Allie's War Episodes 1-4(87)

The Seven’s Guard kept regular passengers and crew out of our part of the ship, which also meant seers performed all housekeeping and food delivery. They stripped one of the larger rooms of furniture to make an exercise arena where Eliah could train me in sparring, too. The sparring itself was damned hard—seers had faster reflexes, better hearing and vision, more intolerance to pain because they could detach their light from their physical bodies, and they mixed sight skills in with their physical fighting.
So basically, no matter how much I absorbed, I earned new bruises daily.
Revik taught me “normal” things, too.
Before I was fully awake that morning, he sat on the end of the bed, explaining semi-organic machines to me, and the basics on how they worked. Laying Barrier images over virtual, he also showed me the primary theoretical models or “breeds” of living machine. He explained how they arose from Barrier experiments by seers during that brief period of integration with humans in the early twentieth century, and how seers were banned from scientific research in the forties partly because a handful of renegade seers took to “persuading” the more intelligent organics to turn on their human masters.
He said Syrimne basically invented the wires, too, while experimenting with ways to both enhance and control seer powers using organics and semi-organics.
I’d never heard that version of history before, either.
Some of what Revik taught me was blatantly illegal.
Like how to break keypads and access locked computer networks, pulling passwords and bypassing firewalls with my sight. How to avoid racial tagging systems and blood monitors as well as closed-circuit cameras and other security surveillance. How and when to push humans into giving me things I needed. How to feel facial recognition software and other external scans with my aleimi, and how to fool a DNA, fingerprint or iris scanner into a false positive for human, or a false negative on an ID by my DNA, if I was wanted by SCARB or Interpol.
Others were relatively benign.
Like how to greet strange seers and the rules on asking other seers for help. Legal loopholes such as when and how to claim clan status to avoid certain searches and seizures. Etiquette in seer temples and homes. How to act towards older seers, especially family members or any other category of seer to whom respect or deference was owed.
Revik informed me I would get a new identity and a clan tattoo once we made it to Asia. The Seven would reclassify a dead seer with my stats, and presto...Alyson May Taylor would cease to exist.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
Revik further explained how I could claim proportional citizenship if they set me up with a human sponsor. Meaning, if I gave up some rights of movement and association, including sexual rights, depending on the contract, I would get limited citizenship rights proportionally related to the contractual agreements with whomever I worked.
“Your world is terrifying,” I told him.
“We didn’t make it so,” was his response. He paused then, thinking. “Well. Mostly.”
He went on to explain that contractual citizenship was just one way humans pressured seers to work for the military and in other quasi-legal occupations. Civilian contracts could only grant rudimentary rights...rights which generally didn’t include travel or association beyond specified categories...”entertainment,” including prostitution, being one of those most easily granted.
The military offered, among other things, nearly unlimited freedom of movement when not on the job, coupled with moderate rights of association without the need to sell sex.
Not surprisingly, a big market for seer contracts also existed in organized crime syndicates. But, Revik noted wryly, the life spans of those seers tended to be shorter, and Rooks dominated that market almost exclusively. Even the mafia didn’t make a habit of killing seers indiscriminately, however; trained seers with high sight-ranks were far too valuable.
Seer mafias existed as well, according to Revik, mainly dealing in seer children and organic material, including blood.
I got flickers as he spoke, glimpses of Asian seers on donkeys, leading dirty, barefoot children with dark eyes across the snow, metal collars around their necks like those I’d seen on the prostitutes and other owned seers in San Francisco.
He’d also mentioned casually,
...Even if you are able to legally change identity, you should know that Sark females like you are not legally sentient to the seers, either. If your race were made public by the Council, I would officially be your owner. And if I forbid it, you cannot consent.
We’d been eating on the balcony, and he paused at this, taking a bite of apple as he waved his hand vaguely.