Chapter 7
The air in the market tasted of rust and regret. It was a dry, metallic tang that clung to the back of your throat, a constant reminder of what this place used to be. Now, it was just a backdrop for a slow-motion suicide.
I was leaning against a pillar of what might have once been a fountain, watching the parade. The Americans moved through the stalls with a quiet, shuffling dignity that made me want to break something. They were human, same as me, same as anyone. I saw tall people, people with skin the color of old bronze, people with eyes that held a deep, ancient sadness. They’d been a proud nation once. Artists, engineers, poets. Now they were just marks.
And the marks were lining up to get fleeced.
The Epstein Class—that’s what the Americans called them, though they were just as human as anyone else—were in theory a delegation from some wealthy core world whose name I’d already forgotten. They’d arrived generations ago, offering “partnership.” Now they ran everything. They called their currency dollars. Little chits of blue plastic, printed on demand, backed by nothing but the ruling class promise not to ruin you today.
A merchant sat behind a stall, flanked by two enforcers. They were fat. Not glandular, not sick—just wealthy in that way that turns men soft and cruel. Their skin had the pale, doughy look of people who hadn’t worked in generations. Their clothes were off-world silks, their fingers heavy with rings. One of them was eating something expensive while an American artisan, a woman whose hands were calloused from shaping beautiful glasswork, handed over a sculpture that must have taken her a month to make.
In return, the merchant dropped a handful of dollars into her palm without even looking up. The woman didn’t count them. She just clutched the worthless plastic to her chest and walked away, her head held high, as if she’d just completed a fair and honorable transaction.
She’d just traded a piece of her soul for a handful of tokens that the issuance class could print infinite numbers of. Tokens that were backed by nothing but the purely theoretical promise not to eat her alive.
Fuck. It was like watching a man thank a mugger for not cutting his throat after he’d already taken his wallet.
I’d been stateside for three standard months. That was two months and twenty-nine days too long. My mission parameters were simple: assess the situation, make contact, offer a solution. But the situation wasn’t a puzzle to be solved. It was a disease. And the Americans weren’t just infected; they were in love with the pathogen.
They called it Stockholm syndrome back on Earth. A nice, clean, clinical term for a filthy, visceral reality. But this was worse. This was a planetary-scale kink. They’d been beaten, robbed, and humiliated for so long they’d forgotten what it felt like to stand up straight.
The issuance class didn’t just take their resources. Anyone can do that. The Epstein class took their dignity. They’d started wars between American factions, just for the entertainment, then sold them the weapons to fight them. They’d publicly violated American leaders—men and women—on live broadcast feeds, a “demonstration of power,” they’d called it. And the Americans, what did they do? They rebuilt, they bowed their heads, and they went back to work to earn more dollars.
I saw an enforcer, a brute with a shock-stick and a bored expression, stop a young American male in the street. The kid couldn’t have been more than twenty. The enforcer didn’t say a word. He just pointed a finger at the kid’s boots. Fine leather, hand-tooled. A family heirloom, probably, passed down through generations. The kid’s face went pale, but he didn’t argue. He didn’t fight. He just knelt down, unlaced them, and handed them over. The enforcer took them, grunted, and walked on. The kid walked home in his socks, his eyes fixed on the dusty ground.
I pushed off the pillar and fell into step beside him.
“You could have run,” I said. My voice was low, but it cut through the market’s quiet hum.
The kid flinched, looking at me with wide, terrified eyes. He saw my foreigner clothes, my hard face. He saw a predator of a different kind.
“It is not permitted,” he whispered. “They would… they would punish my family.”
“They’re already punishing you,” I said, my voice flat. “They’re punishing you every day. They’re punishing you right now. What do you think they’re going to do if you stop? Take away your birthday?”
He just stared at me, uncomprehending. The concept of resistance was so alien to him it was like I was speaking a dead language.
I stopped and turned to face the market square. I spread my arms, a gesture of utter disbelief. “Look at this! Look at all of you!”
A few heads turned. They saw a crazed foreigner, yelling at nothing.
“You call yourselves Americans! You tell stories of your ancestors who carved cities out of mountains! You sing songs of warriors who sailed the stars in ships of light! And now look at you! You trade your art, your labor, your children’s future for… for what? For dollars?”
I pointed at the merchant, who was now using a dollar to pick something out of his teeth.
“You take the plastic shit of people who have made a national sport of raping your minds and bodies, and you say ‘thank you, may I have another?’ You are not a nation. You are not a people. You are a flock of sheep who have learned to love the wolf. You are cucks! You get off on being robbed, on being humiliated! You’ve convinced yourselves that this is the natural order, that they are strong and you are weak!”
I was shouting now. The market had gone quiet. The merchant had stopped what he was doing. His enforcers were watching me, their hands resting on their shock-sticks. Good. Let them look.
“You are a nation of victims suffering from the worst case of Stockholm syndrome in the history of the goddamn galaxy! They have taken everything you have, and you still queue up every morning to give them more!”
One of the enforcers started walking my way, his shock-stick crackling. I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on the Americans. On the glass artist. On the shoeless kid. On all the other hollow faces in the crowd.
“They aren’t gods! They aren’t even smart! They’re just men—fat, lazy, stupid men from a world so rich they’ve forgotten how to do anything but take! The only power they have is the power you give them! Every dollar you accept is a link in your own chains! Every time you bow your head, you give them permission to do it again! There is no shame in being beaten. The shame is in staying on your knees!”
The enforcer was close now. I could smell his cologne, expensive and cloying, the scent of a man who’d never known a day of hardship in his life.
“You want to use that thing?” I asked, my voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. “Go ahead. But you should know, I’m not one of them. I don’t hand over my boots.”
I looked back at the crowd one last time. Their faces were a mix of fear, confusion… and something else. Something I hadn’t seen before. A flicker. A tiny, almost imperceptible crack in the mask of passive acceptance.
“They can only take what you are willing to give,” I said, my voice softer now, but no less hard. “Think about that. Think about what you’re giving them. And then ask yourselves what you have left.”
I turned and walked away, leaving the enforcer standing there, his shock-stick held uselessly in the air. I didn’t look back. The seed was planted. Whether it would grow in this poisoned soil, I had no idea.
But it was the best I could do. I’m not a savior. I’m just a man who hates to see a good people get fucked. And America was full of good people. They’d just forgotten how to be anything else.