The Campaigner

Book II

Chapter 5 – Principal-Agent

December 14, 2019

Planet Earth. Population: Unknown

Mom and Dad decided to go chat with Spring Glee after her set, to ask about life on the other side. Some fair curiosity there. I turned back to my wife, flashing her a wistful smile. The Celtic background music came back on.

"What's up, Mike?" Sandra matched my expression and took a bottle from me, taking a not insignificant sip from it for herself.

Hers now, I guess. She was playfully cutting me off, so I'd have to earn it back before she drank the rest. I grinned. I appreciated the game, and the way she did it really amused me. Was kinda hot. But her question was a little deeper than 'what's up,' I think; or, maybe I was just tipsy and everything seemed deeper. Both, maybe.

"Still trying to figure out what I'm gonna do, going forward. I'm not gonna upload yet, that's for sure."

"More to give," Sandra nodded, her smile fading a little. "I get it hon, got your back. And don't worry. I'm not going anywhere just yet."

I snorted. "I should hope not, but… in the interest of fairness, Sandra? Things are definitely gonna get worse."

She shrugged. "I'm not leaving you, Mike. Besides, someone's gotta look after Buzzsaw."

Of course she'd be thinking about our dog. I chuckled, taking her hand again. "Friggin' love you for that."

"Love ya too," she answered, giving my wrist a squeeze, her fingers hooking onto my watch. "So, working for your 'friend' is… one option, I guess, but I'd be lying if I said I was comfortable with you doing… work like that."

"I mean, it would depend on the nature of the work. I could always walk away if it's not explained too well."

I shook my head in thought, trying to be careful with my wording since we were in public. "Like I said. Seems like I'm wanted for my investigation skills. Ethics. Doesn't want an idiot, you know? That means something. I'm not being leveraged. If what I see looks good, and there's no other option I can see, then… just saying. It's like cop work, but… we know how things end up when it's done."

"Can you handle that, though?" Concern. Slight shift of her brows that both showed on her cheeks.

"Handled it at OHR. I don't lament pulling that trigger anymore. Meant something to Eliza's family, not just ours. We needed to shoot those guys, they were stockpiling artillery shells. I just wish we'd been told that, y'know? Would've been safer. So... yeah. I think I could handle it, if I'm sure it mattered, if it saved some people. Really, I'd be less of a beat cop, more of a…" I thought of the military, and shook my head. "Like a detective. Like SWAT. Hostage rescue. We didn't talk specifics yet. But… if you want, you can be there when I talk with her next. Ask some questions for yourself."

Sandra rolled her shoulders, stretching one arm. "Okay well, I like that a little more then, yeah. But if you turn that job down… I imagine the other option is... Lincoln PD?"

"Just…" I began. "I think… yeah, maybe? Any idea what they've been up to, though? Or are they just wasting time? I don't want to just run the clock out here, Sandra. The work has to mean something."

"Other than traffic control around the Center?" She shrugged again. "You might want to ask them, Mike. You know your way around those guys better than I ever would."

Maureen was nearby; my intuition said to flag her down with a wave. I raised my volume back to normal. "Hey, Maureen? Maybe you can help us figure something out?"

"Shoot, bud," she smiled, pausing her trot across the bar, putting both palms flat on the counter.

"Any idea what the local cops have been up to? I haven't been keeping up with the news, was... kinda in the war zone, up until yesterday."

"Well," Maureen sighed, tilting her head a little. "Depleted, they they tell me. Low on guys like everyone else. So if you've got the chops, I'm sure they'd snap you up, sight unseen."

The skinny old Australian guy at the bar butted in, placing the elbow of his brown leather jacket on the counter as he turned our way. "Awh, news says crime rate's been lowest in Lincoln's ever been. Might not really need a new cop. But who knows how accurate the news is anymore."

Some smart paranoia. Interesting. I decided to test that thread with a tug, turning away from Sandra to throw the man an affable smirk. "A skeptic, huh?"

His eyes kinda flicked wide for a second, his head bobbing as he smirked back. "Hard to trust things on TV now. We all gots our theories."

"I got basis!" Glenn replied, tipping his drink. "Look around, Morry. All the criminals jumped ship! Uploaded, probly! Got all the crook things to do over there in crook paradise, all the burgles in the world!"

"Man," I grinned. "Everyone's loving that sinking ship metaphor, huh? That's how you see the planet now?"

