Vyyda Book 1: The Haver Problem Read Free

did the work of stripping raw syntho-grains.  They sifted, scaled and sorted, purified and packed, then repeated it all again and again.  Robotics and automation which would perform all such tasks more efficiently were entirely impractical.  Human beings didn't breakdown, require expert attention or replacement parts.  Or, if they did, simple enough to plug a brand new man or woman on the line in place of an old one.
                  Four generations of Jeffersons preceded Millar as laborers on Hyland.  While it wasn’t clear how the Jefferson line came to be there, the certainty of the connection to their famous ancestor was unassailable .
    "Our direct damn link to Thomas Jefferson should have saved our family from relocation," Dorsey's father said frequently, so as to never lose sight of the reason for his misery on Hyland.
                  Millar Jefferson, with his long face, tired features and prematurely arthritic joints, also clung to the belief that his ancestors, along with countless others, were wrongly relocated from Earth during the "age of removal”: forced migration from Earth.  The theory held that the sheer number of human beings spread across the expanse of U-Space, as well as their permanent, iron-solid separation from Earth-controlled C-Space could only have come as the result of a massive, engineered exile. 
                  The elder Jefferson (with longtime cronies at his side) passed these stories on to younger laborers on Hyland.  They routinely suggested that one of the new breed might have come from a distinguished line of humans and never even known it.  An alluring thought; that one could be something more substantial than they’d been conditioned to believe.
                  “Who knows,” the elder Jefferson said to more than a few young men and women toiling alongside him, “you could even be from a more substantial line than me.”
                  As the new convert pondered the possibility, Millar would always follow up with a disclaimer:  “It’s not likely .  The Jeffersons are an unusually special case.  But it’s possible.” 
    However, convincing as he may have been to dozens of "uninitiated" Hylandites, the one he most hoped to reach evaded his influence.
                  Dorsey had vivid memories of his father, at the end of an excruciating shift spent scaling the unusable crust from syntho-grain links, fingers numb and calloused after years of the repetitive task, kicking his shoes into a far corner of the tight quarters inhabited by the family (on nights when he no longer had the funds to occupy a seat at one of the taverns and drink his troubles away), reclining and retelling stories of Jeffersons through the ages.
                  "Am I expected to remember all of this?" Dorsey asked once, around the time of his fourteenth birthday – a year shy of transitioning into the labor force.
                  "Expected to?  Don't you want to know about it all?"
                  "What good does it do?  Past is past."
                  Millar Jefferson rose gradually from his half-reclined position on that particular evening, jarred from the sincere hope that his son would carry on the oral tradition of the family Jefferson, and walked away, never to look at Dorsey quite the same way again.
     
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                  Administrators on Hyland 6A couldn't do much about discussions regarding family histories and Earth's conspiracy to dislocate billions.  At least, they couldn't do much about it without antagonizing workers.  Nor did they try.  Sure, they would have preferred that everyone on the planet contented themselves with the banal recorded entertainments piped into the residences of laborers during off-hours (music, insipid human dramatic presentations: