What is With All of the Cops Everywhere, All of a Sudden?
OK, I was there when Diamondcut and Insomnias got arrested. For those of you who missed the news, the Mockers security department are now under contract to provide security for Babboons ... which just goes to show you how much faith even some Omni employees have in their own cops. We had an armed detachment of bodyguards follow Thyme from her club to her wedding reception at Reet's, out of friendship and as a courtesy to a customer.
And sure as heck, what should happen but a ridiculously large number of goons in InternOps suits shows up. Said ill-costumed, ill-mannered clowns take it upon themselves to arrest a pair of guests at the wedding reception. No charges placed, no police procedure, just "You're coming with us." Welcome to life in corporate hell, of course. Just because Omni-Tek promised democracy for Rubi-Ka five hundred and forty years ago, don't assume that the police are any way accountable to the citizens, or obligated to obey any laws themselves.
Corporate fascism always equals "police state," of course. But call me spoiled; it wasn't like this six months ago. I guess the same wave or colonists that brought me to the liberated zone in Rubi-Ka also brought Omni-Pol some new recruits, people who weren't as burned out and used up from decades of war as the (mostly invisible) Omni-Pol I remember.
Of course, now that the sentence has been executed and a trial supposedly held, there are charges. (You have to love that sequence of events, don't you?) "Stims" - hello? They sell them in every supermarket on the planet. If stims are illegal, then why is Omni-Tek profiting from selling them to their own employees? "Grid hacking" - oh, please. Who doesn't? "Tax evasion" - nice charge to hang on a neutral and a clanner, eh? Excuse me, but I never agreed to pay taxes to Omni-Tek, and I don't think that Diamondcut did either, and I don't see anything in the Tir Accords that grants Omni-Tek the power to levy taxes outside of their own "black iron prison" cities. "Piracy"? Nice trick, if they could do it. "Criminal networking"? Oh, you mean having friends who don't work for Omni-Tek. Hello? Tir Accords? Heard of them?
Which leaves us with the murder charge. Since the InternOps agents that Diamondcut is alleged to have "gunned down" (oh, I don't blame you for calling it that, Mr. Diego, I adore melodrama as much as you obviously do) were adult professionals, any sane Rubi-Kan would assume that they were insured, like everybody else from Boss Ross all the way down to some pre-teen kid with his new NCU.
Oh, wait, they were insured. But the good old fashioned Omni-Tek insurance system "malfunctioned." And this makes Diamondcut and Insomnias the murderers? Look, you can get scragged by a snake the size of a small freighter or a bug the size of a building, any time you leave your house on Rubi-Ka. (Nice terraforming job, Omni-Sci.) If the insurance system lets you down, it's murder all right ... but it's not the harmless businessman defending himself that's the murderer. It's Omni-Med that's obviously guilty of negligent homicide. Not that I'm waiting with bated breath for anyone high up in the org to be charged with that crime.
And all of those ridiculous charges just to justify -- banishment from Omni territory, and deliberate hacking of his insurance records. Hello? Omni-Tek starts screwing around with the insurance system to make it selective about where peoples' deaths will and won't resurrect them. About the same time, the insurance system starts failing to resurrect people, even Omni employees. Coincidence, or ancient astronauts? It sure looks to me like we know whose fault it is those Omni InternOps guys ended up dead-dead. By any chance, did the same people who coded the Omni-2 weather control system code these modifications to the insurance system? It would surely explain a lot.
Look, Dave Duster is just another neut, he means nothing to me. But this whole story speaks volumes about why the company that illegally leased this planet, staked out by prospectors who murdered ICC investigators to keep them from discovering notum, and "defended" it by murdering six million Terrans via orbital bombardment during the Corporate Wars, can no longer be trusted (if they ever could be) with their precious monopoly on captured Omega nanotech, let alone with any role in the governance of Rubi-Ka.
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The other two pieces of recent "crime news," unfortunately, come from our side. Oh people, my people - where did you go wrong?
Four strippers working in Old Athen, arrested by clan guards?
Hello? Since when was working as a stripper illegal anywhere in the north? Is it annoying? Yes, like pretty much every form of begging. Let's get the strippers off the streets and into strip clubs and whorehouses, where they belong ... if only to improve traffic flow. But to announce violations of laws, then publish the laws in question later, if at all - isn't that Omni-Pol's M.O.?
