Firebreak

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

Some kind of shitty mesh boob-armor thing that I toss directly on the market because no.

Aw. :P Though I would 100% wear that.

“Right? Tell you what. If you get killed out here, you have my permission to haunt me. And, like, I mean, really fuck with me. Go nuts. Make the walls bleed.”

While B, from her library or wherever, collects screenshots. Takes notes.

Ahh, the library. Haven for discontents, malfeasance, and ne're-do-wells.

“Historically it’s always been easier to fight wars that people support,” B said. “What Stellaxis did is genius. The SecOps operatives put a face on it. Twelve faces. With trading-card stats and action figures and t-shirts and fame. You can root for them in a way you won’t root for a mech or a smart bomb or a grenade. You care about them.”

I feel like I've seen this in other media. That shitty airplane anime I watched once, etc. Definitely feels legit though. Armies would have livestreams now if they could keep the operatives alive and, y'know, not show warcrimes.

“I mean. You’ve seen the war approval ratings. Twentieth-century wars, twenty-first-century wars? Nowhere near this popular. Read up on some history sometime. It’s fascinating. Hearts and minds, you know?” I didn’t know. It sounded like a quote from somewhere.

The author peeking through. Also, fucking oof.

game. Top players will be recruited and trained by that same corporate defense division to fight for real in the real war in the real city—that’s a popular one.

America's Army reference? (Had to look up the name)

“She, uh.” I clear my throat. I hate this part of the job, I truly do. It’s public speaking and performing in front of an audience and hanging your entire livelihood on the approval of strangers all rolled into one tidy panic-attack-inducing bundle.

“You’ve got issues, my friend,” she says matter-of-factly, and it is, of course, as it is of all of us, true.

let the internet go on internetting.

“If I was looking for weird behavior, I’d be more interested in the person who suddenly stops doing what they do every day,” I tell her. “I say we keep up business as usual,

Tru.

“Should’ve complied,” he says, and goes blank-faced as he returns his attention to whatever he’s doing online. “How do you know he didn’t?” I ask him, but he’s not listening.

Oof.

Being touched by strangers is its own special circle of hell, and I will not be convinced otherwise.

You can’t go where you want if you don’t have rights. Which you don’t if you’re not human. Or if someone has convinced the rest of the world that you aren’t.

...Fuck. FUCK. I don't think this is aimed explicitily in book.

part three hearts & minds

Using this quote is Millenial as SHIT. Glad it's getting used by something better than it's origin.

which I can use to buy water. Overpriced company-store water, from a corporation I’m much more inclined to boycott entirely, but I don’t exactly have the luxury of being picky. I can’t very well fight them if my kidneys give out.

Is there an answer here? Or has this, all of this, gone on too long for anyone to even be able to conceptualize an alternative?

What do we get to control? Nothing! Nothing except what we take back for ourselves.

I have an equal amount of time to think about how stupid we’ve all been, all this time. Believing everything the company told us, whether it made sense or not, just because it had a full-scale media/marketing juggernaut to back it up.

But Jessa and I go way back. And lucky for me, I used to use the same goddamn password for everything.

Security be dammed. ~_^

Because you’re pure, I want to say. Because everything else is corruption and fuckery to the horizon, and you and poor goddamn assassinated 06 are the rock around which it passes.

They’re famous because a corporation that controls everything wanted to sell its customer-citizens a war. Even the swords, I realize belatedly. They weren’t taught to fight with blades because it’s efficient. They were taught to fight with blades because it looks appallingly fucking cool. Weird kind of strategy to win a war, but goddamn if the image hasn’t moved billions worth of merchandise.

There were more security guards posted down here this time. At least five. The way he’s left them, I’d have to count their heads to be sure.

Heh.

and, weirdly, a paperweight snow globe of old San Francisco, where I’m not sure it ever snowed even before it was underwater.

My favorite snowglobe is off an aquarium. The interior of it.

Not resonance grenades. Not frag grenades. Not any number of awful things it could have been. For one pants-shitting second I imagine being stuck in a room with a hallucinogen burst and 22.

Oh my Gods.

I swallow. “Maybe she’s trying to make it right.” “She can’t,” 22 says simply. “But it’s as good a use of her last minutes as any.”

I cackled at this.

He stops just shy of saying what the fuck is going on. Apparently having a sword in your face is a great demotivator.

lol

“—hell have you been all this time?” Jessa’s asking me, and everyone is staring and there are microphones in my face and I don’t quite know how they got there. But it’s a question I know how to answer, a question I was maybe born to answer, a question that I owe it to the dead to answer, a question that every step along my path has brought me here to answer. So I do.

I wrote this book in solidarity with all who struggle against oppression, corruption, fuckery, and greed, whatever face it wears. Let’s never stop fighting for a better world.

<3