Popular Front - FI – Cold Spell

When do you stop waiting for help to come?

At the turn of the century, the Organic economy was dependent on the state-owned conglomerate Klorieka.

Many have tried to capture what it meant to the Organ. A beloved institution. A symbol of a bygone era, or one still yet to arrive. Few have succeeded.

But to the outside world, Klorieka was an immoral hydra. A case study in what happens when commercialism meets a holonist monopoly.

Water was a public utility, of course. Thought best left to the state. But canned water could be monopolized. Exported abroad. Rebranded and sold at breathtaking mark-ups to health-conscious urbanites, or 'donated' to disaster-stricken communities, so long as governments forked over aid funding. It cleansed your spirit. Kept the chemicals in your tap far from you. Paired with Klorieka-branded formula, it was just as good as—better than—breastfeeding.

The practices of Klorieka were many things, but they were, above all else, unsustainable. Their campaigns in impoverished regions inflamed anti-government sentiments amongst rural populaces. The cost of conspiracy-based marketing wasn't obvious, until all at once it was. If you can't trust what's coming out of your tap, a frightening paranoia consumes you. It's only natural that you'd lash out. Bomb water treatment facilities. Assassinate public utilities commissioners. Needless to say, the nations of the New World were hardly thrilled with the fruits of Klorieka's marketing.

Within a year, the IRVINE Intermundane Code of Marketing Standards was put to a vote before LUNA member-states, with Umikut'a casting the only vote against its adoption. Subsequent international boycotts resulted in Klorieka shedding roughly a fourth of its workforce in the years that followed. Decades on, older generations remain hostile to IRVINE, blaming it, and the LUNA by extension, for placing Klorieka and the broader economy of the Organ on a path toward disaster.

Just when the dust seemed to be settling, Newton Lake was contaminated with industrial herbicide. Klorieka's management assumed the Organ would bail them out. They had too many tendrils throughout the country. A web of contractors and sub-contractors. Whole industries existed solely to supply Klorieka hyper-specific parts and chemicals. 'Too big to fail' was thrown around.

The Organ refused. Kept the purse clasped tight. Klorieka folded in less than three months.

That all was a long time ago.

Go to a bar in any sleepy town in the south, and you'll find folk who never got back up. Canners without a cannery. Machinists trained on equipment that hasn't operated in a decade. Through the drinks and tobacco, they'll mumble about how things played out. How it wasn't right, wasn't fair. How their family had worked for Klorieka for generations.

In their youth that meant something. Loyalty was meant to be rewarded. New autos with crisp leather interiors. Big-screened televisors.

If you wanted a half-decent life, you joined the gendarmerie, or went to work at Klorieka. Anything else and you didn't have the right to complain. Should've made better decisions.

When the rug got pulled out from under them, they weren't exactly gendarme material. Too old. Too strong-headed. Too pudgy.

They don't seem to remember the exact reason why Klorieka came apart. It's distant, blurred by nostalgia and bitterness. To them, they were punished by capital-g Government. Not ours, not any specific one, really. The concept on its own had sprouted legs, then took a tire iron to their lives. Suppose that's why all they talk about now are their fantasies. They dream of blood, guts, and anarchy. Raging against the world they believed they were entitled to.

Tasusuni's barflies do little more than complain and dream.

Whatever it is that they'll go on to achieve isn't clear. Maybe nothing will come of their discontent. Maybe nothing is meant to.

The bartender's the main attraction. Maybe half the age of the average patron. Still has that unease of someone who's only recently graduated into adulthood. He's about as quiet as the streets outside. Maybe slightly more so.

Someone's with him. A familiar stranger. He came to town ill-equipped for the weather. Packed more questions than layers. Bartender's unusually animated with him, even if the two are speaking in hushed whispers. It's rare to see the flywheels and gears of a rumor mill churn, but there it is on full display.

By the night's end, they'll shoo away the last regulars still avoiding empty homes and emptier beds, then close up. They'll walk and talk, teeth chattering as they brave the sharp chill outside.

The bartender lives just across the intersection, contrary to what a certain student film made people believe. He laughs at the thought. It'd be nice to own a trailer, wouldn't it? But he was born a renter, and will surely die one just the same. Come to think of it, there's a screening of that film this weekend at some ritzy festival in Maris. Or was it last weekend? He doesn't track the days anymore. Too much of a hassle.

A reinforced metal door claps shut behind them, their chatter replaced by the dull droning of aging sodium lamps.