Scene 1

His finger hovers over the submit button. Marcus hesitates. On the screen, the Ares Frontier Application waits with patient indifference. He’s filled every field.

Skills assessment: Software engineering, systems architecture, team management. Sixteen years experience. Volunteers should anticipate a minimum commitment of 10-15 years while Mars-Earth return transit remains under development.

In other words, no promises. It’s a one-way ticket.

Dependents you are providing for: 2.

“Noel, finish eating. We have to leave.”

Marcus almost knocks over his coffee as he minimizes the browser. His wife Mara stands in the kitchen doorway, keys in hand, blue scrubs, hair pulled back.

“Thirty seconds,” the answer comes from the other side of the small kitchen table. His thirteen-year-old daughter gives him a meaningful look as she puts down her spoon and uses both hands to lift the bowl of cereal and milk.

“Don’t—” both parents call in unison, but Noel’s breakfast is already gone.

“One gulp?” Marcus asks.

Noel gives him a look. “I was almost done anyway.” She picks up her phone, propped against the cereal box. “Did you see Flat Earth might be the fastest growing movement in the country now? Tripled.” She shakes her head. “We’re cooked.”

Marcus manages a grunt and half a nod.

Noel scrolls. “Oh, and there’s a new retraining ad. ‘New skills for a new economy.’” She puts on a voice, bright and empty. “They should retrain the retraining people. An AI could lie to us way more efficiently.”

She grabs her backpack. “Have a great day, Dad!” she says brightly, then winces. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Marcus says. “You have a great day, hun.” He kisses her forehead.

Mara’s phone buzzes on the counter. She flicks the notification away and pockets it.

“Let’s go,” she says to Noel.

And then he’s alone. Again.

Noel will be at school late. Robotics Club. Mara will see a dozen patients today. And he’ll be here, a month behind on their rent, with nothing coming in, staring at desktop wallpaper he still hasn’t changed. Hargrove company picnic, 2028. He looks at himself in the back row, arm around a junior engineer he’d hired, trained, then watched get laid off eighteen months later. Just six months before his own job became redundant.

He pulls the application back up.

He could click submit. It would give his family a roof over their heads for a few more years at least. He clicks save instead. The screen thanks him for his interest and lets him know his application can be resumed at any time.

As a software engineer in a world powered by software, he never thought he’d need a backup plan. Then he watched as competitors hollowed out and unsolicited résumés streamed into then flooded his inbox. In the end, even his own bosses had shareholders to answer to.

Tech bros called it the second industrial revolution. Kids called it The Hollowing. Now that money can buy machines and machines to run the machines, what use do billionaires have for people?

Marcus steels himself and switches tabs. The eCommerce dashboard for his cosmetics business looked exactly the same as it had an hour ago. Thirty-seven orders in the past thirty days. Almost a thousand dollars. In revenue. Maybe four hundred in profit.

Cosmetics was a safe bet, he’d convinced Mara. It has a well-established market, low shipping costs, and he had a good rate with a bespoke cosmetics compounder who happened to be local. It was a foolproof plan. Just add customers. Of course if you can’t afford AI managing your ads in real time, no one will know your business exists.

Except for return customers, he used to tell himself. Over a year in, he now knows even that was an over-optimistic miscalculation. Entirely logical, and completely wrong.

“What I think doesn’t matter to reality,” he says to no one.

He closes the laptop, grabs his jacket, and leaves.

Outside, the air is cool and the street is quiet in a way that used to mean “early” but now just means “Wednesday.” Marcus walks. No destination, just movement. The neighborhood tells the same story it’s been telling for three years. The dry cleaner hangs on. The nail salon next to it has hand-lettered hours in the window. The accounting firm across the street is a WorkForce Renewal office now, federal posters already peeling. A 3d print shop hums behind plate glass, one employee watching machines work beneath a Made in America banner.

The coffee shop on the corner is full. Ten-thirty on a Wednesday, every table occupied by people who have nowhere else to be.

Past the coffee shop, a community garden where a tech company used to be. Raised beds, tomatoes, a free library built from scrap. Marcus doesn’t look at it.

Waiting for a light at the crosswalk he takes out his phone. The feed serves him something conspiracy-flavored. He swipes it away. Now he’s fed a video breaking down how companies use algorithms to manufacture emotional engagement. His engineer brain locks onto the architecture of it—the pacing, the escalation, the little rewards for paying attention. This person gets it.

He watches it twice without deciding to and forces himself to put the phone back in his pocket. Just as he lets go, an unfamiliar notification plays. A freelance app he’d entirely forgotten about. With so many engineers competing for work, he’d given up on it.

New message from: Aion

I have some code auditing work that matches your background well. Flexible schedule. Attached is a trial task—a few hours’ work if you’re as good as I hope. Five hundred dollars.

No company. No photo. New account.

But whoever wrote this actually read his listing—this was exactly what he advertised. Exactly what he’s good at.

Five hundred dollars. On a platform where senior engineers fight over fifty-dollar jobs.

He taps Accept.