And why would stripping suddenly become illegal the same month that "Enjoy It While It Lasts" got its fight license, allowing them to turn off the suppression gas in one room so that their scantily clad girls can beat each other to death for the sheer entertainment value of the spectacle? I dread to think, but did this happen because "Saint Henry" thought it was too far to walk to Athen to see the strippers? They were supposed to work in a club adjacent to his office building, like decent citizens? I guess in Council territory, "decent" strippers combine their sex with violence, and that makes it OK.
Please, tell me I'm wrong. Better yet, tell me this whole arrest was a stupid mistake, or even better, that it never happened at all and that the article was a prank.
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Which leaves me time to mention, in passing, the recent "murder" of Chester Horner. Look, the suppression gas system in Tir hasn't failed since before I got here. I remember, as a new colonist, feeling deep-seated panic when I saw people fighting to the death outside Fair Trade, because I thought it had done just that. Later I learned the truth - you can fight almost anywhere in Tir, but it takes serious effort, and real cooperation, from both parties.
So yes, two clanners decided to settle a personal argument the way any two indestructible immortals might do so, over some friendly gunfire. Except that oops, unbeknownst to them, Omni-Med and Omni InternOps have been screwing around with the resurrection insurance code for "law enforcement" purposes, and now it doesn't work right all the time.
So yeah, we've got another murder on our hands, all right. Yet another negligent homicide to lay at the doorstep of Omni-Tek.
As if that were big news. Between the mines, mutant madness, weather control screwups, and Omni-Med malpractice, Boss Ross's kids don't make it through a week without at least one negligent homicide.
"Death Isn't Fatal" - but corporate fascism is.
Slave Mentality, Stims, December 19th
Just as there will always be people who enjoy holding the whip, there will always be people willing to be whipped.
If Diamondcut and Insomnias were OmniTek employees, then that only reinforces the point I was trying to make, not invalidates it. Neutrals, at least, are trying to enjoy freedom. They won't support the people who fought for that freedom, or band together with the people who are organized to fight for that freedom, but at least they don't volunteer to live the nightmare that corporate control has become on Rubi-Ka. But if something bad happens to a neutral, I mostly don't care.
If something bad happens to a willing corporate "citizen," I care even less. So two Omni-Tek employees got themselves arrested? Big deal. But it would have been interesting if more Omni-Tek employees had been there in Reets to see how they were arrested. More Omni-Tek employees should see Omni-Pol in action. For some of them, it might be an enlightening experience.
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On the stims question, go to the Medical Supplies terminal in any Ordinary Supermarket in Omni-1 or Rome. Or, visit any Phamacist in the same cities. Help yourself to the speed stims and combat stims, available in a wide range of potency and all reasonably priced ... and all of which tear you up afterwards. You will not be asked for a prescription. You will not be told not to resell them.
I'm right and you're wrong. Sit down and shut up.
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If you wish Baboons would switch back from Mockers Protection Services to Omni-Pol for its security, you obviously don't enjoy being at Baboons. Because before we took over, Omni-Pol was in there very frequently. And they were practically never in there except to harass some harmless person, or to shoot the place up.
If some Dust Brigade commando shows up at Baboons, Mockers Protection Services will protect the customers and staff ... teleporting them out at our own expense, if need be. If Omni-Pol goons in stormtrooper armor show up and start shooting the place up, we'll protect their victims, too. That's the difference.
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I am sick and tired of having December Nineteenth thrown in my face.
First of all, your owner said that we didn't do it; over and over again he has told you that the Council of Truth, and clans affiliated with the Council of Truth, had nothing at all to do with December Nineteenth. Boss Ross isn't at all happy with the fact that we don't let Omni-Pol occupy and invade cities north of the Central Artery river without staging protests and interfering. But he has never so much as hinted that the real Clans had anything to do with it.
At the time it happened, I was heart-broken, and kept my mouth shut out of sympathy for the victims' families. But that was before I got slapped in the face, over and over again, for something I had nothing to do with. Now I'm going to speak my mind, and I hope so will all of the rest of the freedom-loving people of Rubi-Ka.
The official death toll was 158. Over half of the permanently dead (86) died because of insurance malfunctions. But leaving Omni-Med incompetence and the employees' own negligence out of it, let's be generous and leave the death toll at 158.
On March 11th, 29419, Omni-Tek battleships engaged in the Corporate Wars used orbital bombardment against TruSpace and Sol Banking ... on Old Earth, the most densely populated planet in the galaxy. Six million civilians died in that one, blatantly illegal attack. Historians tell us that the Corporate Wars, which were entirely Omni-Tek's fault, lead to the permanent death of one hundred and twenty million people.
And you want to keep making a fuss over 158?
Boss Ross isn't.
