=Proteus= 
**Posted by:** Jake Carter, Firewall Proxy <__Info__ __Msg__ __Rep__>
I don’t leave [[Mars]] much, but when I do, small and boring-ass moons of [[Neptune]] such as Proteus are not usually where I choose to go. Unless there’s a good mystery, that is.
==Free== 
**Station Type:** [[Beehives|Beehive]]
**Allegiance:** Independent
**Primary Languages:** Arabic, English, Italian
**Population:** 10,000
I’ve had my nose to the ground for some missing Martian infomorphs the last few months, and now I’ve found ‘em. They’ve been spirited off to a tiny hellhole called Free, way out on the fringe. “Gather data. Look for evidence of x-threats. Don’t interfere.” Balls, man. I want intervention on this one. If I don’t get it from Firewall, I’m calling in the [[Barsoomian Movement|Movement]]. My cousin Young-Ja’s got a crew of futeisha badasses who’d love to take a break from street actions and train jobs and shut down this bad news farm. This hellhole promises morphs for everyone, with better morphs coming with proof of superior ability. I can tell you right now that’s a load of shit—we’re looking at slavery here. The locals buy Martian indentures and then enslave the ones who don’t measure up to their criteria for citizenship.
I don’t understand all the technical-ass criteria they use for these decisions. Some of it involves having useful skills and an appropriate temperament, but there are other criteria that the locals keep secret. The upshot is around 5% of all immigrants get fairly basic but nice morphs like splicers or bouncers, another 15% get worker pods and similar cheap morphs and the opportunity to earn better morphs, and the rest are stuck in synth and case morphs that contain various override switches and other limitations.
These people also have involuntary psychosurgery to make them content with their lot. The people in bios and pods can earn better morphs, but the rest don’t want better morphs—they just want to work themselves down to bare synth muscle and be praised for their ceaseless effort. There are stories that the [[Planetary Consortium|Consortium]] tried this sort of crap six or seven years ago and gave it up because bad PR started leaking out—and on account of some seriously problematic side effects. I don’t know what those side effects are, but we’ve got mind-slavery here, and if these fuckers can make it work, it’ll spread.
Free’s made a name for itself by providing the kind of sophisticated data analysis and complex design strategies that were performed by AGIs before the Fall. Now, AGI is illegal in pretty much all inner system habs, and hiring people to perform this sort of data mining and manipulation is expensive. Free’s made a nice proﬁt undercutting local talent in the Consortium and other places where AGIs are illegal.
Most of their contracts are new, but with the payments starting to roll in, Free could make a big push for growth, and we really don’t want to see this place get a major inﬂux of immigrants or to start spreading their poison to other habs. The chink in their security is that they’re so eager for work, they don’t check the credentials on potential clients—or those posing as such—too close. I got in and out without a hitch.
But I’m waxin’ political, and that ain’t what I got paid for. So, demographics. Free has a total population of around ten thousand, and the general layout is a clear reﬂection of the local politics. The habitat is a beehive dug into the surface of Neptune’s moon Proteus, and the deeper you go, the better things get. The areas near the surface are either hard vacuum or helium and are home to the synths living in drastically Spartan conditions. If you ask them, they’ll all tell you that luxuries would distract them from their work and that they all love their work. Ask as many as you like; you’ll get exactly the same spiel.
Below that, you get some heavy-duty airlocks with armored walls and doors and the sorts of sensor suites and concealed defenses normally found on high-security installations. This is where everyone who still has an intact mind lives. The next few levels are mostly for pods and look like most other mid-range habs you’ve seen. The primary difference is the mixture of fear and hope. Some of the people here are horriﬁed by what’s going on, but not so much that they’ll risk trying to do anything to stop it. My guess is that anyone who’d stand up to what’s going on ends up mind scrubbed and stuck in a case.
Even deeper in, you get the areas where the biomorphs live. Down there, you can see that while it’s small and fairly new, Free is doing pretty damned well for itself. Of course, when each resident has the work of a dozen people supporting them, it ain’t surprising they’re living fat. The elite have high-end cornucopia machines, ubiquitous smart materials in walls and furnishings, and top-of-the-heap personal energy and raw material budgets.
Even then, there’s a pecking order. The people in charge plan to stay that way. Even in the high-status areas, the local leaders have all the cornucopia machines locked down from printing any weapons other than knives. The only unrestricted fabbers are personally owned by the local oligarchs. If you want to procure a nice morph or serious bio-mods, you gotta know somebody.
It’s just how Mars would be if there were nobody around to throw monkey wrenches. I’m thinkin’ we should import some.

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