needshumility: (eye roll)
needshumility ([personal profile] needshumility) wrote2011-09-26 11:27 pm

1.1.01.01.037: sacrifices for the good of the collective.

You know, ever since that port, I've been thinking about Violet.



She's my fiancee. She's pregnant. I hate her. I don't even feel slightly guilty for consistently cheating on her whilst here with Jane. Because I love Jane. Not because of her nose - that's for people like Tommo. But because she gave me something nobody else could at home - the truth. Which is a very, very valuable thing. In a world where everyone is stupid as a matter of course, which I realised myself in a Chromogencia meeting, and even more so since being here. We're educated, by Rule, 'until we're sixteen, or know everything there is to know, whichever comes first'. Our most clear answer to any question is just 'I don't know'.

So I'm cheating on her. I just don't care. It won't last when I get home. I am forbidden to even associate with Jane when I get home. This, right here, is all I get, before I give my life to a woman I hate.


Violet. She's Purple. Her father is Head Prefect. But her family is quickly heading towards Blue. They needed a high perceiving Red to bring them back. As soon as she knew I was over 75%, she forced me against a wall and kissed me. Soon enough, her father and mine had come to an arrangement. A very expensive arrangement, but that's how the marriage market goes, right?

Her being pregnant was part of the deal, because, well, I was going on a dangerous mission the next morning and might turn up dead. It happens. Especially at High Saffron. They paint the walls with Greed there. That's the colour which causes the Mildew. It's nothing but dust and bones in places. The first thing I knew about the pregnancy half of the deal was when she turned up naked in my bedroom. They'd paid my dad extra for that.

Security, I suppose.

Never the less, I proposed to Jane. In High Saffron. My dad would have let it happen. He promised me, if I loved someone, I could marry them.

The Rules won't. She was 'discovered' to be a Green in her Ishihara - that's a colour perception test - and we were complimentary colours. I couldn't talk to her. Let alone marry her. I am in no doubt Violet's father bribed the Colourman. (Incidentally, I can run circles around the Colourman sometimes - and there's very few people here who remind me of him. Una's inmate, mostly.)

I almost don't want to go home. So I can keep doing youknow with Jane, so I don't have to marry someone I was sold to.

But that would be selfish. I have a greater service to the collective.

That is the sacrifice I will make for it. Having the woman I love.

Don't take it for granted. Never, ever take it for granted. Because not all of us have the freedom to love as we want.

All those things you can have, without thinking twice - books, love, science, the ability to see colour, the freedoms you have, the ability to trust without doubting it - some of us think are amazing. Some of us would be in absolute awe of. Are in absolute awe of.

And then it's so very disappointing when you don't entirely realise how precious that is.

[identity profile] thebestnose.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 10:39 am (UTC)(link)
I'm not talking to you about this right now.

We'll talk later.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 12:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Jane...

I don't understand why you're angry.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 12:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Except I don't want her damn child. The only person who didn't get a tauping choice in the matter was me.

I have to go back for a lot of reasons, but that - that is the one which makes me angry. I'm not selfish, but it would have been nice to be able to have the one choice in life I was actually promised.

And I used to think my dad was a good man - in the main, I still do, but I can't help but resent him for this.

Re: Private

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 12:48 pm (UTC)(link)
At least he had a way out.

The thought is appreciated, Chromie.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 12:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm sorry about your sister. It happens to most people in our world, but usually for monetary reasons, or to gain or maintain a position in the social hierarchy. I didn't think anything of it until I came here, and then I realised that just because it's common doesn't mean it's fair. Or that things were always that way.

We don't have a king. I'm not sure assassinating anyone, except Violet or the Colourman could change this.
darknessb4me: (right ok)

[personal profile] darknessb4me 2011-09-27 01:38 pm (UTC)(link)
What's the punishment for breaking the rules?

Killing Violet's not a bad idea, if you can stomach it. Probably not. It would be selfish.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 01:40 pm (UTC)(link)
Demerits. Lose enough and you get sent to Reboot.

It would be. And would ruin other plans. It's the other plans which keep me from doing anything about it.
darknessb4me: (heh)

[personal profile] darknessb4me 2011-09-27 01:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, good, you have other plans. I assume they're worth it.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 01:50 pm (UTC)(link)
They will be. They're bigger and better than assassinating a king.

I want to bring down National Colour from the inside. So I've got to marry Violet - becoming a Colourman should be a lot easier when you're a Head Prefect's husband.

I just wish I didn't have to choose.

[identity profile] thebestnose.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 02:22 pm (UTC)(link)
I know you don't. Later you will.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 02:23 pm (UTC)(link)
I see.

[Private

I got the Rulebook out, you know. Tried to write loopholes to fix it. Then tried to find enough to discredit the Colourman.

But you told me to stop, so I did.
darknessb4me: (right ok)

[personal profile] darknessb4me 2011-09-27 02:28 pm (UTC)(link)
I destroyed my entire country by assassinating the king. The government was essentially paralyzed after we also killed his cabinet of advisers.

So have an affair with her.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 02:44 pm (UTC)(link)
I... don't want to kill people where it isn't necessary. And I don't think our government works like that.

I intend to. But the price of getting caught is not just high for us, but for the whole plan.

[identity profile] betrayalswager.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 02:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Your world sounds quite... interesting.

[Actually, he thinks you're insane and babbling incoherently over the network, but he's willing to humor your ravings for the moment.]

Private

[identity profile] thebestnose.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 03:03 pm (UTC)(link)
[Sigh.] It's pointless. There are other things we need to spend our time doing.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 03:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Interesting is an odd way of putting it.

Re: Private

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 03:37 pm (UTC)(link)
It's not pointless when I love you.

[identity profile] betrayalswager.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 03:38 pm (UTC)(link)
You think so? It sounds completely different from any other period in history.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 03:41 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't know much about other periods in history - and what I do is from people here, and I can never tell how accurate that is - so it doesn't sound unusual to me where it might to you.

[identity profile] betrayalswager.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 03:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Of course. You've never known anything else. And yet, for all of that you do not speak like an uneducated man.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 04:02 pm (UTC)(link)
I had a tutor for a while.

But compared to most of you, I am pretty uneducated. We're taught to... abide by the Rules, be polite members of society - everything else I mostly learned myself since getting here.

I think... We were raised to be ignorant, not stupid.

[identity profile] betrayalswager.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 04:08 pm (UTC)(link)
In other words, you were raised in under a totalitarian regime.

Who controls the people? This.. 'Colourman', was it? What a strange appellation.

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 04:20 pm (UTC)(link)
...From my understanding of the word, yes.

The Rules control the people. The Colourman is... a representative of National Colour. They're, I suppose, the highest officials there can be. They decide who gets put on the Grid, make Univisual colours from scrap, perform Ishiharas and... numerous other things I can only guess at.

[identity profile] betrayalswager.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 04:27 pm (UTC)(link)
And you want to overthrow them.

It seems you and I share common interests. How do you intend to do it?

[identity profile] needshumility.livejournal.com 2011-09-27 04:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Me and Jane do, yes.

I intend to become a Colourman. Jane has other friends who will help her, and we have to find out as much as we can about the truth before we can stop it. That, so far, is the extent of our planning. That I know of.

It was Jane's idea first.

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