Parasitic

plebeia    plɪˈbiːən/       

noun

1. (in ancient Rome) a commoner.

adjective

1. of or belonging to the commoners of ancient Rome.

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We haven't always been like this.

Not always breeding people in pens, that is. That's what it's supposed to look like in the records of the past. The Romans had their slaves and gladiators, now they have us, for all-purpose entertainment, for staffing as servants, for the routines past bed times that tortured and twisted minds could come up with. We are almost all test tube babies. The plebeians, those born without special skills, or are decedents of those who staged a mutiny in 2168. So many years have passed us by. Each of us have allocated owners, an owner to rub in the fact that we are of lower birth. Someone who, may or may not ever bother when all that's left of us are bones and ashes. We are forced to do daredevil stunts, for the heck of their adrenaline rush of other people. Most of us don't make it past their twenties. We're used, misused, given all of the dirty work of the Supernus Civilization. House pets have it better than us. 

Every New Year's there is the staged mutiny and the takeover by the Empire. We participate without choice because most of us barely make it through the very real enactments. Participation begins at age 16. I've barely gotten through two. This year, it seems, I don't have to participate, because my owner's here to take me away. It's never good news, but it doesn't matter otherwise. We're only numerals, who could change that in  these hedonistic times?

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We were in large field with an electric force field overhead. The two of us were standing in front of a huge cave mouth with two trainers in protective leather attire. A deafening roar echoed through the cavern walls before being projected out if the open cave. I exchanged alarmed glances with Boy 11. One of the trainers threw chunks of meat from a plastic bag at each of our feet before smearing some on us, smirking. The female trainer was very close to me, holding a flame thrower under her arm, smoking on the cigarette inducers. We couldn't afford the undesirable effects of actual cigarettes in this century so, the battery operated inducer sticks did the job. Her partner, was still smearing blood on Boy 11's pants, tattered and torn from many other 'trainings' like this. The buzzing of cicadas were all around us in the trees. Little insects that were genetically modified in some arenas to suck blood like mosquitoes. I hoped we were lucky today. I hope this breed of cicadas are harmless. I wonder why I bothered hoping. 

We could hear the soft footsteps of the drakon now, our hearing abilities meddled with before out birth, so we had a very sharp sense of hearing. Boy 11 gave a short sharp whistle.

That's our signal.

We both knocked the flame throwers out of the trainers' arms. Some where in my peripheral I could see Boy 11 tackling  his trainer to the ground while I stuffed a bunch of the raw meat into the red-haired bitch's face before throwing her straight towards the drakon, coming out of the cave.  The huge 300 pound black panther-like creature with a face mutated into the silhouette of a dragon looked down at the two trainers at his feet. The red-haired one I'd only knocked out after tearing off her stiff turtle neck collar, checkered red and yellow, for rookie trainers. Boy 11 must have held a really good grudge in his years to have torn his trainer's left arm clean off with his bare hands, I wasn't sure of the man was breathing. He wasn't a rookie trainer, black and white checkered collar. Tackling an experienced staff like that. Impressive. The drakon gave another roar before sinking it's teeth into the neckline the one I'd taken care of.

I smiled a little at Boy 11 in relief. "That could have been us, huh? Either today or tomorrow, during the show in front of the visitors."

 Boy 11 stretches his arms a little, now bleeding in several places. "Good thing they don't have surveillance in these places, cuts down the budget. Come on, let's give the drakon some space to finish up. I'm so sick of being the prey in these arenas." He takes in  deep breath and lets it out as we walk away to climb up a large apple tree further from the cavern. 

He lends me his knee, kneeling down so I can climb up before him. "How old are you?" 

I glance at him, and settle down on a sturdy looking branch as he climbs up to join me. "19, you?"

"24" He says, straining his voice a little as he settles down on to the branch next to me. "I slept with her once, you know." 

"Who?" I ask absentmindedly. watching the drakon devour the male trainer, shaking bits of body out of the modified leather gear that it's teeth couldn't pierce. 

"The girl down there, obviously.' I pry my eyes way to stare at him. "The trainer?" The bitch who gave me ten strokes of cane yesterday for being late for some cleaning up job at another arena like this. A few of the kids from the pens had been killed by some human testing they'd done. I don't want to see it, so I'd hidden out in the library modules for a while after momentarily hacking the system- or an automatic tracker would have found me.

"What? Sometimes, they don't care."

"That they aren't allowed to?"

"If it's for their entertainment they can just force us, remember. Or has your owner give you immunity from that?"

"Maybe. There were a few visitors, nothing horrible. I get great access to the libraries though." The drakon was done eating apparently. It's taken the rookie's head clean off, but left the rest of her untouched and had gone back to it's lair.

"She was such a bitch, I mean; I'm talking torture with those heated metal cuffs. The healing serum didn't have any anesthetic. I hate that thing." He blurted out, loosing the composure I'd been used to seeing.

"Good thing she's gone huh?"

"There's always more. It's probably good to take the leather gear, it's flame proof and can't be pierced by the drakon's canines. We'll need it tomorrow."

"No chance of cancelling the show."

"Nope." He's already at the foot of the tree. Throwing pebbles at the cavern's entrance, checking to see if the drakon would come back out. "I've head a couple of years back this guy pulled the same thing with his trainers, they still continued the actual program the next day."

He turns back at me as I follow him, and opens his arms wide and puts on the 90's gameshow voice, "The Show, Must Go On." 

We manage to salvage the protective-gearing from whatever was left of the bodies and put them on before the clean up crew arrive. Most of them are like us, so some give us both pats on the back as we go back to out living quarters to wash up. We could push it a little bit here, the trainers' aren't superior genetically. They've been dumped here just like us.

There's electronic security keeping us in. We could screw around a little here and there with the hacking or get away with surviving some training stations- if you had the intelligence to do that. There were brain restrictions on some people.  A lot of people actually. There's a vast majority who don't have as much library access as I do. But then again we're too busy doing enteratinment most of the time to try to..maybe get away. It's not possible though, with electronic chippping and no way of having enough access to get out of here. Where would we go anyway? Surrounding the farm is a vast network of wasteland. Very toxic wasteland, seperated from us by huge moats. How would we survive? What would we survive on?