The Taste of Capitalism

Keeping my eyes open through the night had been the right call.

A few of them had used that short stretch of personal time before lights-out to slip over to our cell — the ones I'd already put down, plus a couple of extras who'd decided a death row inmate made convenient prey. There'd even been a handful lingering in the corridor before the morning roll-call broadcast, sniffing around for any sign of life from our side. That pretty much said it all.

Apparently, so long as nobody kicked off a full-blown group brawl that actually got in anyone's way, the prison treated the "minor" scuffles and theft between inmates as just another fact of life. Which is how I'd ended up playing reluctant house-sitter, and why my body was already stiff and aching before the day had even started.

The cellmates who'd been sprawled out since last night only started coming to, one by one, once the morning broadcast kicked in. The guy who'd taken the blade was looking considerably better, and the ones with broken bones or torn muscle were still breathing — thanks to the slapdash first aid I'd thrown on them. They could go hunt down some inmate who used to be a doctor later, if they felt like it. Whether a place this deranged — one that slapped Time-Limited Human Rights on every last prisoner — even had a real doctor was anyone's guess.

Wonder what the meals are like in this place.

Could it possibly satisfy a commoner's palate like mine, thoroughly pickled in the kind of modern junk food that efficiently nukes your dopamine receptors and insulin sensitivity?

Turning that over in my head, I opened the door that had locked itself automatically at lights-out and stepped out. A considerable number of inmates were already scrambling to get a new day underway. They were so lively I had to wonder if these were even the same quiet bastards from yesterday — and the first thing that caught my eye was a pack of them swarming around in a cluster.

Factions bunched up and moving as a unit, probably to claim the communal ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠washroom first. A textbook picture of the model inmate. Even among that lot, a few were still sliding glances our way, taking stock. The ugly current around me hadn't fully died off, then. It was a spectacle a model citizen like me could have gone a lifetime without seeing.

That was when the insufferable senior death row inmate from yesterday — the one who'd said his piece and vanished — popped up out of nowhere.

"So you were alive after all."

"Disappointed?"

"Nah. I'm actually glad. Had a bet going with the guys. Cleaned up thanks to you."

I had no urge to start clucking at him like a schoolteacher about not gambling with a death row inmate's life. I doubted he would have lost any sleep if I'd died. More precisely, the implication was that my dying wouldn't have been that big a problem to begin with.

"Anyway, let's go eat. Call it a celebration for still being alive. My treat."

"...You're buying? They just announced they're handing out meals."

"Ah. I should explain that first, shouldn't I. Just follow me."

"......"

Instead of answering the question, he flicked a hand and walked on ahead. Maybe the reason he'd been sentenced to death was that he'd bored innocent people into dying of sheer frustration. Watching that attitude, I could believe a judge had thrown the gavel at him.

Death row really does stand out, though.

The color gap between a regular inmate's uniform and a death row jumpsuit was so stark you drew eyes wherever you went. The stares trailing us piled up as a matter of course.

Cell Block H-050 alone held hundreds, and once you added the other blocks, the crowd filling the vast communal cafeteria could have passed for a full-scale military unit.

"There are a few other communal cafeterias besides this one, but you're supposed to use only the one assigned to your block. Keeps the friction — and the cooperation — between inmates from different blocks to a minimum."

"So you can't use the others at all?"

"No. They only split them this way for the guards' convenience. Anyone with an inmate code can use the common spaces freely. It's just that if an 'unfortunate accident' happens when you do, the guards won't lift a finger. You ignored the prison's rules, so you had it coming."

"Novel management style."

Crush the inmates hard, then hand them a strange little pocket of autonomy — classic carrot and stick. And the reason the place still ran at all, even managed like that, was probably that every prisoner here had exactly two options.

Break the rules, resist hard, and get disposed of without a whisper. Or keep your head down, follow the rules as best you can, and claw your way back to freedom.

Any ordinary human who didn't have an anger-management problem was going to pick the latter. Which was why this insane prison was still ticking along just fine.

