I'm new to Escape Pod, and this was the first Union Dues story I'd heard. I enjoyed it so much that I went back and listened to the other five stories in the series. It was an odd experience. To my mind, "All That We Leave Behind" is the least bleak of the bunch. It's certainly the one that hews most closely to the themes that are so common to superheroes: the teenager who discovers he's different, the conflict between desire and responsibility, etc. The darker themes of the Union Dues world are hinted at, but they aren't made explicit, a listener who's new to that world (like me) won't necessarily catch them.
That's why it was such a shock to listen to the other stories in the series, and find out what a horrible life the Union's supers live: isolation, quasi-slavery, not enough hot water, for crying out loud! So in a way, this was the perfect story with which to be introduced to the Union Dues series: as I listened to each successive story, the grimness of the world became more apparent. It's easy to imagine the narrator of this story going through much the same process that I did, as he's indoctrinated into the ways of the Union...
Anyway, that's all very roundabout. Looking forward to more Union Dues!