Clare-Dragonfly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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rainbowfic2015-08-23 04:24 pm
clare_dragonfly) wrote in rainbowfic2015-08-23 04:24 pm
She Would Follow
Name: Clare
Story: prison planet
Colors: Fire Opal 6, Fiery speech/sermon; The Hills of Iowa 8, I was out here listening all the time.; Antique Brass 20, Hey, Big Brother's watching. / Yes, yes, and so can Little Sister.
Supplies and Materials: canvas
Word Count: 795
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Awful, dystopian government; characters drugged against their will
Notes: A little background on why these people ended up imprisoned on this planet. (I don't seem to have a tag for prison planet! It is the same universe as robot rights; should I just use the same tag for both? They don't share any of the same characters.)
People had already been imprisoned for saying things like this. Natasha knew that. No one had, yet, been imprisoned for listening. But she was being careful anyway.
Maybe she could have been more careful. But it was a big campus. She’d set up a couple of reroutes, so no one should be able to trace her specifically. And she seriously doubted that she was the only one on campus watching this speech; anyone hunting for dissidents on campus would have a hard time finding her specifically.
Besides. She had to listen.
“The election is a sham,” he was saying. He had dark, intense eyes, a shaggy haircut, thin lips that shaped themselves thoroughly to enunciate every word. “If you don’t think they know exactly who is going to vote and how, and how to stop the ones who are going to vote the way they don’t like, then wake up! They’ve made it harder for people to vote who are traveling. They’ve made it almost impossible for students.”
Natasha nodded along, fully agreeing. She’d already registered to vote in her home province, which was still her legal address, even if she was spending nine months out of the year here in Sea of Tranquility. But when she’d heard that the rules had changed for how voting worked if you were currently in a different location, she’d tried to log in and familiarize herself with how it worked before election day.
The site claimed it no longer had her information. It didn’t recognize her email address, password, thumbprint, or retina scan. And she didn’t believe that had happened by accident. She didn’t believe it could happen by accident.
So she’d signed up again. That was the only recourse. She was still waiting for the confirmation.
“Now, I’m not saying not to vote,” he said. “Vote if you can. Do everything in your power to make it possible for you to vote. That way they can’t say that young people are useless. They can’t claim we refuse to get involved in the political process. They’re the ones who refuse to have a political process at all.”
His eyes seemed to bore into hers, though he was on the other end of a computer terminal somewhere in the world—maybe even somewhere off-planet—and he had no idea who was listening to him. If anyone besides her was listening. He’d told them before that he had tracking turned off, so he kept going entirely on faith. He hoped people were listening to him. He hoped he was making a difference. But even if he wasn’t, he had to keep trying.
Natasha had no idea who he was. He was keeping his identity completely secret—except that anyone watching the broadcast could see his face. But it wasn’t easy to find the broadcast, and he had it masked somehow so that it couldn’t take his retinal scan. Maybe that was why his eyes seemed so dark, so depthless. The camera saw him differently than it saw everyone else.
Natasha saw him differently than she saw everyone else, too. He was a leader. He was the one she would follow. He was the one who would find them a way to a better society.
—
Natasha ached all over as she woke up from the drug. That was all she knew—she was waking up from a drug. As her consciousness had cleared, that was the first thing she’d heard, a woman saying that they were waking up from a powerful sedative.
She didn’t know who they were. But there were quite a few of them, and she was among them.
It had only been a few weeks since she’d been caught trying to get into provincial records and arrested. They’d claimed she had been trying to destroy voting records, which wasn’t true at all. She’d been doing the opposite—adding records for those who had tried to vote, but had been stymied by the ridiculous bureaucratic process that had been designed entirely to keep the current party in power.
And that was what they were talking about, all around her. Had they been fighting for a more democratic government, too?
As her mind slowly cleared, as she freed herself from the strange straps, a single voice cut through the chatter and directly into her mind. “But healthcare is a basic right, as fundamental as education,” he was arguing, which was nothing she’d ever heard him argue before.
But she would have recognized that voice anywhere.
A few minutes later, the door was open, and the thin sunlight was streaming into what they had all quickly agreed must be a spaceship. And she could see his face again.
