what ‘slave’ stands for in my novel, the slave project

I’d wanted to hold off on explaining the title of my dystopian novel about a near-future prison that innovates to become profitable by putting young convicts to work at hard labor on useful projects, and dirty jobs most free men don’t want to do.

The novel will take us through this evolution through the eyes of a young athlete convicted and sent to the Mountain Vista Correctional Work Camp.

As I’ve written earlier, almost everything in this carefully researched novel has actually happened in human history. I’ve added a few high-tech inventions that I think will happen.

So while the vast scope of the program isn’t immediately clear to Tyler, our hero, and his fellow convicts and friends, it has been the plan of the mysterious warden from the start: put convicts to work for profit by leasing them out to companies, organizations, and individuals.

They are part of the SLAVE Project:

Subordinated Leased Assets for Value Extraction.

The first part of The SLAVE Project is Tyler’s story. Tyler is an artist and he finds some favor with the warden, painting scenes from daily life, and other art projects for the warden and guards.