Star Striken

It's 2029. The dust has finally settled on the great Shutdown War of 2026. Writers and readers stick to their spaces and do not interact except at the AO3 neutral drop-off site. I head to an illegal underground writer bar. I knock on the door, they ask me to write a mini-fic about a ship they choose at random to prove I'm down. I get suspcious bc they don't even specify what fandom. I hear someone having a job inside and know it's a sting. I dive out of the way just in time: Google Drive and his corporate friends burst through the door. They have writers in custody who are crying things like, "fan artists take commissions, too!" "the shutdown changed things!" and "who sent you?" A woman with purple orbs looks at me ominously as they load her into the corporate-police-legal-intellectual-property van. "Think twice before you write for them," she says. I'm addicted to kudos so I will not heed her advice but I nod anyway. I look for news at the drop-off site. The air feels weird. I'm getting stared at. I notice that there's only readers around for some reason. I realize too late that I'm wearing my AO3-logo "Bitches That Write" custom sweater I got off Etsy before the war which signals that I'm a writer. Readers begin to circle me. I hold out my hands and tell them that some of my friends are readers. I tell them I read sometimes even though it's illegal for writers to do that (we lost the right to read in the war). I tear up and say that I don't even care about kudos, I write for me, I'm an ally. They snatch my laptop out of my hands and go to Microsoft Word. They find nothing bc I'm tech illiterate and only use Notes. They go on AO3 and push 'Download' -- immediately I fall to the ground. The potential kudos I would have gotten leave my addicted body. I curl on the ground in pain and need. Someone throws my laptop at me. Someone spits on the ground and chuckles as they say, "When you go back, tell your writer friends: copyright infringement."