Entry 82. Backlash

Entry 82. Backlash

Badiah Sinclair was quick to attempt to mollify the public outrage. I was surprised at how unwilling people had become to trust the great hero of Sirius 4.

In his address to the planet, he made the same arguments he had been making all along.

“I had no choice.”

“Like hell!” people barked back at the screen.

“ImagCorp intended to defend its business, and we were forced to comply with their demands.”

“Like hell!” people scrawled on walls and pavement.

“We could no longer allow Imaginary Structures to continue operations without concessions to ImagCorp.

“Like hell!” people roared in the streets.

And another phrase began to work its way into the public consciousness.

People receiving tax bills began to respond not with payment but with, “I choose not to participate.”

Building inspectors who visited construction sites were met not with a properly filed building permit but with, “I choose not to participate.”

Even marriages were performed without a license. More than one officiant who asked, “Well, shall we sign the license now?” was greeted with, “We chose not to participate.”

None of the speeches I had given about nonviolent noncooperation was as effective in convincing people as Badiah Sinclair’s violent cooperation with ImagCorp. Others took to the streets, but with gentle words, not implements of destruction. Most remarkable to me as I reflected in my cell: No one at Imaginary Structures had met fire with fire. Of 6,500 people in that crowd, surely some of them had brought their personal weapons to the scene. None fired back at the security officers.

As word spread beyond Sirius 4 about the incident at Ganges Pass, so did the outrage, and it soon became apparent that Sirians were not the first to wonder why ImagCorp still needed to license its basic technology 200 years after developing it.

Because ImagCorp left Badi Sinclair twisting in the wind.

“Like the people of Sirius 4, we condemn violence,” read the official statement from ImagCorp. “If Sirius 4 and Imaginary Structures Inc. wanted exemptions to our licensing program, all they had to do was ask. Those exemptions are hereby granted.”

I am tempted to write, “It was that easy.” But there is nothing easy about the sacrifice of 35 souls.