If you even visit Omni-1, you have to have noticed by now that the apartment building that was blown up in the December Nineteenth Incident has been quietly rebuilt. No press conference, no parades, no speeches, no statue honoring the fallen ... not even a memorial plaque and a press release.
Why not? Because one hundred and fifty eight dead employees don't mean squat to Omni-Tek. On November 2nd, 29129, 72 miners were trapped in a major accident, buried alive. They could have been rescued, but they were "only atroxes" (as the company actually said at the time, oops) so it was cheaper to let them be crushed half to death and to die of thirst, and just make more of them. They probably haven't told you this, but every Clanner knows it -- it lead to the protests galaxy-wide that lead to the first independent union on Rubi-Ka. Every day, Clanners struggle for freedom in memory of those fallen employees -- employees that Omni-Tek would rather forget.
Omni-Tek negligence kills people by the dozens and hundreds per year. Every improvement in safety that has happened on this planet has happened because somebody else, the unions, the ICC, or the Clans, has made Omni-Tek save lives -- and made them do so at gunpoint.
And you want to keep making a fuss over a couple of dozen?
The only reason you remember is because it was an anti-matter bomb, a very flashy weapon. A very stupid weapon. No Clanner would have used it. We know that until the ICC finishes invalidating your owners' illegal lease on this planet, we only live here at ICC sufference. (At least, I hope we all know this.) I would cheerfully assist in the lobotomization of the idiot who made that attack.
Or maybe they weren't an idiot?
So far as I know, nobody north of the Central Artery has access to anti-matter. Omni-Tek does. Clan labs don't have the ability to create the freakish supermen we've been seeing behind some of these attacks. Omni-Tek does. I've actually seen this, lately. The Mockers occasionally escort tours of a nightmarish corporate crime scene in The Longest Road, Omni-Tek code name "Biomere." You should ask some questions about it, some time. Oh, I forgot. No, you shouldn't -- you might find yourself convicted, then arrested, then charged, like other employees have. But I digress.
(But one last digression before I move on - Dust Brigade masked commandos have attacked Council-affiliated targets every bit as often as they have company-affiliated targets, or more so. They're not ours.)
Omni-Tek had at least as much incentive to sabotage the peace process as we did - more, really. How better to justify the ongoing attrocities from Sabulum to Last Ditch? And if it discredits the freedom movement with illegal weaponry, and all it costs is some credits and a hundred-odd deaths, what would stop them?
It could be that Boss Ross hasn't done anything to commemorate the victims of December Nineteenth, not because he doesn't care what happens to individual employees and their families, but because his conscience is bothering him.
Before you get all emotional about them....
I have dealt with shades, Diamondcut and the posse surrounding them....Ignis....Xzique....
I've been treatened with perma-death by ignis, saying that "I should watch it, cuz shades is sooo good at hacking people's insurance". Ignis saying that in the middle of borealis city in front of fellow neutrals, on MY turf, did NOT make him popular.
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It did not get to that point immediatly....
As a neutral fixer, i've been places and seen things. Heck, i even helped the fight against the Dust brigade by going public on the Vandelmar Consorsium's activities (see the link in the sig).
To make a long story short, they were supplying weapons to the dusters, kidnapping innocent little girls, and whatnot....
Now, the moment i wanted to go public with this, some of Diamondcut's agents Wanted me to wait before divulging the information, citing concern for the girl, etc.
I flatly refused, cuz i smelled something fishy going on.
Now after a while, i do my biz like usual, get to some kind of fixer meeting in a little bar....everything going well....
Until Diamondcut's goons Surrender me to the Vandelmar Consorsium. It gets better: the next day, Diamondcut and his croonies were atempting an ambush for general Telion in Reets.
Ever since that, i've been finding out a lot of information about Diamondcut's Cartel of sorts. It's NOT a surprise the mockers got the security gig at Baboon's , THEY ARE PART OF HIS POSSE. Omni guild, and clanners (including Most of the Mocker's bosses) Are his spyes, and believe me, the mockers see me, they watch my noot booty, sure thing.
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Fast foward to the present.
I have no sympathy for those Duster collaborator helpers. In fact, the only reason i haven't Gone public until now is because Garrisen does not seem to WANT to catch Diamond.
You want the juity on the criminals, Talk to Juju..... he'll give you a run for your money....
(oh, and i totally expect the mockers to barge in here and say i'm a fool. I can picture the 'respectable business accused by corporate facists' angle already. But then, i haven't been awarded anything from the man, so MY opinion is unbiased.)
