Reed Salazar woke to the sound of mandatory optimism.
"Good morning, Nova Prosperity residents! Today is another opportunity to achieve your goals and increase your prosperity score!" The cheerful voice cut through his apartment like a cleaver. "Remember: dedication today means rewards tomorrow!"
He lay still in the narrow bed, staring at the water-stained ceiling of his Sector 12 apartment. The walls were thin enough that he could hear his neighbor coughing through the night, every night. The corporate broadcast couldn't be turned off, only muted, and muting decreased your prosperity score. Reed had stopped caring about his score two years ago, but he hadn't bothered to mute the broadcasts. Why waste the effort.
"This week's sector highlight: Sector 3 residents achieved an average prosperity increase of 2.3 percent! Could your sector be next?"
Could it, he thought flatly. Could we.
His tablet chimed—the morning notification cluster. Water ration: 45 liters for the day. Air quality in his sector: "adequate" (meaning breathable but not comfortable, upgrade available for only 15 credits per day!). Prosperity score: 347, down from yesterday. He didn't bother checking why. Probably because he'd bought actual vegetables instead of meal paste. The system didn't like when you went off-budget, even when the budget was designed to keep you hungry.
Reed sat up slowly, joints aching the way a thirty-year-old's joints shouldn't ache. The drawer next to his bed held his personal pharmacy: five different pills rattling in unlabeled containers. He took two with his daily water ration, swallowing them dry. Leveler, the unofficial official drug of the lower sectors. Technically illegal, functionally tolerated, and absolutely necessary if you wanted to work three jobs without having a breakdown.
Not that Reed worked three jobs anymore. Not that he worked any jobs, technically. But he provided a service. He helped people get through their days. The irony wasn't lost on him that he was part of the problem, that he was dealing the same shit that kept everyone docile enough to accept the grinding. He just couldn't... he couldn't quite bring himself to care.
The broadcast chirped on. "Reminder: citizens maintaining employment for 90 consecutive days qualify for a prosperity bonus evaluation! Talk to your supervisor today about maximizing your growth potential!"
"Growth potential," Reed said to his empty apartment. "Right."
He got dressed in the same clothes he'd worn yesterday. Same clothes he'd worn for the past week, actually. Laundry cost credits, and the water usage dinged your prosperity score. He'd shower on Sunday, same as always. In two days. Just two more days.
The face in the mirror looked like shit. Dark circles under darker eyes, stubble he couldn't be bothered to shave, the kind of thin that came from forgetting to eat rather than from any intentional choice. Latino features that his mother used to call handsome, back before she'd died trying to pay off his father's medical debt. Reed Salazar, age thirty, drug dealer, former financial analyst, current waste of space. Pre-prosperous, in the corporate language. Always pre-prosperous, never quite arriving.
"Today's motivational minute!" the broadcast announced. "Remember: there are no poor people on Nova Prosperity Station, only pre-prosperous citizens on their journey to success! Your dedication is your investment!"
Reed laughed, the sound bitter in his throat. Pre-prosperous. Like they were all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires, one good break away from moving to Sector 3 with its clean air and functional healthcare and food that didn't come in gray paste form. Like poverty was a choice, a temporary state, something you could work your way out of if you just tried hard enough.
His brother had tried hard enough. Tried himself to death.
Reed grabbed his bag—the real reason for his morning routine—and headed out. He had rounds to make. People depending on him, in the saddest possible way.
Sector 12 in the morning looked like exhaustion given physical form.
The corridors were clean enough—the station was obsessive about maintaining appearances—but everything had that worn, tired quality that came from too many people using too few resources. Flickering lights that never got fixed. Walls that were supposed to be white but had faded to the color of old teeth. People shuffling to their various jobs, eyes down, shoulders hunched.
Reed walked his route the same way he always did: automatic, half-aware, noting details without thinking about them. The propaganda posters were new this week—"Your Tomorrow Starts Today!" with an image of a smiling family in Sector 3, because that's what you could have if you just worked hard enough. Underneath someone had scrawled "my tomorrow looks like today" in marker. It had been half-scrubbed off. Even graffiti was monitored.
His first stop was Marcus Ibrahim's place. Reed knocked twice, waited, knocked once.
