Free An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) by Thomas Gondolfi Page A

Republic .
    Corrupt police, city services, and government poisoned every corner of this world and all those it had colonized . Those with the money could buy anything they wanted . Only those innocent people who could afford to purchase justice could actually obtain it . The list went on and on.
    Sonya’s dark musings kept her busy until she completed the first leg of her journey . Three of her fellow terrorists waited at ground level of their current target, the Colonization Unlimited Building . They milled around, chatting and blending into the rest of the scenery , dressed in dirty and heavily worn clothes with only a couple of the boxed internees in the vicinity .
    The boxed — another abomination of this world, Sonya thought . A tiny minority of fearful Nils listened to the megacorp and government propaganda . They volunteered to have their brains placed into robotic equipment to do menial tasks just for the hope of someday earning the right to be returned to cloned bodies and legally registered . Just the sight of the two automatons trying to shore up the footing of a crumbling building left her sickened by the way one man enslaved another.
    Turning her mind away , Sonya perceived her fellow comrade s and wondered if they weren’t enslaved even more strongly than those inhabiting metal and plastic bodies . But by the same token, t hey carried hatreds that forged each into a weapon or a tool that might just change the world — but one that also condemned them , even as it m ight one day save others .
    Arthur Lewton, a tiny man at 1.3 meters and only 60 kilos, ran an accounting department for OldsTransport until a lift-bus dropped on his wife as she installed a new undercarriage . OldsTransport faulted Linda with improper alignment of the grav impellers and refused to pay any benefits . Arthur’s private investigation revealed OT used out-of-specification impeller casings that showed a tendency to burn through and fail to lift.
    Instead of admitting their mistake, the VPs of manufacturing at OT fired Arthur and discredited his findings by replacing all the faulty casings before he could prove anything . Despite his diminutive size, Arthur’s rage couldn’t be underestimated . Once, caught red-handed without a weapon, he rammed his finger up one corpie ’ s eye socket deep enough to perform an impromptu lobotomy .
    Slightly chunky but nonetheless quite attractive , Beth Watkins wore the figure of a woman who ’d birthed one too many children , yet s he ’d never been a mother . Beth’s grievance with the megacorp s started when she received a temporary contraceptive which permanently damaged not only her uterus but also her abdominal wall . The contraceptive damaged thirty percent of the test subjects before being released to the market by Caring Health Systems anyway . A former runway model, Beth lost her looks, her job, her fertility , and her husband.
    Martin Fox’s sympathies most nearly matched Sonya’s own . A Nil of a verage height, average weight, brown hair, brown eyes , and no distinguishing marks , he used these physically nondescript features to his advantage— basically, they made him a complete nonentity . Sonya had on more than one occasion watched him vape a corpie, drop the weapon and melt into a crowd . He could then stand a scant two meters away as the Metros arrived , with none the wiser .
    Martin wanted to make nature a dominant force i n the world again . His heartfelt dreams were even more radical than even Sonya’s, however . Given his choice, E arth would be cordoned off as a “no - human zone.”
    Loyalty and passion embodied the most important traits of each member of her core group . All had been on more than one mission . She knew the color of their emotions.
    “You all know what this mission ’s parameters are ,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper as she entered their circle . “ Seven bombs planted at th is corp’s primary entrances and set off at end of shift