DEPT. OF INTERIOR TO DIRECTOR, INTELLIGENCE [REDACTED] CONCLUSION OF ORIENTATION TO INTERNAL SECURITY This document is the last of the series of training materials that you have recently received. CONCERNING THE CREDIT SYSTEM Credit has the appearance of capital, but is, in fact, social debt. It is therefore an economic inductance instead of an economic capacitance, and if balanced in no other way, will be balanced by the negation of population. This is war, disease, and criminality containment measures. The total goods and services represent real capital, and currency may be printed up to this level and still represent economic capacitance, but currency printed beyond this level is subtractive. It represents the introduction of economic inductance and forms notes of indebtedness. Population reduction measures are the balancing of the system by the elimination of the true creditors (the public which has learned to exchange true value for inflated currency) and falling back on what is left of the resources of nature and the regeneration of those resources. The application of shock tests in economic engineering involves ‘shocking’ the prices of commodities, and the public consumer reaction is monitored. The result of these echoes is where we discover the psycho-economic structure of a given segment of society. It is through this process that differential matrices are discovered that define the family household and make possible its evaluation as an economic industry. Then the response of the household to future shocks can be predicted and manipulated. Through this society becomes a well-trained animal with its reins under the control of a sophisticated social energy book-keeping system. Eventually, every individual element of the structure comes under computational control through personal preferences and identified consumers (by use of their social credit number crossed with regulated labeling of consumer goods using hash numbers). SUMMARY Economics is only a social version of a natural energy system. Because of the distribution of wealth and the lack of surveillance and consequent lack of data, this field has been the most difficult for Directory systems to codify. Since energy is the key to all activity it follows that in order to attain a monopoly of energy, raw materials, goods, and services and to establish the New Direction to its full extent, it is necessary to have a first-strike capability in the field of economics. In order to maintain our position, it is required that we have absolute first knowledge of the science of control and the first experience in economic engineering. In order to achieve such sovereignty, we must at least achieve this one end: that the public, the Old Families especially, do not and will not make similar connections between systems or learn to apply such knowledge. This is becoming increasingly difficult to control because more and more of the Houses and merchants are hiring the newly popular professional “Movement Analysts” to create and apply mathematical models for the management of those businesses. It is only a matter of time before the new breed of private analysts will catch on to the work begun by the Directory in the First Era. The speed with which they can communicate any warning to the public entirely depends upon how effective we have been at controlling the media, subverting education, and keeping the public distracted with matters of no real importance. [CONCLUDED] The letter I included for you this week was the last of the letters initially sent to me in my first year in my position. I was only in my twenty-fifth year and hadn’t really taken the Directory’s presumed strength to be that serious. This letter shook me, and I sat on my floor to read them all over again. It took me nearly three weeks before I could sleep through the night again without building paranoid webs of what story my daily life would tell someone. It was the first time I personally felt afraid of the Directory. Being a part of it didn’t help then and it still doesn’t. This week has been a nightmare. I’ll give you a taste of it before going into the big story that no one will ever hear. My week kicked off with a former Highland queen who has been supplementing her meager dividends by working for a high-end escort company several times per month. A current and very important Old Name individual is rumored to have numerous video cameras around his estate to record house guests, parties, and intimate encounters without the knowledge of most of the participants. A solitary but recently prominent Highlands scion spends one night a week as a boy toy/slave to a very expensive dominatrix. Two Midland Old Names, both married and not to each other, have been caught having sex in public by the Watchers; not once, not twice, but three times within a four-week period. This one came from “anonymous” tips (paid, of course) and watcher reports. All of them are technically very true, but not officially true until I've fill out a forest of paperwork. The first item is one that the commons think they understand, but they never will. Everything is so, so creepy and complicated when it comes to this House. I can only reveal so much, even now, because the story remains indefinitely sensitive. To start, I have to say, the Directory’s Medical Safety branch receives an asinine amount of reports every month. Anonymous mail-ins flying in from all directions about what some House member has given to