{"product_id":"2940013141018","title":"Manumission","description":"Originally published in Baen's Universe, (April, 2008)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis morning, when you wake up and look at your rippled reflection in the basin of water near the concrete wall of your cell, you only have one true personal memory left. It can't be that your entire life is based off this one event, so you suspect they've left it with you to piss you off. To 'motivate' you. To make you one raging motherfucker.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt's a riff on the Countee Cullen poem. You're six, standing on the street holding the anonymous arm of your mom, and the other kid staring back at you flips you off and calls you nigger.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat's all they really left you with.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSure there's other stuff, you're no vegetable. You can use money, eat, walk, tap the net, and know just about anything headlined over the last thirty years. But anything specific is faded, general, lost behind static and fuzzy feelings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou empty the basin with a flourish and look around your cell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe headache, the all-over itching, the scars crisscrossing your entire body, that gets to you too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou've signed yourself away, the men in the black suits have explained back when you first arrived in this cell. They sat across from you on a sterile metal table. The document they slid toward your burnt smooth fingertips is legit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo you listened to them, and nodded, and they got up to leave.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOh yeah, one last thing, they had said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYour name.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePepper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd your last name?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey just chuckled and closed the door...","brand":"Tobias Buckell","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47082293362928,"sku":"2940013141018","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013141018_p0.jpg?v=1763577513","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013141018","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}