The Long Goodbye

It seems like the inevitable choice for humanity will be a ultimately humane one. We will be a one world community with one currency, one set of laws for everyone along with hundreds of cultural variances throughout the world. We won't have any more "other countries" to worry about and through genetic manipulation and a stronger and more strict education, there really wont be any more poeverty or ignorance.
- Muhatma Al Jeebeb 2045 - World One Summit XVII

It'll be like Star Trek. Everyone working on something that they like or going someplace new.
- Enid Park 2028 - MIT Graduate Presentation.

Prologue

In the future most careers will be sought for and studied for at the primary school level. Most people will leave their parents as teenagers and young adults and they will set off on some Lifetime Career. It will be called the century of "The Long Goodbye".
People will then move on and into their apprenticeship. Unions will be formed and worlds will be explored. For the majority of those that enter Lifetime Careers, returning to Earth would be rare. Adults will find themselves in transitional periods as well and many will end up working on luxurious cruise liners that help bring resources to outposts and other planets or moons.
During the Long Goodbye century, 80% of the population of planet Earth takes on Lifetime Careers and leaves Earth on their journey. Very few actually get a chance to return. Families are spread out throughout the universe and in time a new way of life emerges for humanity.

The people that still live on Earth comprise of two main types. Those with Lifetime Careers and those who have been "sectioned off" and are "banished" to the Off Grid. The Lifetime Careers on Earth consist of farming and rehabilitating natural areas.

The people in the Off Grid section however, are cut off from the rest of the world and live in a completely free and lawless zone. There are no laws. All Un-Rehabilitatable persons are eventually placed in this zone with a backpack of standard tools for survival.
Other people have opted to drop out of normal society and actually "break in" to the Off Grid to live anonymous lives. These people are usually heavily armed and well supplied with food and tools. These folk are called the Los Torturadores.

Chapter One
Jack was a Los Torturadores. He became a Los Torturadores while floating around the Moon. They were out of fuel and running out of food. They were about to be rescued when suddenly a separate emergency at another location took precedent over their own needs due to the rating system - which rates the overall importance of the actual people in need of being rescued, and it places them into ranks - and these ranks are constantly changing as events unfold in the surrounding universe. Many people have died due to constantly being outranked by other emergencies that took precedent over their own.
Long story short, Jack is now a Los Torturadores and he is about to commit his first murder. Hunger had gotten to the best of he and his fellow travelers and it was either kill and eat or be killed and eaten.

And there the man sat, on a muddy log next to a puddle of oily, green water with empty water jugs poking out from its putrid surface.
A fat greasy bearded old man sitting slumped over. He was wearing only one shoe, a bright red basketball shoe with puffy white treads. He had drool running down from the cracks of his lips and his eyes were glazed over and staring dully into the darkening dusk, a swarm of insects in the near distance forming a miniature tornado.
Jack peered through the palmetto fronds. His butcher knife gleaming in the moonlight.