Page 60 of Skyn
A figure rises from the back of the room—grimy apron still stained, eyes burning. It’s the shopkeeper from the market. The one who sent me here.
“You think that matters?” he spits. “Youmetal bastardsthink promises mean something now?” His voice climbs, ragged and furious. “You poisoned the meat! You wrecked the food lines, and now no one trusts the supply chain. You’re killing people whocan’tfight back. What good is a perfect society if none of us ever get to see it?”
Gasps and claps ripple through the chamber. The shopkeeper meets my eyes and nods once, solemn. He needs to know where I stand in all of this. I raise my hand to my forehead and twist an invisible helmet light—I see you. A gesture older than all of us, born in the mines where words failed and light meant everything.
For those who know a riot of applause fans through the crowd.
“The food was too far.Too far!” The shopkeeper shouts, voice cracking as he points a trembling finger at Ben. “You’re corrupt, and you poisoned us.”
Before anyone can stop him, he plunges a hand into his pocket and yanks out something wet—reddish, glistening, and grotesque. A pulpy mass of rotting MEAT, sloughing apart in his fingers.
He hurls it.
The sludge smacks Ben squarely across the temple with a sickening splat. Chunks of decomposing flesh slide down the side of his face, catch in his collar, and ooze along the pristine line of his cuffs, leaving streaks of gore and rancid stink in their wake.
The chamber recoils as one, a gasp rising like bile.
Guards burst through the doors and grab him, wrenching his arms behind his back. He kicks once, hard, before they drag him toward the exit.
“Let him go!” I rush toward the aisle, but Ben holds me fast.
“Guards,” Ben says—sharp, commanding. They stop mid-stride. Someone hands Ben a cloth to wipe the stinking mess from his face. “When an Iku gives you an order, you obey. Or I will begin to cull where I please. Bring him back.” His voice carries through the room, low and clear. “I mean to say something to him.”
There’s a pause as the guards glance at one another. Then they pull the man to his feet and march him back to the center.
Ben nods his head to the shopkeeper. “You are looking at the leader of the growing dissident movement in the mines,” he says.
The room stills.
He could kill him. Make some example of him.
“I want you to cast the first vote on a new reaping system,” Ben says, eyes locked on the shopkeeper. “One based oninformed consent.”
I step forward, voice steady. “Sixty safe years. No tricks. No poison. No hidden clocks. Just a choice. When your time is up, youopt in.Acontract.”
Ben spoke to the shopkeeper, “Those who opt in get a living stipend. A passport to travel freely between sectors. A name in the IS. Recognition, resources, access. The kinds of choices most people will never have. But here’s the major difference.Everyonemust be eligible.”
Sputters and uproar. The table’s talking heads start blustering.
“This will not be a tax on the mines.” Ben’s voice rolls over the crowd.
“Why would any ofuschoose this death?” A council member asks. “We live well past one hundred. We have enough food in our bellies, can travel freely.”
“Why would you choose to die?” Ben shrugs. “Maybe you won’t. And maybe that means we never should have forced mine folk like him,” he points to the shopkeeper, “to do it for us. Without a choice.”
More applause. Ardent now.
He knocks lightly on the table before circling it with an almost-predatory grace. His power is palpable, and it’s clear that everyone in the room feels it. They need to know why he isn’t cowed.
“There is another thing, other than material goods, that this contract offers,” Ben says. “Council families who have members in the Lions of the Second Sector or L.O.S.S. program gain enhanced voting power on the Sector Council. They have veto power and special ambassadorship roles, where their families become official representatives of the program ineverysector.”
Several of the council members glance between each other. No doubt already thinking of their least favorite child or distant cousin they can throw in the program to extend their power.
“It’s a long-term investment in your family’s dynasty,” I chime in. “Value is what we make it. Beauty, desirability, status—it’s all made up. Constructed. A set of rules that someone else decided, shaped, and enforced until we all believed in them. So, why not remake them? Why not assign value where there is real need? The L.O.S.S program is fair.”
“This all sounds good, but the cost of such a program would be enormous.”
“More than the cost of rebuilding the mine sixty years ago?” I ask. “More than the distribution-channel disruption and inter-sector trade from poisoning the meat? More than the fire? No. This program is a fraction of the cost of rebuilding after a controlled burn. And as we create more and more ways to manufacture food, terraform the land, we will require a smaller percentage, until one hundred and eighty years from now, this program will be obsolete,” I say.
