This is a Test

Ch. 3 - Part IV - Day Two

Having accomplished something positive, he set about to explore the features of his tablet. While the others talked amongst themselves, Cashe installed the habitat's user access portal and read through the End-User License Agreement, which he always did with any new application. It was the standard fare, wherein the user signed away all rights to personal privacy ad infinitum and allowed Anoptica to sell all accumulated data without remuneration. He continued his perusal unabated through hundreds of lines of legalese, but stopped at one sentence buried within a long dense paragraph:

By authorizing the use of the aforementioned product, one forfeits all rights to their firstborn offspring and transfers full and sole ownership of said entity to the Anoptica Corporation.

Cashe paused his scroll through the EULA to consider this discovery. On rare occasions, developers had been known to hide jokes or contests in user agreements, but he had never found any in products distributed by conglomerates, as they took their contract language seriously.

Cashe had zero interest in a firstborn, secondborn, or anyborn, and he took extreme measures to ensure against his personal propagation. He had heard fools bemoan how corporations were evil, yet here one was willing to adopt a child before conception. Cashe smiled, imagining how nice it would have been had this been his fate.

The legality felt questionable, but with their platoons of lawyers, it must have been binding. It felt good to know that if one day the improbable happened and some woman approached with outstretched arms holding a mewling money-vacuum while demanding child support, he could simply say, "I'm sorry. I would, but I needed to use a computer program for work, so..." He wondered about the contract another way, where he could go to court to offload offspring to Anoptica. The whole deal seemed like a win-win for Cashe. He would be allowed to use a fine program, and in exchange, the company would protect him from the financial perils of progeny. He hurried through the rest of the EULA and tapped the OK button with joy.

Cashe sat still with a smile on his face, having had a productive hour. He had amused himself at the others' expense, created a lovely venery, legally insulated himself against inadvertent spawn, and the inane meeting seemed to wrapping up. Everyone was standing, ready to leave. Nothing could spoil his mood.

LIA: What if I must make a critical change to the network infrastructure, one that can affect the systems in a drastic fashion. Who do I ask for permission?

DANTE: You're the expert here. Use your best judgement.

Cashe could just hear the extra E. He hated them all.

Word count - 526

Author's Note: I saw a lot of people confused by the final line. My real chapter is broken up from the original into four parts. The joke is a call back to something mentioned in Ch. 3 - Part III, the chapter right before this one.

Also, for book club members, please place final comments here so I can find them quicker when I edit, as all comments have value and I will re-read all before any next draft. To all those that got this far, thanks for reading. :)