He was the one she would follow. And she had followed him.
Story: prison planet
Colors: Fire Opal 6, Fiery speech/sermon; The Hills of Iowa 8, I was out here listening all the time.; Antique Brass 20, Hey, Big Brother's watching. / Yes, yes, and so can Little Sister.
Supplies and Materials: canvas
Word Count: 795
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Awful, dystopian government; characters drugged against their will
Notes: A little background on why these people ended up imprisoned on this planet. (I don't seem to have a tag for prison planet! It is the same universe as robot rights; should I just use the same tag for both? They don't share any of the same characters.)
People had already been imprisoned for saying things like this. Natasha knew that. No one had, yet, been imprisoned for listening. But she was being careful anyway.
Maybe she could have been more careful. But it was a big campus. She’d set up a couple of reroutes, so no one should be able to trace her specifically. And she seriously doubted that she was the only one on campus watching this speech; anyone hunting for dissidents on campus would have a hard time finding her specifically.
Besides. She had to listen.
“The election is a sham,” he was saying. He had dark, intense eyes, a shaggy haircut, thin lips that shaped themselves thoroughly to enunciate every word. “If you don’t think they know exactly who is going to vote and how, and how to stop the ones who are going to vote the way they don’t like, then wake up! They’ve made it harder for people to vote who are traveling. They’ve made it almost impossible for students.”
Natasha nodded along, fully agreeing. She’d already registered to vote in her home province, which was still her legal address, even if she was spending nine months out of the year here in Sea of Tranquility. But when she’d heard that the rules had changed for how voting worked if you were currently in a different location, she’d tried to log in and familiarize herself with how it worked before election day.
The site claimed it no longer had her information. It didn’t recognize her email address, password, thumbprint, or retina scan. And she didn’t believe that had happened by accident. She didn’t believe it could happen by accident.
So she’d signed up again. That was the only recourse. She was still waiting for the confirmation.
“Now, I’m not saying not to vote,” he said. “Vote if you can. Do everything in your power to make it possible for you to vote. That way they can’t say that young people are useless. They can’t claim we refuse to get involved in the political process. They’re the ones who refuse to have a political process at all.”
His eyes seemed to bore into hers, though he was on the other end of a computer terminal somewhere in the world—maybe even somewhere off-planet—and he had no idea who was listening to him. If anyone besides her was listening. He’d told them before that he had tracking turned off, so he kept going entirely on faith. He hoped people were listening to him. He hoped he was making a difference. But even if he wasn’t, he had to keep trying.
Natasha had no idea who he was. He was keeping his identity completely secret—except that anyone watching the broadcast could see his face. But it wasn’t easy to find the broadcast, and he had it masked somehow so that it couldn’t take his retinal scan. Maybe that was why his eyes seemed so dark, so depthless. The camera saw him differently than it saw everyone else.
Natasha saw him differently than she saw everyone else, too. He was a leader. He was the one she would follow. He was the one who would find them a way to a better society.
—
Natasha ached all over as she woke up from the drug. That was all she knew—she was waking up from a drug. As her consciousness had cleared, that was the first thing she’d heard, a woman saying that they were waking up from a powerful sedative.
She didn’t know who they were. But there were quite a few of them, and she was among them.
It had only been a few weeks since she’d been caught trying to get into provincial records and arrested. They’d claimed she had been trying to destroy voting records, which wasn’t true at all. She’d been doing the opposite—adding records for those who had tried to vote, but had been stymied by the ridiculous bureaucratic process that had been designed entirely to keep the current party in power.
And that was what they were talking about, all around her. Had they been fighting for a more democratic government, too?
As her mind slowly cleared, as she freed herself from the strange straps, a single voice cut through the chatter and directly into her mind. “But healthcare is a basic right, as fundamental as education,” he was arguing, which was nothing she’d ever heard him argue before.
But she would have recognized that voice anywhere.
A few minutes later, the door was open, and the thin sunlight was streaming into what they had all quickly agreed must be a spaceship. And she could see his face again.
He was the one she would follow. And she had followed him.
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Yes. Yes, I like this!
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