[Can't Opt Out]

Arc F1.7 | Chapter 22: Why Call Attention To Things Better Left Unacknowledged?

“Of course I won’t be mad,” Halen breathed into Codeth’s mind and while he had already suspected his friend would say as much, Codeth still felt his heart unclench because he had been worried—had been concerned that Halen would be upset that he would choose to bypass Emilia in favour of seeking out Mikhail.It wasn’t that Codeth didn’t care for Emilia—didn’t know that if something happened to her, so many of his friends would fall apart. Halen would become a shell, he was sure—fuck, just these past few months had been bad enough, Halen wandering through the world in some mixture of passion and ghostliness. A part of him had died the day they graduated, the reality that he wouldn’t see Emilia every day weighing on him. Still, there had been the possibility of Halen running into her around town, and despite how strained things were between his friend and his parents—who very much didn’t approve of Halen not taking a proper gap decade—Halen had spent a lot of time around their house.

He had an apartment in Roasalia, of course, sparsely decorated because he was rarely there, instead spending nights in his childhood bedroom or at his office or wherever Codeth was spending the night. For those first few weeks, however, Halen had forced himself to work from within the strain of his parents’ domain, had forced himself to tolerate his parents’ nagging, all so he could catch a glance of Emilia as she bounced through town.

Then, she was gone—off to Yurndale to court Olivier de la Rue as her lawyer and another piece of Halen had vanished with her.

“I might… I might never see her again,” Halen has whispered one night, after Codeth had managed to get the fact that Emilia had sequestered herself into the clone dorms in Roasalia out of Darrian—it wasn’t hard information to get, Darrian too much of a sweetheart to ever deny Codeth such information; mostly, it had been hard to get him alone! Simeon or Janie also would have told him, had he been able to get to them. Simeon’s parents were horrible shit stains, and Codeth had no desire to go near their house unless absolutely necessary, while Janie had been gone on vacation until just last week.

Was messaging someone an option? Yes. Had he only realized he could have messaged someone to ask where Emilia had gone after tracking Darrian down? Also, yes—there had been a lot of alcohol and drugs during those first few days of Halen’s depressive spiral, okay!? Realistically, Codeth had realized once they’d finally sobered up that he probably could have asked Emilia herself where she’d gone. Intoxication was not conducive to having sensible thoughts.

Regardless, Halen had been sadder since Emilia left, and probably the only reason Codeth hadn’t up and left the entire city—much to his grandfather’s growing annoyance, as the old man had barely tolerated him to begin with—was so he could let Halen know when Emilia occasionally returned.

All so his friend could see her, if only for a moment.

Lovesick idiot—so much of an idiot that, the last time Halen had managed to sneak a glance at her last month, Codeth had needed to talk him down from pranking her.

Pranking each other, Codeth knew, was their love language. Bullying each other was as well, he thought—and aether help them if they did get together and procreated. Fuck if any children they raised wouldn’t be little disaster gremlins… or so straightlaced their parents wouldn’t know what to do with them and—

And Codeth tripped.

Very nice.

Not embarrassing at all.

Luckily, he didn’t go flying, nor did Vantril, her arms wrapped around his neck as her legs squeezed his waist.

“Are you okay?” she asked, not for the first time. Despite her being all long, lanky limbs and weighing maybe 120lbs soaking wet, the Drinarna intern seemed rather concerned that he wouldn’t be able to support her weight. It was fine. Codeth was just a klutz with too vivid an imagination.

“Yes, I just had a…” He cut off, trying to think of the right way to describe what had passed through his mind, his Censor struggling to find a proper translation because there was also that: he didn’t speak Lüshanian fluently, and while his Censor was translating well enough for him, it had been far more helpful when with the rest of their drop group who were much better with languages than he was.

Codeth tried to explain himself as he raced through the curving streets, Vantril having informed him that while this section wouldn’t allow him to microspark it would lead to the same tunnel system Emilia had originally used to get through the city, which tended to be a lot straighter. As the entrances also tended to be within buildings—businesses, mostly—they had decided not to risk trying to get into the tunnels with their huge group; they would have attracted far too much attention. Him and Vantril alone? In no world could Codeth pass for a Lüshanian, but with an intern who did look Lüshanian?

Well, with them alone, Codeth was willing to fabricate himself one of the Drinarna uniforms Halen had added to their library and use a short illusion to make himself look Lüshanian—as well as a bit older—for a moment.

Vantril would do the talking and pushing to get them into the business—every business they passed was shuttered—and then they’d just hope that no one noticed his illusion or questioned them too much.

“That sounds like a vision from the aether?” Vantril said, using a word that Codeth’s Censor didn’t recognize but that a short discussion between them eventually revealed the meaning to be a vision from the aether.