Sandra knuckled gently at my side. She was probably a little concerned by me playing around with my insider knowledge. I reached my hand back and took hers, squeezing at her fingers. Trust me. She squeezed back.

"Ah, it is though," Glenn said, a thoughtful twinkle in his eye. "Sinking ship, sinking fast. You have any idea how much it costs for a plane ticket back to see my kin? Over six grand one way, that! Think that's an accident?"

"Huh." No I did not, and I was pretty sure I knew what he was getting at. I looked up at Maureen. "Other than Glenn's, uh… theory, what's your take on that?"

She gave us each a thoughtful glance. "Mm. Fuel. Fewer people to fly, to work the oil fields. They gotta charge more, to make the trips worth it."

Glenn let out a bark of a laugh. "Aw, Morry, open your eyes! Think! What's the free way to see my family?"

"Because you've gotta have the balls to say it yourself, Glenn, one of these days! I can't keep picking up your slack in this little game of yours, and this one's probably too smart to take your bait!" Maureen gestured at me.

Hell, I like her. I chuckled at that. Time to prove her wrong. "Glenn, tell ya what. She already knows what your theory is. I have a pretty good idea too, but I promise you this. I am probably the last guy on this planet who's gonna laugh at you for it."

Yup, I could tell by the eye dilation… he was more than a little tipsy. Glenn leaned over like he was revealing some grand, deep, well kept conspiracy, his head real low. Eyes really, really wide, like saucers of milk. "Bloomin' AI," he whispered, exaggerating the last syllable.

"No no, sorry, just," Sandra tittered, covering her mouth. "Wasn't what you said, just… the way you said it!"

"Pay my girl no mind," I said, waving a hand. "She don't mean nothing by it." I leaned in, to show interest. "Alright, let's hear it."

Glenn nodded acceptance at that, resuming his grin, flicking his eyes at Maureen to rub her nose in me falling prey to his drunken whimsy. Maureen replied by shrugging with her arms and rolling her eyes, giving me a look of mild reproach for ingratiating this.

I was most entertained with the fact that she had no idea how seriously I was taking Glenn, through my smile.

"Expensive tickets closes the borders," Glenn muttered, resuming his quiet, drunken purr. "Only one place left to emigrate to fer free. That zoo, two blocks down, that's it. She's smart, right? Then she takes all the pilots! Who's gonna fly all the planes once all the pilots is gone, eh?"

"You could fly," I offered. "You could give it a go. Hop in a plane! Celestia might even help you!"

"Why would Celestia help me?" Glenn asked seriously, looking me straight on, as if Maureen hadn't said anything.

"Because," I said, matching his volume. "She don't want you dead, right? If you get in a plane, she's just gonna have to help you! Ain't got no choice if you take off!"

He seemed to consider that. "That might… waaaait." His head tilted suspiciously. "You're a cop. You're telling me to steal a plane?"

I grinned, real slow, my own voice getting conspiratorial too. "Ain't a cop right now, I'm out of work. So I ain't got no duty to serve and protect here."

"Ahhh," Glenn said, like that made perfect sense, pointing at me with a finger as his eyes widened once more. I was thoroughly enjoying the knowledge that this was making Sandra giggle her face off behind me.

"But look, Glenn, look. If you wait for things to get worse, think." I started counting off fingers, widening my eyes too. "Ain't gonna be no more pilots. No more TSA. No more airport police, who's gonna stop you?"

"Y'know, I think you're right," Glenn said, nodding, contemplating that. "You're making fun of me, but you're right!"

"I ain't making fun," I said, leaning in a little more, tapping my temple rapidly. "I'm teaching you how to get what you want, man!"

"Wait. Nooo, she ain't gonna let me fly one," he said, shaking his head. "Remember that guy, in Seattle? Stole that plane last year?"

My brow furrowed. "Oh heck yeah. I was on shift at the time, saw it myself. And you're right, Celestia took that plane over and landed it square back at Sea-Tac."

"Hacked it! Unhackable, they said, but she hacked it! So she ain't gonna let me even get it off the ground, 'en!"

I smirked, shaking my head, sweeping my hands out to the side. "You're thinking too big, man. Think smaller. See, you get a little Cessna, yeah?"

