In the year 2127 the Earth was no longer habitable because of global warming. Many shelters were built underground to save as many people as possible. In addition, fourteen space stations were built, most by different countries, a few by private groups. One of the latter, named “Enduring Freedom,” was financed by a group of rich Americans. The construction workers were promised that they and their descendants would be allowed to live on the station until the Earth was livable again.

   That promise was kept, but not in the way the workers thought it would be or in any way they would approve of. Because of limited space, the station ecology was set up for a vegetarian diet. The rich station owners soon began missing the meat they no longer had available. The population was also increasing beyond the limits of the available resources.

   A small group of the rich owners got together and devised a plan to stabilize the population and provide meat for their dinner tables at the same time. They divided the population into five groups, themselves and the other owners (the “Idle Rich”), the hired help who ran the station (the “Administrators”), the female maintenance workers (the maintainers), the best looking of the young ladies among the general population (the pets), and the rest of the girls in the general population (the breeding food animals). The rest of the people were considered surplus population to be killed for meat as needed. Anyone disagreeing with this plan would be guilty of sedition, the penalty for this offense was being spaced without a spacesuit. Since this group owned a majority of the shares in the station, what they decided was law. All the children were taught that their society was set up that way by God. A thousand years later, no one questioned that. Except for someone who called himself the “teacher of righteousness.”

   Ryan was searching for traces of the pathways used by the self-proclaimed “teacher of righteousness.” He wasn’t succeeding. It was easy to find the “teacher’s” postings, they were all over the web. The “teacher” sure hid his tracks though. There wasn’t even a hint of a trace of how he posted his bogus history of the space station.

   “What ya got Ryan?” Jack asked as he entered the web monitoring room.

   “Some guy calling himself the ‘teacher of righteousness’ has posted a seditious history of the founding of our space station.” Ryan replied. “He claims that the food animals and pets are the descendants of the construction workers who built our station. He must be a real hot shot programmer, every time I delete one of his postings, it pops back up. I can’t find any traces of how he’s posting his stuff either.”

   “Why don’t you isolate his postings?” Jack asked. “Then we can at least control the damage.”

   “I tried that,” Ryan answered. “And I can’t. He must have gotten deeper into the system than anyone has since the founding.”

   “Let me take a look” Jack sat down in front of his computer. “Maybe I can find something you missed.”

   The next day they called in all the computer experts to help in the search. Three days later they were still looking without making any progress.

   “Anyone got anything?” Jack asked.

   “No.” “Nope.” “Not here.” everyone replied.

   “Ryan, you got anything?”

   “Nothing Jack.” Ryan answered. “I just keep running into nothing. We slapped down everyone who tried to hack into the hidden part of the system so hard that no one’s tried since Rory’s uncle was executed. No one has any expertise in that area now.”

   “Someone obviously has.” Jack replied. “This ‘teacher of righteousness’ is making fools out of all of us because he does have expertise in that area.”

   “Who are the most likely suspects?” Joe asked.

   “All the Administrators and Idle Rich,” Ryan responded. “Except for the school aged ones who are being constantly monitored for seditious leanings.”

   “In other words, most of the free population.” Joe stated.

   “To be thorough” Jack added “we have to include the Maintainers on our list of suspects.”

   “That sure narrows down our list of suspects” Ryan wisecracked.

   Kayla looked at him lovingly. “When I first came here, right after my mother was killed, you were the only one who was nice to me.”

   “That’s because I saw you as a human being.” Dave slipped his arm around her waist. “My parents and sister only saw a food animal.”

   “Why do some of us have to be food animals and pets while others are Idle Rich and Administrators?” she complained, snuggling close to him. “Why can’t we just all be human beings?”

   “Yeah, I don’t like it either.” Dave said. “I wish our ancestors had found a better way to solve the population problem.”

   “Why does there have to be a population problem?”

   “This space station only has finite resources and no room to expand.” Dave answered. “We had to leave Earth because of global warming. The Earth got too hot. It’s still uninhabitable.”

   “It’s been over a thousand years hasn’t it?” Kayla asked. “Isn’t that long enough for it to cool down?

