Small towns all over the country are dying. Many of them find themselves in a situation where they are on their last legs being kept alive by their last factory. It's becoming a real issue for some as many of the kids brought up in those small towns move away to start better lives in more exciting places. Sadly though not everyone can just relocate since many of these towns are homes to lots of farmers or are just people without the funds to really relocate.
Because of this there has always been predatorial adviser agencies that move in on these small towns with promise of turning things around and revitalizing their town, but more often then not these companies are just looking to take the little money the town has left on it's way out.
However there is one company Prosperity & Redevelopment that claims to be different then others. It's only showed up in very few locations, but the places it has shown up seem to have started to turn around.
It didn't really make sense how they were able to fund all the projects they started, but they promised to turn towns around once they got the city on board with it's contracts. They built new offices, schools, restaurants, as well as new city infrastructure. They even created their own private police force to help keep the town safe.
The reality was actually much darker.
No one who's experienced it knows how it works for sure. Some think it's magic and some think it's nanomachines in the water. The method doesn't really matter, but Prosperity & Redevelopment was actually able to physically and even mentally transform people. It started out slow and innocent. The company was brought into the town by the Mayor and City Council promising to bring jobs, business, and life back to their town. They would come and build up their offices, then upgrade the towns infrastructure, better internet, pluming, electrical work, the works. It all seemed too good to be true as the company came in and started to upgrade the town. Eventually though people started to notice there were more and more P&RS(Prosperity & Redevelopment Security) Officers driving around and patrolling. Due to their sketchy legal contracts with the city they had about as much authority as the local police force but were much more manned then the 5 or so people who worked as officers in the small towns they moved in on.
People eventually got warry but before complaints could really move forward Prosperity & Redevelopment announced that they would be making all of these new upgraded utilities and public services free to anyone who got processed with one of their new IDs. A perk of being a resident they told them, as a way to get people to want to move to this small town. At first it seems completely normal as people went and got registered and processed with a new ID that gave them their free access, but then something odd started to happen. Some people started to look different ages, their fitness levels or other traits seemed different, and other people seemed to just vanish while new people would just show up after being processed. Which for a small town where most people knew everyone it was pretty weird to start seeing lots of people you'd never met before. What was even weirder though was none of the people who were processed would acknowledge that there was anything off about these people when talking to people who weren't processed yet.
Then something even more miraculous started to happen. People who were blind or in wheel chairs or had other physical disabilities suddenly had working eyes and legs. This caused a lot of the town to rush to get processed, but also scared some people away. At this point though enough of the town was processed that it was easy for P&RS to stop the people remaining from contacting anyone outside of town since all utilities run through P&R. They rounded up anyone they found trying to leave town or contact the outside. Eventually the remaining people dwindled away as it became more and more of a hassle to not have an ID until everyone was processed. In a few cases some were processed even by force if they had to. Some of the more problematic people even seemed to vanish after the process.
At this point the people of the two finally learned the real gravity of the situation as their Mayor who was now looking fifteen years younger and much more fit and handsome then he used to explained the situation in a mandatory city hall meeting.
Everyone who is processed was not able to leave the town or tell anyone who hasn't been processed anything about what is really going on here, and if asked about P&R people would find themselves only saying good things for the most part. Everyone in the town would be given a role and most people would be paired up. The goal was for this town to get back on its feet by having people stay in the town working and living here and starting families and boosting the population.
Everyone had a role to play and if they didn't play their role there would be consequences. Punishments could range from a painful shock running through your entire body, being detained, to being dealt with by P&RS goons, or even sometimes something worse. Initially when people first freaked out some people who spoke up were dragged off by P&RS officers never to be seen again while others were reprocessed into something worse. For some it was like a dream going from an aging man in a wheel chair to now a fit high school jock, while others it was more of a nightmare like a teenage boy who was excited to go off to college in just a few months finding himself now trapped as a stacked trophy wife for one of the higher up city officials. Everyone is also provided a job, home, and wardrobe all "appropriate" for their new lives.
Everyone would be monitored and they would be given schedules for things they must do for the first few weeks of being processed, but if you behaved and played along you could get more leeway and wouldn't need a schedule as long as you still played your part in this new society that P&R was building. Everyone was required to report anyone who wasn't playing along and if they didn't they too would end up feeling the consequences of not playing along.
There was also mandatory events that would require certain people in the town to attend for various things. These could range from a town fair, city hall meeting, local sports game, etc. The idea is to make this town very lively so it wouldn't do if everyone just hid away in their homes. They had big plans for this town and you could either roll with it or end up getting rolled over by it.