Until every inmate's rights get stripped away, that is.

For now, there were still choices, so even the long-termers were scraping by somehow, waiting on release. Later, even that would become impossible. When that day came, rules wouldn't mean a damn thing — the place would be nothing but people living because they couldn't manage to die, and people already rotting on the floor.

The insufferable death row inmate slouching along in front of me, and I myself, were not going to escape that fate.

He stopped short, pointed somewhere, and spoke.

"I'll explain this once, so remember it. That's the distribution area for the destitute, the petty, and the cowardly. Any inmate whose Human Rights Guarantee Period hasn't expired can use it equally. The designated meal comes out of a window hooked up to the automated kitchen on the Ground Floor."

"That sounds like you're saying there's another option."

"Obviously. I have no intention of eating that pig slop. And you — your Human Rights Guarantee Period just ran out, so you can't use it anyway. So what's a man to do? Borrow the power of capitalism."

He headed in the exact opposite direction from the distribution line where most of the regular inmates were standing, and joined a queue of maybe ten people. That station had a serving window too, but sitting beside it was a machine I knew well — the same kind of holographic kiosk and biometric scanner you'd see at any restaurant or public office on the outside.

"You already know there's a currency that only works in here, right? You didn't just start beating on those inmates yesterday for no reason."

"I heard about it. Couldn't figure out how you actually earn the money, though."

"I'll get to that. First things first... every inmate who walks into this prison automatically gets a Prison Banking account the moment they're assigned a number. Not a convenient little overdraft account, mind you. Think of it as a personal biometric wallet. You stuff money in like a piggy bank and spend it like a dog."

"Biometric wallet. So not a Smartlink security key, and not a physical card."

"Every internal system that runs Prison Banking reads our irises and fingerprints. So you can save and spend anytime, anywhere, without carrying a single physical thing. Person-to-person transfers work too. And that's exactly why, if you really want to finish someone off in here, you cut off every finger and gouge out the eyes."

The kind of line that would have made a civilian gag on reflex came out of him like he was commenting on the weather.

Not even surprising anymore.

The reason inmates carried crude but reliably lethal hardware — blades, knuckles, the usual — was obvious enough. This prison was a place where, depending on the situation, you needed the resolve and the means to leave a man a wreck, even if you didn't kill him.

For what it was worth, back when this was a game, the prison management AI had played middleman and run both a real-time auction system and a shop.

"So. What do you want? I'm Korean through and through, so I figure I'll start the morning light — a bulgogi set."

"Same."

"A man of taste."

A bulgogi set was a valid call. I had no memory of us becoming friends, but if I treated a free meal as a one-time friendship fee, it wasn't a bad deal.

My temporary friend authenticated his iris through the biometric scanner, finished the electronic payment, and two steaming bulgogi sets slid out of the window. Nobody had lovingly cooked these by hand, of course. Cheap artificial ingredients, chemical seasonings engineered to make your mouth water, and the delicate wok-work of an automated cooker — that was the whole recipe.

Trays in hand, trailing the smell of grilled beef, we took a table at the far end under the sour stares of the regular inmates. There were other people using the kiosk, but most of them looked like gang bosses trailing a pack, or like the sort of operator who could handle himself. In other words, this wasn't envy. It was genuine dislike. They hated death row inmates, and they didn't need a reason.

"If a death row inmate like you can make money, the other inmates should be able to as well. Why are there so few people using the kiosk?"

I asked it around a piece of properly seared meat. My temporary friend packed an enormous lettuce wrap without a word, shoved the whole thing in his mouth, and chewed. Relentlessly, unapologetically on his own wavelength.

"Mm. Everyone needs money, sure. But most of them put it toward something more urgent first."

"More urgent? Aah. That."

"Yeah. The Human Rights Guarantee Period. Anyone with a set sentence has to keep extending it until they walk out of here in one piece, so they can't help pinching every private expense."

