"That's right. Besides, the base doesn't hand out food for free. Haven't you all known that for a while?"
"A simple meal costs twenty Contribution Points."
Those twenty Contribution Points seemed to strike a nerve. The woman nearly leaped out of her hospital bed. "Twenty Contribution Points? Isn't that a total rip-off? A single meal costs twenty Contribution Points! We're just ordinary folk—where are we supposed to get Contribution Points?"
"If you don't have Contribution Points, you can sign a one-year labor agreement with the authorities. Haven't many people already done that?"
"Absolutely not! That labor agreement is basically an exploitative slave-labor contract. It says that whenever the base needs it, they can assign you to any post."
"What could I do with these old bones? What if they assign me to burn corpses or sweep up trash? How could we possibly manage that?"
