The Militia. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
civilobedience) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
multiversallogs2012-09-08 04:06 am
civilobedience) wrote in multiversallogs2012-09-08 04:06 am
Entry tags:
another day older and deeper in debt
Who: The Militia, and the citizens of Baedal.
What: Moments in time.
Where: All around the city.
When: Over the course of this week.
Notes: This post is the activity mentioned here - there were enough volunteers to do asides tailored to specific volunteer characters, but if you'd like to have your character witness something in here, or hear about something after the fact and react to it, you are more than free to. Just keep in mind that these are for read-and-react, not confrontations: if your character picks a fight they will be arrested. These are examples of normal events that happen every day in Baedal.
Warnings: Bigotry, xenophobia, harassment, references to police brutality, endless creepy patronizing bullshit.
Day in and day out, the Militia has a presence in Baedal. Many are plain-clothed officers, watching, waiting. In times of strife, more and more uniformed agents appear amongst the citizens, reminding Baedal that she is protected. (That she is ruled.) For most, this is simply the way things are, and always have been – if you follow the rules, and if you shun those who don't, your life is unaffected. Maybe you decide not to vote because your heart doesn't match up to what's expected of you. Maybe you keep your eyes on your feet and keep walking past a hooded authority figure matched against a defenseless civilian. Maybe you are saved, and your ardor is won forever.
It's different for everyone.
Badside: The Hungry I | Megan Gwynn
They arrive not long into the first afternoon rush, swift and without warning. The music is killed, the doors are held. They want to see every patron's identification, they want to see every employee's documentation, they want to check the dates and validity of every permit, they want to count and re-count the cash in the till and see the books. They search every corner and crack for contraband and they scan and re-scan everyone's CiDs, making sure no one has anything they should be seeing to down at the Spire, as a courtesy.
The human girls are permitted to leave first, though they're subjected to having their belongings searched, of course. Then the patrons, one by one. The owners and whatever waiters and dancers are unfortunate enough to be visibly xenian are kept long after hours, searching and talking, checking and confirming. It's for everyone's safety.
no subject
As minutes turn into hours, it does not escape her notice that the employees being kept behind are like her. Xenians.
When she's still there well into the evening, she starts getting antsy. Her voice raises a few times. It only takes a little extra attention from a Militia agent before she quiets again, but she starts crying instead, this is making her sick and she just wants to go home. It's not fair. She hasn't done anything wrong, not like at home. Her reputation in Baedal is spotless. Why is this happening to her?
She's wiping at all the makeup smeared on her face when someone puts a jacket over her shoulders, over her wings. She tries to smile at him. He's her favourite bouncer, a convict who happened upon a judicator with a particularly sick sense of humour -- his brand consists of dotted lines all around his wrists. They couldn't actually cut off his hands, see, but it conveys the message all the same: thief.
When they finally let her go, her bags having been rifled through and her CiD messages checked over and over, they're still talking to him and he doesn't answer any of the texts she sends him later and she's not coming to work, if it's even open, for a few more days. She's not sure what that silence means.
Coin's End: Bureaucratic District | Rachel Conway
When Ms Conway is stopped, it's business as usual until one hooded figure murmurs the name of her cohort to another, and she is asked to step out of the flow of traffic for a moment. The questions are routine, almost apologetic in places, interested in others. Her bag is searched. A female agent is called over to search her person. When her CiD is returned, there's a tiny piece of paper with someone else's number scrawled it stuck to it, and a polite, if still entirely inappropriate, compliment about her hair.
no subject
But before that it was the entirety of her teenage years, what sometimes seemed to be a nonstop parade of oh-so-concerned teachers, neighbors, fellow worshippers with prying, pitying, pointed questions. She slips right back into it as if she never left, answering questions she feels are no one's goddamned business and enduring the inspection she feels they have no right to carry out--are they actually fucking patting her down, what the entire hell--with the good-natured poise and polite resignation one expects from someone who, gosh, really understands that people just have to ask these questions, have to poke around in your business, because it's for your own good.
Yes, she has business in the area--filing routine and mandatory paperwork on behalf of her employer. Yes, she likes her job. Yes, she's been down here before and likely will be regularly, you know how it is, there's always paperwork. No, she's doesn't live in Syriac Well, she just works there. Yes, that certainly is a big flashlight in her bag, she works late sometimes, you know how it is, a girl just needs to feel secure walking to her apartment building from the train late at night. Yes, that's the paperwork she's here to file, no, she has nothing else to do here but drop that off, it's back to the office once she has.
