visitors are watching it’s playful attempts to get at the apple.

The actual polar bear has been extinct for centuries. This is a close approximation to a real one.

A woman has white fur grafted to her naked body. She is on all fours and has been given large teeth and claws similar to a polar bear. She has been augmented to behave just as polar bears might have in the wild. She will live out most of her life in this frosty environment as entertainment for spectators.

The next exhibit is the marine biome. The family is able to walk through an interactive display resembling a large aquarium with many hallways and corridors.

Overfishing and pollution has long since destroyed any possibility of the return of fish to the dark seas of Earth. However, here they have recreated the coral reefs and exotic flora that once covered 70% of the earth’s surface.