Workers & Researchers

In the first waves of exploration, a great number of researchers and other skilled workers went out to see the stars. Most of them did so knowng it would be a one-way trip. They would have to form colonies to survive, they could die in accidents, or maybe become lost in the depths of space. It was the great unknown, but they did their work gladly. When the gold rush came, the tens of billions leaving for new worlds in just a few years, they needed more of the skilled workers and researchers to pave the way.

The coporatists would soon poison the dream of other worlds. Indentured servitude, oppressive laws, and downright con artists left the greatest minds to spend their days toiling away for no reward. Many concluded they should never have left.

Society’s Backbone

Travel to the stars required expertise. It needed electricians, plumbers, developers, and builders. The richest and most powerful in society were collectively a pack of conniving fools: none of them could build a rocket or land a ship. They could however, buy the people that could. At the start, it made sense. The workers all imagined the rule of law would hold up:

• Labor laws
• Safety regulations
• Healthcare

This notion survived until there was no going back. The first colonies of course took care of their workers, but only until they were established. Once the executives had what they wanted, the noose tightened and there was nothing anyone could do. Every ship was company-owned. Passage back to Earth cost more than a lifetime’s wages. Crooked corporate laws made it nearly impossible to survive, let alone save enough to escape.

These worlds were built by the most skilled and dedicated in society, but the whole time they’d merely built their own open-air prisons.

Resistance

The workers believed they could still oppose their masters. It happened in every new system at some point: a single, massive protest. The pressure of every day life rose to a boiling point and things came to a head. Sometimes it was acts of terrorism, destroying company property and disabling key systems. Sometimes it was a million people marching in the street. Realistically speaking, it doesn’t matter. To a corporatist, resistance is resistance and it’s against their shareholders’ interests. There could only be one answer: a clean and ruthless purge.

Loud protests were met with missiles and nukes, sanitizing the area in the name of ‘security’. Quieter protests, acts of sabotage and subversion were met with a quiet snatch-and-grab, followed by an execution. It was mob-rule, but mob-rule backed with the power of law. No one could do a damn thing about it.

In time, many of the workers would become pirates. Their skills built and operated those ships. When it came time to fight back, they were the ones who could capture them for their own use. They were the ones promised Eden and instead trapped in the depths of hell. They paved the streets in gold and were fed shit for their efforts. It was their blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifices that made the dream of every colonized system a reality. If they were not given their cut, they’d take it.

New Athens

The story played the same everywhere, except for New Athens. The colony effort here was a collaboration of Pirates, Workers, and Corporatist backing. In New Athens, the workers make up the biggest faction by shear numbers. When they built a city, they stayed in charge. When they built The Parthenon, they kept the keys. As any of these engineers and they’ll tell you: the corporate pigs may’ve paid for New Athens, but it belongs to the workers.

The oppressive systems and forces that crushed the life out of the other systems were never given root here. No, they were stopped cold by a weary workforce who’d already been through the ringer.

It is here that the Workers can thrive. They create feats of engineering, study new worlds, and contentedly spend every day just enjoying their craft. It’s hard to go wrong with a system like this.