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[b][u][center]The Island of Freedom and Submission[/center][/u][/b]

[b][u][center]Part 1[/center][/u][/b]

[b][u][center]For angelus288[/center][/u][/b]

[b][u][center]By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

The year was 2080, and change was in the air, even if nobody could see it coming. Derek Bronson stared at the hologram of the news coming down from New York City, hearing the filtering that it was going through by the bought and paid for news network, and shook his head as he imagined how that was going to be taken by the public. Or rather, the poor, as anyone outside of the business heights actually was, these days.

He leaned forward on his chair, watching as the human woman continued to smile as she described the protests that had been going on over the last week over starvation conditions for the workers. The local Mega-Corp – Datarel-Banks, a merger of two different mid-level corporations that had risen in the last twenty years – was the ‘unfortunate victim of public greed’, according to the newscaster.

[i]Translation: they’re being stupid enough to demand even more work for even less compensation.[/i]

Derek rubbed his forehead as he watched the video feed play out. It was selective, more selective than usual, to the point where he was picking up on the fact that there were multiple clips that were being repeated just to fill out the run-time of the edited report. He could tell that the riots that they were trying to show were isolated incidents. For that matter, considering how many alternate angles they showed, it might have been the same, singular incident compared to the relatively orderly protest that was going on.

He groaned. The protest was going to get worse before it got better, and if there was someone stupid at the helm – and with Datarel-Banks, that was almost guaranteed – then it could send shocks through the rest of the world. The public had stopped protesting for some time before their rise, and now? The stability of the rich – including his family’s stability – was getting shaken from the ground up.

He wanted to say that was good, but was it? Considering the sheer anger that the poor were operating under, he honestly wasn’t sure that it would bode well for him and his family if they didn’t do something to show where their loyalties lay.

The woman on the holo-screen stopped talking, and her almost pathological smile faded. Her eyes widened. Something had happened.

“I – we regret to inform you that the protest has turned violent.”

[i]Oh, crap…[/i]

“And in response to a thrown object, there has been a drastic response by local peacekeepers. We warn you in advance, this footage is graphic.”

Derek’s eyes widened. What had happened? If it was something bad, how the hell were they getting away with showing it? Everyone knew that the media was bought and paid for by the Mega-Corps; this should have been edited out.

[i]Unless it was too big to hide…[/i]

The screen shifted, and his eyes went wider still. The streets of NYC were awash with chaos, with whirring drones, and –

Papapapapapapa.

The pattering, silenced shots of bullets flying from flying drones and walking security bots was loud as could be, strafing through the crowd. Dozens had already fallen, not dead, but bloodied for sure, and screaming for help that would never come. The credit checks would have already denied most of them treatment, and the rest of the crowd was running. His eyes went wide as the massacre spread.

“Datarel-Banks security forces are responding to overly aggressive behavior from the crowds, as well as – this just in, as well as a threat from the crowd to seize the NYC headquarters of the corporation. More will be reported as the situation develops.”

Derek shut off the holo-screen, still hardly believing what he had just seen. Not that the Mega-Corp had responded that way – they had done worse when they were off-camera – but the fact that the footage had been allowed on-air. That shouldn’t have happened, and he was all but sure that there was someone in that network that was going to get their head served up on a platter for it. The world had just seen the massacre happening. Even if it wouldn’t have been possible to silence the news in New York, not everyone would have heard about it if the media had just kept their heads on straight. Now, that display of cruelty and the rich’s view of the lower classes was all but perfectly recorded.

Change was in the air, and it wasn’t necessarily good change.

Rubbing his forehead, he slowly pushed himself out of his bed, which immediately started folding backwards into the wall. The room altered itself in accordance to his wishes, supplied by an implant in the back of his head that transmitted mental commands to all material that was made by his father’s company. It was a simple enough way of keeping things under control, though it was limited. His father had put down strict restrictions that he had to operate under, particularly after he had shown some public sympathy for the poor.

