In My Moonlit Mornings: Part I - Paperback

by Elijah J. Graham (Author)

What if the prison industrial complex existed without the institutional middleman? What if indebtedness was a crime? What if all crimes could result in enslavement? In My Moonlit Mornings is a dynamic piece of realistic fiction, written in a dystopian alternate America that has permanently legalized involuntary servitude.

John Harrison, president of the newly named United Confederacy of America, has revised the constitution to permit slavery in a profitable new form referred to as a Blacktract: the product of an authoritarian hierarchy system installed in the forefront of America's Bill of Rights. Through his influential manifesto, The Superior Stratagem, John Harrison and his son have persuaded the American people with alternative facts and blunt charisma to welcome involuntary servitude by abolishing prisons and effectively subjugating criminals and the impoverished. The two most important laws in the Harrisonian revised Constitution, written entirely by President John Harrison himself, proceed as follows:

Indebtedness, lasting a period of six months or more, is a crime.

All crimes are punishable by Blacktract at the discretion of the victim and approval of the United Confederacy of America.

Blacktracts are not involuntary labor or forced upon anyone, until they sign the solid line at the bottom. Once the paper is wetted, all of the signers' desires dissipate to be replaced by their proprietor's desires, all fruits of their labor are inherited by the proprietor, and all of their basic human needs must be filled by that same master. Though, and I must add this, for one to not sign a Blacktract is death.

These laws, coupled with preexisting tendencies for poor people, people of color, immigrants, and women to fall into debt or commit a crime create a tense world of profitable subjugation that is similar to our own world if it were under a magnifying glass.

Malik White, a stubborn runaway Blacktractee, finally escapes his content life as a mechanic under an abusive master in a Mississippi auto shop and travels to New York City after hearing about its unique opposition to the Confederate American government. There, he finds Keri Carter, the compassionate leader of the Railroad to Equal Life, or REL: the last enemy to the United Confederacy, domestic or international. Keri then introduces Malik to her overly violent, super-assassin sister, Nina, who has a big surprise of her own waiting at home for Keri.