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A weathered public kiosk with a cracked screen, a camera above it and a palm reader below

Obj-CST/09

Compliance scoring terminal

A kiosk that watches behaviour and withholds services accordingly. Recovered intact, which tells you how much anyone wanted it.

Recovered

A public kiosk. It reads a biometric ID, consults the Obedience Index, and decides what you may have today.

This one was recovered intact and unvandalised from a district where almost nothing else survived. The catalogue notes that as a finding rather than a convenience. Statues of heroes were pulled down within weeks of the Disclosures. The terminals stayed up, because the terminals were still issuing rations.

You do not smash the thing that feeds you, even when it is also the thing counting you.

Filed with

  • The Obedience Index: The score that decides privileges, mobility rights and employment. Aasma's was never assigned, which is either an oversight or the only piece of luck in her file.
  • P.A.I.: The name is the joke. It implies public access; in practice it governs the public while remaining entirely inaccessible to them.