No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
Joe Bloggs sat himself in front of his brand new laptop, pressed the On button and waited. It had cost him a pretty penny, but it was due: he had owned his prior device for nearly six months. Keeping it any longer would have placed him on a list somewhere for sure. That was never good. Even worse: using a machine past its legal age for renewal would trigger RA1011, and that was terrifying.
After 30 minutes of promotional videos, the computer reached the login screen. He swiped the card. That would be 25 bucks, thank you very much. He only had to swipe once though. On every subsequent login, his card would be charged automatically.
The same went for apps. Some were cheaper than others. Using Wowser was only 50 cents, because it was gateway to the World Wide Market, where each site had a different access entry fee: shops tended to be cheaper; but anywhere you could interact with other humans, on chats, forums, or social media; could cost up to $100 a minute.
On its first startup, and after clicking through the mandatory unskippable batch of 50 or so ads, Wowser landed him on the GooBing search page. That was another 10 more dollars out of his pocket. But then again, you could not expect a search company to give away information for free!
Indeed, it was already forbidden by the now famous RA1996: “No individual, company, organisation or public entity may offer products or services of any kind free of charge”. At the time of its passing, they argued, this would level the playing field, stopping certain associations, charities, subversive free software hackers from undercutting corporations. Tech Barons, after all, were the self-made titans at the helms of the true engines of industry, running the firms that provided jobs and created real wealth out of the digital thin air.
Joe could not disagree. He was one of the beneficiaries of the tech industry after all. When he fired up his RA0365-approved word processor, he could work and earn enough to maintain the technology that allowed him to work and earn. Besides, it was all so convenient for him: the iSpyAI subsystem automatically detected he was using the office suite for his job, and would calculate the monetary worth of what he produced and deduct 10% for the software provider.
This made perfect sense to Joe: if you made money off of their software, it was only fair they should take their cut, even after already charging you for the purchase of the software itself and the privilege to use their cloud storage—disks were currently ridiculously expensive and slow, they said, so much so, they said, it made no sense to provide a Save locally option anywhere in the menus.
If he used the office suite for non-work related stuff, like when he wrote his poems, the rate was calculated per word. But he didn’t do that very often anymore, not so much because of the cost, but also because iSpyAI would register and analyse those texts too. It was becoming too easy to run afoul of one of the many less-known RAs, even with a single haiku.
His teenage neighbour had written a passionate message to his lover. Before he could press _Send_, armed men in black had broken down his door and beaten him senseless with their electrified nightsticks. Joe was never sure which software company had sent them, but now his neighbour walked with a limp and could not see through his left eye.
Either way, having Wowser land him on GooBing every time it ran was a too expensive for Joe. He opened the settings and rooted through its contents. Changing a default would only cost him a few cents. Modifying the home page would probably make him incur some more extra charges, but it would probably work out cheaper in the long run.
He located the Home page option and filled in the box with foodsolutions4u.com, a cheap site he frequented, a store that delivered microwaveable ready-to-eat “meals*“—the text under the asterisk guaranteed that each meal contained “approved food substances”. Foodsolutions4u obligated him to make a purchase on every visit as per RA0888, but Joe virtually lived off of their stuff anyway.
He clicked Save.
A full screen alert flashed onto his display. Big blocky white letters on an angry red background:
YOU HAVE VIOLATED RA0101. DO NOT ABANDON THE PREMISES. OUR AGENTS WILL ASSIST YOU SHORTLY.
Joe’s blood turned to ice in his veins.
There was a bang at the door.