Emergence 3.0
A Novel – In One Page Per Day
Saturday, April 13th, 2019
Chapter Two: The
Dispossessed
Everything and everyone was owned by the state, there was
no such thing as private property, or privacy of any kind.
Most of the people living in the Empire had nothing, they
accumulated no wealth, received no inheritance, passed nothing on to their
children. They lived hand to mouth and had little thought for the future beyond
the endless search for safety and food, and the hope for a good night of sleep.
Even those in the lowest class of citizens treated these
people, who comprised “the masses,” they treated them contemptuously, mocking
them, mocking their frailty, calling them names mocking them as “Food of the
Gods.”
Those without class had no rights as citizens, they were
outcasts, untouchable, they did everything they could to avoid the notice of
the Empire.
They were the fools of the universe.
They were wholly owned by the state, they were less than
slaves, their lives had no value, they could be hunted for sport, and often
were. On some worlds they were even cannibalized in ritualistic feasts.
They were never educated, they were forbidden to learn to
read or write, to calculate numbers, though there were always some among their
numbers who possessed such knowledge and passed it on.
Not every outcaste was born in their condition, some were
sentenced to it, stripped of their class and caste for their crimes against the
Empire.
It was a great source of drama to watch a disgraced and
fallen member of a higher class, suffer the outrages that were visited on the
low. To watch them try to protect their children as they were sent with nothing
but some rags on their back to find their way in the world.
The lives and deaths of the outcastes were meaningless;
unsung, unremembered and unknown, they were in the absolute majority on each
and every world, and they were regarded as if they were nothing at all
#Emergence #SuperShortFiction #365SciFi #OnePagePerDay
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