"So the only ones blowing money on personal stuff the way you do are death row inmates — no sentence at all, just top up the period now and then and you're fine."

"Plus the ones with short bids who'll be out soon, and the long-timers and faction bosses who take 'tribute' and get to enjoy the true flavor of capitalism."

Most of the people who landed in this prison were not looking at a short stay. Set aside the death row inmates and the lifers — no chance of release, or next to none — and you were still rotting for five years at a minimum. Pinching personal spending so you could stretch your Human Rights Guarantee Period to match your sentence was the only sane move.

"You have to earn enough to extend your rights for exactly as long as your sentence, so the longer the bid, the stingier they get with spending and the more desperate they get for income."

"And on top of that, they have to set aside tribute for their own personal reasons."

"Exactly. They need more money than we do, and they work ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠their asses off to get it — but they don't have the luxury of buying expensive meals like this."

The way ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he tossed off expensive meal made it obvious a single plate was not cheap. Of course it wasn't. What kind of inmate got to sit in prison and put away bulgogi first thing in the morning?

I nodded like my curiosity had been satisfied and kept my hands and mouth busy. The truth was, the obvious prison economy and class structure weren't what I actually wanted to know.

"So how do you actually earn the money? The cellmates I worked over yesterday said you get a modest reward from the prison for taking out inmates whose Human Rights Guarantee Period has expired. Inmates like me."

"That's pocket change. It's also a sly little policy — efficient population control, and a neat way to pit inmates against each other. If you want to actually put your hands on real money, you sign up for the daily duties the prison posts."

"Duties?"

"The usual. Subcontracted grunt work the corporations dump on the prison, short trips outside to clean filthy sewers or landfills. Oh — and sometimes they throw you onto a construction site as cheap emergency labor."

I still didn't look convinced.

"There'd be people trying to escape, though, right?"

"Nope. If there ever were, they died the second they tried. Security robots running kill protocols don't hesitate for a fraction of a second the way a human would. They just open up with the autocannons."

That much was true. That was why we'd called those things Cans.

And besides, people whose biometric data was already sitting in the Ministry of Justice database were not going to stroll through 2040s Korea enjoying some leisurely prison-break sitcom. The moment you tried to run, you were getting shot or scooped up shortly after.

"So that's all there is? That's the whole way to make money?"

Do the ordinary work, earn steadily, extend your Human Rights Guarantee Period, pay your tribute, tuck away whatever's left. It would have been a lovely life. But that wasn't the real game, and heaven knew it, the earth knew it, and I — Han Seungho — knew it.

Life in this prison was not a structure where pocket change bought you economic freedom, or physical freedom either.

"You're thinking that pocket change from that kind of work wouldn't even keep a death row inmate fed, aren't you?"

"Suddenly losing my appetite."

"I'm thinking the same thing, so don't get the wrong idea. Besides — if I'd only been doing that kind of work for pocket change, how would I be enjoying this lifestyle? Right?"

Fair point, coming from a man who'd been about to get demoted from temporary friend back to nameless death row inmate.

"So there's a way to make real money. Not pocket change."

"There is. We call it Special Duty. General Duty has recruitment caps, and the work and the pay vary all over the place — but Special Duty is different. The job itself is the same, but the pay is basically pure performance."

He piled bulgogi, garlic, and kimchi onto a fresh lettuce leaf, added a smear of sauce, and rolled it tight.

"Lettuce with nothing inside is just a leaf. Stuff it full and it becomes a proper wrap. Special Duty is like this wrap — you go get as much 'cargo' as you can carry. Anything useful. Anything that makes money. Anything interesting enough to catch the eye of the people upstairs. The prison brass run ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it through a valuation AI for an objective appraisal, then convert it to cash at whatever it's worth. If the thing isn't dangerous, you can skip the conversion and keep it yourself. Just like this."

My temporary friend flashed the same ordinary wristwatch he'd shown me yesterday and grinned.

"Where do you do this Special Duty?"

"Simple."

His finger pointed straight down, at the floor beneath our feet.