   “Sometimes I forget that you aren’t educated and aren’t kept informed about what’s going on.” Dave said. “Our experts are observing the Earth. They say that it’s still desert and much too hot for human survival and will be for many more centuries. So we’re stuck up here with no room to expand.”

   “Since you can’t marry me, can’t you take me as your pet?” Kayla asked. “I don’t want to be killed and eaten in a few years. I want us to watch our children grow up and I want to grow old with you.”

   “I’ll have to talk to my dad in the morning about making you my pet.” he answered. “I really want you to be my wife. Since my dad won’t allow that, I’d much rather give you pet status than have you remain a food animal. Good night love.”

   “Good night my darling.” she answered as she snuggled closer to him.

   “Why can’t she be my pet?” Dave demanded. “I’ve given up on marrying her just as you demanded so why can’t I keep her as my pet?”

   “Because it’s going to remain a food animal.” Rory told his son. “The decision’s been made, live with it. By the way, you better hurry up and make it pregnant or I’ll take over that very pleasurable task.”

   “ I don’t see why you keep referring to her as ‘it’.” Dave challenged. “She’s a human being with feelings, just like you and me.”

   “That’s seditious talk son.”Rory replied. “You know well that we’re divided into five groups here, the “Idle Rich” who own this space station. The “Administrators”, us, who run it for them, both of whom are fully human. Then there’s the sub-humans, the maintainers who repair the station and provide pleasure for us and the “Idle Rich”. Then the pets, owned by the “Idle Rich” and by some “Administrators”, and at the bottom, the food animals.” So you better forget about making your food animal a pet. You also better refrain from your seditious talk or I won’t be able to keep you from being executed for it. Remember what happened to my uncle Josh?”

   “Yes sir.” Dave replied grudgingly. “May I be excused?”

   “If that’s all you have to talk about, yes.” Rory answered. “I just don’t want you slowly decompressed and then spaced. Sedition is taken seriously and the penalty is severe.”

   “Yes sir.” Dave replied on his way out.. As he entered the passageway outside their dwelling space, he hit a key on his pocket computer that activated one of his prearranged programs. 

  He made his way to an observation dome undetected. His program saw to that, the surveillance cameras didn’t show him where he was. Instead, they showed him with Kayla.

   He took a look at Earth to see if what he’d been told about conditions there was true. He wasn’t too surprised to find out that it wasn’t. There were places that actually looked habitable and there were signs of human habitation in them. Dave was elated. He and Kayla could escape this decadent society that wanted to kill her.

   That night after they went to bed Dave used the finger talk they developed as children. “Don’t react darlin’, I suspect we’re no longer free from observation here so we need to play it safe and use our finger talk. They’ve been lying to us. Earth is habitable now. I need to prepare a safe path and an escape capsule for our trip then we can escape to Earth. That and tying up a few loose ends here will take a couple of days. Then we can leave.”

   “Will I be a food animal where we go?” Kayla inquired.

   “Of course not.” Dave answered. “You’ll be my wife.”

   Ryan was exhausted. They’d been working twenty hours a day for five days straight. They weren’t any closer to finding this “teacher of righteousness” or shutting him down than on the first day. Something had to give soon or they’d all go crazy.
  
   “How’s he doing it?” Joe cried in frustration. “He must know we’re looking for him but he doesn’t seem worried by our efforts. I feel like he’s laughing at us and I don’t like it.”

   “Yeah, it’s getting to me too.” Jack agreed. “Why don’t we take a break and do some brainstorming. Maybe we’ll gain some fresh perspective. If nothing else, it’ll let our minds rest a little.”

   “Yeah!” “Good idea.” “I’m for it!” “Let’s do it.” everyone said as they adjourned to the break room. They all got their favorite beverage and snack and took ten minutes to unwind before starting their discussion. “We sure aren’t getting anywhere fast.” Joe remarked. “Maybe we need to look more closely at the people we cleared as suspects when we first started. Maybe a seditionist or two slipped past the school’s screening somehow.”

   “Hold on,” Ryan objected, “that’s an insult to us screeners. We’re very careful in our work.”

   “Maybe so,” Jack cut in, “but it wouldn’t hurt anything to reassess your work. We’ve checked everyone else out very thoroughly and haven’t found anything yet. It’s worth a try.”

