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.