Chapter 5: The Sweatshop

The Sweatshop

"Sweatshop" remains a curse word in modern Capitallia. It is only muttered out of the hearing of the "bosses" because the rejoinder is "you're FIRED!" The alternative to the sweatshop staffed by Legal Resident labor is slave labor, instituted first in Capitallia's constitution of 2089. Yes, slavery was contemplated in the old United States—an amendment repealing the 13th Amendment was six states short of ratification when Aztlan and Capitallia seceded from the United States.

What is a sweat shop? On a purely descriptive level a sweat shop is a small, independent contractor that involves minimum investment in infrastructure and the workers get the bare minimum wages that the sweat shop owner can get away with. This minimum investment includes minimum workers who are worked as long as productivity permits. Even slaves cannot be worked 24 hours a day for 7 days a week. Isolation and powerlessness mean that the workers do not have any means to improve their situation. Labor unions hated sweat shops because the independent contractor was too much labor union investment for too little control over the labor supply. Children were used because they'd work for less and were easier to control than adults—and Big Labor battered Big Business with the Child Labor lever long after children were prohibited from working for pay.

But children would be exploited in unpaid community service ... that was okay.

In the bad old days of the 19th and 20th Centuries there were worse things than the sweat shop. Mining was dirty and dangerous. Unemployed children would steal, perform hard manual labor in the streets, hustled newspapers and hawked liquor and tobacco. Children were prostitutes, too. The worst though was farm labor, especially farm labor for the migrant worker. During the 20th and 21st Centuries most of that migrant labor was Latino and is part of the reason for Aztlan's hatred of the United States—and of Capitallia. Despite the clean-cut image of working on the farms in the healthy open air, the reality was working knee deep in animal waste products and later with toxic chemicals, working from the pre-dawn twilight to the last bit of usable light after sundown with few breaks no matter how extreme the weather, even working all night long when there was enough moonlight, often wearing inadequate clothing, not always receiving enough food or water, sleeping in the open fields or (if the farm owner was humane) in vermin-ridden barns. Farm labor worked under conditions that would result in Capitallian slave owners being enslaved for life themselves.

Hank used his data link to summon several people from Silver Orb's gardens, its small craft shops, from the labs and even from the underground control center. There were seven ranging in age from 11 to 81. The gathered in Hank's conference room.

"I called you together because of great need," Hank started. "I have an assignment. I will kill on that assignment. I need your help to limit the number of people who will die. I give you my word that the deaths I cause will be necessary to save other lives. Some of you cannot tolerate having contributed in another's death, but rest assured that I and I alone am responsible for anybody that I kill. I can only hope that I kill the right people, that those deaths save lives. If your involvement is too great, you can leave now."

"You can't get rid of me that easily," the eldest stood up. His scalp was bald except for a white fringe around his temples and his long white beard stained yellow in places. He had white chest hair that ran down his sagging pot belly—the latter hid is genitals from view. His arms had atrophied to the point where his elbows were knobby. Though less than a decade older than Hank, Charles demonstrated what natural aging did to the human body—Hank was muscular, healthy, and sexy even. Charles was worn out. Charles lifted his beard to show a collar around his neck. "I chose to wear my Legal Resident identification collar when I could wear it around my wrist and avoid being mistaken for a slave. I don't get many customers when it's my turn for brothel duty—not every woman has an unfulfilled Electra Complex fantasy. I am a Legal Resident Non-citizen in name only. My family owes you so much that I am really your slave. I willingly give you the right to order me to do things that I couldn't do as Charles Xavier Weathercock. If not for you my family would all be in the USR and I'd be dead by now. I consider myself your slave, even though I am formally a Legal Resident and a free person. Anything you ask of me is on your soul, not mine. I know you agree with me. I'm an old man. I thank you for letting me be useful in my sunset years."

Hank composed himself, obviously moved.

"Anybody need to leave? No? I won't hold it against you."

"I trust you," the youngest was Sharon. "You need me. I'm wearing a collar instead of a wrist band too. My family has never been happier. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to pay back some of the debt we owe you."

"If everybody is staying, then I called you together because of your talents and knowledge. At least eight people have been murdered in Florida." Hank described the murder/suicides by four slaves against their masters. "As you all know that is impossible. The inhibitions against killing another and against destroying themselves is deeply entrenched. Those conditioning routines are renewed at least quarterly. For one inhibition to be overcome—most likely suicide—is very rare. To have both the inhibitions against murder and suicide violated at one time borders on impossible. Four well-behaved slaves killing their high-profile owners within 50 kilometers of each other and within ten days is, well, the saying is that once is an accident, twice is coincidence and three times is enemy action. I want to brainstorm who is responsible for killing those senators. The slaves were NOT responsible."

"You have more information, Hank," Charles stated. "Why aren't you sharing that with us?"

"If you never enter the box, thinking outside the box is easy," Hank responded. "We'll spend about an hour throwing out ideas. I'll brief you all on the rest of the facts that I have—keep in mind that I may have false information. Given that slaves are not going to up and murder their owners, who pulled their strings and made them do that?"

Sharon laughed. All eyes turned to the eleven year old as she explained. "Officer Hardy said he had to investigate our sweat shops. You work us harder in this sweat shop than any place else."

"I work you no harder than I work myself," Hank grinned. "Admittedly my boss is a gold-plated bastard—"

"Let's get on with this," Charles suggested. "I don't have as long to live as some of you."

"I could extend your life."

"No thanks! I mean, if you order me to, I will, but I'll take my allotted span of life and no more, thank you."

After everyone stopped laughing the ideas flew thick and fast. Some people had more to contribute than others. Two who were very active were Theodore Dalton and Danny Albertson.

"Why don't we retrace the steps of those slaves over the past 30 days?" Danny suggested. "I'd go back 90 days if the slave tracking database permitted. I'd look for two things. First there would be all four slaves showing up in the same places during the last 90 days—not all at the same time, but at the same place. More important would be any time the slaves vanished from the grid. If all four slaves vanished from the gird at the same place that would be significant."

"Thanks, Danny! I hadn't thought of that. Let's see what else you can come up with."

When the hour was up, Hank briefed the group on what was known about the four assassinations. What was fact, what was guesswork and what was just hunches were displayed on the walls of the conference room in bold letters 50mm high. The bare-bones outlines also appeared on everyone's display screens on the conference table. Just touching a finger to the outline point would drop down to the next level, with every detail that was known on the cases. Photos and vids were available. After the multimedia briefing and a few questions, Hank started a count-down in glowing green.

"Throw out your ideas. I picked you because you are the most creative people in Silver Orb. Using your new information, come up with motive, suspect and how they did it."

"The other three murders were made to look like accidents," Charles observed. "Even the double drowning could have been explained as an accident. I was a lifeguard before I became a cop and we were taught to expect a drowning victim to panic, to clutch at anybody nearby in a death grip. The prussic acid attack—almost undetectable. A careless investigator could accept that an owner had a heart attack and the shock killed the slave as well. Old aircraft are death traps. They should all be fitted with that emergency parachute system so that the plane can be landed safely in an emergency. But that last attack was blatantly obvious. Having the slave dive through a plate glass window was a nice touch. I didn't think that the human body could penetrate the window."