As the bed folded away and the holo-screen rolled forward to become a half-desk, he stood at it to start typing out messages. He sent out requests for information from the network, as well as a question of official statements from Datarel-Banks. He wanted to know what they were going to spin this as, particularly as some of the drones had been supplied with weapons from the Bronson factories. His father would –

The screen went red, and he knew that his access had just been cut. The information flowing through the implant link to the machines stopped, leaving him off-balance, swaying for a moment before he caught his balance again. Other information, and voices, for that matter, started coming through.

“Everyone to the living room. Now.”

That was his uncle and semi-adopted father, Martin Bronson, head of the moderate corporation Ardus Global Industries. He hissed under his breath, knowing that this was going to be a lecture meeting and knowing that there was no way out of it, either. He glanced back at the screen, and then forced himself away from it. Best to get this over with as fast as possible before he had other restrictions laid on him for being late.

Leaving his room, he was immediately joined by a pair of snow leopards. The anthromorphs immediately fell into matching step just behind him, perfectly copying one another without even a millisecond’s difference between their pace. Their weapons were cleared at their hips, but he knew from experience that they wouldn’t draw them until it would have been too late for a human to respond. They were trained too well to show any untoward aggression towards their employers.

[i]Or their target,[/i] he thought, shaking his head as he walked along. The snow leopards were assigned to him as bodyguards, technically, but they were just one more means of restriction that his father had laid over him. One more thing to keep him from talking to the wrong people, or saying the wrong thing in private. He imagined that they had both been listening outside his room and knew what he had been watching. It was so pointless to try and hide things like that, and he no longer bothered.

The hallway was relatively barren as such things went. Some of the big, rich families had hoarded treasures from around the world. Martin Bronson had no such interests. The walls of the family manor were instead adorned with different anthromorph models that they had been responsible for – including some that were realistic enough that he worried that they were stuffed models of formerly living ones – as well as cases of weapons that the company had made. Every hall felt like a mix of mad-science and the celebration of war, and he had never entirely felt comfortable with it.

His cousins – well, siblings, really, considering how close they were – were muttering across the implant channels, wondering what was going to happen. Derek didn’t bother responding. He knew where this was going, and he knew that he would be the one listened for if he started talking. No room for dissension among the family, and Martin would label what he had to say as dissension, doubtlessly enough.

They soon reached the library, a large-ish room that contained books that were mostly unread. The old papers were mostly for display, with the actual reading done on tablets that could be carried around rather than anything else. He stepped inside, one of the snow leopard anthromorphs following, the other taking up a position by the door.

One by one, the rest of the family arrived, joining him at the meeting table normally used for Martin’s meetings with the other corporations and the mega-rich clients that came to visit. Sarah, Jenny, and Carlos each sat on one half of the table with him, all of them with their own anthromorph bodyguard, and they glanced at him with a curious, raised eyebrow.

He just shrugged in return. If they hadn’t heard, he didn’t want to be fighting Martin about what they were going to say.

A few minutes after they had all gathered, the man himself appeared. Martin Bronson was as tall as one could honestly expect a human to be, topping out just under seven feet. There were some rumors – and rumors that Derek believed – that the middle-aged businessman had implanted himself with hormone producers that hadn’t entirely been tested, and that was why he had grown so tall and so broad. That said, there was no proof of that, and while Martin had quite the team of medics looking over his every move, there was none of the other signs of deterioration that some people had from that kind of implantation. The mustached man leaned over the table, narrowing his eyes as he looked from one of them to another.

“All of you need to get one thing through your head right now. As of today, we have never sold [i]any[/i] weapons to Datarel-Banks.”

Derek opened his mouth, but his uncle pointed a finger at him, narrowing his eyes.

“Not one word, Derek. So far as all of you are concerned, we never sold anything.”

“But the records and receipts –”

“Already being digitally shredded, Sarah.” Martin shook his head. “It’ll be old news before the end of the day.”

“What will be?” Carlos asked.

“…Were any of you watching the news? Besides Derek?”

The rest of the natural children shook their heads slowly. Martin nodded.

