Democracy

August 8th, 2126
 
"What are you crowing about?" I cackled. "Demo-octo-see?" I pretend to sound out.
 
"Oh boy" Emily chimed from the other side of the room. "Here we go again. Dock leave him alone, he's only been here a few months."
 
"Don't listen to those two," Dock grumbled back. "They are both converted democrats. Have member cards and everything."
 
Orion looked between Dock, Emily, and I in confusion. Dock was right though, we were both democrats. But unlike Dock Silver, we hid it better. He had spent the better part of the last decade slowly grinding us down. After all the bad we had done, the thought that one day there might be a world where everyone was treated equally was a very tempting thought.
 
Dock continued "Back a-hundred years ago, they had actual democracies. Countries like Russia and China practiced the ultimate form of equality, which was Marxist Communism. Then the western capitalists slowly came in and took people's rights away. Making us no better than the low level employees that we are today. No rights or anything."
 
I thought back the slums that I grew up in. How my Mom had struggled to raise me in the ruthless streets under the massive skyscrapers that hung in the sky. Money was the only thing that talked. Now I was so wealthy I could have paid to feed and clothe the entire block that grew up on and still have plenty left over.
 
"Rights?" Orion asked.
 
"Oh you poor kid," Dock shook his head. "A right is an moral obligation that you are owed for existing."
 
"Like food and clean water" Emily added.
 
"But don't you have to pay for that?" Orion said.
 
"That's the point. You shouldn't have to," I retorted ruthlessly.
 
Orion looked back to Dock with even more confusion on her face.
 
"He's right, but rights are more than just things you can buy. You should have the right to privacy, the right to pursue your life the way you want. The right to leave a job when you want."
 
"You can leave your job when you want," Orion argued.
 
"Not without paying a fee that's ten times your salary wage," I pointed out again.
 
"That doesn't seem fair to the company," Orion said in a disbelieving tone. "If I owned a company I wouldn't want my skilled employees to leave without paying me for all the money I spent on them".
 
Dock sighed deeply. "This one sounds hopeless." Dock, Emily, and I all chuckled. Even quite Rom gave a grunting laugh from the corner where he watched those fake Mech fights. Mechs were so expensive that no one would really have them fight in an area just for entertainment. Those fights always ended in draws with both mechs taking minor staged damage. It was so boring I didn't know how he could watch it.
 
The door to our common room opened and Zed walked through.
 
"Got and op brief in the conference room," he stated before turning and walking back down the hall he had come from.
 
I snapped up, grabbed my data pad, and hurried after Zed. I was glad to have something to do, it had been a couple weeks since our last job and we hadn't been given a new assignment yet. A day more, and I might have been with Rom on the couch watching the fake fights. I shuddered at the thought and smiled to myself.
 
I followed Zed down a couple doors and took my usual spot at the long conference room table. The table could easily fit 15 people, but there was rarely more than the 5 of us.
 
The rest of the team all filed in. Zed fiddled on his pad for a minute before the holo screen appeared at the end of the table. Kate Steele appeared in frame wearing her usual profession black suit. Her blond hair was in a tight bun. She straightened her glasses before crossing her fingers and beginning "Hello Team 44. Today I have another job for you. It's pretty straight forward, just a simple assassination. The target is a politician with ties to the third eye attempting to infiltrate one of our local ordinances." She flicked her hand at her screen and files appeared on our datapads.
 
"Like I said it should be easy. Management would prefer a suicide or scandal of some kind…." She continued talking but I had stopped listening.
 
Looking through the first of the files it was clear that the target, one Robert Rowe, was a local man running for mayor in some small town in the Yukon Territories. The tie to the Third Eye was through the Teddy Lives cell. A part of the organization that I had heard Dock mention. They were apparently named after some long lost politician named Teddy Roosevelt who was notorious for shutting down monopiles some 200 years ago. Rowe's file indicated that the only wrong thing he had done was try to secure better pay scales for the people in his district and try to implement a local welfare system with 'radical' information from 'terrorists'.
 
I glanced at Dock and we exchanged a look. It was his disappointed face, he didn't want to do this job. I flipped to the end of the file and check the bonus for the various forms of killing him.
 
That was the problem with democracy, you don't get paid to do something good for the community but you did get paid 6 zeros to kill someone who tried to make the world better.