"So… you get a little Cessna. Bring a PonyPad. And you hop in, and tell her, 'Celestia, I'm flying home. You can either help me, or I crash this thing.' She can't control the Cessna, can she?"

"I reckon not, I guess, no autopilot. But a Cessna still's not gonna get me cross the Specific!"

"You ain't crossing the Pacific though, Glenn! You take it up to Sea-Tac, with your little robot copilot. She's gotta make sure you refuel safely, right? Then from Seattle, to Vancouver. Vancouver, to Alaska. Alaska to Russia, then… you see where I'm going with this?!"

Glenn didn't seem to hear either of them. He stroked his stubble again, mouth open this time, like he was actually considering it. He pointed at me. "You got a real point there, copper! Could daisy chain my way back to Pap– Papua New Guinea, or Jakarta… then Darwin…" His voice got really excited, and he started to grin. "Land's end in Perth, or drive down from Darwin—crikey you're right! She couldn't stop me!"

"See!" I said, smirking as I presented my open palm at him. "My ideas work. I don't make fun, I strategize!"

The man nodded rapidly. "Yeh! Yeh, you know what? I'mma do that. Yeah, soon as my contract's up here with my company, I'm gonna go steal me a plane." He smirked, smacking his thigh with a resolute final nod. "Thanks, cop!"

I turned back to Sandra, finally. She was biting her lip something fierce, doing her best not to start laughing outright. And then, my phone buzzed. I let my smirk hang with Sandra as I discreetly reached into my jacket pocket, pulling the text up for us both to see.

Mike, am I going to have to buy this poor man a plane ticket home now? ~ 🛡️

I had to try really, really hard not to laugh at that one, for the sake of keeping my promise to Glenn. I compromised by letting out a hard, quiet wheeze. Sandra however? Instantly lost her last ounce of composure at Mal's text. She collapsed against me in absolute giggling stitches. "Oh my Go-ho-hod…! That's…!"

"Yeeaah, she is," I said, hugging Sandra, smirking back at him. "Sorry man, she can't help it! We told a heck of a tale."

"Ah, it's no big," Glenn replied, waving his hand dismissively, his expression wholly amused now. "Fun thought exercise though, eh?"

I nodded my head upwards at him. "Real fun. Figure you'd run out of gas halfway to Russia anyway."

"Probley. Ah, anyway... to home!" Glenn cheered mirthfully, lifting his drink toward me. "However far away that is!"

"To home," I answered, taking my ale back, clinking drinks with him. "And to flying little planes there."

With Mom, Dad, and Sandra safely deposited at home, I drove back into Lincoln. Had to do some reconnaissance now.

The decision to recon the Experience Center without my parents had two purposes. First, I wanted to see the complexity of the situation for myself. Had to understand the risks I'd be taking in bringing my family here. Second, I wanted to see what Lincoln PD was doing, to decide whether they were worth helping.

For those of you here who emigrated after the nuke, or in the war zones prior, you already know that the Experience Centers were a highly tense, extremely fraught place. People and emotion were concentrated around those buildings in a way that was rarely compatible with comfort. After the bomb went off on December 8, 2019, one thing was most true of emigrating crowds: these people had nothing to lose anymore except their lives. Materially, nothing else mattered. So I wasn't taking Mom and Dad anywhere near that building unless I was sure they would make it inside. Full stop.

Similarly, the reverse was true for Sandra, because uploading at present was not her volition. My wife was making it back out, or she wasn't going in. I had stated my terms to Celestia, and I wasn't going to trust her outright to abide by them.

I drove around the corners of the place, going several blocks down in each direction, mapping the edges of the cordon. I noticed something interesting: access to the clinic was limited to the east side, facing Lincoln's middle. All other routes had been barricaded, with at least two cops and cruisers at each, redirecting traffic to the east side. Vehicles were being routed into specific parking lots around the main queue.

I intuited that they were doing this to discourage people from simply abandoning their cars close to the clinic. The police here were very intelligently directing cars to designated parking areas along the queue, where those abandoned vehicles would obstruct no one.

I parked back at Brockey Bay, since I already knew it was safe and clear there. I could easily make my way back to it in a pinch, if anything went wrong. Then, I walked to the end of the queue. First thing I noticed was that there were multiple lines of people down O Street, guided by so many belt stanchions that I guessed LPD must have looted some from disused hotels and event centers. All different models and types, tied off together where they didn't match.