“Keep it that way. You have some deniability that people will believe. Matter of fact, I’m locking any of you out of seeing anything put out today, or about NYC and Datarel-Banks for the next year.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” Derek muttered.

“Derek, I told you. Not a word.”

He sighed. Once again, pushed to silence. He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap. Did he want to speak up on this one? He probably should, but at the same time, he knew that there was every reason to be a little cagey about it. His uncle didn’t like having someone criticize him, and he could get…

Well, not dangerous. That was being unfair to the family patriarch. But he could get very unpredictable with his punishments, and while none were out and out abusive, some of them were archaic and strange. Like the time that he had been restricted to nothing but bread and water for a week, or the time that he had been stifled and restricted from any news access for a month, or the time when he had not been allowed to speak in any way for a fortnight. Martin had a way of finding different punishments that weren’t dangerous to the person suffering them, but were remarkably uncomfortable, regardless.

He looked down at the floor, instead, knowing better than to push his luck around the others. His cousin-siblings cocked their heads to the side, then looked back at their father.

“What’s going on, dad?” Sarah asked.

“Nothing that you need to know about.”

“I’d sure as hell say we do, if we’re going into full deniability mode.”

“The less you know, the more believable you are.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re telling us?”

“Trust me, it’s better for all of us that way.”

“All of us? Or you and the company?”

“Sarah, for us, there isn’t a difference.”

“…”

The friction had been growing between the natural heirs of the old man and Martin himself for months. Ever since Derek’s more rigorous punishments for speaking out and pointing out that the tides of history were changing, it was clear that they needed to be more informed. He was actually rather proud of some of them, particularly Sarah, for digging in and finding out what she could. He wouldn’t be surprised if she came to him for news, later.

If he had the chance, he would have ordered his computer to send her the news reports to get around the restriction that she’d be under, but as it was, he’d be lucky if he could tell her out loud. Martin had ways of fucking with people.

“That’s everything for now. We never did business with Datarel-Banks, and the guns on their drones came from someone else, or were manufactured in-house. Got it?”

Acceptance – though not agreement – came in bits and pieces, from Carlos first and from Sarah last. They were nodded at, told to leave with nothing but a gesture, and they got to their feet and stepped away from the table. He, however, wasn’t given the same gesture, and he knew that he wasn’t getting the same treatment. After all, he knew what had happened, and he didn’t have the same sort of trust that the rest of them did.

As his sibling/cousins left the room, along with their guards, it left him and Martin alone. It was telling that the old man didn’t have a bodyguard of his own; all the anthromorphs in the building were programmed and raised to be loyal to him above all others, and that meant that no matter how protected anyone else felt, they were still at the old man’s mercy. Derek curled his fingers into fists as he looked at the floor.

“So…what are you going to do to me?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not going to fix anything with this.”

“The poor will accept what happened. They always do.”

“Not when they’ve all seen people get murdered.”

Martin shrugged. That was all, just a shrug, but it was enough to convey decades-worth of uncaring feeling towards the laborers of the world.

“They’ll be happy when Datarel-Banks pays it off.”

“That’s all? They killed people – hundreds of people – and that’s all that happens?”

“Money talks.”

“Not loud enough compared to lives.”

“The poor want to live. They’ll be satisfied with a temporary financial penalty if it goes into their pockets.”

“This is different. How many times do I have to say that?”

“It’s no different from the laborer deaths when they tried to unionize.”

“It’s hugely different. People saw this one.”

And that was going to be the difference that stuck to them. They would have seen the deaths. No matter how the news networks tried to publicize that it was completely justified, they would have seen peaceful people being run off with robots flying after them and putting bullets in their backs. They would have seen security bots and more chasing them down, cutting them off, shooting them until they stopped moving.

They would have seen the corporate massacre and realized just how much had been done to the people that were peacefully asking not to die, only to be shot down for it. They would see it, and remember.

“Money doesn’t dry blood,” he muttered.

“Derek…” Martin sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”

“That’s always your decision, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Though you never listen.”

