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Disclaimer: This story deals with adult themes, and themes that may not be suitable for anyone to read. You have been warned. Continuance to read this document, acknowledges that you are allowed to read this document in your place of orign, that you are of legal age to read it, and that you take responsibility for having read this document. The author is therefore in no way liable for any damages, in any way shape or form. * * *

Runaway: Part 1 of a series

• * * Chapter 1: The End... Thankfully it was a warm day, because the torrential downpour might have gotten to me otherwise, and given me any number of resperatory ailment. A nice average seventy degrees, though awfully wet; actually felt nice for a change, and gave me a chance for a shower of my own. But that's because I was completely broke. Actually, I owed money to more loan-sharks than I wished to admit, and was on my last chance to escape. If it worked. I had found this add in a paper somone had discarded, and like so many ads that proliferated the media, it started, "A new life awaits you on the offworld colonies." Normally I might have discared it without a second thought, but some part of me, perhaps lady luck, said to keep reading. Unlike most ads, which had a hefty pricetag attatched to them, this one continued with "Help Wanted". I was capitivated already, as thoughts ran through my mind of leaving to an offworld colony, where perhaps the loan-sharks wouldn't have either contacts, or juristiction; might be the complete escape and restart of my life I needed. The rest of the advertisement, had little to dwel upon, just an office to contact in person, no phone number listed. I picked up my pack with the remains of my belongings, and almost ran throught the rain to get to this office, my mind awash with the possibilities. The subway ride was easy enough, and at least was long enough to help me get up my resolve and courage for this decision; not to mention dry me fairly well enough to be presentable. The doors slid open while the compuerized announcer heralded our destination. Rather than arriving at a streetside, the subway stop was under one of the larger buildings. I got out and walked through the empty almost sanitized corridor toward the elevator. Pausing to read the advertisement again, I verified the floor against the buildings registry, and called the elevator; took it to the floor, and stepped out. The whole floor was devoted to this corporation, perhaps a couple of the floors, for instead of entering into a hallway, I stepped out into an empty waiting room, almost hospital or clinic like, with a receptionist half tucked away behind a frosted glass window. I approached, and she took a moment before smiling to me. "Welcome to Future-Tech, how can I assist you today?" She said in a short, but friendly tone; almost eager to talk to someone and do her job perhaps. Reaching into my pocket I pulled out the folded paper, and in showing it to her, said, "I came about this advertisement for a job offworld?" She took the paper and purused it, verifing it's origin perhaps, and nodded. Reaching into a drawer she pulled out a clip-board, and handed it to me. "Take this, and I'll page the director right away." She said, handing me the clip-board. At first, I thought it must be a tear off pad of forms, but instead the clip held what seemed a dozen or more sheets of paper, and appeared to be one single document. I sat down, pen in hand, and began to fill out the top with my personal information. Not a bit far into the paperwork, I was interrupted and looked up to see a well dressed man, looking to be in his mid, perhaps late, thirties. He had on a full suit, vest and all in a calm warm gray, sporting a paisely tie and a grin that would make a stock broker shivver. He almost looked like a fed. "Greetings. My name is Drew Peterson, and I'm the director of this branch. Please come with me and we'll discuss your employment." I got up, and started to follow him, amazed at how quickly he came in and his mannerisms in general. Perhaps if I hadn't been so eager, so ready, so overwhelmed I might have noticed the short pause before saying employment. The hallway lead down past a few doors, no doubt holding other employees, or perhaps stacks of files and paperwork. One was no doubtedly the bathroom. We turned a corner, and he held his arm into a door to the left, waiting me to go in. I had no idea how high up in the building we were, for sunlight poured into the conference room he had lead me to. I walked to the window first, not hearing him close the door, or press a button to page someone else to come down. Looking down I could see a few dozen feet or so to the tops of the clouds, occasionally flickering and glowing as either a hovercar passed through it with its highbeams on full, or the flicker of the lightning from the weak storm. Then again, with the money to support offworld colonies, it was possible that this was a hologram instead. "Please, take a seat and we'll get down to brass tax, Mr..." he said in a manner-of-fact way, his voice trailing off at the end. "Simon Strathmore." is all I said, unhefting the bag from my shoulder into a neighboring chair before taking a seat myself. I set the clipboard, barely touched by my pen on the table. "Well, first off, why do you want to work at one of our offworld facilities?" He asked. "To be honest, as I feel it's easiest to be so, I'm broke; and looking for nearly any opportunity. I'm a diligent worker, and willing to do almost any task. Cooking, cleaning, heck if it's janitorial work, I'm even up for that." The man across from me almost smiled at my equally up-frontness as his own. "Good to hear." was all he managed as someone entered the room. A huge