   Ryan and the other screeners continued to object so they discussed other possible new avenues they could explore. Finally, they had a list of about a dozen new ideas, including rechecking the schools’ screening. Joe headed the team that was rechecking the student’s screening. Ryan was in charge of checking out the family of Rory’s uncle Josh. “After all,” Ryan said, “someone in that family might have inherited his smarts and seditious leanings.”

   The next day Randy thought he had something. Rory’s son, Dave, had some suspicious programming activity at age seven. From his schoolwork, he didn’t appear overly intelligent or too gifted in the computer field. His I. Q. Scores were bright- normal. Certainly not the genius level I. Q. they were looking for. And, other than the fact that he no longer ate meat, he didn’t seem to have any seditious leanings. Still, he was the best lead they had. Randy decided to take a closer look. Two hours later, Randy still didn’t have much but he thought he should share what he had with Ryan and the others.

   “Hey Ryan,” Randy called, “I think I might have something. It’s pretty tenuous but no one else is coming up with anything..”

   “Something tenuous is more than we’ve come up with so far.” Ryan replied. “What is it?”

   “Rory’s son, Dave, had some suspicious programming activity at age seven.” Randy answered. “But other than that and a few other minor things, he just doesn’t seem to fit our profile at all.”

   “Let’s see what you got.” Ryan requested.

   Ryan spent the next twenty three minutes going over Randy’s data.

   “Very tenuous.” Ryan remarked. “I’d be inclined to dismiss it if we weren’t grasping at straws. In fact, I already have dismissed it. Let me see if any one else has come up with anything. This just may be the break we’ve been looking for.”

   Ryan sent a message to the other team leaders saying that his team might have something and asking if any one else had anything.

   Joe replied that his team found two slight anomalies. “Jeri, one of the ‘Idle Rich’ girls, was exploring the barrier hiding the inner system briefly. Someone must have warned her about it, she hasn’t even gotten close to it in years. The other is Rory’s son Dave. He did some programming that might have led to the hidden part of our computer system at age seven but stopped almost immediately. A while after that, he stopped eating meat. We haven’t found anything else.”

   “Let’s keep a close eye on those two until we solve our problem.” Jack cut in.

   Dave paid a visit to his friend, the maintainer, Laurie. He went there openly instead of using one of his special programs to go there unnoticed. What better way to hide a clandestine meeting with a maintainer than to make it look like a torrid lust affair. Everyone on the station would accept that without question. All the “Idle Rich” and “Administrator” males over ten had some kind of torrid lust affair with one or more maintainers.

   When he entered her room he hit a key on his pocket computer that started one of his special programs that showed him having sex with her. That way the monitors in her room wouldn’t pick up what they were actually doing.

   “It’s safe now.” he told her. “We can talk. Kayla and I have to get off the station immediately. I can’t wait for your planned takeover. When they first started looking for me they weren’t even coming close. Now, they’re breathing down my back. If I don’t get off the station soon they’ll catch me. The Earth is habitable now, they’ve been lying to us about that. Just like they’ve been lying to us about you maintainers and the food animals and pets being sub-human.”

   “But, what’ll we do without your help?” Laurie asked him. “I don’t know how to manipulate the hidden programs like you do.”

   “You can access them and you’re more skilled than you think you are.” Dave answered. “You’ve already set up programs that are just as good as mine. And I’ll teach you the rest of what you need to know before I leave. That’s why I came here.”

   “What do they see us doing?” Laurie asked.

   “Oh, we’re making love again.” Dave replied. “That’s what they expect us to do so that’s what I show them.” Dave was busy at his computer. “Watch close, I’m setting up a program that you can shut all the doors in the free inhabitant areas with. I’ll also write one that you can use to open and close doors anywhere on the station. That’ll allow you and your friends to subdue them a few at a time.”

   “Hey, that’s neat!” Laurie said. “That’s a programing trick you haven’t shown me before. Can you show it to me again, more slowly this time.”

   “That?” Dave asked. “That’s easy. All you do is this.” Dave instructed. “But watch this closely. This is something that’ll help you a lot.”

