The Windup Girl

Calorie companies own the seed stock. New People are engineered for service; kink-springs store energy.

Turn springs by hand, or by elephant, because calories are scarcer than labour. Emiko was manufactured to obey, is legally property, and performs nightly for an audience that finds her manufactured obedience the attraction.

Capital captures it — Nothing is abolished. The gains are simply owned by someone.

The rare post-automation setting where energy, not intelligence, is the binding constraint — and human muscle becomes competitive again.