“Do Lüshanians believe in the will of the aether?” he asked, hoping to all the aether that the momentary vision that had filled his mind, of Emilia and Halen with a small silverstrain child, wasn’t real—they’d only been a few years older and the child had looked old enough that they would need to be conceived, like, now, which was way too soon for any maybe-coming relationship they currently had, and would be considered way too young for a Baalphorian to have a child. Emilia was sometimes insane, but even Codeth couldn’t see her popping out a child until she was done with university and settled into a career… or twenty. The girl had no idea what she wanted to do, and it wouldn't surprise him if she spent the rest of her life bouncing between careers as her interest swayed this way and that.

They’d looked cute, at least—happy. Also, the kid’s eyes had been odd. That more than anything else was what seemed strange about the vision—the flicker of his imagination—because in what world would he imagine a child belonging to Emilia and Halen who had colouring somewhere between their own—silver hair and deep brown skin, although it had held far more tones of red than Halen’s—and features that leaned into Emilia’s, but eyes that belonged to neither of them? They were purple, yes—all silverstrains’ were—but a strange purple, and aside from the picture Emilia had sent of the lavender code girl, Candence, who was also a silverstrain, Codeth had never seen those sparks of silver that all silverstrain eyes possessed held within orbs that weren’t a soft purple.

Maybe, his mind had conjured up those odd eyes simply because he’d seen the picture of Candence, with the deeper purple eyes of a lavender code, shot through with silver. Now, knowing that such fascinating eyes were possible, he was seeing Emilia and Halen as parents of a child with eyes that were different—with eyes that were a cascade of pinks and purples, glittering with silver stars.

So, soooo weird.

“It’s not a super common belief—at least, that’s what people assume, anyways. It’s a bit hard to tell?” Vantril explained. As they had a ways to go and little to talk about, the talkative girl broke the various beliefs of the locals down for him.

Baylor had already babbled about the various ethnic groups of the nation on their way to Lüshan, telling them all the myths and stories he knew about the small groups and cultures that existed within the nation. While all nations had dozens of smaller subgroups, Lüshan’s culture had created more of a divide between those groups than most, while also pushing many of their cultural groups underground, so to speak.

In Baalphoria, there were the communities that popped up around Sub-30, Sub-50, and Ex-300 families, but together, they didn’t make up much of the population—maybe 10% or 15% lived within such solid communities, although the lack of transparency among Sub-50s kept the government from being able to make a proper estimate on their own population size. When it came to the rest of the population of mainland Baalphoria, though? Outside of those specific communities, if one excluded the various diasporas who struggled to integrate with real Baalphorians due to purism, there wasn’t that much of a culture divide between their citizens.

Sure, various regions had their specific cultures, stereotypes, prejudices. In general, the identity of Baalphorian transcended those lines, blurring culture until they were, largely, one homogeneous culture with slight variations that were rarely seen as strange or weird or wrong by those who didn’t follow a given custom. There was a reason some nations referred to Baalphoria has being beholden to the cult of the Censor: very little connected or disconnected them on a macro level.

If the majority of Baalphorians—which, within this context, generally included anyone whose family had lived in their nation for a few generations—were overall accepting of the various beliefs and customs of other Baalphorians, Lüshan was at the opposite end of the spectrum. While the nation did seem to have numerous, smaller ethic groups, there was apparently a history of the nation trying and failing to integrate immigrants and refugees into itself. The government had at times forbidden those who of less common ethnicities from marrying, instead encouraging them to marry ethnic Lüshanians and leave their traditional culture behind.

As the government controlled the schools, they had been able to separate members of those ethnic minority groups, effectively forcing them to interact only with ethnic Lüshanians and other ethnic groups. While it wasn’t impossible to start a relationship with someone from a different school, it was frowned upon. People in relationships were usually allowed to intern in the same places—making break-ups messy—and once Lüshanians were out of school, it was rare for them to move cities. This meant that the schools and government could continue keeping minority groups from becoming too numerous within a single city in hopes of integrating them into the majority culture.

“The last few governments haven’t been as militant about this, but some of the schools still have unofficial quotas for minority students, ‘so they don’t get so many at their school that they form their own group of more generic outsiders’—or something like that,” Vantril added to her explanation, her body tense against Codeth’s back and at least he wasn’t awkwardly realizing he was with someone who was okay with that sort of forced assimilation.

Was Baalphoria also terrible to its minority groups? Absolutely. For the last few hundred years, they had tended towards exclusionary behaviour, however, and if it was between excluding those who were different, and thereby never allowing them to become anything but the other, and effectively forcing a culture to vanish… Well, as he wasn’t directly affected by such policies, Codeth wasn’t about to speak in absolutes, but he had a feeling the former was better.

Also, the latter had failed miserably in Lüshan—just as whatever attempts at assimilation Baalphoria had made through the effective demand that all citizens use Censors had—hence the complicated nature of beliefs in the will of the aether in Lüshan.

“It’s not as easy as encouraging intercultural marriage to erase beliefs? They’ve done studies, and a lot of the people who felt forced to marry outside their ethnic group either married someone who was accepting of their desire to keep their beliefs going, or they kept practicing them in secret. From there, they handed them down to their kids—and those kids were often still considered ethnic minorities. There was this whole equation the government had, a few generations ago, for figuring out if a child was ‘Lüshanian enough.’ Those don’t officially exist anymore—at least partially because they were so ineffective, forcing beliefs and culture underground, rather than getting rid of it the way those governments actually wanted.”

