Culture Touchstones

Deal signing

When a big deal is struck the deal is often codified by sharing a drink. Usually alcoholic or otherwise inebriating. It's considered bad taste to show up to a deal without a drink since it shows that you think the deal isn't going through.

It's most common is pouring yourself a drink. The more dominate figure will then poor slightly more about 3/4ths of their drink into the other glass, then the lesser figure will pour until they both have about equal amounts of drink.

This shows trust coming from the more powerful person. "I'm giving more to you, and trusting you to uphold your end" and then it’s a show of skill from the other, to see how close they get to an even split. The closer they are the "the more skilled they are" I put this in quotes because it's to show skill for whatever deal they've made, which clearly isn't true unless it’s bar tending role.

It's worth noting that this can take many forms and this is just an example. If an employer is doing a mass hiring spree it would be unwise to drink that much alcohol, so they may opt to share a cigar with a group of people, or may buy a bunch of pills and everyone takes one.

What sort of deal constitutes this tradition is vague. While technically buying from a street vendor is a deal, you're not talking shots for that. The general rule of thumb is long standing deals. New employment would count, but if you were a temp-hire then probably not. If you're interning, probably not. If you're leasing an apartment, maybe, if you're spending 10kC or more a month then it's not out of the question, if you're leasing from a slum lord they might share spit with you.

Important deals like this are also done in person, if a deal isn't important enough to do in person then it isn't worth this tradition.

Cyberware

Nearly all people have a cyberware implant that is their digital ID. This essentially encrypts anything they wish and it proves it came from them. Important digital documents and social media are often signed or logged into with this digital ID. The digital ID works on an open source and free platform and has been around so long now that it's integrating into most things.

This also means that people tend to wear gloves, RFID blocking gloves at that, because these communicate via RFID.

It's also common to have your digital currency spend this way as well, and a 3rd chip that acts as a general storage for various keys you may have.

It's also common for high security organizations to have you get another chip, or several, installed that allow you to scan into areas, computers, or just an organization ID.

One downside to this is that "hand robbers" have become common. People simply slicing people's hands off to extract the chips. For this reason its considered rude to ask someone to put their hand inside something.

Another thing people have done to prevent hand robbers is to get additional cyberware that prevents it. It could be metal bone replacements or much cheaper skin armor. In nice parts of cities hand robbers are not common, it's something to be wary of but not worried about unlike in slum areas.

Additional recent security enhancements check the finger prints on the hand as well as the temperature of the hand, if it falls below expected levels the scan may not be accepted. Obviously physical locations don't accept severed hands and important transactions are mostly done in person for this reason.

Debt and Slavery

Debt is a known dangerous item in Compact space, often more dangerous than weapons. Not all debt is slavery, but most slavery is debt or comes from debt. If you take on more debt than you can afford it is common for whoever loaned you the debt to take you as a slave if you can’t pay it. Debt collectors is a radically different job in Cassius. Debt collectors will go and take people and bring them to debt prisons where they are allowed to work in whatever that prison does. There is a weird range of options on how this actually plays out, some companies struggle to find low skill labor, or need/want free labor, and will issue debt hoping people don’t pay it back so they can steal them and issue them as labor.

Before I make this canon, let’s consider the cost benefit analysis of something like this.

You’d need a fairly legit debt business, a prison, jailors, debt collectors. Debt issuance can be AI, debt collectors can be paid fairly well $500 US a day and as long as they bring in 2 or 3 new slaves a week they’re doing their part and that's a low figure. Prisons can be fairly automated with behavior either increasing or lowering your debt owed. The company can say the price of goods is far lower than what they actually sell for so they can keep them for a while to the point where a $200 cash advance could generate the company $2000 profit for the cost of $700. The minimum debt amount to be worth stealing is $100 US, which is pretty low. I’ll say that this model may have existed for a while but recently became far too powerful with new companies and prisons being mostly automated.