It's a Non-Rest Day
Scene 1: Sector G-3 – Non-Rest Day Seizures
Lieutenant Arista stood in the hallway outside Dormitory 1B, her arms crossed as the Helot inside was led out by two Enforcement cadets. The man didn’t resist. He didn’t even speak. He kept his eyes fixed on the floor as they marched him toward confinement.
“Caught mid-episode,” one cadet reported. “Game show variant. He tried to hide the tablet under the cot.”
Arista stepped inside the room. It smelled faintly of soup paste and skin. On the bunk, the tablet sat powered down, screen cracked at the corner. The confiscation tag blinked green.
She pocketed it without a word.
Then, from the ceiling above—a faint thump. Music.
She froze.
The melody was distant but unmistakable: a pulsing synth rhythm. Something bright, energetic… Morganite.
Arista turned sharply. “Upstairs. Now.”
They climbed quickly, boots echoing against ferrocrete.
At Dormitory 2C, she motioned for silence. The door was ajar.
Inside, three Helots moved in tandem, laughing—arms raised, hips turning with the beat. On a shelf beside them, the tablet glowed brightly, cycling through a music video: dancers in pink jackets, a celebrity host clapping along, message bubbles rising across the bottom.
Arista stepped in.
The music cut instantly.
All three froze.
“You know what day it is?” she asked.
No one answered.
“Confinement. All three.”
As they were escorted out, one of them—a woman with short-cropped hair—muttered, “It’s just a song.”
Arista didn’t respond.
She looked around the room. The furniture was basic. The floor clean. No signs of rebellion. Only a rhythm that had no business existing in a place built for duty.
She turned to the tablet. Before powering it down, she hesitated. A faint curiosity pricked at her.
The screen still showed a chat thread, half-minimized.
[GaiaUser045]: I still think Camila’s the best singer on Chiron. Morgan Core doesn’t appreciate real harmony.
[PK-Sunwatcher]: At least she’s better than that synth-thief from Morgan North. You guys see her new outfit?
[HelotG3-Milo]: Yeah lol. Way better than the last one. Even my dormmates liked it, and they don’t even watch these.
She frowned.
They were talking across faction lines. The usernames were stylized but clear—one from Gaia, one Peacekeeper, one from here. A Helot. Joking about fashion. Engaging in casual banter. Connected not by ideology, but by shared commentary on a Morganite celebrity.
She stared at the thread for a moment longer.
Then powered the tablet down.
For all we know, she thought, every Helot could be watching.
And we’d never know until the music starts.
Scene 2: Verity Media – Analytics Briefing Room
The lights were low. The screen glowed with a web of user engagement data—bright threads linking tablets in Spartan Helot sectors to Peacekeeper nodes, Gaian community ports, and Morganite network centers.
Juno Lorens stood in front of it, hands clasped behind her back. She looked calm, but the corners of her eyes showed the weight of recent analysis.
“Integration’s complete,” she said. “The latest tablet firmware has opened stable two-way messaging between users, faction-blind. They’re not just consuming content anymore. They’re talking. Reacting. Joining the feed.”
Director Senna leaned forward. “Helots? On the planetary grid?”
“Yes,” Juno replied. “Using official Verity Connect protocols. Active user clusters are now confirmed in Sectors F, G, and parts of B. Engagement spikes occur in the evenings—mostly after meals, on rest days. But there’s rising weekday spillover too.”
She tapped her wristpad. A quadrant lit up with transcripts.
“We sampled one thousand active Helot-side message threads. The most common themes?”
She let the bullet points populate behind her:
– Celebrity fashion
– Cooking/food share images
– Romantic subplots in serialized dramas
– Health advice
– Music reviews
– Curiosity about Gaian flora and Peacekeeper city design
– A few—very few—questions about outside news
“They’re not asking about politics,” she added. “They’re asking about life.”
Director Yin spoke next. “Is it just passive chat, or are they forming social bonds?”
“Early signals suggest nascent parasocial behavior,” Juno said. “They’re treating distant usernames like distant friends. Some threads span days. One Helot in Sector G-3 has been asking Gaian students for herbal cold remedies.”
Kaelin tilted her head. “So they’re building trust?”
“Yes,” Juno said. “Or at least familiarity.”
A pause.
Then Senna asked, “Can we give them more?”
The others looked at him.
“Helots are our most underdeveloped audience demographic,” he said flatly. “If they’re engaging, we should be segmenting. New content blocks. Targeted feeds. Maybe even factions-tailored drama arcs.”
Yin raised an eyebrow. “You want a Helot reality show?”
Senna shrugged. “Why not? We’ve cracked the wall. Now it’s time to build the bridge.”
Juno glanced at the data again, her voice quieter now—more to herself than the room.
