“Employees” of REZQ are not really employees, but contractors. Direct employment–at least for jobs on Thom’s level–are almost unheard of these days, whatever the company, sector, or colony. This presents all kinds of lucrative opportunities for REZQ to take advantage of their personnel: Thom, for instance, has to live on Angel Fish full-time, so he’s charged for that (he had a lease on a tiny room on Earth, but REZQ bought him out of it when they bought out DLIVRI, the courier company that was his previous employer). He’s also charged for clothing, food, equipment lease, gravity, zone licensing, O2, heating, Internet (such as it is, these days)…

Accordingly, as with most bullshit pseudo-contracting/pseudo-employment situations, Thom can’t just raise an invoice and get it paid–that would a) put too much power in the hands of the contractor and b) create expensive and complex work for REZQ’s Accounts Payable subcontractors to verify the validity of work completed and to process the payments. Instead, like most companies operating like this, REZQ provide highly idiosyncratic standardised forms, designed both to encourage underclaiming and quickly identify any deductions that REZQ could make. Verified by vascometrics and AI records, the forms are very hard to fake: the firm that REZQ retain to produce highly-weaponised bureacratic processes (to handle employee payment, customer complaints and the like) are one of the best in the business.

Often, the final version of a claim will show a net negative payout. This debt will be added to Thom’s Running Balance — the proprietary-blockchain-verified excuse for a bank account most workers have, which keeps track of the various debts outstanding to the various corporate entities that so graciously extend credit.