Work Text:
Sometimes, as a voice actor, you didn’t get to be choosy about the gigs you took.
And sometimes you were kidnapped and blackmailed by a megacorporation into giving them your voice and soul to train the AI model that they were rolling out as a combo mascot/warden.
Not everyone had been a fan of Deep Space Discounts’ switch to prison labor, some for different reasons than others. But of all the people who spoke out about it, only one voice actor was needed to send a message.
Cyan Eren Herbert (CEH for short, which his fans had somehow turned into “Kay”) had first made a name for himself by doing voices in neurovision parodies of pop culture- Interstellar Strife, The Last Bulgrum, Fangs, even Dragon Ball Z. He was so good that a holo-streaming company called Quadrilateral picked him up, and in the span of seven years he’d done so well with them that he was an intergalactic household name.
But in the span of a single year, it all came crashing down.
It started when Cyan decided to leave Quadrilateral, at the end of the fiscal year. He was doing great with them, he liked what he did, but he wanted to do more . And it felt like he’d already accomplished everything he possibly could with them. Staying at Quadrilateral would just be more of the same- and that wasn’t enough for him.
So he left Quadrilateral together with his bondmate, who he’d fallen in love with over the course of those seven years, and set out to make his own solo content. Music, holo-streams, excessively elaborate neurovision horror stories. His bondmate Coral was a unique species, a photosynthetic alien that had the ability to wirelessly sync with quantum computing devices. Coral edited all of his content, and his skill combined with her unique style kept fans coming back for more.
A few months after Cyan went independent, the news broke out about Deep Space Discounts’ horrible labor practices. People protested wildly all across the cosmos, Cyan included.
And then DSD fired all their staff and hired prisoners instead, which led to a completely different cycle of debates, riots, and general media scrutiny. Yet even despite that, Deep Space Discounts’ stock didn’t crash.
It rose.
Somehow, against all odds, the silent majority was in favor of DSD’s new business practice. Naturally, this was horrifying for a lot of people- CEH and Coral especially, as people who had just left Quadrilateral on good terms. It was terrifyingly easy to imagine a world where Quadrilateral hadn’t allowed them to leave, or refused to give them their proper wages after resigning.
And then, as if spurred by their thoughts, things did get worse.
Coral was caught in a shootout, while shopping in the next town over. It was the local galaxy’s most popular grocery store, a chain that had found success in their immediate solar system but failed to make waves outside it. They were one of the few franchises that had held out against the persistent expansion of Deep Space Discounts… and then a group of space pirates got into a fight with the local tough guys over a value pack of bioengineered nutri-paste.
As soon as he got the call, Cyan raced to the hospital. Coral was safe by the time he got there, out of the immediate danger phase, but her internals had suffered lasting damage from the crossfire. She’d need a month of surgery before she could return home.
And that was when Cyan discovered that neither he nor Coral had health insurance.
To be precise, neither of them had good health insurance. Their jobs at Quadrilateral had given them expansive benefits packages, including full coverage for anything that cost less than a year’s worth of wages. Now, neither of them had that- their individual health insurance only covered fees up to a month’s worth of their Quadrilateral pay. They could have gone for a more comprehensive insurance plan, but Cyan and Coral hadn’t thought they would need it at the time.
But now Coral was in the hospital, for the first time since Cyan had met her, and Coral’s surgery fees weren’t going to be cheap.
Cyan and Coral were doing well as independents, but not that well. The money they were making was at best a third of their pay with Quadrilateral. Combined with the fact that their new individual insurance wasn’t going to be able to cover all of Coral’s fees, and suddenly all of their saved-up funds (what little funds they had) were being redirected out of their account as soon as they arrived.
So Cyan made announcements on social media, reopened Punchstarter, and tried as many things as he could think of to generate funding. He sold t-shirts, did custom voice-overs, and signed posters by the hundred. It helped a lot , but it still wasn’t enough.
And right at the final stretch, when Coral’s surgery was almost but not quite paid for, Cyan was approached by Deep Space Discounts.
Normally, he would have turned them down immediately- they had a proven track record of being conniving, awful, and generally inhumane with everyone who worked for them. He‘d been extremely outspoken against them during the protests, calling them out all across social media. Cyan despised DSD, objectively and personally.
But Coral was still in the hospital. She wasn’t getting worse, but she wasn’t getting better either. And the funding for Coral, which had poured in so strongly at first, was slowing down to a trickle. If things kept going the way they were right now, it could be as many as six months before Coral’s surgery was paid for- by then, it’d be too late.