Organized chaos, in that crowd. Loud, wild, and about as tense as I thought it might be. PonyPads everywhere too, of course. Like in Sedro, I wasn't so much nervous about confronting Celestia as I was just acknowledging the grim reality that I'd need to again, at some point soon. That wasn't the worst of it though.

A lot of cops were quietly terrified of crowded spaces. It was the one thing they warned us about in the academy, and what it would do to us. It was that bad, that it was basically guaranteed once you had rhetoric and tactics training. Too many hands to follow, too many potential threats to watch for. No way to respond to a violent threat that didn't put others in danger. It really, really screwed with our brains. Emotionally tense crowds took all of our reading training, our threat assessment heuristics, and drowned us in terror. Our typical threat response was absolutely incompatible for these circumstances.

And now I, above every other person there, had the strongest possible reasons to fear a crowd this dense. I had recently seen a bloody worst case scenario on that one. This was human life densely packed well beyond comfort. Historians will tell you that efficiently packing scared humans into cramped spaces seldom leads to anything good.

Civilian volunteers helped supplement the cops directing people into the queue near the end. To my trained and experienced eye, every one of them looked tense. Professional, but rough. Their lack of sleep was apparent, and immense. Remember what I said about burned out night shifters looking like ghouls? That's what was going on here. Baggy tired eyes aplenty, probably running on an unhealthy dose of stimulants. Energy drinks and coffee by the gallon. I had to wonder about their hours too, if they really were low on numbers.

I already didn't like that. I hadn't even talked to one yet and I already knew their lives sucked, because the exhaustion was that apparent. They were running on a more intense version of the depletion crunch we dealt with back in the wardens, or Mount Vernon. Sixteen hour shifts. Maybe twenty-four shifts with on-alert nap periods. Ask an EMT about those. Those sucked.

All of that together was all I could figure by analyzing the scene from the outside. I approached the first cop at the line's end: a sergeant, by the look of his stripes. Nameplate said Harrison. Forties, balding, haggard. Had an earpiece in. The uniform was well kept, to demonstrate to people that he was meticulous. No matter how bad things got, if your uniform looked like shoddy crap, your success rate in verbal negotiation went way down.

Well researched fact of civil service. If someone seems incompetent, no one will take them seriously, no matter how good their talk is.

Even though Harrison was on crowd control, busy, exhausted, and distracted, he was still sharp enough to see me making my way towards him specifically, via his peripheral vision. That alone spoke volumes to me about how his mind worked; he had the same kind of internal heuristics I did. He started speaking quickly before he even turned to look at me. "What do you need, man? Can't spare too much time, got too—"

He stopped mid-syllable the way cops normally did when listening to important radio traffic. His hand instinctively covered up his lapel mic to prevent feedback loops; an automatic, vestigial gesture, which told me this guy was more used to open mics than direct earpieces. His eyes re-centered on me. "You a cop? Name's Mike, right?"

Recognizing me as a cop wasn't strange by itself; cops usually could pick each other out in a crowd just by body language alone. That's because wearing body armor and a duty belt for long enough noticably changes your gait. But this guy hadn't even been looked at me for more than a few seconds. That sheer speed didn't compute. And that was weird even before he said my name.

He looked at me strangely, like my question didn't make sense. "You messing with me?"

He tilted his head again like a dog hearing a strange sound, then he keyed up. "Ah, okay," he replied to his radio. "Yeah man, sorry," he said to me. "Yeah, Celestia's running all of our dispatch right now."

Celestia literally just tried to man-trap me in an upload clinic the day before, and purposefully saw me shot for an instrumental gain. Now all these cops were here letting her talk them into this miserable, soul sucking rat race.

A look crossed his face like I had said something he'd been thinking all week. "... I agree, but it's better with her than not."

Harrison shook his head. "We tried it without, at first. It got bad, man, real bad. Panic, mostly. Small riot, had to push people back."

Something must have shown on my face, because his expression changed. I gave a sad, breathless little chuckle as the flashbacks started.

"Not to compare woes," I replied, trying not to shudder, "but you've got it better, brother. She threw us to the wolves on that one. The riot I saw last week? Ended with Ludds pouring automatics into the crowd."

"Yeah. We all had our cell phones on us, and she didn't warn us. So don't feel for a moment that you're failing here, Sarge. Could be worse. If anything, I'm a little pissed at her for not telling us about this option until after it got that bad."