  Dave wormed his way into the deepest part of the hidden programming. “Now you can access and manipulate any data anywhere in the system. This will allow you to keep them in the dark about your actions. In time, if they are looking for you they’ll find you but only if they know just who they’re looking for.”

   “Like they know to look closely at you.” Laurie added. “Did you tell Kayla that they’re closing in on you?”

   “No, I don’t want her to worry too much.” Dave replied. “She’s got enough worries already. Besides, if she gets real scared she’s more likely to give things away.”

   “I guess caution is a good idea.” Laurie said. “But you should trust her more. She just might surprise you.”

   "Speaking of caution,” Dave said, “they’re likely to take a close look at anyone I’ve spent very much time with. It’s just as well that we limited our contacts like we did or it wouldn’t be safe for you to stay on the station either. You might warn the others so they won’t be caught by surprise. The powers that be are sure to pick up some of them.”

   Dave worked for several more hours, explaining things to Laurie as he went. Finally, he had the needed programming finished. And Laurie learned a lot. She now felt confident to take over when Dave left.

   Dave left Laurie’s chamber and made his way to the escape capsule he planned on using. A half hour of working on the capsule and it was ready for his and Kayla’s escape. He then prepared two other escape capsules as back-ups in case they couldn’t get to the first one. One of his special programs showed him spending time with several different maintainers while he did this.

   “Anything new with Dave?” Jack asked.

   “No, he’s just playing with several of his maintainer playthings.” Joe answered. “I’m starting to think he’s a better programmer than his records show.”

   “Maybe we should check out these maintainers he’s spends time with.” Jack said. “If he’s the seditionist, no telling what he’s planning with them.”

   “He’s spent time with just about every maintainer.” Joe replied. “He’s very promiscuous.”

   “Nothing unusual there.” Jack replied. “We were too at that age.”

   “Maybe we should bring him in for questioning.” Joe suggested. “Close questioning and some unfriendly persuasion will get him to spill his guts.”

   “That’s for sure.” Jack said. “But if he’s the “teacher of righteousness” we wouldn’t get the truth out of him that way. Let’s question the two maintainers he spends the most time with and another one picked at random.”

   “I don’t know nothin’” Jill screamed. “All Dave ever does with me is have sex.”

   “That’s a lie, little maintainer.” Joe said as he grabbed a hank of hair and twisted her head around. “Why don’t you make it easy on yourself and tell us the truth.”

   “I’ve been telling you the truth.” Jill screamed. “Please, stop torturing me.”

   “Joe,” Jack called from the doorway and motioned him to follow as he left the room. Jack closed the door. “We’re not getting anywhere this way. If they’re not telling the truth we won’t get it out of them. We’ve already tortured one of them to death. It won’t do any good to kill all of them. Turn her loose and keep an eye on her. Let’s go pick up Dave and his little food animal.”

   “Hey Jack,” Ryan said as he rushed in all exited. “We got the proof we need now.” he held his PC out to Jack. “ Look at this. See how he touches his pocket? He does that before all his love-making sessions”

   “And his PC’s in that pocket.” Jack said. “Well, there’s no doubt now. He’s our renegade programmer. Let’s get him.”

   “Those jerks” Dave sputtered. “It’s time Kayla. We have to get out of here before they torture you.”

   “Why,” Kayla asked as they headed for the door. “What are they doing?”

   “They just stopped torturing Jill and Rachel.” Dave answered as he hit a key on his computer. “That came too late to help Alice. She died under their abuse.”

   Jack and Joe entered Dave’s room and found it empty. “What’s this?” Joe said. “My computer still shows them here but they’re not. He’s obviously our seditionist.”

   Jack called security. “We’ve found out who our seditionist is and he’s running. Your computer won’t show where he is. Cover all the escape capsules in this sector. We’ll have to do a physical search for him. C’mon Joe. Let’s go find that troublemaker.”

   Dave’s computer gave a beep, alerting him to the fact that there was a problem. He checked it and saw that security was physically present at the escape capsule they were heading for. He looked over several routes to the other two escape capsules he had prepared and found clear paths to both of them. He changed their direction, heading for the number two escape capsule. Kayla followed quietly. He went down a maintenance passage that his computer showed him was empty. As they were about to leave the passage, his computer vibrated, letting him know that the corridor he was about to enter was now occupied. He held up a hand and he and Kayla stopped. He checked his computer and saw security personnel walking through that passage. He waited, checking his planned path. The security personnel walked by the hatch to the passage he and Kayla were in and continued around a turn in their corridor. He waited five seconds longer and continued on his way.