“I don’t listen when people are wrong.”

“…You aren’t going to go along with this, are you?”

[i]Would you?[/i] he wanted to ask, but he knew the answer. Martin would have, and had, gone along with it in the past. Back when the whole shift from government rule to rule by corporation had begun, Martin Bronson had toed the family line, kept to the rules, made sure to say whatever he needed to say in order to keep the company growing. The better that the company did, the more lies that Martin told, until he started believing them.

Now, the old man had the power to do whatever he wanted. The world bowed to wealth; the orders were given by the board; the entire planet trembled at the power and influence that the various companies could bring to bear, all under the different banners of the Mega-Corps. While Ardus wasn’t at Mega-Corp level, it was one of the favored subdivisions of one of the bigger ones, and it was expected to rise soon.

His uncle didn’t want to jeopardize that, he realized, wanting to keep the chance of them getting even bigger, even better. Despite the fact that they lacked for nothing, that was the way of the Mega-Corp. You rose, or you died. You improved, or you lost everything. There was only so much room at the top, and if you were ever ‘satisfied’, then you were just one more meal for someone bigger than you.

“I guess I’m not,” he muttered.

“Then I can’t keep you here.”

“What?!”

“I’m not keeping a risk in the family.”

“Martin, you need to listen to me. If you don’t do something, then –”

“Nothing is going to change. The poor have suffered before. You’re just seeing things that aren’t there.”

“No, you’re ignoring everything.”

“You are hysterical.”

And the minute that was said, the anthromorph behind him grabbed him in a choke-hold, pulling him back from the table. The tight grip left him gasping, barely getting the air that he needed to stay conscious. Martin stepped up to him, shaking his head as he looked down.

“You need to calm down. And I cannot believe that you’ll do that here. Too much of an agitator, too much of a stirrer.”

“If you won’t…change…the others…”

“I will not have you risking my children. And I won’t have you risking yourself, either.”

“Nnngh…”

“You’re wrong, but think of this, Derek. If things do change, what saves you?”

“…”

“You’re a Bronson. You’re as doomed as the rest of us if you rock the boat. So, until you figure out how to be a Bronson and keep your mouth shut when you’re told, you’re banished from this house.”

“Nnn…what…what are you…”

“There’s an island well away from here. Family property for decades, and one I planned to give to you under better circumstances. For now, however, it seems that it will have to serve as your ‘vacation house’ until you come to your senses.”

Derek couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was the worst possible outcome. Not only was he being silenced, but he was being sent away, sent somewhere where he couldn’t do anything. Not that he could do much in the family manor, but out there, he couldn’t even try and persuade his cousin-siblings that they needed to do something. He was being silenced, stifled, gagged.

Martin shook his head, gesturing at the snow leopard anthromorph.

“Take him away. The jet should be half-prepared already. Make sure that he is not harmed.”

“Yes, Master.”

“And make sure that he is given the greatest care. I don’t want him damaged.”

“You…you…”

The choking grip was keeping him from coming up with something to say, some final line that might have been worth passing through his lips. All he could do was stare in shock, awe, and disappointment at the family patriarch. Martin shook his head in return, sitting down at the meeting table once more.

“I hope you learn something from this, Derek.”

“You’re in danger. I swear…this is…this is not…”

“It will happen as it’s always happened.”

“You’re…wrong…”

“Take him away.”

And so he was. He had one last glimpse of the library, that ancient place of wealth rather than learning, before he completely blacked out.

#

When he came back to consciousness again, he could feel the implant in the back of his head buzzing as it collected information on his health. He reached out by instinct, touching the nearest surface –

“Please wait, sir.”

The voice of his ‘bodyguard’ was enough to still him where he stood – no, sat. He was in a chair, one with a high back and a good lift under his legs. That meant that he was probably in a jet. Yes, the family jet, his father had said that he was being flown out to a new destination. Probably to the very island that they had been discussing.