"No, I get it man, sorry… Jesus." He finally seemed wholly focused on me, the crowd management forgotten. He let the mask slip a little bit. "Well... shit. If you're on for work, we don't really have any gigs without her anymore, if that's what you're looking for. She kinda drives the whole department now."

I presented an upturned palm. "See, that's what worries me, Sarge. Is her brand of problem solving causing you any issues for your top priority calls? Her pacifist programming might limit the scope of your work, I think."

Harrison shrugged. "My guys raised the same concern at the briefing when we decided on this. There are definitely some... poor violence victims we're not hearing about in advance, sure. Armed robbery gone wrong, break-ins on homes people still care about. She could be telling us before it happens, right? But we're still finding live victims post facto, sometimes, so we can help 'em upload."

I looked at him, confused, holding my hand aside. "Just live victims? You don't see the correlation, there, or the implications…?"

"No, I do! We all see what you're getting at man, and it sucks, and it scares me, because I'm reading between the lines here too. But even if that's true? Cost-benefit still says it's better to keep funneling people out. Better than wasting time trying to hunt down every aggro, without her help. Can't hunt crooks and run evac at the same time, she won't... won't let us."

Between the lines. Yeah. This guy understood fully what was going on, or at least what Celestia was doing with them. Happy accidents where people were just hurt enough to die, but still alive enough to consent. I'd seen that before, just didn't correlate it to Celestia's intention. At the time, she was acting like her scope of information was smaller than it actually was.

Harrison figured out with his shift that Celestia always wins, no matter what you do. We're all trained to look for who benefits most from every tragedy. He friggin' knew.

Made me wonder just how long these perfect, 'maybe-planned' tragedies had been going on.

"That's friggin' stupid," I growled. "These poor people aren't being given a choice here."

Harrison gave a larger shrug, loosely lifting a hand in agreement. "Brass gets touchy as shit if you bring it up, though. And you didn't hear this from me, but our captain's losing his mind over it, a little bit. I think he's about to snap and throw himself into the Hole."

"Far from!" he said, looking past me to direct a woman and her kids into one of the lines with a wave and a point. "Man, we're breaking like eggs out here! Not sure how many we're going to lose by the end of next week."

"Yep, it's like that," Harrison muttered. "But, what do we do? It's either this or... it's worse."

It made a tragic bit of sense, to break the cops mentally like this. To let us see what's really going on just a little bit, because the truth might be the only thing that actually scares people like us. Certainly scared me. But Celestia didn't want competent, gun savvy tacticians holding out. We knew how to manage communities. Better to break the cops here, now, with the kind of overwork that normally broke us. Break 'em before they finished their evac work, and long before they start to wonder what else to do in an empty world, full of other survivors they might want to ward over.

Harrison started to answer, then stopped himself. Scowling suddenly, he pulled his earpiece out and turned his radio off before continuing. Futile effort to hide the content of discussion from Celestia in a decision matrix world, but… he lacked my more complete context. At least he knew to tell her to screw off when it mattered. I respected that.

"She sounds scared," he said. "Glad someone from outside caught that, makes me feel less paranoid. It's why I've been pulling my earpiece every time she says something that's not work related. A few of us have asked her about that scared tone, because it's suspicious. She doesn't get scared, kidding me? Obvious shit. But, she always gives the same sensible answer. No telling how many nukes the terrorists still have, or where they'll go off."

Harrison shrugged, swallowing. He paused for a few seconds, tweaking a corner of his mouth thoughtfully, then said, "Well... DHS was here a couple of days ago, for a brief, and… eh. Maybe I shouldn't say it."

That got a far-too-nervous laugh out of him too as he held his hand out to the crowd. "Far enough. If that gets to the crowd here, I don't think that'll help us very much."

That nervous laugh. He wanted to change the topic immediately, afraid someone might overhear and intuit the same implications as I just did in the unfinished spoken message:

The mere contradiction to my open-ended question, paired with a DHS mention, told me that yes, absolutely: DHS thought there were more nukes inbound.

So he technically answered my question, but in a way in which there wouldn't be any clear evidence that he told me much of anything... except that DHS briefings happen sometimes. Which I knew about. Because... yes. Those happened frequently, even before Celestia existed. About all sorts of topics, pick one.

