Forty Days of Flash Fic: Day Twenty-Four (Warning: Potential Triggers)

Another piece set in the "For Your Safety" universe. Due to the fact that this and the next couple of days might be triggery to folks with body image issues, I'm putting them behind a cut this time.

( She'd always been a Big Girl )

More "For Your Safety" Notes

As mentioned in the previous note, a typical Processing Center running 24 hours a day can be filled to capacity in a little over two years. Which meant some queuing up was in order.

The Groupmind quickly came to the realization that its original plan of attempting to hold the UnProcessed in existing urban centers was going to be security nightmare, so it instead created a series of Relaxation and Waiting Centers in the vicinity of the underground Processing and Storage Centers to handle to waiting masses. Which meant that in the midst of the greatest de-civilization in history, the greatest urban construction in history was going on at the same time. The irony was not lost on the Groupmind's sense of humor.

Each R&W Center was built to hold ten million people, on a standardized urban plan. A downtown area with shops and entertainment areas was built, surrounded by a series of low rise, comfortable condominiums to house families and individuals, averaging five hundred people each. Surrounding all of this was a triple layer of security fences, the inner most of which was a thick, whitewashed concrete wall, tall enough to hide the outer fences. The latter of which most notable did not have razor wire or electrification. The Groupmind had no intention of risking hurt to anyone trying to escape. The triple redundancy was mostly to slow escapees down while Civil Protection units moved in to gently herd them back to their homes.

Interior security was handled by morphs in civilian Civil Protection uniforms appropriate to the former nation state that was being occupied, bearing no arms more violent than tangle grenade launchers. This was backed up by a series of CCTV cameras both inside and outside all public and private areas that would have made the operators of The Prisoner's iconic Village green with envy.

TBC

My tweets

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• Fri, 04:19: Forty Days of Flash Fic: Day Twenty-Four (Warning: Potential Triggers) http://t.co/YF6r31DL
• Fri, 05:34: More "For Your Safety" Notes http://t.co/lr0dXzuU

My Key Chain Thing Broke

I'm not exactly sure what you would call it. It was a circle of leather about three and half inches across that I was given in art class when I about eight years old I think. My art teacher punched out the hole at the top, then I used a hammer and some letters to press "R DAY" with a star underneath, and some patterning along the edges, so everyone would know that this was MY key chain. Then I dyed it light brown, waited it to dry out and hung my keys off it for the next thirty-five years. Over the years the leather got worn down and also got soaked and dried so many times it was dark and cracked all over so you couldn't really see the letters anymore, but I kept it just because with that big leather disk hanging off it, there was no way I'd ever really lose my keys.

Until yesterday that is, when the leather broke at the hole where the keyring was inserted, while I was pulling it out of my pocket to unlock the mailbox. There's no real point in trying to punch a new hole for it, and it can't be repaired, so I'm going to have to either throw it out, or find a place of honor for it in my junk drawer.

Salutes.