Memory flooded in, and with it came the sensation and reports around his own body. He was doing alright, and hadn’t suffered from oxygen deprivation past the point of being choked out. He had been allowed to start breathing again as soon as he had lost consciousness, which had required slightly more pressure than the average human would have needed. His birth into the Bronson family had come with certain modifications to the gene code in addition to his various implants.

Shaking his head, he opened his eyes to confirm his guess. Yep, the plane, complete with all the plain white walls and the lack of screens anywhere. There were only a few seats in it, something to keep the feeling of luxury high, considering that they were only ever flying with the full family and with a couple of bodyguards and a servant, most of the time. That meant that there were a total of thirteen seats aside from the cockpit, which was still open.

“I could fly myself,” he muttered.

“Master Bronson does not allow that.”

“I know.”

“You will remain in your seat unless –”

“I know the drill,” Derek said.

“…I suppose you do. I apologize for this happening, Mr. Bronson.”

He nodded, and the snow leopard stepped back. The anthromorph started talking to the cyborg pilots in the cockpit, going over the flight plans, more than likely. Derek shook his head, leaning back against the headrest of the chair as he looked straight at the ceiling.

[i]If I had been a normal person…[/i]

Might as well have said if he had been choked by someone other than the bodyguard, at that rate. He had been made stronger and a little more durable than average humans, and anthromorphs were not just trained, but all but programmed to know how to do that without hurting someone. They had different senses, and were actually more sensitive than a human, to the point where they could do something like that without genuine risk of injury. He shook his head, realizing that he didn’t even feel sore.

[i]Well done, I guess.[/i]

Shaking his head, he looked down at the arm of his chair. A finger-scanner was at the tip, and he touched it. As soon as he did, a screen opened in front of him, starting with a projection of his uncle.

“[i]I wish it didn’t have to come to this, Derek. I would like it if you would just understand what it took to get where we are, and to keep what we have, but I know that that’s just not what you are.

“At least, not yet. I hope that this time away from the world will help you understand the various advantages that we actually have, and what it would mean to lose everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything. The protests want to rip us down to their level, to take everything that we have and share it among themselves. That would not bring them to our level. Not anything close. What we’d need for that would require a total overhaul of everything that we have, and even that wouldn’t be quite enough. It would just mean living…comfortable, rather than living as we are.[/i]”

And he knew that the whole family would never entirely go along with that. They wanted to be better, even Sarah. They all wanted that status that came with being on top of the world. Instead of changing –

There was no point in getting angry. He had let his uncle walk all over him because his uncle had all the power. There was no point in fighting someone that wasn’t there.

“[i]I can’t convince you of that. So, I’m putting you somewhere where, hopefully, you can see how much it means to have comfort. You will have nothing but your own little world. You will be treated well, everything taken care of. I hope that you treat it as the learning experience it is, and come back with a better, more cooperative state of mind, both for my children…and for me.[/i]

The message faded. A prompt asked him if he wanted to save it or not, and he decided against it. There was no point in filling up the memory banks with something that he never wanted to listen to again. His uncle’s face disappeared from the screen, replaced with a map labeled ‘Silan Island.’ It wasn’t a particularly large one, perhaps big enough for a small airfield on one end and a resort on the other, with a hint of jungle and forest for nature paths and recreation, but nothing further.

[i]Hmmm…[/i]

He flicked around the map, curious just how far from the mainland the island was. The answer was, very. If one didn’t have a long-distance water-craft, one wasn’t getting away from the island in any way save for by air. The closest landmass was another island, probably uninhabited, and he doubted that there were any tourists that would be vacationing too close to a place like that.

The more he looked at it, the more that he realized why he was being sent there. It was isolated, and from the looks of things, just small enough to not be noticed if it went missing from a regular map. Some random traveler might stumble across it if they were having particularly bad luck going from one place to another, and some rich traveler might notice it from the air, but that was all.

[i]And that means that none of the others will come for me…and I can’t get away to talk to someone, either.[/i]

Knowing his uncle, he doubted that there would be much of a means of contacting the outside world, even through things he might try jury-rigging. This really was, he realized, a way of getting him as disconnected from the rest of the world as possible. Martin really believed that he was going to change his mind just because he couldn’t hear the bad stuff any longer.