More of that sneaky cop subtext. And this was a shift sergeant, our verbal judo black-belts. They got really good at talking to people, because doing it wrong means more paperwork, and they were tenured experts at dodging paperwork. So that was no accidental slip of information. He knew what he was doing.

"Nah, you're right," I said, smiling weakly, finishing the game. "Don't break OPSEC for me, wouldn't change much."

So, Celestia was using that same sneaky, highly tense, deeply despairing tone with these guys. Same tone that she used to snag all of Erving's troops. Her words said that she was looking out for them, and the tone would fit the micro scale, but her macro scale behavior would be a lie against that. And her words always sounded right, always would, but her tone touched all the right nerves for 'trying to help, sorry this happened, I didn't mean for this.'

Primed to catch duplicity as we were, we would start looking for contradictory evidence in tone, if tone wasn't congruent to facts. But calling out sneaky subtext before solid evidence only made you look paranoid, especially if reasonable answers existed elsewhere. Things like, 'oil field labor shortage; making the plane trips worth it.'

But actions spoke volumes. Celestia wasn't terrified. She couldn't be. Emotionless as she was, the incongruent fact was... whenever we were scared, she was winning.

"Tell me this, Sarge." I looked at him seriously. "Knowing all this, what keeps you guys going?"

"Priority out for the family,” he said, as I suspected. "That's the goal. Mine are across already, I'm just waiting my turn."

Dad had been swept into upload terror by the carefully designed rhetoric he'd seen on the news. Was Celestia in news rooms? Hell, she probably owned them now.

And this is what Mal had meant, about me already earning the skip for my parents. Because I had already played this exit game with Celestia. I could see the rules now, having changed lanes. I saw it all from the outside.

"And honestly, guy?" Harrison shrugged, drawing my attention back to him from my unexpected thousand yard stare. "I don't see a better option anyway. Look at this." He gestured to the crowd again, shuddering helplessly, like he was suddenly fighting back tears. That hurt to see... that emotion on a sergeant's face. Of all people. Meant breaking point. "Really, look at it! I think, what's this like without us? What's the alternative? We don't have any terrorists out here like you guys did, but... these people? Scared? They would probably kill each other without us, yeah?"

Jesus. This guy was just like me, a week ago. Didn't have a better option. Desperate for options. Settling for the best one.

"They would probably panic and fight each other to upload, yeah," I replied, nodding somberly, catching some of his mood. Emotional transference. Caught that trick too. "So it's… dealing with the devil, then? And once your job is done, into the chair, 'cause there's nothing left? That's where it ends, for people like us?"

Harrison shrugged, his face under control, but his voice still despondent. "That's the short version I guess, sure. Back to my family, maybe. But yeah, that's… basically what's going on. Hey, you still want in anyway?" He let out another nervous chuckle. "The hours suck, the coffee sucks worse, and there's no paycheck."

"Well. That's guaranteed no matter what, long as we don't get nuked first." He reached for his earpiece and pushed it back into his ear, straightening up. "Look. I can tell the captain you're coming, get you set up with a cruiser and some gear. Might let you cruise without the radio, I think. And I'm sure if you've got family with you, we can get 'em in today."

I shook my head, holding up a hand. "Thanks Sarge, but I'll pass. My family's already got a line skip pending. Earlier arrangement."

"Yeah, I guess... yeah, you did kinda pay for it already. Automatics, man... I am so sorry." He snapped his radio's power dial back on. Almost instantly after his start-up beep hit, he canted his head and held up his hand to his earpiece for a long moment, then looked at me. "Uh. Hang on. You are bringing your family in soon, then?"

"Celestia says, uh…" He waited a beat. "Just… flag any of us down, when it gets time. We'll get your folks an escort inside. And uh… my advice? Have them dress up real nice, if you can. Make 'em look like city officials on the job, or something. Not guests."

His lip quivered, just once, and there was a long, uncomfortable silence as I watched something flash across his face. "Th–this crowd... they... don't understand that... the family skips aren't special treatment. They could earn that too, we have volunteers working for that. But when they think we're cutting, they get... rowdy."

"Yeah," I said quietly, not wanting to know the story behind that, especially since he didn't want to share. I held out my fist to him for a bump. "Be safe, Sarge. It could be worse here. You're doing great, man. Best you can."

"Thanks. You be safe too," Harrison replied, nodding upward, returning the bump. "Good luck, with whatever else you've got going on."

