Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

Part III. Maia's Star

The family of Pax Oniri wants Maia to resign, and they want Constellation to admit the Story treatments aren't working, aren't enough.

"A biased officer can't be fixed. She's like a rabid pet."

Oh, so they're allowed to insult her, but when she called their son a demon, a predator, nothing but another male lawbreaker, they documented it for the civil suit.

Maia takes her fourth Story pill and watches another man go down, this one a shorter guy. So manipulative. Was the point to say, not all men are big? Some are small? Like a foot in the door to empathy, how about you give this little guy a shot?

The family of Pax Oniri protested outside every day and every morning Maia walks past their signs, head held high. They shout, "Empathy training doesn't work. It isn't enough, stop using deadly weapons on our sons!" To the first, Maia couldn't agree more. Empathy training doesn't work. To the second, they were delusional if they thought she was going to be able to do her job without a weapon. They were insane if they thought she was going to die for a criminal to live.

"Stealing shouldn't have a death sentence!" yelled Pax's girlfriend, Aurora. Ex-girlfriend now.

"Why did he have to die? For stealing? " yelled Pax's sister Dawn.

The morning after her fifth immersive Story, when she walks past, the family's demand has evolved: "You can remove an officer's gnomon's capability to shoot to kill unless responding to a deadly threat," says Pax's mama, Destiny Oniri.

Going inside, Maia walks straight back to the Capo's office to find Capo Amazulu seriously talking about it.

Speaking into a link call, she says, "If empathy training doesn't work, we should consider having certain officers with weapons capability, and certain officers on support duty, unarmed. Gnomons tiered for link teleportation and other capabilities, but no deadly force. Can we set a gnomon to stun?"

When Capo Amazulu hangs up, Maia needs to have her say. "That's not necessary, the empathy training is working," she lies.

On her way home after the next treatment, Maia buys Story from a drug dealer. It's almost like she doesn't know she's doing it until it's done. She was going to book the guy, even off duty. He looked so sketchy, he had drug dealer written all over him, so she went over. And her hands go to her wallet and the next thing she knows she's buying.

What are you doing? she asks herself. It's been such a hard day, though. Most nights her self-medicating involves three hours of non-stop link shows, link movies, streaming episode after episode to block out the day and destress. Escape into someone else's stress.

It's not enough anymore. There's this one shows that almost still does the trick. Almost. She fell in love with the female lead on day one, the first episode, a character named Alma Satiri who's a powerful filmmaker played by Suara River. A fighter, though it may seem like a strange setup for an action show — she came from nothing and everyone tried to shut her out of the industry, just like what happened to the movie star Suara River until she got her big break in Stars and Stopped Clocks. One day the competition try to straight up kidnap her, make her disappear, but Alma fights her way out of it and saves herself (with some impressive martial arts, stunts done by the actor herself). The next time, though, it's not capture but kill, and the only thing that saves her is one of the three hitmen, a guy named Ray Aria, who sees her beautiful dark eyes and falls in love at first sight. He instantly turns his gun on the other two killers, shooting them dead.

At first Maia had felt annoyed when Alma fell for Ray. She felt territorial. Why would Alma love a man? She seemed smarter than that. She almost stopped watching the show but then she missed seeing Alma's gorgeous figure twisting and maneuvering between combat stances, so she tuned in to the next episode. The bad guys come for Ray, and would have executed him if Alma hadn't sprung to action, taking out four goons with her starfire and one with a dagger in her belt, saving his life. And when Alma goes to bed with him, Maia shook her head, but when Ray and Alma flirted she was amazed to find herself smiling.