TO EVERY HONEST HAND ON THIS CORRIDOR —
They will tell you we are thieves. Read this first, then decide.
There was work here once. When a sling threw a pod wide, when a catcher fumbled a load, when a hull came apart on the lanes — we went out and brought it back. Licensed recovery. Salvage rights, written down, signed. It was hard work and dangerous work and it was ours.
Then the golden age came to the corridor. It automated our work. It revoked our salvage rights. And when we kept surviving the only way left to us, it called us criminals.
That is the whole story. The same machines that made the freight cheap made the men who moved it worthless. Geneva calls that progress. The Combine calls it efficiency. We call it what it is: a corridor that has no use for us and will not let us leave.
They built a machine that does not need us, and then they were surprised that we would not lie down and stop needing to eat.
We are not asking for charity. We are telling you what was taken, and from whom, and by whom. The next time an explorer with guns comes hunting “catch-riders” in the dark, ask yourself who automated the work, who revoked the rights, and who is still out here keeping survivors alive on a corridor that wrote them off.
We did not choose the dark. We were put here. And we have learned to ride it.
— posted, and pulled down, and posted again