Terms of Service

Kira found out Nakamura-Shenzen owned the planet the way most people found out things on Voss-7: through a software update.

The notification appeared in her optic overlay at 6:47 AM, sandwiched between a weather advisory and a reminder to hydrate. NOTICE: Planetary Governance License transferred from United Colonies Administration to Nakamura-Shenzen Holdings Ltd. Please review updated Terms of Service. By continuing to reside on Voss-7, you agree to the revised terms.

She blinked it away and went to work.

The refinery sat on the edge of the Plateau, a cathedral of pipe and pressure where atmospheric gases were separated, compressed, and shipped off-world. Kira ran the tertiary filtration systems — a job that required enough expertise to feel important and not enough to actually be important. She'd held it for six years, which on Voss-7 made her practically tenured.

The Terms of Service were seventeen thousand words long. She knew because Dex, who worked secondary filtration and had opinions about everything, had counted them.

"Clause 4.7," Dex said, leaning against a coolant pipe during their break. "Planetary residents are classified as licensed users of Nakamura-Shenzen environmental infrastructure. Residency constitutes acceptance of usage monitoring."

"So they own the air?"

"They own the atmospheric processing systems. Which on a planet that doesn't have a breathable atmosphere without those systems means yes. They own the air."

Kira looked out the refinery window at the Voss-7 landscape — rust-colored plains under a sky the color of a bruise. Without the atmospheric processors, that air would kill you in four minutes. The colony had been built on the understanding that the processors were public infrastructure, maintained by the UCA, funded by colonial taxes.

Nakamura-Shenzen had purchased the UCA's colonial debt six months ago. Nobody had thought to ask what collateral the UCA had offered.

The changes came gradually, in the way that corporate changes always came — not with announcements but with adjustments. The oxygen mix dropped by 0.3%. Not enough to be dangerous, enough to make you tired by afternoon. A cost optimization, Nakamura-Shenzen explained, to ensure long-term sustainability of atmospheric services.

Then the water. Then the network bandwidth. Then the heating in the residential blocks, which dropped two degrees because the algorithm had determined that human productivity remained stable at 17°C and there was no business case for the additional energy expenditure.

"They're not doing anything illegal," Dex said, scrolling through the Terms on his overlay. "That's the beautiful part. Every single thing they're doing is covered by a clause we agreed to by waking up this morning."

Kira started attending the town meetings. There were forty people in a colony of three thousand who still bothered. The mayor — a title that now meant "licensed community representative" — read Nakamura-Shenzen's quarterly transparency report aloud while everyone stared at the table.

Revenue was up. Efficiency was up. Resident satisfaction metrics, based on an algorithm that measured productivity and complaint frequency, were up. By every number the corporation tracked, Voss-7 was thriving.

By every number they didn't track, it was suffocating.

Kira began her project on a Tuesday, in the four hours between her shift and the mandated rest period that Nakamura-Shenzen had recently rebranded as "recovery optimization time." She pulled the schematics of the atmospheric processors from the colony's original engineering database — pre-acquisition, still accessible because nobody at Nakamura-Shenzen had thought to lock it. The processors were modular. Redundant. Designed by engineers who had built in more capacity than the colony would ever need, because space colonization attracted the kind of people who over-engineered things on principle.

Three percent of processing capacity was unused. Three percent was enough.

It took her four months to build the parallel system. Scavenged parts, improvised seals, a secondary processing loop hidden in the refinery's maintenance infrastructure. It produced breathable air — not much, not enough for the whole colony, but enough for a room. One room where the oxygen was right, the temperature was right, and the air didn't belong to anyone.

She didn't tell Dex. She didn't tell the mayor. She told the children. Twenty of them, ages six to twelve, who came to her room after school and breathed air that wasn't metered, monitored, or optimized. They played games. They were loud. They wasted energy. They did nothing that had a business case.

Nakamura-Shenzen's atmospheric monitoring systems detected the anomaly within a week. A minor discrepancy in the gas exchange logs — a fraction of a percent, the kind of thing that algorithms flag but humans ignore.

A technician was dispatched. He found the room, the children, the improvised processor humming quietly in the corner. He looked at Kira. She looked at him.

He filed his report: minor calibration drift in Sector 7 filtration. Recommended routine maintenance. No further action required.

He came back the next day. He brought his daughter.