Of Councils and Conspiracies

[memoryandtheft]

We managed to make it in and out of the Council offices in one piece.

[That's the sort of statement that should sound celebratory. It doesn't. Even with the flattened affect provided by the psychic network's rendering of tone, there's an undercurrent of carefully restrained anger.]

The plague's gone. The plague's been gone for almost two hundred years. The Council's been keeping quarantine all this time in order to keep from having to admit they've been drugging people blind for no good reason for centuries. Their biggest concern right now is the fact that more and more kids are being born resistant to their drugs.

That's where the Duskling population boom is coming from. And the kids born on the wrong side of twilight - apparently, immunity to one side doesn't guarantee immunity to the other, and they aren't all that careful about making sure their shipments don't get mixed up, since an adult probably isn't going to notice any change after a few doses of the wrong thing.

Comments

[memoryandtheft]

It wasn't exactly a serious suggestion. Fire's a last resort. A very cathartic last resort.

But if the food in storage has all been tampered with, it might be a loss anyway. They must store everything for the Dusk market in a separate location...

[comebewe]

Well, we could always torch the Council instead. Much more satisfying, and with a lot less risk of starvation.

[it's not exactly a serious suggestion either. but admittedly, still rather tempting]

The farms, maybe?

[memoryandtheft]

Maybe. We should send someone out there to see how well they can support the population if the food in the warehouse has all been altered.

If we could just get word to another city...

[comebewe]

We do wonder what's happened with those other cities...did they ever get the plague as well, or was it just January?

[memoryandtheft]

I think it had to have hit them. You said your source told you a delegate brought it back - there's a good chance it spread to the other cities the same way.

If it hadn't, someone would have come looking by now.

[comebewe]

They also sent people out, to tell the other cities that there was still plague. Still, you would think that someone would have managed some contact by this point.

We...hope that they have not all fallen to plague. But it is possible.

[memoryandtheft]

More than a thousand years ago. No one's going to write off a city for a thousand years unless getting to it turns into a matter of can't, not won't.

[comebewe]

Not if they decide it's in their interests to do so.

But...you're probably right.

[memoryandtheft]

We'll probably never know. Not unless someone feels like exploring, and gets lucky enough to find something before this is all over.

How do people stand this?

[comebewe]

The same way people stand anything. Because we have no choice.

[but by the angry, bitter tone he spits that out in...he's just as unhappy about it all as she is]

[memoryandtheft]

[She recognizes that tone, mostly from hearing it in her own voice. She's hardly a stranger to survival, after all.

Gambling with the future of entire worlds, though? That's new.

Mostly.]

Too bad we can't just organize a strike until we get a living wage and reasonable information.

[comebewe]

We wish. Problem is, the worlds the Trumps are playing around are still real, and they're usually heading towards some kind of upheaval when we arrive.

There's a lot of potential for things to go very wrong.

[memoryandtheft]

So what do they get out of making sure everything hits the boiling point early?

[comebewe]

No idea.

They're not exactly big on explaining their goals. Or anything, really.

[memoryandtheft]

Of course not. That would be too easy.