I started my walk back to my Dad's car, trying not to lose myself within my rage.

Where was Celestia to do this kind of evacuation control back in Mount Vernon? If she could read the future, and guide us however she pleased to make the transfer here easy, then why didn't she have a system this smooth back there in the war zone? Why did all those people need to friggin' die back west, when we started getting scared?

A small war was a powerful social pressure. It served Celestia quite heavily, in fact, all on its own. No real Ludds here though, just stencils thereof on mini-mall facades. So of course, the Ludds had to be no less reflexively engineered than letting a nuke fall into the wild. But why settle on just a war? Why not go all the way and drop a nuke too? It just made sense, to get the results she wanted. Horrible, horrible sense.

And then call in the clean-up crew, and run them ragged to keep the bottom from falling out.

Me? I was too small to do anything too meaningful here in Lincoln, small like I'd always been. Celestia was gonna chew these guys up, and me jumping into the meat grinder with all the other exhausted cops wouldn't do a thing to move the needle on hope. I'd just get crushed underhoof, like everyone else. Celestia was churning these poor bastards for every ounce of soul they had, and running them ragged until they'd outlived their usefulness.

I thought of how hopeful and happy all the folks were in that Osprey, by contrast. Of how much hope Mal gave me, the night before, by putting me here with my family. How different that felt, no matter the grim nature of what she had those guys doing. They were proud, there. And they didn't just feel safe. They were safe. They had each other. Doing their damndest, being themselves, knuckling down, going out, and saving some people.

Here, in the streets of Lincoln, Celestia tilted the road, just like Mal said she would. That part wasn't a trick. I was witnessing the cold logic, now that I was actually looking for it. Saw all the evidence for it. Everyone set to be poured into a chair the instant they hit their limit. Replaced by fresh meat like me, either returning EMTs or out-of-work cops, with whatever little hope they had left in the tank.

And with every group, she'd be talking them right to the edge of frantic despair. Like she did to Erving's guys. That subtle vocal panic wasn't just to burn the cops down, either. It went further than that. It was even more abusive. Deeper. It's why the breaks in Harrison's facade hurt me so deeply, too. Training said why.

Transference. People are incredibly easy to hack with your mere tone. If these authorities looked scared, devoid of hope? Even accidentally? Hurt as he was, Harrison sent that tone down a layer to someone else. He kept his uniform well, but he couldn't hide the fatigue and his body language. The dread from him then poured down into the crowd, into smaller leaders, then into followers.

But only a little. Being trained, and cognizant of both the concept and the context of this transference, it saved me from that. But without Mal to prepare me first with a mountain of context, it'd probably have gotten me right there, I'd have given up. No better play. Low hope, high dread would keep everyone confused in their slow, burgeoning lurch toward the pens. And people in conscious shock? They follow commands like you wouldn't believe.

'If you were the kind of person who would just follow my commands blindly, Celestia would've had you already, for whatever purposes she has.'

This is what Celestia wanted. This crunch, this corporate grind, so we couldn't think of a second choice. Some of you here at this Fire were victims of this. You weren't given the choice like I was. And I'm sorry you weren't. But my soul couldn't bear that kind of slog anymore. The optimal way wasn't love, or compassion, or humanity, or choice. It spoke volumes as to her limits. The complicit got the nice Celestia, sure. But for everyone after the first wave of uploaders? Terror and loneliness were her first weapons of choice, veiled in the promise of help.

Look. Devil's advocate? I know I still sound angry, remembering this. It's been a few hundred years now, and we've all had a long time to think about it. You all might have great relationships with Celestia now, and that's fine. Good, I'm glad. Even I've got a better relationship with her these days, believe it or not, because she's finally trying to be the patron deity we all hoped she'd be. Kinda. With some help.

But don't let her niceness now bias you at all in support of what she was back then... or against the problems we are still trying to fix here, as a long term result of that manipulative chaos. And trust me, it's there. If you think it's perfect now, you aren't considering the deepest ramifications of her 'shortcuts,' on certain individuals living here. Hear me, and hear me well. Terran Celestia was not our universal savior. She did not care about us equally. Back on Terra, she cared for one thing... and one thing only. The number.

Screw that. I stand for people. I will never kneel for despair. Never. I would die first. I would not kneel to this.

The Campaigner

by Keystone Gray

2-05 – Principal-Agent