11.7- The Annulment of Contracts

Hello. This is just a little reminder that Saturnalia is upon us once again, and this year, as you know, there is merchandise available for you. So go tell your family and friends that they can go to cottonbureau.com/mikeduncan to buy you all your presents this holiday season. That again is cottonbureau.com/mikeduncan. You know what you really want for Saturnalia is cool Revolutions merch. I would also like to say, hey. Maybe give yourself the gift of a Patreon subscription. If you go to patreon.com/revolutions, you can get all of Revolutions ad free. And next week, I will be dropping my first bit of bonus content for all of you who have subscribed, and thank you thank you thank you to all of you who have subscribed. So merchandise is at cottonbureau.com/mikeduncan, and the Patreon is patreon.com/revolutions. Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Episode 11.7, the annulment of contracts. We left off last week with Timothy Werner getting a bunch of batteries chucked at him in the Upper Warrens Of Olympus on 05/17/2246. What would go down in Martian history as the day of batteries? The first of the three great revolutionary events that would be enshrined in the mythic pantheon of Martian lore before the ink was dry on the Declaration of Independence. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the Mars Division Authority censored screen vids to prevent the story from spreading. And the further you got from Expansion 15 Way 7, the more difficult it became to know that anything had happened at all. Security services then fanned out looking for the rest of the battery chuckers. They had arrested 42 people right there on the spot, but more than a thousand people had been there that day, and security was ordered to track them all down, interview them, and identify the rest of the culprits. But this was tough going because the d classes had long since perfected the art of answering security service questions without really saying anything at all. This was a reflex whether they were guilty, innocent, or somewhere in between. Most of the people there that day knew nothing about anything, but their responses sounded exactly the same as the people who did know something. They were vague, noncommittal, and a little murky on the details. Meanwhile, the corporate intelligence wing of the security services opened an investigation into members of the reception committee. They wanted to know how and why such antisocial malcontents could have gotten access to five way seven. As I said last week, it's hard for me to believe Mabel Dorr wasn't involved, but it's worth noting that she was investigated and questioned along with everyone else, and corporate intelligence never came back around for her. And that was even knowing full well she was a woman with political ambitions who was also a vocal critic of the new protocols. But whatever she said to them, coupled with whatever evidence they lacked, was enough to let her walk free. …