“Why do you know all this?” Codeth asked as he slowed his steps and ducked into the alleyway Vantril directed him to, so he could fabricate himself a uniform and get changed… and then deal with the unfortunate job of making himself look like a Lüshanian—an incredibly awkward thing to do at the best of times, pretending to be a different ethnicity, and even more awkward given their topic of conversation!

“Should I not?” the intern asked as she hoped off his back. One hand planted on her small hips as she glared up at him, her dark braids swaying with the movement.

“No, I was just under the impression that Lüshan’s schools are really focused—like, they only teach things that are directly relevant to their students. So, if you know this much, either you were taught it in school, meaning it's relevant to being a Drini, or someone you know thought it was good information to have,” he replied. After a moment of hesitation, he decided to go with Emilia’s suggested recon route: running a million different skills and letting the feedback layer over itself—it wouldn’t do to start getting naked and then realize they were about to be attacked!

“Part of it,” she said, poking her head out of the alleyway when something exploded—it was far enough away that it wasn’t relevant to them, but as he pulled the uniform from the aether, Codeth still watched the explosion through his Censor, making sure it wasn’t going to set the city alight, at the very least—“is that while there are still people who want a single culture within Lüshan, the intermixing of cultures led to most people being or knowing someone of mixed heritage. So, that singular culture is a dying belief, but it’s also one of those lingering beliefs that could lead to… well, a situation like this? Where a faction that wants a return to ‘the good old days’ rises? It’s good to know such beliefs exist, especially as we’re likely to come across people who believe things like that while we work.”

“Both in the public and other officers?”

“Yeah. It’s especially good to know if we’re someone who looks like a minority group or we’re partnered with someone who does.”

Codeth… hadn’t really considered that. While there were certainly traits that set Baalphorians apart from other ethnic groups, they were a largely multi-racial nation, and there really wasn’t some firmly defined ethnic Baalphorian as a result. It was, for instance, virtually impossible to tell a white Baalphorian apart from a white Lu Rosian if they were laid bare, without clothing or hairstyle to indicate their nationality. Even when it came to Halen, who was more obviously of Grey Sander descent, many of the racial group’s more telling features could be found in a number of southern nations. At the same time, there were other members of the Grey Sander diaspora who had become so engrained into Baalphorian culture that no one but the worst of purists wouldn’t accept that they were now Baalphorian because their nation had spent thousands of years of, well, being colonialist terrors.

Once, their nation had been similar to Lüshan in that it sucked those it conquered into it with brutality—far more brutality than this sort of encouraged intermarriage, to be sure. The result was a huge mix of skin tones and features, only claims of culture through clothing and customs—not to mention accents and broken Baalphorian—tending to out them as not Baalphorian.

Mostly, as Vantril added on that the other reason they were taught such things was because they might run into some beliefs that virtually no one had any understanding of, due to how much they had shifted within single family unit as underground beliefs, Codeth wondered if the reason Lüshan had let its efforts to assimilate all minorities into the collective identity of whatever the government decided a proper Lüshanian was wasn’t because their efforts had failed; instead, it was possible that Baalphoria had pressured them to drop it.

After all, when was the last time he had thought of Baalphoria’s brutal past, or contrasted their treatment of their minority groups with another nation? Many nations were considered more like Baalphoria, possessing a majority group and a handful of small ones, all vanished into the edges of society. More were somewhere in the middle, being accepting enough of the various cultures in their midst. Lüshan, with its history of accepting refugees—because they hated their neighbours, mostly, and were always looking for ways to fuck them over, and what better way than to give those fleeing their enemies refuge?—had more minority ethnic groups than most, and it was impossible not to look at their attempts of assimilation and not see Baalphoria’s past reflected through a cracked mirror.

Perhaps, in the days when Baalphoria and Lüshan had first begun forging an alliance, Baalphoria hadn’t wanted to call attention to the similarities between Lüshan’s then-present and their own brutal past.

Baalphoria, if it was good at anything, was excellent at convincing its citizens that nothing bad had ever happened. Everyone was happy and had always been happy. There were no problems. Everything was great and had always been great.

Maintaining that illusion, however, required effort—required censorship and never allowing attention to be drawn to their past evils.

Head cocking as he turned to Vantril, unsure of how to do up the complicated buttons of the Drinarna’s deep grey uniforms—colours that would denote him as the superior of their pairing, unfortunately—Codeth had to wonder, how many evils was his government currently enacting on the world, only getting away with it because they had millennia of experience in controlling the narrative?

It made it interesting, then, that they were so willing to go against Emilia—after all, they were definitely calling attention to a terrible law and for what purpose?

Was making Emilia disappear into a decade of house arrest or forcing her to vanish into the Free Colonies really important enough to risk shattering the illusion that Baalphoria had made of itself?