Sowing season looms and the Directors have all but declared a national emergency over the number of unformalized union contracts. The Directory had set centralized family planning as the symbolic start of the Second Era timeline. Every year since that first one that system has gotten more backlogged. The Directory prefers to appear infallible but then will let slip little liberties when they need to save face. Oversights like those allowed to House Bourbon, contrasted with the fine-tooth scrutiny applied to House Cymbelline. Now I’m left to tidy up the ad-hoc swap between House Usher and House Dion.

The union I cooked up for Marty Silvia proved a success, for now. The Directors even claimed to be impressed by my ingenuity. The Dion girl’s marriage into an estate of the Midlands zone soothed some of House Dion’s wounded pride. House Silvia was grateful just to have their succession settled, but ended up less than happy about the Directory’s conditions. You see, House Silvia has a daughter who has spent a large portion of her young life in those kinds of rest homes that one finds out in the countryside that are so well known for their discretion. In childhood, these admittances were for a variety of neuroses or vague anxiety. Her records are still marked that way for her more recent stays, but our intelligence reports have suggested a different story.

Lucille Silvia has a substance problem, though not necessarily a narcotics problem. The Midland zone has a minor, negligible black market drug trade that’s been nearly eradicated. The girl started with liquor and was one day found drunk and shoeless in a park. The Directory sent inspectors to confiscate the liquor from the Silvia estate. Then the girl was found deliriously skipping down the rail tracks. Inspectors traced her condition to the datura bushes found on the estate and had them ripped out. The girl once found her way to the vineyards curated by the House’s tenants and ended up poisoning herself with half-fermented wormwood elixir. Another time she downed a half-gallon of a charwoman’s cleaning vinegar.

As Lucille approaches her formalizing age the Directory has failed to figure out what to do with her. Spinsters and bachelors are a sign of incompetence, in their view. House Silvia, though muzzled, is still a name that sells papers and the Silvias know this. As content as they are to barter in scandal, they have no issues with allowing their daughter to embarrass their usurpers.

As I said before, the Directory was quite taken with my supposed creativity concerning Marty Silvia’s pre-marital conundrum. Their big oaken signature stamps slammed thunderously with their enthusiasm. Agents were dispatched at once, assignments were delivered in stark terms. I myself issued hellish warrants for Marty’s blackmailers. Isme Dion was made Isme Silvia a few days later. House Silvia invited me to the union, which was far more fun than I’d expected. Dancing, laughter, and a flood of ice wine. Lavish by today’s controlled standards, but a fractional glimpse at their old ways. Well into the occasion Marty found me and yanked me over with his heavy handshake. He thanked me gratuitously and slurred something about him and Isme “working something out,”. I laughed with him and hoped to never have to find out what that meant.

The Directory sent the bills out on the following day. House Dion would now marry their son to the daughter of House Usher. From House Silvia, they asked for the release of their troubled daughter to House Bruce. She would marry the heir and with House Bruce under a high level of oversight already, the Directors could keep a leash on two potential problems. None of this was received quietly. Rose Dion exploded at Langston Usher when they ran into one another at the Lowland Court. House Usher’s patriarch left with a bleeding lip and Rose spent the night jailed after spitting in the eye of the officer who first attempted to restrain her. Langston has spent every week since then publishing one smear piece after another on House Dion in his unfortunately lucrative tabloid. In the Midlands House Silvia has barricaded themselves behind a battery of medical notes detailing all of the esoteric treatments that their troubled daughter absolutely must not have interrupted. House Bruce is taking the silent approach. No summons response. No sign of life during the fruitless hours the Directory’s watchers have spent at the gates of the Bruce estate. No one wants to risk the escalation that would come with a sanctioned raid, which is something that hasn’t been done since the early years of the First Era. The Directors hate a Situation, which is exactly what they’ve gotten out of all this.

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An Introduction to Economic Amplifiers

Part 1 of 2

Economic amplifiers are the active components of economic engineering. The basic characteristic of any amplifier — cultural, political, or economic — is that it receives an input control signal and delivers energy from an independent energy source to a specified output terminal in a predictable relationship to that input control signal.

The simplest form of economic amplifier is a device called advertising it is in this field that the most positive and productive use can be made of the Old Family System. The Commons are plagued by nostalgia. An OFS House that is merely not cruel to its tenants will be held in high regard even by those who live outside of their holdings. Imagine what could be gained if they were to engage with them in a kind and guiding manner. In a time of drought, a spectacle could be made of a House’s frugality. Instead of the enormous resources spent to head off the perennial riots that have haunted us since the First Era, we need only employ the right OFS member to soothsay the agitators.

An economic amplifier may have several inputs and outputs. Its response may be instantaneous or delayed. Whatever its form might be, its purpose is to govern the flow of energy from a source to an output sink in direct relation to an input control signal. For this reason, it is called an Active Element.

Economic Amplifiers hall into classes called strategies. The specific internal functions of an amplifier are referred to as logistics. Therefore, economic amplifiers not only deliver power gain but also, in effect, are used to cause changes in the economic circuitry.

In the design of an economic amplifier we must have some idea of at least five functions, which are:

1. The available input signals,

2. The desired output control objectives,

3. The strategic objective,

4. The available economic power sources,

5. The logistical options.

The process of defining and evaluating these factors and incorporating the economic amplifier into an economic system has been popularly called ‘game theory’.

The design of an economic amplifier begins with a specification of the power level of the output, which can range from personal to national. The second condition is the accuracy of response, i.e., how accurately the output action is a function of the input commands. High gain combined with strong feedback helps to deliver the required precision. Most of the error will be in the input data signal. Personal input data tends to be specific, while national input data tends to be statistical.

[CONCLUDED]