There are so many things they want to know, and though they're civil and full of sorry for the trouble, we gotta do what we gotta do, the clear implication is that there will be more trouble if she doesn't answer. Or if she demands any answers in return--who the hell do you think you are, what right do you have stopping someone on the street, how dare you question my business here, doesn't a law-abiding citizen have free movement here--and, above all:
What's so special about my cohort that merely being part of it earns me a public frisking and interrogation?
If she were still the afternoon server at the tea house, with no one to answer to but herself, she might try edging toward some of those questions. But she's well aware that she's not just a private citizen anymore; she works for and with Jack, and there's a lot at stake for him. Getting on the Militia's radar as a troublemaker or getting herself arrested for being out of line could screw things over for him
So she keeps smiling, keeps up the act of being a compliant, polite, understanding good citizen. Yes, I've been here a while now, almost a year and a half, I think. No, it's true, I haven't been at my job all that long. Yes, that's a picture of my dog on my CiD, yes, he's cute, isn't he? His name is George Tirebiter, no he doesn't actually bite tires, there was a school who had a mascot by that name near where I grew up and I always thought it was funny.
...Yes, this really is my natural hair color, no, there's no artifice involved, cosmetic, magic, or otherwise, oh, how kind of you to find it remarkable, insert perfectly-executed humbled gaze-drop here, gosh.
She keeps up the polite smile and idle chatter as her belongings are returned; she notes the number stuck to her CiD and she nearly asks, but she's not sure if it's an error, a test, or in some remote possibility, information being slipped to her, so she puts the device back in her bag without comment. She keeps up the act all the way to her destination and back, bright smile and brief you guys have a good day on her way back past the checkpoint, to the train, on the train, all the way back to Jack's offices.
Once she's safely out of sight, though... She's still kind and civil, this is a professional workplace, after all, but boy, is she a flurry of I can't believe I have to do this activity, striding from office to office, who's got a magnifying glass, I need a magnifying glass, I'll bring it right back until someone comes up with one.
And then she's in her office, the lamp on her desk turned so she can inspect her CiD with the magnifying glass under it, because like fucking hell is she using this again until she's sure it hasn't been tampered with.
Which is a problem, because now there are people she needs to call.
Flyside: Residential | Alexia Swiftdawn
no subject
"Shabby freelancers—what's that supposed to mean, I live here," Alexia mutters under her breath, as the her unit walks away from the scene, jobless. Life isn't fair, but there's injury and then there's adding insult to injury.
The Mog Hill-Badside border / The Dog Fenn-Badside bridge | Wolfgang Einhorn
This time it isn't the main streets – they know better, in places like this. The Militia has set up three stops on popular paths from the El Train into the canton, snagging those who don't want to be snagged. Some people run when they see the abrupt appearance of hooded figures, materializing as if from the shadows, barricades and all – but most quell their desire to flee, and forge ahead, mimicking cattle. It's safer to slink by the side of a lion than to attempt to outrun her.
Someone in the thick of the anxious-quiet crowd being kettled clutches his CiD and whispers, “Go to the woman! My girlfriend, she said go to the woman.” As if anyone has a choice in this mess where to go – but the tide shifts, desperate and desperate not to look desperate, and then Wolfgang is suddenly in front of a woman in full Militia regalia. She takes his CiD to scan it for validity, and when his cohort name pops up, she pulls him over to search him. Another two agents loom nearby as a third takes her place maintaining the line, but they're paying more attention to the crowd.
One pocket, then another, his jacket, his trousers. When she pulls out the container, she doesn't say anything, or ask him what it is. She stares at it for a while, expression a mystery behind her mask. A minute ticks by, then another as she unscrews the top, picks up his CiD again, flips through her own. There is conflict in her posture.
Maintaining an eerie silence, she puts it back in his jacket pocket, returns his CiD, and clears him to leave.
no subject
He has a terrified moment where he thinks maybe this is for him. But if they just wanted him, they know where he lives; they would have just come to his house and found everything they needed to haul him back to...
It doesn't escape his notice that it's because of the cohort that they single him out. He starts to sweat.
