Chapter 32: Robbing Peter

Peter was confused and frightened. As he regained consciousness he recalled his last waking moments. Peter had taken the bus from the Governor Grimes Indentured Servant Dormitories to his workplace as he did every morning from Monday to Saturday. He got off the bus, checked through Security, and collected his office key card. Upstairs, Peter made coffee and started the daily office routine by booting up his data system and scanning reports.

Lieutenant Lester Boron was was more agitated than normal when that federal marshal entered the office. Boron looked around the room, located Peter, snarled some words that Peter couldn't quite remember. The intervening period between that morning and now had the quality of a nightmare--one Peter wasn't able to wake up from.

"Peter," a woman's voice said. Peter opened one eye, then both. The woman was gray haired and chubby and somewhere in her 60's. "I'm Nurse Shelley. You are in the veterans hospital--it was the only safe place to bring you. How do you feel?"

"Mistress, I am fine," Peter lied even though his stomach churned and his head throbbed.

"I don't like it when you lie to me, Peter," Nurse Shelly said. "I can tell by your implants that you are in pain, that you are frightened. Tell me how an indentured servant came to be fitted with bio digital implants."

"Mistress, I work for a government agency and implants protect agency proprietary information," Peter said. He tried to swallow but his throat was dry.

"Drink this," Nurse Shelley handed Peter a plastic glass with a straw in it. The glass contained water. Nurse Shelley helped Peter sit up enough to drink it. "All of it. Then I'm giving you some pills and some more water."

After taking the pills, the tired indentured servant laid back on the pillow. A subjective moment later he was woken up.

"You have a visitor," Nurse Shelley said.

"Peter," Lester Boron hesitated, then rephrased, "Mr. Louis, you are in the Witness Protection Program as of two days ago under the orders of the Attorney General of the Republic of Capitallia. You were illegally indentured 19 months ago, Mr. Louis, and so were many other unfortunates. You thought that you had run up a gambling debt, but that was a false memory implanted in you so that you would volunteer for indenture. The Federal Marshal's Service needed someone with your background but our budget didn't cover hiring a lawyer, not even on a part-time basis. We even were restricted to hiring only Type B labor because the Federal Labor Board had limited the number of free person jobs here at the Reno office. You were a bargain that the Federal Marshal's Service just couldn't pass up and your indenture documents were in order. So until a few days ago you were working as our para-legal, helping federal marshals prepare the many documents we need to enforce the law. We had no idea that you were a crime victim until last week.