So, despite every bone in his body and all his friends warning him, Cyan went to sign the contract for a voiceover gig with Deep Space Discounts. They were replacing their old mascot, a cartoon man in a form-fitting bodysuit called Discount Warrior, and wanted Cyan to voice the new one: DeeDee.
Still, Cyan wasn’t stupid. He wrote up a list of conditions in advance, and when he met with the Deep Space Discounts hiring manager he read them off right away.
“I want you to pay me upfront before my first session,” Cyan said. “I won’t do a single recording until I can confirm that my bondmate’s surgery is paid for.”
“I don’t want my name listed in the credits, either,” he continued. “You should be smart enough to understand why. If I find you using my name or likeness in any promotional material anywhere, then I’ll consider our agreement null and void and sue for breach of contract.”
“Third,” he added, “This is a one-time job only. The only work I will ever do for you is the voicing of this character DeeDee, and once it’s done and I’m paid I don’t want to see any of you ever again. Understood?”
The hiring manager nodded to her aide, a bulky automaton with a built-in printer. The automaton printed out a contract right before Cyan’s eyes, and handed it to him.
Cyan adjusted his glasses, and read through the contract. It all seemed legit, from what he could tell. All his conditions were listed, without even a Non-Disclosure Agreement. They included a few extra details as well, such as reimbursement to his bondmate if anything ever happened to him. Ominously pessimistic, but still generous.
“Look good?” Asked the hiring manager.
“Looks good,” Cyan said, and he signed the contract with his full title: Cyan Eren Herbert.
That was his final mistake.
The next week, Cyan took his advance paycheck to the hospital. The doctors started on Coral’s treatment immediately, and once her first session was done (a successful operation, with more to follow) he went back to Deep Space Discounts to begin recording.
That was the last time that anyone ever saw Cyan Eren Herbert.
When Coral regained consciousness at the end of her surgery, the first thing she looked around for was her bondmate. Instead, she was greeted by their close friends and family. None of them had good news.
All of them knew that Cyan had planned to sign a contract with Deep Space Discounts, but none of them knew the specifics. Inquiries to DSD were rebuffed, and Cyan’s name never showed up in any of DSD’s commercials or social media posts. Yet somehow, for months and years after Cyan disappeared, his bank account- an account shared with his bondmate- continued to receive deposits, five-digit figures every thirty days, from an anonymous source.
Things became clearer with the unveiling of DeeDee. A bright-eyed, wide-faced cartoon character dressed in a prison jumpsuit slightly redesigned to look like an astronaut uniform, DeeDee debuted the first month after Coral woke up. DeeDee’s voice was snarky, cheerful, and perky- it sounded exactly like Cyan. Everyone knew it was him, but no one could prove it.
No one could prove it… until a particularly intrepid (and morally ambiguous) lurker on the net forum 4kun made an unsettling discovery.
Deep Space Discounts had a series of digital documents stored exclusively on their private server at HQ. Those documents listed the 1000 people and organizations most persistently and vocally opposed against DSD, and sorted them based on two criteria: the damage they could do to the brand, and the effort it would take to silence them.
Cyan was listed in that file. He was in the top 200 in terms of potential danger, and top 50 in the ‘ease of elimination’ category. Deep Space Discounts had been targeting him for months, ever since he first spoke out against their unlawful practices. They tracked Coral’s grocery schedule, and arranged for space pirates to get into a shootout on that day. They’d taken subtle measures to reduce the amount of work offers Cyan would get, so that he would have no choice but to go to Deep Space Discounts.
And in that document, it was written: ‘use microscopic print to include a life service clause in the VA contract’.
Naturally, this news made people even more furious with Deep Space Discounts than they were before. But it also made people terrified to speak out about it. If they had gone to these extremes just to target an independent streamer, what would they do to people with less social/political power and clout?
What was to say that they weren’t doing it already?
(The lurker who’d exposed the “Deep Grudge Docs”, as they were eventually called, was never heard from again. His disappearance just exacerbated people’s fears.)
The intergalactic peace council attempted a court hearing. DSD paid off the judges in advance, and they received a significantly lighter sentence as a result. People still attempted to speak up, but they were few and far between.
The universe as a whole knew the truth: Deep Space Discounts had won.
All it took was one voice actor to send a message.