Prologue
As technology advances and the world fails to recognize the impending dangers, our true nature is revealed. Greed and entertainment now rule the world. All companies that could have turned the weakest cog in their money-making machine into a better, soulless, and metallic counterpart have done so. The world’s population is not decreasing, but the job market is drastically shrinking. Unemployment rates hover around sixty percent, and crime is rampant. It’s not surprising when there are fewer and fewer jobs for people, and many companies demand absurd skills and sacrifices for them.
Nowadays, the world consists mainly of two social strata: extremely poor and extremely rich people. The elite controls around 96% of the world economy. And despite having so much money, they fight among themselves for even greater wealth. It’s common to hear that one of the wealthiest people has forcibly taken the assets of someone slightly less influential, guided by the idea of the common good and moral justice.
Victims of these robberies were usually left with some housing and small amounts of money to survive independently for a while. However, this practice was becoming less and less common.
Most of the time, the victims lost their family assets overnight, without receiving any compensation, and were left to the mercy of fate. It’s a sad reality, but nobody protested, as everyone was afraid to oppose the oligarchy. There was also a lot of class hatred in society. The middle class, which was already disappearing, and the lower class looked askance at the richest, and wealthy people looked at others with disgust. That’s why the poor were happy when the rich were robbed, and they were overjoyed when they increased their wealth.
As for families with confiscated assets, it was their problem. All families whose assets were confiscated were considered by the wealthy to be acting against people and world peace. If a family was wrongly accused, they had to seek shelter with the unconfiscated part of their family or with friends who rarely agreed because they didn’t want to waste money on freeloaders. When no one wanted to take them in, they often resorted to suicide, seeing no way out or unwilling to live in poverty. Such families had previously lived in affluence, so the change from their exclusive life to vegetating on the street was harder to accept than death. They often also sold themselves. They then became enslaved workers, using their skills to multiply their boss’s wealth.
It was worse if they did not have such people or failed to earn enough to satisfy their employer. Then they had to beg former friends for protection and also become their slaves. They then lived in poverty, fulfilling every request of their master for a piece of bread. They could do this in many ways, such as serving them in their numerous households or joining the ranks of the private armies of the aristocracy, which plundered the property of others. And it was becoming increasingly popular to force them to play sadistic games.
The social callousness, desire for entertainment, and high status of the richest forced the world government to adopt a decree on the protection of life. This decree defined the value of human life based on their wealth, with the poorer a person being, the less their life was worth. This also gave the richest numerous privileges that the world had never seen before. The document ambiguously condoned torture and slavery. People could be tortured, provided their brain didn’t die, and such a person received appropriate compensation afterward. During elite parties, however, minor accidents often occurred. But there was no need to worry if someone had a broken arm, a severed leg, a broken spine, a crushed kidney, an eye gouged out, or was bitten by a snake, as such a person could be quickly patched up in a sanitary capsule and returned to the party. It was worse when someone died; in such a case, a high compensation had to be paid to the victim’s family according to the value of life and the cause of death.
Thanks to this law, there were impulses in elite circles to organize worldwide games. One of the eccentric oligarchs, Chris YellowCoin, was the first to come up with the idea of organizing a mass event for the world under the name of Holly Paradise. This program allowed game participants to choose a prize and compete for it. Millions of people from all over the world signed up, and although Chris wanted to make everyone interested happy, he had to reduce the number to fifty-one so that each of his friends had time to get to know their favorite character well. The number fifty-one also has symbolic significance because each participant represents ten million square kilometers of land. And everything sounds great until you become one of the players.
During recruitment, the organizers followed the principle of equality, agreeing to everyone who was interested, so even I was able to play. Surprisingly, no one from wealthy families signed up for the program. Criminals or their wards forced by the aristocracy registered for the program. Therefore, although registration was voluntary, the players were mainly forced to participate. And I was the exception; I volunteered for the game. And although I didn’t know it yet, there was nothing left for me in the world. At the time, I thought that participating in this competition would allow me to fulfill my childish dream.