[i]People remember things, uncle,[/i] he thought. [i]We remember things longer than you think we do.[/i]

The media had done a very good job for a very long time at keeping the average member of the public from realizing just what was happening in the world. The first thing that the Mega-Corps had done was get them on their side, and aside from the blip in NYC, they had been almost too successful. The Mega-Corps had been the darling of the people, making themselves out to be the angel that fought for the rights of the working man, and that anything bad that they did was because the governments forced them to do it.

It had been a running social norm for years, something that nobody had questioned for the entirety of his life, as far as he’d known. At least, not publicly. However, in the last couple of years, as some of the new corporations had merged and risen to Mega-Corp level – like Datarel-Banks – the old guard started to have their reputation smeared by those that were taking the lessons of greed to heart all too well.

At the very worst, he imagined that the other old Mega-Corps would dismantle Datarel-Banks and use them as a sacrifice, fighting to keep that as a message to the rest of the world that only the current Mega-Corps could be trusted. The others were upstarts, didn’t know what they were doing, and all that.

Then again, he imagined that would play havoc with their various alliances with the smaller companies, like Martin’s Ardus company, that they had going. Those that were waiting to be uplifted would be pissed to be played like that, so it would be something that the Mega-Corps would have to be very careful with. Datarel-Banks had pushed them into a very unpleasant corner, and regardless of how it played out, they would still have to do something.

And if they did nothing, they would face different consequences. They had all but bought the courts, that was true, but the public had [i]seen[/i] this offense. They would demand some sort of payback, and if the courts just let Datarel-Banks off the hook, then there was going to be the demand for far more.

Either the corporations gave them something without going to the courts, or they played stupid and let the courts get them off. Either way, something was going to go badly, and that bad thing would trickle all the way down.

[i]If you don’t find some way to show yourself to be on the right side of history, guys, you’re not going to make it out of this.[/i]

That was the only thing that he could think in that moment, and he knew for a fact that he’d never be allowed to say it to his cousin-siblings.

Tapping the map again, it faded, this time bringing up the different staff members that were at the island. They were all anthromorphs, something that made him groan under his breath.

[i]Lovely…uncle managed to staff it all this way…[/i]

That wasn’t to say that he didn’t like anthromorphs. As a matter of fact, he rather preferred them to the average human, if only for the fact that they were more honest about things, and that they were a little more appealing. However, they were also easily conditioned, and that meant that his uncle had obvious spies in the staff rather than just the bugs that were probably planted all over the island.

He leaned back, sighing to himself. The fact that they were all female, too, meant that there was something else at work. His uncle had always assigned him to male anthromorphs before, and that had partially been to keep him from using any authority to start doing intimate things with them. The fact that the entire staff was female was obviously meant as a way to keep him teased and enticed, reminded of what the rich were able to afford with their servants, something that nobody living a more common life would be able to afford.

Derek grumbled, pushing some of the fantasies already rising in his mind out of the way. The files were all for the personnel, and that meant that he was allowed to review them. Figuring that he might as well get some of that information memorized before they arrived at the island, he went to the name at the top of the list.

“Let’s see what the lot of you are like…”

The first name was ‘Cora’, and she was a snow leopard, just like the bodyguards that he had left behind. Unlike them, female, definitely well-trained in estate management, though this was her first official purchase and posting from the sight of things. His uncle had made several remarks on the file, something about how she was well-trained to dominate other anthromorphs, and that Derek would do well to study her and apply some of her techniques to his own employees.

He wondered how this Cora did that. If nothing else, it would be fascinating to see if she managed it in a better way than his uncle.

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: The start of a new series. In this case, a human sees the impending revolution coming, and he tries to warn his family. Not much success there…

Tags: No Sex, Anthromorph, Anthro, Human, Cyberpunk, Series, Adult Situations Coming, Outcast, Banishment,