She's not going to do that, it wouldn't get her what she wants.

Okay.

She really is very pacifistic for a Sith. It used to get her in trouble sometimes, back home, people thought they could push her around because she didn't go right to threatening to kill them for annoying her.

I have never actually read any science fiction in which the aliens were from a culture of wizards who threatened to kill each other for annoying them. But I bet if I had there'd be a blue protagonist who got planets out of the aliens with the power of political persuasion or something.

Well, these ones aren't scifi protagonists.

Guess not. I've never met a real one.

Well, you'll get a closer look soon.

Should I be letting you get back to Katin?

You did! I see her all day every day now instead of just when I can swing through between bringing bodies home and redeployment.

Yeah. It seems like she's doing really well lately, too.

Deskyl works out and meditates for a few hours; when DZ asks her about the group's reaction to her power, she explains that they experience it as a sense of being polluted, and that she'll adjust it in the future to avoid that.

It takes the blues a few days to get back to her; she spends the time working on a flux capacitor design that will work with the available materials.

They have some proposals!

- Increase social worker coverage to allow local address of individual districts' problems

- Cut credits and make do with fewer reds while switching to robots; it must be very terrible to have to be a red and fewer of them would be a utilitarian improvement

- Suggest to a collections agency that they could have red businesses as customers but they probably won't want to

- Build higher density more modern red districts and move them into those (it pays for itself after you torch and resell the original low density space!)

- Switch their credit auction to this other kind that can be jiggled to be less expensive for them

- Stop having red prisons, the reds in prisons are probably even unhappier than regular reds and most places get by fine just killing them if they step out of line

- Borrow some Doetaran greens or somebody Tapai who studied in Doet, and have them do research to figure out what to do for reds

- Censor the reds' internet more aggressively than everybody else's so they won't have to notice how much people don't like them

- Municipalize red services so they can get paid as routinely as army reds instead of allowing private red companies

DZ sorts them and sends off some replies.

- Cut credits and make do with fewer reds while switching to robots; it must be very terrible to have to be a red and fewer of them would be a utilitarian improvement

This is something they could do themselves, if they preferred to; they clearly don't. Even if they currently did, this proposal does nothing to make being a red less unpleasant.

- Stop having red prisons, the reds in prisons are probably even unhappier than regular reds and most places get by fine just killing them if they step out of line

Reds in prison already have the same option to commit suicide as prisoners of other castes do; taking that decision away from them would not be an improvement in any way.

- Censor the reds' internet more aggressively than everybody else's so they won't have to notice how much people don't like them

They may appreciate being given tools to do this for themselves; it should definitely not be done to them.

- Borrow some Doetaran greens or somebody Tapai who studied in Doet, and have them do research to figure out what to do for reds

This seems like a reasonable approach, if you're confident that you can explain to them what we want. We'll want to have a chance to look at any proposed experiments before they're run.

She sends Peka the social worker, collections, municipalization, new building, and auction suggestions.

Obviously you don't want more social workers; is there anything they are useful for, or should we tell them to stop them entirely?

 I'm not sure how useful a reluctant collection agency would be to you; it does seem like they get army payments right, but there might be other problems with municipalizing. Are either of them worth trying?

New red districts and cheaper credits both seem pretty good; are we missing some downside there?

I'm not aware of anything social workers do that's useful except make some things they're going to do to us less of a surprise.

Collections could really work. I had to look up what they do and ask a friend but apparently they "buy debt"? They could clean up just by being harder to brush off and we'd get the money for the debt right away. But not just one of them, I want them to bid on our debt.

They shouldn't municipalize us, they'd ruin everything.

Some of us would miss our homes and stuff if they got torched and they might decide we didn't really need some amenity in the new building but maybe some really run down districts would like this except we actually own our land, it just never comes up because no clean people want it for anything, so they can't just resell to pay for it without stealing it.

I asked somebody and she thinks that kind of auction wouldn't work well with how we collude on bidding.

Thanks, I'll let them know.

I asked Deskyl about the doom aura, by the way. The one she did to them was to make them uncomfortable, more than scared, and it felt like being polluted, that's why they reacted so strongly.

You're welcome!

That one might not affect reds as much? We're pretty hypo.

Yeah. She said that now that she's seen it in action she should be able to mimic feeling polluted in particular, if that's ever useful for anything.

Probably not.

Yeah, it'd take a pretty unusual situation.

Doesn't make people nicer to reds one bit.

Yeah. She is going to be more careful about it - she can tilt it toward fear instead of discomfort, too, to avoid that. That's usually more the provocative way of doing it, that's why she didn't do it to them the first time, but now we know better.

Did they notice it was her?

I'm pretty sure they did. I've mentioned that Sith can do mental effects like that.

They can sure do lots of things.

Yeah. It's good to have one on your side, if they're a good one. And Deskyl is.

I'm glad we didn't get one who would have stabbed me or something.

Yeah.

Me too.