This story was originally posted at https://grometsplaza.net/world/machine/storieslr/the_last_free_man_on_earth.html on 2020-04-02.
Liberty Island, 4th July, 2051
Richard groaned as a brilliant white light roused him from his artificially-induced sleep. He opened his eyes, and immediately realised the seriousness of his predicament. He was completely naked, his wrists secured behind his back by solid metal shackles. Through the glass windows all around him, he could see the ruins of New York City, the crumbling skyscrapers now repurposed as the Pleasure Centres of the System. Each tower block on Manhattan island probably held several thousand humans, now slaves to the System.
Richard had spent almost all of his adult life fighting the System as the leader of the Resistance. Now, he was its prisoner, held captive in the bright, glittering glass sphere that Lady Liberty now held aloft where her torch had once been, the torch itself lying half-destroyed at the foot of her pedestal.
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