Epilogue

Ten Years Later

Much has changed in Stephanie's life and in my life. Ten eventful years have passed. Stephanie has established herself now in the profession psychologist Paul Gregory suggested to her. She is a practicing slave Advocate and is also called upon to teach classes in the subject. One morning I was an observer watching her teaching a class of new hires for her employer, the Williamson Agency.

"Class", Stephanie began, "when you go to an employer site to perform an audit, your first duty is to prepare a complete inventory of who, at that site, is enslaved or indentured. You will have a list from the state slave registry of who is supposed to be under bondage at that site. You will ask the employer for a list, and you will compare lists. You will physically examine each slave and have each one give you his or her fingerprints and submit to a retina scan. These biometrics provide a secure link between the slave's body and the database of information about him or her. You will compare the biometrics you observed on site with the biometrics from the state slave registry. If you find any person working at the employer site under conditions of bondage whose biometrics don't match official records, you must generate an I-701 form for follow-up by other agency personnel. If any person listed for that site on the state slave registry is not found there, you must generate an I-702 form."

A student's hand went up.

"You mentioned employer site just now", the student began. "Do we only audit business firms? What about slaves owned by wealthy people as house servants?"

"Many of our more successful citizens", she replied, "are fortunate enough to be able to employ either penal slaves or indentured servants in their households. We consider any site where our clients are employed to be an employer site for purposes of our work."

"Stephanie", one of her students asked, "you said earlier when we receive an assignment to audit a certain business, our first visit and most subsequent visits should be unannounced."

"That is right, Melanie" she replied.

"But you also said", the student persisted, "that we should try to develop and maintain a cordial relationship with the employers we audit. Wouldn't things be on a more cordial basis if we showed the employers the consideration of advanced notice so as to minimize the disruptive effect on their business?"

"Yes a cordial relationship is important", Stephanie responded, "if it can be achieved without sacrificing the accuracy of our work. With residential audits we always show the homeowner the courtesy of calling for an appointment at a convenient time. With business audits we should never take the attitude that most businessmen are dishonest and want only to deceive us about working conditions. Honest men and women run most businesses in Capitallia and generally want to deliver good value to their customers and treat their slaves and indentured servants decently and in accordance with the law. There are always going to be exceptions however. That is why surprise must be a standard tactic in our toolkits for business audits."

"How then do we maintain cordiality?" Melanie persisted.

"By showing the employer the courtesy of keeping him informed as to the progress of your investigation, and giving him a chance to ask questions and listening to his side in the event any unfavorable findings turn up in interviews or examinations of his books. I want to stress, however, that by cordiality I do not mean that you should be socializing with the employer over lunch or drinks. Keep it businesslike."

"When we hear allegations", another student asked, "of illegal activities in an interview with a slave or indentured person, how do we protect that person from reprisals by his or her master?"

"Doug" Stephanie responded, "whenever possible we try to obscure from an employer the specific source of such an allegation. Instead we try to independently confirm the truth or falsehood of the allegation. If we confirm it we confront the employer with the evidence we found in confirmation rather than making him aware of the original complaint. He is still afforded the courtesy of an opportunity to rebut that objective evidence however."

"But surely", Doug persisted, "there will be times when it would be obvious to an employer who the whistleblower must have been. What then?"

"In those cases", she replied, "we sometimes take a slave into protective custody until the issue can be adjudicated. If the complaint proves valid, the employer may be ordered by the court to divest his ownership of that slave in order to prevent any future reprisals."

"When do we break for lunch?" the youngest member of her class asked.

A number of interesting things happened during the first ten years of our marriage.

First, a few years into our marriage some very good fortune came my way. Masterson had finally built his new manufacturing plant in Brazil, eager to take advantage of the recently legalized chattel slavery and private prosecutions in that country. Masterson had so much need of my services to staff the new plant that I opened an office in Rio de Janeiro. My contract basically called for me to find victims of crimes and assist those victims financially and otherwise to bring successful private prosecutions against criminals who could then be enslaved as punishment.

Many crime victims lacked either the financial wherewithal or the legal sophistication to do all this on their own. My firm's assistance to them came with conditions. They had to agree up front that if the prosecution were successful that the convicted person would become the property of Masterson Automotive Group with a fixed amount, previously agreed upon, being the compensation to the crime victim. Naturally the financial and other assistance was only provided if the Steelforth Agency determined that the criminal would be someone Masterson Automotive would want to own, or alternatively someone my agency could put up for auction and earn a substantial return on the investment that had been made to secure that conviction.

The second memorable event was that a time came when Tom Jenkins had served out five more years of his twenty-year penal enslavement and it was time for the early release Stephanie had promised him. She signed the manumission order with the provision that he would be on parole for another ten years and subject to plethysmograph sexual function testing every six months. In the event a test showed a relapse to unacceptable sexual ideation, he would be in violation of parole and his slavery would be reinstated for the balance of the original twenty-year sentence. She also paid him his manumission fee of $35,000 as required by law. She had earned ten times that amount in rentals of his services while he was a slave on loan to Masterson. After he was set free Greg Masterson put him back on the payroll at a generous salary as a free employee, doing pretty much the same work he had been doing as a slave the previous seven years.

The next development was that Stephanie learned that both Erin and Kim completed their apprenticeships and became qualified as journeymen in the robot car repair trade. They had both been quite humbled by their forced sexual service during their apprenticeships. Stephanie was satisfied that they both had a whole new attitude, so she decided to give them both early releases from slavery. They both got good jobs as free employees at repair firms. Last I heard Erin was studying for his citizenship exam and had saved up enough for his first year of citizenship taxes.

A fourth development was that Harold Vick, the lawyer who had been a fellow slave with Stephanie at Masterson Automotive and who had been enslaved for embezzling client funds entrusted to him, had finally completed his term of slavery and been manumitted. He discovered no law firm would hire him for the trust work he used to do, but he was able to secure a position as an attorney at a much lower salary working with old Mr. Maxwell at the "Slave-No-More" agency. It would be five more years after that before he could re-apply for citizenship.

The fifth event was that Jeff Duncan completed his ten years of slavery at Vixter Enterprises. He was manumitted and Ms. Vixter paid him his manumission fee of $50,000 as required by law. She offered that he might continue as her Human Resources Manager as a free employee. The salary offer was stingy and he declined the offer. He had kept up his skills in the field through his years of slave service. Last we heard he had found another salaried position with another firm.

I have enjoyed ten happy years of marriage with Stephanie. We have lived together in a very large mansion out on Long Island. Our elegant home is surrounded by beautifully manicured lawns, has a breathtaking view of the Atlantic Ocean, and includes a grand ballroom, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, a gymnasium, and a fully functional auditorium where we have sometimes put on live concerts and dance performances. So large an estate of course required live in servants and we hired quite a few. Servants come cheap in Capitallia. Our servants have mostly lived in a detached building connected to the main house by a tunnel. We haven't had to worry much about what the servants might see or overhear of our personal lives because each night at the end of their shifts they were mind wiped of any such personal knowledge concerning us.