   “Hey” someone shouted just as they were entering the escape capsule compartment. It was two security goons.

   Dave followed Kayla through the door and hit a key on his computer that closed the door behind him. When the security guards got there, they couldn’t get the door to open. They called Jack.

   “Can’t you get the door open?” Jack asked when he arrived.

   “No,” Rick, the head of security answered. “But we hit the manual override. At least he can’t launch the escape capsule so they’re stuck.”

   “Send a team in through the maintenance entry.” Jack ordered. “We have to catch them.”

   Dave and Kayla climbed into the escape capsule, strapped in and hit the launch button. Nothing happened. Dave checked his computer. It told him that the manual override was set.

   “They’ve stopped us.” Dave said. “I’ll have to see if I can’t fine a way to jimmy the hatch open. Wait here.”

   Dave exited the capsule and looked around the launch chamber. He called up a schematic of the launch chamber and mechanism. It clearly showed the locking bars of the manual override. There was no way to move them from inside the launch chamber. The only way to release them was the lever out in the passage where the security guards were.

   He started looking in the cabinets in the chamber and found several cutting lasers. He looked at the schematic again to see if there was a place where he could safely cut the locking bars so that they would disengage. The problem was that anywhere he cut the locking bars it would cut through the outer skin of the station and there were no space suits in here.

   He checked the first aid station. There were several oxygen bottles with face masks in there. He took out two and gave one to Kayla. “I’m going to cut the locking bars and when I do, it’ll cut the outer skin of the station too. It’ll start decompressing in here when the skin’s cut. Put this on and when it gets hard to breathe, turn this knob this way a little. If it’s still hard to breathe or if it gets hard to breathe again, turn it a little more. I’ll get back in here as fast as I can.”

   Dave went back out into the launch chamber and put the other oxygen bottle on and adjusted the mask. Then he started cutting the locking bars carefully, keeping the cuts as small as possible. After the third cut, it started getting hard to breathe. He opened the valve on his oxygen bottle and continued cutting the remaining locking bars. He cut the last one and the hatch was only being held closed electronically.

   Just then, two security guards opened the maintenance hatch. Dave fired a warning shot on low setting near them and pointed the cutting laser at them. They immediately closed the hatch. Dave rejoined Kayla in the escape capsule, closed the hatch and strapped in. He then used his computer to override the electronic hold on the capsule launch. The little bit of air left in the chamber evacuated, the outer hatch opened and the capsule launched. They escaped the station!

   “At last!” Kayla said. “We’re safe now.”

   “Yeah, it looks that way.” Dave answered. “But we still have to re-enter the atmosphere and land. The onboard computer’s supposed to do that automatically. I just need to pick a landing place, lock the computer in on it and it’ll land us there. If it works right that is.”

   “Why wouldn’t it?” Kayla asked.

   “The escape capsules haven’t been properly maintained in the past thousand years.” Dave replied. “I took it through a test run when I prepared it for our escape but I don’t know if all the hardware will work the way it’s supposed to. We’ll just have to try it and pray that everything works right.”

   “Damn,” Joe said. “They got away.”

   “We could nuke ‘em.” Ryan suggested.

   “And let everyone else in the system know that we aren’t letting any of our people go?” Jack asked.

   “What do you mean?” Joe asked. “I thought we were the only people left.”

   “That’s what we want everyone to believe.” Jack replied. “There’s four other stations still functional and survivors still on Earth. If that little bit of information becomes common knowledge, how are we going to keep everyone in line? You better keep that information to yourself Joe.”

   So, Laurie thought, they’ve been lying to us about that too. I bet they don’t know that anyone overheard that little conversation. I’ll have to leak this info in a way that makes it look like Joe’s the leak.

   They were getting buffeted pretty badly. The computer said everything was normal for a re-entry so Dave wasn’t worried. They were slowing down and curving around toward the place he targeted so that much was going well.

