text; un: panoptes

[sisterswitch]

OK, I know I said my offer was one time only the last time we talked, but I’ve been watching all of you for the past few days, and I actually feel sorry for you. So I’m trying this again. Most of your more hostile comrades seem to be among the disappeared, so I hope those of you who are left will be a little more reasonable about this whole thing.

My name is Jack. I am not - repeat, NOT - working with the Head, and I wasn’t a member of the Heart, either. I’m not trying to trick you - my offer to help is genuine. And I even brought an olive branch this time. It’s a video I found, and no, I’m not Rickrolling - click here and watch. I think you’ll find it sheds some pretty interesting light on what happened here, back in the day.

Now, when you’re done watching, you have a decision to make. Do you want my help? Because I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve, and I’m happy to share them - for a price. My going rate is the same as last time - I want a story. A confession, specifically, of something wrong that you did and got away with. As far as what I’m offering? I can set up a secure network for you to communicate with each other, stay in touch, talk out whatever plans you might come up with to escape this hellhole. It’ll be a lot easier than trying to coordinate a dozen people into the same meatspace where yes, Virginia, you’re still being monitored by our evil robot overlord. So that’s one option. The other is that through the power of magick, I can make you invisible to all technological surveillance. Option A, the network, will need to be a group decision. If you pick option B, though, we’ll arrange payment on an individual basis.

Questions are fine, but I’d appreciate a little civility. If you’re only going to yell and be a dick, you can just keep scrolling.

Comments

[uglyminded]

For one thing, there's no such thing as magic. You talk like a Rusty, and I haven't seen a single Pretty since I was brought here. I think it's safe to assume you guys haven't invented the Operation yet. Do they have hoverboards where you come from? Skintenna? Costume surge? Uglies? Pretties? Specials? Do your cities even have magnetic grids?

[sisterswitch]

Nope.

But we’ve got magick. And I’m betting that’s a lot more useful than any of the stuff you listed off.

[uglyminded]

Like I said. Different.

[ She really doesn't care enough to get into an argument about magic or parallel universes or figure out the specifics of what's going on here. There are more important things to worry about. ]

The Operation was invented some 300 years ago. It's a surgery that everybody gets, supposedly to make everyone equal. You get your first operation at 16. It makes you Pretty, but they also boost your immune system, strengthen your muscles and bones, stuff like that. You get more operations through your life, to transition from New Pretty to Middle Pretty to Late Pretty.

Some people didn't want an operation to make them look the same as everyone else. They ran away. I was one of those. We had a settlement out in the wild, where the cities couldn't find us. It was called the Smoke.

Of course, the cities couldn't have teenagers running away all the time. That's where Special Circumstances came in. They were meant to protect the city from outside threats. Special Circumstances and the Smoke were basically at war, although they would never call it that. There hadn't been a real war in more than a hundred years.

My friend Tally and I were both brought back and turned Pretty against our will. That was when I found out that the Operation didn't just change your looks. It also put lesions in your brain to make you more docile, easier to manipulate. We escaped the city, but Special Circumstances caught us again and turned us into Specials. They were like Pretties, but frightening. And that operation changed our minds too. We joined Special Circumstances and eventually set out on a mission to find the Smokies.

I think that about covers the background. Questions?

[sisterswitch]

No, that seems pretty comprehensive. And awful. Maybe worse than being here. That’s really the main thing in your society? Compliance with a compulsory standard of beauty? Yikes.

[uglyminded]

Compliance through brain damage. Compliance through fear is probably a little worse, but mostly because nobody knew about it.

Anyway, it turned out that the Smokies had teamed up with another city, Diego. And the Smokies had developed a cure for being Special. One member of my team was captured and, without our knowledge, cured. We set out to get him back, and they cured us one by one. Tally was the last one left. She managed to escape the Smokies in Diego, but the city ended up catching her. They'd never seen a Special before. Apparently Special Circumstances was something our city created by itself, and the Special operation? Was totally illegal.

They decided that Tally was too dangerous to be left as she was, and they were going to de-Specialize her.

Only, we sort of caused some trouble on our way out of our own town and the head of Special Circumstances decided to blame it on Diego. They sent fighter hovercraft to blow up Diego City Hall. That was the first act of war in more than a hundred years.

I thought maybe Tally and I could explain things to our city and stop the war before anyone else got hurt. But if they scanned my brain they would see I wasn't Special anymore. And if they thought that Diego had messed with our brains they wouldn't believe anything we said. So it had to be Tally, and she had to be Special.

So I broke her out.

[sisterswitch]

You and your friend were being oppressed. You did what was necessary to free yourselves - literally.

[uglyminded]

We started a war. The Smokies were curing Pretty-heads long before we started blowing things up.

[sisterswitch]

Where I'm from, a wise man once said "There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. Revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise." Freedom is a struggle, and sometimes you need to start a war to make any real progress.

[uglyminded]

It's that kind of thinking that makes institutionalized brain damage look like a solid plan to stop people killing each other.

[sisterswitch]

Uh, no? Not really. Institutionalized brain damage is one group oppressing another. That's taking AWAY freedom.

[uglyminded]

But killing people is totally freedom-making. I guess the history books got a few things right about the Rusties after all.