It’s been an exhausting week. More nuisances than intrigues, and I am made much more a secretary than a mitigator. Between the devil and a pile of paperwork, I’ll give you two highlights.

Asshole Monday;

This one comes from a Midland’s son named Marty Silvia, who still isn’t yet of age. Marty had been one of those outliers among the scions of the Old Families who had not been assigned a marriage contract by the Directory. The marriage assignment system is very complex so for the sake of keeping things short I’ll explain it simply. The Directory runs through a list containing all the eligible pairings of the Old Names and does a series of Risk Calculations. They immediately eliminate pairings with too much overlap in their family history and calculate based on the collective data known for each House. This can be a matter of eliminating mismatched ranks, of keeping unpredictable people in a small role or preventing Dangerous Romanticism created among the Publics by a union whose names could provoke Nostalgia. See? It’s already getting complicated trying to say it so simply.

Marty had too much risk and being a son of House Silva did him no favors. There are Houses that resent being left out of the assignments, and there are Houses that enjoy the freedom it gives their member. Marty and his House were very much the latter. Typically boys of the Old Families left to their own devices take up courting the girls of Auview, where it is nearly a Springtime tradition for the untroubled daughters of the merchants to put out their best lures for the chance of joining the muzzled regime. People pretend not to understand it but they do, the darlings think it’s their chance to become a real-life princess, even if the Old Way has been paved over.

So this is the landscape that Marty goes to for an outing with the boys last summer for a weekend stay in his typical haunt, a boutique hotel with an absinthe parlor in the cellar, owned by a distant cousin of the Silvas. After some kind of wild night, Marty and his friends are boarding the lift when they’re rushed by a herd of Auview Island’s shrieking daughters. A woman unrelated to this is also on the lift and is one of the hotel’s other guests. I board with Marty’s handler. I hadn’t been working that night, I just happened to be in the district and ran into him. I know the managers of House Silva very well for what should be obvious reasons. The woman trapped with us was in her seventies and had no idea what was going on and looked like she would rather be anyplace else than on that lift.

The girls are screaming and trying to pull the lift gates back open. Marty grabs his crotch and says, “You want a bite?” Then he turns to the elderly woman stuck there with us and says, “I bet you could use some too huh?”

By this time Marty has accumulated a handful of random shit from his pockets and starts throwing it out of the lift. The girls go scrambling after them, falling down as they do so. The manager hits the CLOSE button on the lift and then Marty reached over and pushes the OPEN button and says, “Not yet, I like watching them.” Then he lets the lift door close.

Darling Wednesday;

This is about a certain Midland girl whose first Saison was so successful she got contracted to a Highland marriage after being at the bottom of the priority list for Directory marriage contracts. I don’t know who I’m trying to kid by being mysterious, but I know she wasn’t big on her name being attached to this story in the first place.

The Directory had given me an auto to chauffeur on occasions like this. They call little things like these “Brushings”, they’re kind of like a casual check-in for old names that don’t cause any trouble but haven’t been checked in with for some time and need their name ticked off by the Records department. This girl had never given the Directory any issue, nor had her family, but she was about to elevate from Midlands to Highlands by marriage contract. Anytime an old name moves zones it’s a huge deal, for everyone involved as well as the Publics since it becomes this huge tabloid event every time. I was driving her and her parents to the first family-to-family meeting after the finalizing of the contract. Her parents were in the back and she sat up front with me. It’s late afternoon, rush hour, and deep summer. The traffic is bottlenecked into the Highland's entryway. On the side of the road, there was this woman standing behind her car, holding a baby in her arms. I notice this because Darling stops our conversation to say, “She has a flat tire,”. I look over and see for myself. It feels like a broiler outside and no one is stopping to help this woman. We’re about a hundred feet back from the woman’s car at a dead stop with three lanes of separation from the shoulder.

One of the reasons I remember this well is because it was the first time since I’d settled into my profession that I truly did not know what to do, whether by protocol or personally. If I was alone I would have left that Directory car sitting in the fast lane, but I had the near entirety of an Old Family in my car, and if anything were to happen even accidentally and I was outside of the vehicle…

Darling is appalled that no one has stopped to even see if help is on the way after we’ve sat watching for 15 minutes. She asks me to pull over to the shoulder, which is going to take a miracle in and of itself. Impatient, the Darling responds by getting out of the car and walking across the lanes to the woman and her baby. There ends up being another child in the car, a three-year-old we hadn’t seen from our angle. There’s also a dog. The mother had been willing to change the tire on her own, but it was so hot that she didn’t want to leave the baby in the car, and even once when she tried as soon as she stepped out of the car the baby would scream, then that would make the dog start barking, which caused the three-year-old to cry. She was hoping someone would stop or a watcher would come by. Darling, all done up for her first meeting, opens the trunk and starts taking everything out to change the tire.

Now, you have to realize that probably two hundred people have seen this play out since Darling crossed the access way and everyone has been staring at the woman with the baby while waiting in traffic for a very long time. All of a sudden, like a gate, has opened, four cars pull over to the shoulder to help. I have never seen people move so fast. Within 15 minutes at the most, the tire had been changed and everyone was back on the road. I had managed to pull over, but only enough to get barely next to the woman’s car. Darling, although not having to actually change the tire looks like a sweaty mess. When she gets back in the car her mother sighs and says, “Well at least you will have a good story to tell.” Darling tells her no because no one will believe her or will think she only did it to have such a story to tell. I was at the most awkward I think I have ever been in my adult life and hadn’t been able to conjure a thing to say. I looked over when Darling finished saying this and she looked truly sad.

And now without further whining, my leak of the week. This is another that came in my early orientation papers.

“DEPT. OF INTERIOR

TO

DIRECTOR, INTELLIGENCE [redacted]

D-61

DESCRIPTIVE INTRODUCTION

TO

INTERNAL SECURITY

Everything that is expected from an ordinary field strategy is expected from the Internal Security Program by its creators, but only in its manner of functioning.

Internal Security utilizes situations, instead of weapons; propelled by data processing, instead of troop advancement; operated by Directory programmers, instead of soldiers; under the orders of the greater Directory, rather than a commanding officer.

It makes no obvious noises, causes no obvious injuries, and does not obviously interfere with anyone’s daily social life.

Yet it creates an unmistakable effect, causes unmistakable physical and mental damage, and unmistakenly interferes with daily social life, I.e. unmistakable to a trained observer, one who knows what to look for.

The public cannot comprehend such weaponry, and therefore will not believe in any conspiracists claiming they are being attacked and subdued.

The public might instinctively feel that something is wrong, but because of the technical nature of the Internal Security Program, they cannot express their feelings in a rational way, or handle the problem with personal intelligence. Therefore, they do not know the means to cry for help and do not know how to associate with others of like mind to organize a defense against it.

When a careful strategy is applied gradually to the public, they will adjust or adapt to its presence and learn to tolerate its encroachment until the pressure becomes too great and they crack.

Consider the program a type of biological combat. It attacks the vitality, options, and mobility of the individuals of a society by knowing, understanding, manipulating, and attacking their sources of natural and social energy, as well as their physical, mental, and emotional strengths and failings. “