another person, of Name or not. Blood diseases, common sex diseases, and so on. But it is something altogether different when it’s midrot. When it is the rot, whether gotten by sex or by shared tableware, almost no one wants to come forward as this posting will show. I was already looking into a reported escorting service. The Directory learned of it by a write-in tip, no name attached. This sort of business is very illegal in Palmetto. It violates the Anti-Traffick Protocol regardless of how consenting anyone is. My investigation so far had turned up little trace of an escort ring besides a single address. The address turns out to be the estate of House Cymbelline. I parked at the gates of House Cymbelline and tried to figure out how to approach this. The House of Cymbelline is old, proud, and the weirdest fucking family of all the Old Names. They are all strange, every member. Talking with them is like interrogating a sphinx. They do it to unsettle people, to shift the tone to a tenor more comfortable for them. And it works, but I would never admit it to them. A knock on my window startled me from my anxious meditation. A pale young man with a face sharp as a pencil and snapped up in one of those too shiny tuxedos that the staff to the House of Cymbelline are given to wear. I stepped out of the car. He said my name as a question and I nodded. He’d likely been told who I was and what they thought I was doing there by some higher member of staff. It wasn't my first visit, after all. He gestured me to follow him as he turned to his assigned town car. We took a leisurely pace along the winding roads of the Highlands zone. At this point I'm wondering if I'll have to use my service piece. My last case with House Cymbelline was a few years prior to this, when the patriarch, Mortimer, had died suddenly and strangely. The case was closed but hardly resolved. A major hang-up had been that Madame Cora, the matriarch widow, had petitioned the Directory for a divorce, not even a year before. Her husband had been cheating on her, she claimed. And it wasn’t the first time, but in her interview she told the clerks that she couldn't take any more of the lies and she felt he’d never been honest with her about anything from the time they began the court rituals. Being an Old Family there was almost no chance of a divorce being granted, but her husband’s behavior was becoming more public, which the Directory does not like. That gave her a shot at some financial support and a piece of separated property, but Mortimer would have to agree to separate officially. The report read that Cora had thought his cheating was confined to a fling here and there. She came to find he had been enjoying the underground saturn clubs of Roark, and other hedonistic pursuits as much as he could and that he was not very picky about his partners. As these revelations came out Cora went to an examiner because she hadn’t been feeling well and was carrying terrible levels of stress. While there she decided to get a full blood analysis as well to find out if she’d contracted anything from her husband’s lifestyle. The examiners have all these quips and one popular cliche is “No news is good news” when it comes to bloodwork results. The tragedy was that Cora got a lot of news and it was very bad news. Not only had she contracted the rot, but she was also pregnant. Mortimer built himself a fortress of advocates. The case stalled until it stagnated. Then came a day, some months later, Mort descended the front stair of his estate, and mid-stroll to the front gate he dropped to his knees and died. The examiners couldn’t find anything unnatural about it so all the cases were closed and his death was credited to the rot he presumably had passed onto Cora. The escorting rumors pointing to the Cymbelline estate were problem enough. With Cora's unfortunate diagnosis it becomes a threat to public safety. The valet pulled off to a private drive. He stopped the car in front of a small, but gaudy theatre. "My lady will meet you inside," he told me. I waited for the valet to lead but when I turned around I found that he had quietly, and quickly, abandoned me. I opened the door and passed through the lobby, assuming someone would come along to show me the way. I passed through a curtain and went dizzy. I’d been expecting some storage closet but found myself standing in the theatre's upper level. I’m not normally startled by heights, but the place was eerie, dusty, and silent. I was on my guard with every further step and pulled out my service revolver. From the top level I could hear a faint music crackling from somewhere backstage. My steps were shaky as I descended the long and narrow stair. I followed it down to the stage. I followed the music and crossed behind the stage curtain. The backstage looked as deserted as the rest. I found the source of the music was coming from behind a door. I waited a moment, listening for sounds of life beneath the tinny notes, staring at the big faded star that someone painted on the door in some lost era. I gave a polite warning knock before opening it. I almost laugh this time. Almost. On the boudoir one of those old-time phonographs is rattling out the dingy music. There’s a note on a plate with my name written in pretty letters across the top. Sorry to have missed you darling. Something has come up with my dear son’s wedding and your people have summoned me. Do re-schedule. The exit will be to the left. X Cora