2084: Slavery Resurgent

Franklin rolled over in his waterbed and forced open his eyes. The commercial telepathy signal was too strong and had woke him up. Twice before he had complained to the provider about it, and they claimed to have significantly reduced the strength. Bullshit. He was convinced that because he lived in the central city less than a block from the provider’s transmission tower, it could not be adjusted low enough to prevent the transmission from disturbing his sleep.

Two months ago, when he signed the lease for his apartment, the landlord had given him a $20 monthly discount in the rent in exchange for agreeing to allow the provider to telepathically transmit advertisements to his subconscious between periods of rapid eye movement sleep. He really did not want it, but his part-time minimum wage job left him no other choice. Besides, they allowed him to select the topics for the commercials. Like most things that had gone wrong in his life, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. All the bad choices he had made were catching up with him. Since griping did not make things better, Franklin rolled over and went back to sleep.

Many of the advertisements that interspersed his dreams were recruitment pitches for various off-world careers. As a child, he was fascinated by science fiction, but as time passed, science fiction had been translated into science fact, and the fact was that space travel was dangerous. Being careful and precise by nature, he did not engage in high risk activities. His few school friends used to dare him to climb trees and jump off of houses, but he was afraid of getting hurt. Why should he do something stupid? To his way of thinking, risk could only be justified by a big enough reward. Outer space adventure would have to wait until the odds were in his favor. No problem, he was a man of infinite patience. He truly believed that his time would come. In the meantime, he had bills to pay.