Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!panix!.POSTED.2602:f977:0:1::3!not-for-mail From: Mark Shaw Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written Subject: YASID: SS/Novelette kind of like the film "Severance" Date: Sat, 24 May 2025 19:58:34 -0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Message-ID: <100t8da$kmv$1@reader1.panix.com> Injection-Date: Sat, 24 May 2025 19:58:34 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: reader1.panix.com; posting-host="2602:f977:0:1::3"; logging-data="21215"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@panix.com" User-Agent: tin/2.6.4-20241224 ("Helmsdale") (NetBSD/10.1 (amd64)) There's a business or whatever that hires financially desperate people to serve as contractors, with those people being disconnected from their consciousness and "driven" by others during their service. The work they do is often dangerous (underwater mining) or humiliating (prostitution). Hence, when a subject wakes up to resume day-to-day life, they would sometimes find themself injured, physically exhausted, diseased, etc. but with no idea why. At some point in the story, as I recall, consciousness leaks between the contracted and free portions of the protagonist's life, and he somehow manages to help another (female, natch) contractor achieve the same ability to know what she's being subjected to. The denouement, however, is not positive. As I recall, one or the other of the two is subjected to a procedure that restores the status quo for him/her, and the other submits to that as the new-normal state of affairs. That's how I remember it, anyway; it's been many years since I read it. Anyone have any idea about the story title or author? -- Mark Shaw moc TOD liamg TA wahsnm ======================================================================== "Anyway, we delivered the bomb." -- Mark Shaw moc TOD liamg TA wahsnm ======================================================================== "Anyway, we delivered the bomb."