   “Is this normal? Kayla asked. “We’re not breaking up are we?”

   “The computer says it’s normal,” Dave replied. “And we’re heading in the right direction. We should be down in another fourteen minutes.

   “Are the people there going to accept us?”

   “I hope so,” Dave answered. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

   Fourteen minutes later they landed. Everything seemed fine. Dave saw a dozen people approaching cautiously. He couldn’t blame them. They didn’t know what his intentions were. Nine of them stopped about fifty yards from the escape capsule, two of them appeared armed. The other three stopped ten feet from the capsule and waited.

   “Time for us to meet our new neighbors.” Dave said as he opened the hatch. Dave went out first, holding Kayla’s hand. She followed him and stood alongside him. “Hi, I’m Dave. This is my wife, Kayla.

   “Your wife?” one of them questioned. “She’s only about thirteen or fourteen. That’s much too young for marriage.”

   “I’m thirteen,” Kayla answered. “That’s plenty old enough.”

   “Maybe where you’re from, not here.” the spokesman said. “He could go to jail for that.”

   “Easy, John.” one of the others said. “I’m Pete, the feisty one’s John and this is George on my other side. We saw a flash of light from space station 'Enduring Freedom' about an hour ago.”

   “That was us.” Dave answered his unspoken question. “Considering the conditions up there, that name’s a joke.”

   “What do you mean?” George asked.

   “I found a way to access the hidden history of that station,” Dave answered. “And I found out just how corrupt our society up there is. The workers who built the station were stripped of their rights and classified as maintainers, pets and food animals. I grew up with them being used that way so it seemed normal until I found out otherwise.”

   “Do you actually eat people up there?” Roger asked.

   “That’s the way things are set up.” Dave replied. “I quit eating meat when I found out the food animals were human. Before that, I didn’t know any better.”

   “How old were you when you found this out?” Pete asked.

   “What difference does that make?” John asked. “He’s admitted he’s a cannibal. The penalty for that is death.”

   “No, you can’t kill him.” Kayla interrupted. “He kept me from being killed and eaten. Besides, I love him. I couldn’t live without him.”

    “How old were you?” Pete repeated his question.

   “Seven.” Dave answered. “Before that, I just believed what I was taught, that the food animals, pets and maintainers were sub-human.”

   “That’s a handy excuse.” John said. “I say we execute him.”

   “No,” Kayla cried, stepping in front of Dave. “I won’t let you.”

   “Let me get this straight,” George said. “You were a food animal and you’re sticking up for one of your oppressors?”

   “I was a food animal,” Kayla answered, “but Dave was never one of my oppressors. He’s the only one who treated me like a human. He did that right from the start. Please, you can’t kill my husband.”

   “Are you sure you want him for your husband?” George asked. “You have a choice now, you don’t have to marry him.”

   “I’ve wanted to marry him for the past several years..” Kayla answered. “I’ve already married him. I see no reason to change it now.”

   “You’re loyal to him, that’s good.” Pete said. “But cannibalism is a serious matter. So is having sex with someone under age. Here, that’s sixteen. These matters have to be addressed.”

   “We haven’t had sex here.” Dave answered. “Where we did, it wasn’t only allowed, it was encouraged. I don’t want to wait for her to get older before having sex with her again but I can if that’s required by your laws.”

   “No,” Kayla complained. “I’m his wife. I don’t want to wait.”

   “I’m afraid you don’t have any choice there young lady.” Pete replied. “You’re too young. Our law doesn’t allow it.”

   “But I’m already pregnant by him.”

   “This will all have to be sorted out in court.” George said. “Until it is, you two need to refrain from any more sexual contact"

   “Young man,” the judge said. “The charges against you are very serious. The death penalty applies in cases of cannibalism. There are, however, extenuating circumstances in your case. You did stop eating human flesh long before you reached the age of accountability. In the society you grew up in, that’s very commendable. However, you cannot be allowed to continue your marriage to a thirteen year old girl, no matter how much you both want to. The charges against you are dismissed. But you must refrain from any sexual contact with Kayla until you two can be properly married under our laws. This court may allow that before she turns sixteen. You two will be evaluated for the next six months. At that time, this court will make a decision on when you two may marry. Court dismissed.”