imposing figure, I at first thought to be a bouncer stepped in, just as well dressed, perhaps looking even smarter than Mr. Peterson, opened the door; briefcase in hand, and stepped in, his huge hand holding the handle as he calmly closed the door. "This is Mr. Jacobson, one of our firm lawyers, and is here to assist with the contract once we get to that." The large figure stepped further in, almost lightly for his almost enormity and setting his briefcase on the table took a seat. I peered closely at him and something just seemed odd about his appearance. I took the chance and asked him, "Are you wearing a holo-generator?" He stared back at me with almost penetrating eyes, caught in his motion and after a moment smiled, turned to look at the director, who was equally as surprised at my comment, and after a nod from him, turned back to me. "Very astute," he said, before reaching to his left arm and pressing the button on an armband under his shirt to turn off the field. He grew in height by a couple inches, his clothing fitting him more perfectly now, and smiled, or it looked like a smile; but it's hard to tell on an Orca. Sitting, it was hard to completely gauge his full size, but easilly nine feet tall, with shoudlers that would barely fit through most doors. Even through the well adjusted suit, I could sense his rippling muscles, toned body, and smooth rubbery skin of which I could barely see on his face and hands, which were large enough to crush mine should he wanted. It made some sense, all the humanoidal dolphin species line were extra intelligent, few were even average on the human normalized scale; and the impression of such a powerful creature just gave added meaning to what he might say as a lawyer. He clicked open what looked like fine china in his hands the clasp of his briefcase, and pulled out a couple sheets of paper, but looked again to the director before proceeding. "Quite frankly," Director Peterson started, "I'm almost ready to hire you on the spot, we do need the man-power, but before I do there are a few things to get out of the way. First, the colony you'd be working for, is on a small remote planetoid; and will house a small research staff, very highly specialized in their fields, and a vast majority of labs and equipment. There will not be a large ammount of space for recreation, let alone support staff. Because of this, we're looking for hardy individuals, who are willing to provide a wide array of support services for these scientists. Janitorial work, sanitation in general, cooking, cleaning, perhaps even some work as lab assistance, unloading and moving of heavy equipment; all would be required from everyone we hire. The contract is for a five year period minimum, comes under the higest security; so you'd not be able to leave the compound until your contract is up for renewal; and should you choose to leave after that period, you'd have to undergo a series of tests and evaluations for your and our safety and security. So far, do you understand?" I blinked, and nodded; the foremost question on my mind was payment; and hearing of such high security standards, I was sure that the loan sharks and debitors, wouldn't be able to find me. "Yes, so far I'm with you." He smiled back, "Other tasks would be assigned by the company as well as the researchers who would be stationed there. They and we would be your bosses. You might say it would almost be like boot camp. You take their orders, you do them. I assure you that unlike the military, there are no harsh repurcussions, and there should be no request of any task to be done that would not be within your ability to accomplish "Because of the sheer size, or I should say lack of size, of the facility, there are little in the way of recruitements that we can spare. Low gravity, hard to keep warm in its position in space. Therefore, you would be required to undergo full physical and mental evaluations before we would fully accept you into the company. You will, depending on how things turn out, need some body modification to be performed. Nothing out of the ordinary for living off world. Every environment and job has its specific needs, and we need the few staff we will have there to be in their perfect form." Before he could even ask if I understood, I nodded. I had heard of this kind of thing before, the military often implanted into soldiers bio-chips, both for identification and constant monitoring of health, but also performed genetic enhancements as standard. Increasing a persons mental speed, their visual range to that similar of a hawk or eagle, making their hearing sharper, or even increasing their blood oxygenation rates made a person a more valuable soldier. More deadly, more effective, and less easilly killed. Such genetic modification from the cousin species on this planet were becoming more and more common for either the rich who wanted to personalize themselves, the military, or gigantic mega-corporations; who needed not just to tailor their work for the products they produce, but their workers to make them better than the robts could. And in these days of such mega-corporations and robotic labor days; the label "Made by hand" meant a lot to consumers, and easilly increased bottom lines. He smiled, and nodded to the lawyer, who in his deep booming voice, almost reminiscient of the fluid sac that dolphins have for their sonar, handed a page to me and a pen. "Firstly, I need this signed. It's a general waiver, that you understand that as a bonded employee of the company, I am not required to divulge any confidential and specific information, that you understand that you have the right to bring in your own legal aid to assist in understanding these contracts which I will summarize for you. By signing this you further