The door opened to show a man in his late forties who looked sixty. Marcus was Black, Lebanese features, and built like he'd been strong once before the work had ground him down. Missing three fingers on his left hand—industrial accident five years back, no compensation, just a medical bill that had tripled his debt load.
"Morning," Marcus said, voice raspy. He wasn't smiling. Nobody smiled in Sector 12 unless there was a supervisor watching.
"Morning. How's the back?"
"Bad night." Marcus stepped aside to let Reed in. The apartment was identical to Reed's—everyone in Sector 12 got the same unit, the same furniture, the same everything. The station called it "equal opportunity housing." "Kids kept me up. Jenna's got a test today and she's stressed."
Reed pulled a small bag from his pocket, pre-counted dosages. "This should help. Same price as last week."
Marcus took it, transferred credits from his tablet to Reed's with the familiar resignation of a financial transaction that would probably knock his prosperity score down half a point. "You ever think about quitting this?"
"What, dealing?"
"Yeah."
"Sometimes," Reed lied. He never thought about quitting because that would require thinking about the future, and he'd stopped doing that when Marco died. "You ever think about quitting the processing plant?"
Marcus laughed once, sharp and humorless. "And live off what? Can't feed my kids on good intentions." He paused, looking at the bag in his hand. "This stuff's going to kill me eventually, you know that?"
"Yeah," Reed said. "I know."
"But not today."
"Probably not today."
They stood there for a moment, two men caught in the same trap, both knowing it, neither able to do anything about it. Then Marcus nodded, Reed nodded back, and the transaction was complete. No judgment, no salvation, just the small mercy of making it through another day.
Reed made four more stops that morning. Yuki Tanaka, twenty-seven years old and working three jobs, who bought Leveler just to keep their anxiety manageable enough to function. Chen Rodriguez, who needed it to cope with twelve-hour shifts in food processing. Sarah Kim, who took it because her chronic pain medication had been cut from her healthcare plan due to a prosperity score dip. Dmitri Washington, who used it to stay awake during his overnight security shifts after his day job in maintenance.
All of them exhausted. All of them trapped. All of them trying to survive in a system that required them to smile while it ground them into dust.
"Your sector's prosperity score is a team effort!" a display screen announced as Reed walked past. "Together we rise!"
Together we rise, Reed thought. Right.
At noon, Reed made the stop he made every day, the one that had nothing to do with dealing.
Marco's memorial plaque was in the Sector 12 common area, a small square of public space that was supposed to foster community but mostly just reminded everyone of how depressing their lives were. The plaque was one of dozens—turns out a lot of people died in Sector 12, usually from what corporate called "personal health choices" and what everyone else called "working yourself to death."
MARCO SALAZAR
2920 - 2945
Exceeded Productivity Targets
"A Dedicated Member of the Nova Prosperity Family"
Reed stood in front of it like he did every day, reading words he'd memorized, feeling the same dull rage that never quite reached the surface.
Marco had been twenty-five. Twenty-five years old and dead from a heart attack because he'd been working three jobs trying to pay off medical debt from their mother's cancer treatment. The medical debt that was legally transferable to family members. The cancer treatment that hadn't even worked. Marco had been running deliveries, processing data entry, and cleaning executive-sector offices, sleeping four hours a night, eating meal paste and nothing else, taking Leveler to keep functioning, and his heart had just... stopped. In the middle of a shift. Surrounded by cleaning supplies and the smell of expensive executive-sector recycled air.
The company had called it an unfortunate health incident. Had noted that Marco had exceeded productivity targets that month. Had sent Reed a bill for the cleanup and a fruit basket with a card that said "Prosperity Through Adversity!"
Reed had eaten the fruit. It was expensive fruit. Then he'd quit his job as a financial analyst, sold everything he owned, moved to Sector 12, and stopped pretending that the system was anything other than a machine designed to extract every drop of labor from human bodies and then discard the remains.
"Exceeded productivity targets," Reed said quietly to the plaque. His brother, reduced to a productivity metric. His brother, who used to laugh at stupid jokes and make elaborate breakfasts on his days off and dream about saving enough money to open a small restaurant. His brother, who had trusted that hard work meant something.