He's panicking and stress is an invitation to Quiet. He's not quite there, he's on a lot of medication and it helps, but his environment warps in response to his distress: other people's CiDs and other electronic equipment go out of whack, throwing feedback. It can't be traced back to him and he's not even aware that it's him, but he is aware that he's busted. They'll find it and he looks guilty, sweating and shaking and very pale, nearly grey. His heart feels like it's going to leap out of his throat and his stomach is going to drop out from under him. He can't even look at her. He won't go back to jail, he won't go, he'll sell all his stuff, blank his CiD, run to the Spatters --
But she's waving him on.
He doesn't even process it until he's halfway down the block, and he's all the way down the street before he starts letting himself freak out. He's through the back door of his house before he starts crying.
A few hours later, he's on the couch in the dim evening light, face washed, fairly drunk considering this bottle of red started out three-quarters full, and it occurs to him: Why? He wasn't randomly searched. If they pulled him because of his brand, they wouldn't let him walk off for committing the same crime. If they pulled him because of his cohort, he would have given them an excellent reason to paint them all as lawbreaking troublemakers. Compassion? Maybe. He's not sure he has enough faith left in cops for that, but...
He sits on it for a while, but decides after a few days he'll tell someone. Maybe talking it out will help.
Coin's End: The Judicarium | Jones
Lots, and lots of paperwork.
Overseen by the Militia.
Because some paperwork is about who is behaving, and who is paying their property taxes, their HOA bills, their licensing taxes. It's about who responds politely to an expected visit, and who doesn't. No one employee does too much work on any on subject for long, always rotating, always out of synch, always blearily catching up each new week. Most of these employees have no choice – either from a financial point of view, or an alternative to something worse point of view. But it's a living, and it isn't hard labor, so who can knock it?
Especially when, despite the mind-numbing tedium, you do a good job and don't complain. Jones, as everyone knows her, is the lucky recipient of not only a raise, but a gift card to a coffee shop. The Militia personnel who oversee her office are chipper, unmasked, and always on time. A firm handshake and a job well done, we're so looking forward to your continued efforts! If only everyone else on her cohort could be such good citizens.
no subject
Jones is not so naive as to think of the Militia and its agents fondly because of this gesture—although she's not so cynical, not yet, to think that some of the people who oversee her office aren't entirely bad people. She's sure they think highly of her work, and some of them might even find her likable as a person.
But it doesn't sit right with her, not at all. She should be resisting, not keeping her head down, but what good is she dead or in prison? Is it a sacrifice she should be prepared to make, or will she find a way to make this serve a higher purpose? Jones likes certainty—from the certainty of food on the table to the certainty of knowing that the same end awaits everyone. And there is so much uncertainty here.
She cashes her entire paycheck and—fairly sure that no one is paying undue attention—leaves all of it in an envelope under the temple to Toivo in Aspic.
She doesn't sleep well.
Flag Hill: ExproAuth Centre | Data
When the tax returns and pay stubs finally make the full rounds the first time, a representative of the Militia comes knocking to investigate a new hire. Two days later, several Militia agents and one representative of the city's Requisition Commission – a quality control officer – come knocking to investigate the work that this new hire has done.
They leave quite a checklist of requirements when they finally depart.
no subject
The soldier searches his CiD and workspace thoroughly—and then again, and again. She moves quickly and keeps her distance as though she expects him to do something sudden and dangerous. Data barely has any belongings at home, much less here, and is unsure of why she repeatedly searches when she will find nothing, but his first attempt at assuring the soldier of such is met with a rebuke and a warning, and he doesn't try again.
Once she finally seems satisfied (or, if not satisfied, then resigned to the fact) that his station in the PHDM* processing room is kosher, she takes his CiD and moves on to investigate other areas of the building. Data is locked inside the room and left alone, where he stays quietly for hours.
By the time he's released, it's so late at night that it's technically early morning. The Militia woman has gone; it's his supervisor who lets him out, returns his CiD with a tense, caged expression, and tells him he doesn't need to come back in to work.
When new management is installed at the Flag Hill ExproAuth Center and all its recently-caught PHDMs are destroyed, it makes the weekly news. The explanation given is vague and made of half-truths, none of which mention Data. He reads the stories, and listens to the gossip, and talks with his housemates, and he wonders what it was that happened underneath it all.