agree to understand that I am legally obligated to discuss in detail any term of this contract you need clarified, but that neither I nor the company is responsible for any item in the contract you fail to read, or have described to you by any person, including me or any other company employee, or your own legal representation should you employ one. Once you sign the full contract you will be legally bound to its contents." He took a deep slow breath. "Pleas sign here if you understand. The pen you are using is my own genetic crypted ink pen, it is registered with the company, the legal offices of the Global Federation, and is legally binding." I thought about it for a moment, and knowing I could not afford any legal aid, I was glad that there was at least someone present who could answer any questions, even if only to a certain degree; should I have any. Very professional of the company. However trepidous I was about signing blindly the next five years of my life away, one thing I knew was that they couldn't kill me, or permenantly harm me in any way. I signed. He pressed another sheet my way. "This document is a simple clause, that says up front, that even though you may sign the full contract it is binding under a couple of conditions. That you pass your phyiscal, mental health exams, that you meet a certain cognitive criteria, and that prior to being shipped to the facility to begin your work, any employee of at least a certain level can terminate the contract without question. Basically a revolving door policy. However, once you do sign, you are obligated to perform all these tasks without question, that you bind yourself to taking the exams and tests, and will complete them all. You are not allowed to simply walk out the door without a full review. You will be back-paid for the time you spend these exams with your first pay period." I didn't even think, it made sense to me; and I was becoming more and more eager to have a job, or back at school. The director smiled. "Before you sign the full contract that you've partially filled out, I'm sure there's at least one detail I've left out, and that's pay." He took a short breath, as if collecting his thoughts rather than needing the air intake for a long speech. "All pay would come at the end of your five year period, taxes pre-taken out. You'll have full benefits, room and board are taken care of by your work at the facility. The reason we will not pay you in a standard cycle, is that the place is so small, and will be conducting top-secret research, we cannot simply allow you access to any goods and services you might normally want. You cannot have things ordered and shipped there, no carriers but our own will be visiting the station. This is not to say that you will have zero access to goods and recreation, quite the opposite, but everything you would want would be requisitioned through company channels, and delivered by our couriers. Any purcheses that fall out of a series of categories, would be debited from your pay at the end automatically. Your funds will automatically as well generate interest in our vaults while you earn it, at a variable rate depending on how our company is doing. So in theory, the harder you work the more your money will be worth at the end. For your position, we'll be paying you fifty thousand per standard earth year. That is well above the national average, but barely. Considering the secure nature, the room and board, and services you will be performing; we feel it is more than fair to compensate you this way." He looked at me as a fisherman might examine his lures and bait selections before going for the seven pound bass. I thought for barely a couple heartbeats, and with the quick mental math knew that at the end I could go to school and finish off my degrees easilly with that cash. And given this type of work, even if I would be made to forget, or never discuss what went on, it should look good on a resume to have worked at a top-secret offworld colony. It was the lawyer who smiled at me and waited. "We have as long as you need, but the sooner you get going, the sooner you can be on with your exams and know whether you have the job. You only need to read, fill out, and sign." I quickly looked at the contract. I finished filling out the personal information blanks I had not gotten to yet, and started reading the first page. The technical and legal jargon started welling up in my skull, forcing a headache to the front. And soon I started skipping pages, paragraphs, clauses. I could not believe how much there was. Surely most of it dealt with the nature of payment in full legalese, the details of room and board, of the secrecy of the information, location and business. I felt certain that nothing was out of the ordinary and skipped rapidly to the end, hoping I wasn't making a mess of things, but what was my alternative after all. I signed my name in the best flowing script I could muster. The lawyer quickly smiled, and said there were just a few points that needing initialing throughout the document as well, and with expert hands flipped to the pages and pointed out the spaces for me to dot my i's and cross my t's. Almost hurriedly after I had finished the last bit of filling out, and with a nearly huge grin on the director's face, he scooped the paperwork up, placing the first two sheets I signed on top, stuck them in a manilla envelope, and penned my name atop it. He placed it in his briefcase, snapped it closed in a professional manner, and stepped to the door. He walked out and I turned my attention to the director. "Firstly, we need to secure your personal belongings you have with you, then it's to our medical ward for your exams." He said in the cool businessman tone from before, and lead me out into the hall.