Behind him, a screen showed a corporate ad: "Nova Prosperity Station: Where Your Dreams Take Flight!" The audio was a soaring orchestral piece paired with images of executives in Sector 1 looking out viewing windows at Mars.
Reed wanted to laugh. Wanted to scream. Did neither. Just stood there, numb, looking at his brother's name on a cheap metal plaque.
"I don't know what I'm doing, Marco," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "I don't know why I'm even..." He trailed off. Couldn't finish the sentence.
Couldn't finish the thought.
A maintenance worker passed by, glanced at Reed, kept moving. Everyone in Sector 12 knew what it looked like when someone was visiting the memorial wall. Everyone in Sector 12 had someone to visit.
Reed stayed for another minute, then turned away. He had more deliveries to make. Had to keep moving. Had to keep going. For no reason except that stopping felt like more effort than continuing.
By evening, Reed was done with his route and heading back to his building when he saw the body.
Not a body yet, technically. But close enough.
The man was crumpled in the hallway near Reed's unit, corporate courier uniform marking him as someone from the mid-sectors, probably Sector 15 or 16. The uniform was clean, well-maintained, the kind of thing that required a prosperity score Reed hadn't seen in years. The man was maybe forty, clutching his chest, breathing in short gasps.
"Help," the courier wheezed. "I... I called... emergency response..."
Reed knelt down, keeping his face neutral. "How long ago?"
"Twenty... twenty minutes..."
Twenty minutes. Reed checked his tablet—emergency response time for Sector 12 was listed as "variable, up to 180 minutes depending on resource availability." Which was corporate speak for "we'll get there when we get there, if we feel like it."
"Okay," Reed said, voice flat. "Just breathe. They're coming."
The courier's eyes were wide, terrified. "I can't... my prosperity score... I have... I have healthcare..."
"I know," Reed said. "They're coming."
But they wouldn't come. Not in time. Reed had seen this before. Healthcare on Nova Prosperity Station was tiered, and while this man probably had decent coverage for his sector, the response time in Sector 12 meant that "decent coverage" didn't mean shit. The man would die in this hallway waiting for an ambulance that would arrive an hour from now, and the report would say he died of natural causes, and his family would get a bill for the emergency response service they'd called but couldn't use.
"I have kids," the courier said, voice breaking.
"I know," Reed repeated. He didn't know. Didn't matter.
The man's breathing got shorter. More labored. His hand clutched at Reed's sleeve, desperate. "Please..."
Reed sat with him. Didn't leave. Couldn't help, but at least the guy wouldn't die alone. That was something. Not much. But something.
It took twelve more minutes.
When it was over, Reed closed the man's eyes and stood up, knees cracking. He should feel something, he thought distantly. Horror, rage, grief, anything. But there was just... numbness. Just the same flat exhaustion he felt every day, the same understanding that this was how the world worked, that people died in hallways waiting for help that never came, and tomorrow there would be a corporate memo about the tragedy and nothing would change.
The courier's bag had spilled open. Reed looked at it. Looked at the empty hallway. Looked back at the bag.
Inside was a data chip, the kind used for secure corporate communications. The kind that probably contained nothing interesting. The kind that was definitely not supposed to be lying in a Sector 12 hallway.
Reed picked it up, pocketed it without thinking, and walked into his apartment.
The mandatory evening broadcast was already playing. "Tomorrow brings new opportunities! Rest well, Nova Prosperity citizens. Your dedication makes our station strong!"
Reed sat on his bed, looking at the data chip in his hand.
Somewhere in the building, his neighbor was coughing.
His brother was dead.
A man had just died in his hallway.
The system would keep grinding.
And Reed Salazar, age thirty, pre-prosperous citizen, drug dealer, accidental thief, had no idea that the small chip in his hand was about to change everything.
But that was tomorrow's problem.
Tonight, he took his Leveler, lay down, and waited for unconsciousness to arrive.
Above him, the station hummed. Fifty sectors, millions of people, all of them trapped in the same machine. All of them trying to survive one more day.
Pre-prosperous, the corporation called them.
Reed had a different word for it.
But he was too tired to say it out loud.