The Living condition

11

In an economic decline during the late 3010s, a start-up company was created between three co-owners. James Elliott, Carter ____, and Jenson Briggs, each taking their namesake for the company and using the money made from James Elliott's family to pay for the start-up.

The premise of the company was initially remarkably simple; to make the world a better and easier place, and to make plenty of money doing it. It started with simple products that could be needed and used anywhere. Office supplies that wouldn't run out of Ink,reams of paper that were biodegradable at a faster rate, binder clips that could be used for self defense in a pinch.

It wasn't until 3019 when the idea of robots were proposed between the three men, and the work was undertaken. The solution to immense unemployment was simple for the rich; to replace the workforce with robots that did not require anything more than a little filtration and a little oil to the joints.

—

The day you knew that some forms of love ran only skin-deep was anything but a happy one. It was the same day you'd learned exactly what your father valued, and which order they fell in line with. His work, his wealth, his business partners, his robots, his father, his home, his health, his wife, his mother, his child, his pets. You were young when you'd learned this natural order. Younger than you should've had to be, watching from behind a sliding glass door as your father unburied the family dog. The poor thing had gotten old and blind, and you had found it cold and stiff in the backyard,laying atop an old bone. You'd spent that day giving it what you thought was a funeral. Something like your grandmother had, something nice and to be buried back in the ground.

Something in you felt queasy, watching your father unbury that old,blind, dead dog, toss the stiff body into a trash bag, fix the dirt in the backyard and drag the bag to the garbage can.

Your hardwork to show a last piece of love to a beloved pet tarnished, just like that. Like it was easy for him.

You'd flinched, startled when your mother set her hands on your shoulder and led you away from the sliding glass door. She said nothing regarding your father. She merely told you to play in your room.

That was the day you learned your mother's values and where they stood. Her house, her table, her special glass you weren't allowed to touch, her figurines, her old collection of trophies from when she was young, her dreams that she never followed, her husband, her parents, her child, her pets.

You don't want to be anything like them. How could a person be so callous as to not give their pet a sendoff? A pet that's been in the family for longer than their child had been, and she just let that poor dog be thrown in the garbage like it was nothing.

—

"We should run away." you'd propose to Tessa one afternoon, lazing around her room. You'd thought about it before, you'd proposed it before. It was a conversation the two of you had sporadically had over the course of a decade. Running away. Running out to the stars. Living amongst the wilderness. Pretending you were raised by wolves and not snobby aristocrats. The fantasy got harder to picture with the addition of the drones, but you'd never not include them. You'd all run away together. The idea was at the front of your mind out of desperation. And it only got more desperate after your father had told you.

You would be going away.

Not moving homes, though your heart always felt stuck in another house,not of your own. Not moving, but YOU would be going away. Venturing the stars alone. A liaison for your father's company all alone with people you didn't know,restarting on another planet by yourself.