"...did that happen?"

"I expect it happens as often as there are blues who get their kicks by ordering people set on fire. You know the stuff the Oahk Empire did, right -"

"Some. They don't push history in yellow school."

"Oahk Empire had three million blues, around Anitam's numbers. At its peak more like six but that includes areas they weren't holding very tightly or for very long, which changes it. Emperor awarded blue credits personally, which meant that if you didn't manage to get his personal attention, no kids. - he had three wives, himself, and a baby by each every year - so people'd try to get his attention by thwarting rebellions that never were - just have two hundred people dragged out of their beds and beheaded and call them rebels, why not - generals would start stupid wars that honestly just weakened the empire, because that was how to earn a credit - I don't know if the Emperor realized precisely the incentives he'd created, I don't know if he believed that hundreds of people were coming to him with bloodily suppressed rebellions and evidence of treasonous schemes and foreign spies and so on because they had to get his attention somehow or if he thought he was just surrounded by threats - it'd make anybody paranoid -

 - yellow I think was awarded by extended service to a sufficiently important blue, which is significantly less horrible but did mean people couldn't quit a job that was their only chance at kids, no matter what their boss did to them or had them doing - and even if you had an appalling record of disposing of your subordinates in plots for intrigue or Imperial attention you could always find more - and it was a terrible place for the software industry, because everyone was throwing their energy into the yellow service industries -"

"- what about the other castes?"

"Green got 'em for doctorates and academic awards and so on, the ones with any aptitude would just stay in school racking up degrees. I think the universities changed their procedures such that this allowed at least some actual work to get done. Grey got them for killing lots of enemies of the empire and boy were there enemies of the empire everywhere. Orange and purple there were organizations that handed out awards for this and that and also corrupt people who'd sell them or trade them for favors. Reds they have the social workers award them and most of those are corrupt too and just sell them. Same problems everywhere with whole industries shriveling because there was no good way to earn a child through them."

"People didn't go into those lines of work after they were twenty?"

"I mean, some, but it's not trivial to retrain from a secretary into a programmer or from a person-who-got-six-doctorates into a documentary filmmaker and you want to arrange the grandkids too."

"These were transferable?"

"No, no, then you might have had a functioning market for them. But connections were still the way to get them - in Calado all the senators were scrambling to declare their great-grandchildren responsible for everything I did -"

"Oh."

"Our way sucks less. Though it'll be much better once there are starships and we can loosen up."

"What about the thing Voa does?"

"It makes everyone real happy, I'll give Voa that. I do think there's something to be said for eugenics and a lot to be said for Anitam's very low intracaste wealth inequality but honestly if I were in charge I'd at least give everybody one for free."

Nod.

"I should sleep. Let me know if you need anything?"

"Yeah."

Isel sleeps.

The other red districts manage to avoid provoking noise complaints. Her private security guards them through the night.

In the morning if nothing is on fire she'll go out flying.

Nothing is on fire.

A purple writes her; her family needs money and there's ads for taking over red work but she doesn't want to get murdered. Will she get murdered.

No. It's safe to take over red work; if the government messes up they could find themselves without enough people trained, like Biyan, but there won't be violence against purples like Evalee.

And she goes out flying. Lands in a district.

<Hey! It's Isel. Just checking in, and I have some revisions to our evacuation plans based on how the evacuation of the downtown district went.>

"...hi," says the nearest red. "You're, um, you're touching the railing, there."

<In morph, doesn't count. There was all sorts of theological wrangling.>

"Oh. What do we need to know?"