Employee Badge

Good morning Sherice. Are you excited for the ceremony?
Yes, mother, so much so I could hardly sleep last night.
I'm so happy for you, child. Today you get your Employee Badge, and as a rated tech! Your father would be so proud.
I wish father could have joined us today...
Me too, dear. He was a good man and did not deserve that charge of malfeasance, he uncovered the wrong person's slush fund, however, and that was it.
Have you heard from him lately?
Yes, he managed to get me a message last week. He's still on that wildcat crew. They thought they found a good rock about a month ago, but it turned out to be a dud, just enough metal to pay for the ship repairs and maintenance.
I wish he would find a good one and come home.
Me too, dear. But enough of your father. He would want you to be happy today. And I know he is very proud.
A few hours later, a long line of young adults, all recently graduated from basic corporate training, Corporate Trade School, or the Pleiades University, passed before a bored bureaucrat.
Papers?
Ahh, yes. Here. Sherice Doraka.
Ehh? I knew your father. Good man, good accountant. Too bad about the screw up. Well, I'm sure you'll do well. Tech 4, well done. You'll do well indeed.
The man handed Sherice a small package, which the youth carried through a long chain of functionaries, from room to room, until, at the end, the last functionary handed over a small plastic card on a company branded belt clip.
Congratulations, Technician. Welcome to the Pleiades Corporation. Your assignment is coded to the badge, and your home reader will bring up your contract and position details. Looks like you report in on Monday. Have a good weekend.
The celebration that night, in the Doraka household, was raucous. The next several weeks were a blur while Sherice learned the ropes as a new Technician, grade 4, assigned to the local power generation facility.

The Employee Badge. It is difficult to explain what the experience was like for someone in 2075 to receive their badge for the first time. In times past the closest one might come was receiving naturalized citizenship in one of the great powers. In later times it was close to when a mere person was elevated to Citizen for performance of some significant service or surviving a tour in the patrol fleet. Almost everyone received an Employee Badge, at least almost everyone who was willing to commit to the Pleiades Pledge. There were some few who simply did not qualify, either through inability or some defect of character, but the majority of the Unemployed became so after serving the Corporation for a time, usually through some major infraction of the rules or gross insubordination.
The Employee Badge served as a combination of identification, credit card, passport, medical record, bank card, and travel visa. With an Employee Badge one could travel, buy and sell goods, work and be paid, and pay others for minor (non-corporate) debts. Without a badge one was among the Unemployed. The Unemployed could attend school, if young enough, but otherwise could do little other than huddle in downlevel on earth or join a wildcat crew in the asteroid belt. In downlevel people lived as criminals or animals, the dregs of a civilized society and the castoff failures. In the asteroid belt you either died; quickly, brutally, and horribly, or you survived long enough to find a high quality mine or even a heavy metal rock. With a good find the wildcat crew were granted Employee Badges, and transferred to a comfortable mid-level retirement on earth. With a heavy metal rock a crew could negotiate an upper level retirement, or even a Luna retirement for particularly rich finds. Sometimes the Unemployed would land on Mars or one of the outer moons, but such were rare indeed, and it took a lot of effort to stay hidden from the wildcat press-gangs in those places.