The Human Migration (World Building Notes)

There was a prompt released in the world-building community that asked us to talk a bit about surveillance systems in our world, so thought I'd take this opportunity to write a story from the perspective of a Human being interviewed about why the left their territory to join Free Space.

Here's A Link To The Post If You'd Like To Check It Out.

Source

Human Refugee

There was no choice but to leave. Our worlds were in a self-governing state prior to The Confederation of planets. Each world had its own laws, and over the years we even developed our own cultures and belief systems independent of each other; that's the benefit of living light years from one another.

Slowly though, things changed. Currency became the first major change, a credit system was introduced that linked all worlds together. They sold it as an answer to free travel and immigration between worlds.

Along with the new monetary system, there were regulations put in place to ensure that poverty was made a thing of the past. Everyone believed it would help the massive disparity between the rich and the poor. There were people who simply couldn't afford to live, so new measures were introduced to make sure that nobody could spend all they had access to and be left with nothing.

Automatically money was taken from your wages, and sent to the places it needed to go; rent, food, tax, etcetera. What you were left with was yours. The first time I knew it was a problem was when I tried to go to a bar for a midweek drink. The transactions were blocked near the end of the night, stating that I had work in the morning. In my drunken mind, I thought it was a glitch, but then it became common knowledge that they were "helping us."

Then people protested, and there was a major clampdown on heavily populated areas. It happened slowly, but soon life changed rapidly. It all started when a terrorist organisation started to demonstrate its anger by targeting certain government buildings. As a way to save us from that group, we were scanned, and monitored, for our own protection.

Soon, we couldn't move freely between worlds, and not long later we weren't able to move freely throughout our own cities.

Wake up, go to work, if requested - you could go for food or a drink, and then back home. On days off it was possible to go to a place of leisure. A new line of transport ships came out, and they were fitted with navigation chips that automatically turned the ship around if a request was denied, or if you tried to travel a certain distance from your house.

They saw everything, followed us everywhere, made note of everyone we visited, and I experimented one time by going out alone, bringing nothing with me but the clothes on my back. Within one hour I was picked up by armed forces, and they took me in for interrogation.

Nobody knew what was going on before it was too late. I made preparations to leave when I knew there was no coming back from it, and the minute they sent out a warning about a terrorist attack, and told us to prepare for pick-up and transfer to safe government-run facilities, I knew it was time to leave.

I saw the pictures, and videos, and knew that those camps weren't to keep the "Bad people out" It was to keep us locked in, where we could be monitored much easier. The places were as big as towns, the only difference was they were walled off, and had automated defense systems. There's no reasoning with machines after all.

I arranged passage to Free Space the moment I knew it was over. Did I want to leave? No, I just had no choice.