Non-Fungible Human

Escape

Angus walked towards his owner. He carried the silver platter high above his right shoulder, his other hand tucked neatly behind his back. The smell of freshly grilled lobster tails with lemon and herb butter made his stomach growl. He hadn't been able to eat breakgruel this morning. He was too nervous. The kitchen knife he held under the cloth behind his back weighed heavily in his hand. He was sure it was shaking. He was sure someone would notice.

He focused on breathing deeply. He focused on his training. Stand up tall, face impassive, eyes downcast, long strides to take him smoothly along the length of the eating hall towards the sole occupant. Having been trained his whole life for servitude his body posture was perfect. His movements were almost second nature.

How many steps? 5 more. Make them even. OK, here we go.

He set the tray down in front of Mr Hang and lifted the silver lid. It looked amazing. He stared down at the meal, seeing colours in foods that he was not used to seeing. Vivid oranges and yellows smattered with green. He surreptitiously switched the knife from his left hand to his right under the guise of shifting his waiter's cloth to the other arm.

Mr Hang shifted, turning his head ever so slightly, annoyed.

Angus gripped the knife tighter, still concealed but now in his stronger hand. He knew he should have stepped back long ago but he couldn't bring himself to pull his eyes away from that delicious food on its silver platter, torn between doing what his mind screamed at him to do and what he came here to do.

"Well? Is there something else?," snapped Mr Hang.

Angus opened his mouth, closed it, and then placed one foot behind him. He was halfway between worlds. One was the world of servitude. The one he knew. The other was freedom and unknowns. This was it. This was the moment when he would break free from this sadistic slaver. Today was to be the day he started living his own life.

If only it wasn't so goddamn terrifying. He was still frozen. He had to do something quickly.

There was a noticeable throb building in the vein at Mr Hang's temple. It was a sure sign he was angry and that all hell was about to break loose. Angus said the first thing that came into his mind, "I thought they were extinct."

Mr Hang turned to look at him. He looked at him full in the face, astonished at the gall of this serving boy breaking the rules by talking to him. He looked him up and down with a malevolent glint in his eye.

"Well, they are now, boy," Mr Hang sneered, "now fuck off and don't ever interrupt me again."

Angus stepped back. His heart was racing. To be honest he was almost relieved to be obeying commands. The concept of free will was enticing but damn taking action was hard. Well, it wasn't so much that taking action was hard. It was that this action would completely uproot everything he knew. So maybe now isn't the right moment?

As Mr Hang cracked limbs with his fat hands, slurping the prized meat noisily from its shell, Angus shifted nervously. His waiter's cloth was over his right arm, the pommel in his hand and the knife running up along his wrist. Out of sight.

He leaned back against the wallpaper and tapped his head lightly against the hard surface, grimacing as he tried to jolt his brain into making a decision. Holding the knife was awkward and his hand was starting to get tired. He couldn't focus on anything but that sensation of weight and fatigue. It seemed every beat of his heart was emanating from that knife. Like the inanimate object was beating. It's probably just the pulse in my wrist felt through the knife he thought.

His brain had frozen up. When he needed his faculties most they had deserted him. He couldn't think of what to do. Should he do it? If he didn't, this was his life until he was as old as Jeeves. And Jeeves was old. Or so he assumed. He'd had never actually asked how old his tutor was, but he had wrinkles everywhere, so he must be old. Jeeves had been in servitude to one family or another for his entire adult life. But at least Jeeves had experienced a childhood. He'd been around at the very start when the world economies collapsed, the fabric of society started to unravel, and technology stepped in and broke the neck of sovereignty, country, and laws. The environment was already on the downward slide when the populist revolutions destabilised the world's biggest economies. The far-right political ideologies of independence and freedom from government quickly turned into a bedlam of guns and hold outs. The whole thing had taken a mere 10 years and had propelled the human race backwards a thousand years or so. At least socially. The economic powerhouse of globally resilient distributed monetary and asset systems meant there was no need for central banks or any banks at all. Bitcoin and its brethren were the financial system.