Mr. Ekwood’s Unfortunate Summoning
by G. Connor Salter
The year is 1913 and two people lay dead in an English home. Two supernatural foes stand over them.
Contact info for G. Connor Salter
Website – https://gcsalter.wordpress.com/
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They say that a human life is invaluable, that you can’t put a price tag on it.
After China introduced the social credit rating system it soon spread to the rest of the world. No-one thought of it as a problem until it made its way into healthcare systems. Because of the strain and lack of funds in what essentially a human need, it became the norm to base your patient’s necessity for treatment on this rating. It started off getting lower ratings because of your general health, obesity, alcoholism, if you smoked. People thought this was fair, if someone didn’t look after themselves then why would they deserve treatment over someone else who was more healthy.
It became worse when the rating system took advantage of its social aspect, the population could vote you up or down depending on how you were as a person. It became a must to be perceived as popular. Everyone shied away from any controversial political thinking or acts of anything scandalous and tried to better themselves to increase their stars. Humanity bettered as a whole but lost what the idea of being human really means.
The government swayed people’s perception on people, lowing the rating of anyone who apposed them. But you couldn’t be ‘off the grid’ anyone without a smart phone or who hadn’t downloaded the app would automatically show up as a zero. The homeless and poor were the first to feel the impact as their lack of funds forced them into an culling, for lack of a better word, any sufferers of diabetes, asthma or any condition that requires constant medication now had no access to their rights for treatment.
When visiting a hospital, the higher rated were treated first and sometimes the lower rated weren’t treated at all. With the massive decrease in the population of the ‘working class’, society began to crumble. Threats to vote people down to force them to take the roles of minimum paid jobs stabilized humanity for a time but this vicious cycle of spite and revenge became worse and worse.
We enter a period of time were the egg shells that we so tentatively walk on cover the graves of everyone in our wake. Unable to show any inclining of individuality, any political bias, and thought that could be seen as a disregard or judgment on our governmental oppressors less we suffer the same fate.
With this I ask you.
What would you rate another humans life?
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