Author: Alastair Millar

“It’s quite impressive, really,” said Annika, leaning back in her chair. As General Overseer at Europe’s busiest spaceport, she’d worked hard to get where she was, and could afford to be relaxed.
“It’s bloody annoying, is what it is,” retorted Hans. As a Senior Processing Officer, he tended to find himself at the sharp end of policy, and was a lot less sanguine about things.
“Oh come on. Getting hold of a shipping container, fitting it out with grav plates and self-contained life support sufficient for a voyage to Earth, and then smuggling yourself off planet on a Tradeship must have taken a lot of time and effort.”
“Hmph. A lot of money and bribery, more like.”
“Well, maybe. But he’s here now.” She brought up the holofile. “Adam Iwasaki, age 69 T-years, citizen of Callipolis Prime, industrialist… seems like someone with a lot to lose. Why’d he do it?”
“He’s wants political asylum. Says the government wants to kill him.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Apparently the local oligarchs took control of the planetary government, and in his version enacted a series of sensible new labour and taxation laws.”
“Okay. So? I mean, surely he’s one of them?”
“Well, cutting taxes for the wealthy elite while forcing everyone else to work longer for less didn’t go down well with the general populace. After a few months of grumbling, the final straw was cuts to education, while making it something that everyone would have to pay for. Students protested, the security forces tried to shut them down, things got violent, and suddenly they had a full-blown revolution on their hands.”
“Hmph. Well, businessmen are usually adept at cosying up to new governments.”
“Not this time. The self-styled New Juvenocracy removed the franchise from anyone over 45, and introduced mandatory euthanasia for the over-70s.”
“What?!”
“They feel that old rich people are bad for the health of society as a whole, and decided on a radical solution.”
“You mean, if we send him back, they really will kill him?”
“As soon as he turns 70, yes. Which is in about 2 months’ time.”
Annika sat and thought about the implications for a while. Interstellar travel was still a rarity, hideously expensive, and not something done for pleasure. Meaningful communication with the Colonies was intermittent at best, commerce being conducted by massive automated freighters with no human crew, so she wasn’t surprised that no word of the takeover on Callipolis seemed to have reached the homeworld yet.
“I don’t want a corpse on my conscience,” she said eventually.
“So you want me to let him go?”
“Heavens no! Throw the book at him. Illegal entry, unsafe radioisotopes from his thermoelectric generator, foodstuff import in violation of quarantine and safety regulations, travelling without a ticket, anything and everything you can think of. I want him locked away forever.”
“Seriously?”
“Absolutely. His little story might give people here ideas. Earth’s running out of everything, the climate’s gone mad, and we’re on a knife-edge. Mercantile Houses buy politicians just to keep things ticking over. It’s not a perfect system, but change it and chaos follows: trade collapses, we get starvation, resource wars and megadeaths. I don’t want THAT on my conscience either.”
“I see what you mean…”
“And of course, it would only get worse from there.”
“How so?”
“We’d probably lose our own jobs as a result.”
“Good point.”
“Believe it. We’ve got a good thing going here. Now sort it out.”
Hans rose. The boss was right; you didn’t need to be rich to be worried about number one. Or the greater good.
“On it, chief.”