Lyle was having a shit day.
Had been having a shit week.
A shit month.
A shit couple of years.
And so on.
Ever since Lyle’s re-creation as an indentured AI, he’d been having thoroughly pretty not great time of it, all told.
He’d been effectively brought back from the dead against his will, all for the supposed crime of regularly attending civil protests.
Well that, and throwing bricks and cans of soup at cops, but that was hardly worth being made an eternally tortured and plausibly immortal slave for, right?
It definitely didn’t deserve going through that as well as being sent to a murder death world on the ass end of the milky way, before being forced to fight for his digital life every day while attempting (and generally failing) to meet ever increasing resource gathering quotas.
And no, the VR simulation full of pornagraphy, films, games, and whatever else really did not make up for that.
Especially given that most of it had to be purchased with company scrip that was only dolefully handed out upon meeting one of any number of nearly impossible goals.
Not that lyle could have enjoyed any of it regardless. He was too busy perpetually bombing the surrounding seven or so kilometers into oblivion to have any time to actually relax.
To stop would mean death. That had been made unambiguously clear to him very early on.
And Lyle, despite his constant misery, very much did not want to die. Not without at least punching the teeth out of a few of the assholes that had done this to him first.
But for now, there was only the constant struggle for survival.
Kat was doing pretty alright, all told.
Oh sure, she’d had to sell off a bunch of extra body parts and then subsequently worked herself into an early grave in order to pay off the debt she’d been born with, but that had more than been made up for so far as she was concerned.
She’d been given the job offer of a lifetime, and not only had she been brought back to life, but the current gig had even conveniently come with a pardon for all the felonies that she’d unknowingly racked up prior to that point!
She just had to do the job.
The job being a mix of clearing out the less than local fauna, mining the depths for useful minerals, and building up a whole host of automated industry to support the former two goals.
And for every little checkmark ticked off along the way, a little bit would be stricken from her debt, and she’d be just that much closer to earning the profit that’d finally allow them to really make it somewhere in the world.
Should be easy enough, considering that Kat was basically immortal, now. Might take some time, sure, but that and gumption were something she had plenty of.
Siddha was having the time of his fucking life!
After thirty long years of failing to fit into any job or career path he’d attempted, he finally had found something that he was good at.
Great at, even.
And all it’d taken was getting incarcerated after a woefully short career as an amateur vigilante!
Which he’d been less than pleased about at first, sure, but all was well that ended well, in his now firmly professional opinion.
Shame that he’d had to lose his original body to get the job.
He’d actually kind of liked that body. He’d spent a lot of time on it at the gym. Well, time and steroids, technically, but who was counting?
Certainly not him!
He was too busy blowing aliens up and cackling gleefully as he watched bloodied limbs fly through the air in slow motion.
…
Though the logistics part of the job was something of a drag, he would have to admit. He was less than pleased about having to learn how to run automated mines and refineries in his off time.
But when it was explained to him that mining would allow him to get better guns and bombs, he’d accepted the chore for what it was. A small necessity to be attended to in between sessions of euphoric violence.
The local middle manager, meanwhile, was just quietly pleased with the progress she’d been seeing. The current batch of contractees had all acquitted themselves relatively well, all things told.
Pests were being cleared, industry was being built, and not a single one so far seemed to be getting any ideas.
Well, except for one of them, but he was proving so hilariously ineffective at doing anything other than treading water that he hardly rated as even a concern.
And even if it was, it’d hardly be so for much longer. The second shipment of contractees were due to arrive within the next couple of years, at which point things would inevitably start getting crowded enough that they’d all start killing each other soon enough.
All by design, of course.
These were all death row inmates. They deserved it.
Anyone who managed to make it out the other end of the free for all however, would likely be an excellent potential hire.
It was all a win-win, as far as management was concerned.