“Are we just building bridges… or are we doing something bigger?”
Scene 3: Dormitory Window – Jalen
Jalen stood beside the dormitory window, one hand resting on the frame, the other holding a chipped enamel mug filled with lukewarm soy tea. Outside, three of his friends were being led across the wet pavement by Enforcement cadets. They walked in a line, hands behind their backs, heads down—not in shame, but in a sort of practiced acceptance. The march to confinement was not violent. Just quiet.
A moment earlier, he might have been among them.
The warning had come from Miro—an old friend from Floor C—who'd seen the first arrest and pinged their shared chat group with a single word: “Now.” Everyone in the lounge had frozen. No questions. No debate. Just quiet fingers tapping ‘power off’ and setting tablets aside like hot plates. By the time Arista’s team reached their door, the lights were dimmed, the floor silent, and no sign of anything out of order remained.
Jalen sipped his tea, eyes lingering on the way his friends’ boots scuffed puddles as they walked.
It wasn’t anger that curled through his thoughts. It wasn’t even fear.
It was... wonder.
He still showed up for duty on time. Still completed his sanitation analysis reports. Still logged full productivity ratings from the hydroponics supervisor. No quotas were missed. No safety protocols ignored.
He turned from the window and looked at the turned-off tablet sitting on the shelf above his bunk. The black screen reflected the ambient room light like a quiet eye. That morning, he'd been watching a trivia segment where contestants answered questions about pre-Unification animal species. The host was hilarious—light, animated, always smiling—and the reward wasn't even real prizes, just fan badges and digital applause.
It wasn't sedition. It was joy.
And not the kind that interfered with work. It came after work. After everything else was done.
He sat on his bunk slowly, the tea warming his hands.
He'd seen messages from viewers in Gaia and Peacekeeper towns, from Morganite neighborhoods where people streamed whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Some watched game shows at lunch. Some while working out. Some as they fell asleep.
Here, the rules were different. Here, they rationed joy like oxygen.
He didn’t question the rules. Not really. But a quiet part of him—just a thread—began to wonder why.
Scene 4: Lieutenant Arista – Netizen “LyraShade”
Lieutenant Arista adjusted the brightness on the confiscated tablet, lowering it to 35% to reduce eye fatigue. The device’s recycled casing still bore a sticker that read “Smile More – Life Is Short.” She’d left it on.
The screen lit up with the default Verity Connect interface: a glimmering welcome panel, user feeds, trending tags, and regional chat spaces.
She had created a user profile under the alias LyraShade, listed as a Gaian medical student “on exchange rotation.” Her avatar featured a nondescript silhouette with lavender background and a leafy vine border—nothing too flashy, but not Spartan-sparse either. Just enough to pass.
The global chat opened with a flood of messages:
[Gaia-Rae73]: Ugh these Peacekeeper cooking shows are so dramatic lol
[PK_Arun17]: At least they have real spice. Morgan vids are just product placement in disguise.
[HelotG3-Talin]: Guys it’s stew night again! No fake pepper this time!!
[MorganPulse44]: Wait are you the Talin from that clip with the spilled algae noodles?
Arista watched quietly, letting the messages scroll.
This wasn’t surveillance in the traditional sense—there were no tactical maps, no flag lists, no keyword triggers. But it was surveillance in another way: psychological profiling, behavioral timing, tone. From what she could already see, the Helots were not organizing anything. They were… relaxing. Sharing food pictures. Complaining about bad dorm lighting. Arguing about singers and outfits.
Still, there were patterns worth watching.
She typed slowly:
[LyraShade]: Do you guys usually hang out here after shifts? Just curious, I’m new.
[HelotG2-Nessa]: Only on rest days. Or when Enforcement isn’t being weird.
[HelotG4-Tek]: Or when the pipes are broken and no one’s checking. lol
Arista narrowed her eyes slightly. That comment—“Or when no one’s checking”—was the kind of quiet flag she was looking for.
She opened another window and began cataloging user handles that mentioned watching on weekdays, or used coded language like “before curfew” or “ghost hour.”
But something else pulled at her: the rhythm of it. The naturalness. The way the Helots typed just like any other faction’s youth. The same slang. The same emojis. The same back-and-forth over nothing.
In a way, it was almost worse than sedition.
Because it wasn't rebellion.
It was belonging—but not to Spartan society, but to something bigger.
She saved the user list and closed the chat. Then paused.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard a moment longer before typing:
[LyraShade]: What’s your favorite show? I want to catch up.
And pressed send.
i’ve been borrowing a friend’s just to log in, but i’ve got two more months left in this exchange rotation and i can’t keep asking her forever
water lab rotation. lots of pipework and humidity. miss the tree canopies tbh
