Not Cosmic, But Incomprehensible

General
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Originally published at: Not Cosmic, But Incomprehensible | The Associated Worlds

This was originally a #WritingWonders prompt over on Mastodon, the original prompt being: “MC POV: Name one thing that is guaranteed to make you angry? Why?”. I liked the result enough that I thought I’d share it over here, as well.

“Make me angry? The cases that fall into, in our legal code, ‘destructionism’.

“Why? Because I don’t understand it.

“We get – I’d say a lot, but this is still Imperial space, so let’s say an anomalously high level of crime here. We get slash-traders, commercial fraud, thieves grand and petty, stowaways, dockside brawls, too-long-aboard-syndrome on and on, everything a major trade station attracts like flies. But even if you slice off the truly desperate who need a hug, a hot meal, and someone to walk them to the Eleemosynary Exodochium more than what most people think of as justice, I can understand most of them. They’re zero-sum crimes; desire and greed and unfortunate passions are things we all have, and they’re not even wrong in themselves, only in how some folk handle them. Even the murderers – I’ve never hated anyone so much I couldn’t stand to share the universe with them a moment longer, but I can understand how someone might.

“What I’ve never been able to understand about these people — these are people who set out just to make the universe a little bit worse for their existence in it. Destroy or desecrate things just so that other people can’t enjoy them. Go out of their way to ruin someone’s day, or week, or decade, not as a side-effect, but as the point of their actions. Hurt and smash and wreck not for greed or other profit, not even for revenge upon their target, but just because they can, and it – I’d say it pleases them to do so, but it is hard to imagine real pleasure coming from such. These I do not understand, and it is hard to temper anger without understanding.

“And that’s dangerous for me. I’ve escorted people who have done much more damage to arraignment, but it’s these who make me think fondly of — unapproved uses for airlocks, before I quash it. And that they can make me think that, even for a moment, that makes me angriest of all.”

– Jynne Cerron, Enforcer, Watch Constabulary
Mer Dinévál Countermass Station, Seranth

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What’s the “Eleemosynary Exodochium?”

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“Hotel run for the purpose of doing good deeds”, I think would be the literal translation. Hereabouts, I think we might call it “emergency housing” or a “homeless shelter”

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Close. You didn’t quite fit the exo- in there. In the original, of course, it’s “xeno-”, but in the 'verse, we deprecate that prefix because of implications (“you’re not strangers, you’re friends we’ve only just met”) and, Doylistically, because of Warhammer.

I’d probably say “charitable hostel for visitors”, or words to that effect. Anyway, it’s the place that provides food, sleep, basic cornucopia services, and other help to distressed spacefarers on-station.

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Would it also, at least in the rougher sorts of places (particularly the edges of the Empire/border worlds), provide a secure place for someone fleeing something or someone (from escaped slaves to people fleeing abusive relationships or living arrangements to someone who’s pissed the wrong person or people off)?

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I would expect the Eldrae to provide sanctuary to any/all escaped slaves and people fleeing abusive relationships, on general principles of telling slavers where they can stick the idea that people are cargo.

I’m not so sure about them always providing sanctuary for those that have merely pissed off the wrong people. I mean, if you knowingly contracted and are in default, I don’t see the Eldrae being particularly willing to help. If someone is screwing with contract terms, however, I can see them telling the contractor to drop it or get a K-rod dropped on them.

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While that sort of thing may exist in places, that’s a more specialized service. Insofar as distressed spacefarer’s hostels aren’t generally built to handle the sort of unwelcome visitors who tend to come in shooting. (Also, if you’ve pissed the wrong person off, you should have planned better.)

Also, see below.

Ah, wouldn’t it be nice if.

Unfortunately, while the 'verse is an idealistic place, it’s only a Utopia where people work hard and continuously to make it so. (And, y’know, they do - you can hear Valëa Andreth bitterly lament the weight of the Pointy-Eared Man’s Burden over here, and yet she still gets up in the morning and does it, day in, day out.)

But, alas, the bitter truth of the universe is that just because someone’s oppressed doesn’t mean they aren’t also a bastard-coated bastard-filled bastard.

(You don’t exactly have to look far for historical examples, here. Classical Judaea was very oppressed by the mailed Roman fist, but it was a snake-pit of political infighting that had invented random mass stabbings because no-one had the tech to invent the splodydope. The principal reason the Balkans chafed under Ottoman rule was not taxation or even the devşirme, but rather that the Ottomans inconsiderately forced them to not murder each other by the bushel. And the freed slaves who founded Liberia, with direct experience of what the particularly brutal American form of plantation slavery looked like from the inside, immediately set out to capture their own African slaves and recreate essentially the exact same system, only this time with them holding the whips.

tl;dr - The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized ain’t just a good trope name.)

In the big picture, this forms one of the major reasons that the Empire isn’t more, ah, kinetic in general when it comes to overthrowing objectionable regimes - namely, that by time you’ve wiped out the regime that replaced the regime you wiped out that replaced the regime you wiped out that replaced…, etc., on repeated visits you get to find that you’ve got a mountain of skulls and precious little evidence that stacking it helped anybody . That’s why they go the slow way of cultural influence, applied memetics, and very subtle operations, because unless you can produce people well-suited to freedom, you can’t just give it to them and expect them to keep it.

In the small picture, this is why the Empire is not a signatory to the Accord on Refuge-Seeking Sophonts and never will be. They’ll shoot slavers and free slaves on general principle, yes, but they’re also aware that the critical dependency of Utopia is its population of Utopians, and as such they’re acutely uninterested in inviting all the personal and social dysfunctions of the part of universe outside this carefully constructed ring of spears inside, where they’d only shit up the place.

So, to sum up: a solution to your immediate problem? Yes. Sanctuary? Well, unless you can fulfil the usual immigration conditions, no. You get a complimentary steerage-class passage to any polity or freesoil world that will take you, or failing that, Márch.

On a side note, this is probably - well, look, it works fine for eldrae psychology, but for those of you with a more human mindset who already have trouble prosecuting domestic abuse because the victims don’t want to bring the weight of the law down on the perpetrator, consider how likely that anyone close to that mindset is to seek help from the people who feel that the proper judicial response to such things is scheduling a swift trial and execution on the rare occasions that sending out a guy with a mop does not suffice.

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(To further clarify that last one, I note that under many Earth systems, the victim of a crime can refuse to press charges - yes, lawyers, I know I’m oversimplifying hugely - or at the very least, refuse to cooperate with the prosecution of them.

Under the Imperial system, an assault, say, is not merely a matter between attacker and victim, it’s a breach of the Imperial peace and while the victim may be forgiving, the Curia, notoriously, is not, and the victim has no standing to pardon crimes against the Contract or the Charter. In short, it is not in the public interest that such things be allowed to pass.

And refusal to cooperate with the prosecution of them? That’s called misprision of felony, and unlike the common-law offense of that name, there are no exceptions for family members, self-incrimination, or anything else. Under the Responsibility of Common Defense, you have a duty to uphold the law that mere sentiment does not foreclose upon.

It’s rare that the victim of a crime actually finds themselves facing the penalties for misprision, but it’s not exactly unknown, either.)

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In a sense, Responsibility of Common Defense is like being called in front of a grand jury in the US.

You can do a lot of things, but if you’re called-you either appear or you’re in trouble for not appearing.