In Volume, robots were too expensive. The smarter solution — at least for the shareholders — was to manufacture humans instead. Workers are grown in vitro, raised by AI parents, trained for the workforce, and released into the world as adults. As economic units. And they arrive already in debt.
The birth debt is the cost of their creation — the facility, the AI upbringing, the training. The worker spends their entire life paying it off. It’s a direct mirror of how we go into debt for education just for the privilege of working for someone else. Or how credit cards keep an entire generation in a permanent cycle of repayment with no visible exit.
During COVID-19, politicians encouraged workers to return to their jobs to keep the economy moving — even as the virus killed them. In Volume, that logic is just written into the contract. You were made to work. The bill is already due.
💡 Idea by me, prose by Claude (Anthropic)
#WorldBuilding #BirthDebt #GigEconomy #Cyberpunk #Volume