Cassia, member of the Commune of Eraginkorra, sat at her desk. She, by popular consensus, handled diplomacy. She didn’t have any true authority, as the Commune was decentralized, but most of the people there followed what she said by default. Her authority wasn’t enforced; she just made suggestions and people followed them. That’s how true authority was supposed to work; it was optional.
They’d overthrown the Terran Republic on multiple planets, staging guerilla wars which made it impossible for them to take them over. They’d cut ties with them, and managed to thrive on their own. It wasn’t much, but they had been able to secure freedom from the oppression of the Terran corporations, freedom from the system of capitalism.
Well, there was one exception - The Antares Authority. It was a subsidiary of the Terran Accord, but basically everybody knew that they were rogue; they were only a subsidiary on paper. They had formed a mutually beneficial relationship, with the Antares Authority secretly sending them food supplies in exchange for different materials, like iron and uranium - Antares was quite limited in terms of mining. After all, allies were few when you weren’t a capitalist. The partnership had to be kept secret, but this was understandable for Cassia.
It had been three years since the Republic had tried anything, too. They were completely self-sufficient, completely ignored, especially because the Terran Space Force was gearing up for some unknown threat.
Everything was going to be great. With the TSF distracted, the anarchist revolution would go without a hitch. And the Antares Authority had just offered to pitch in, giving them resources to liberate yet another planet belonging to the Republic, save people from their chains.
All she had to do was a bit of paperwork - making her preferences known. Her endorsement of the Antares Authority’s initiative was what was necessary to codify it, and she was about to give it. And then…
“Cassia?” Penelope yelled, “You have to see this!”
“What?”
“It’s a video of the moments leading up to Brendan Oil’s assassination. It’s been distributed across the entire galaxy.”
What was going on?
“What does the execution of capitalist swine have to do with anything?” Cassia asked.
“Just watch it, Cass!”
She obliged.
It was indeed a video of Brendan Oil’s lair. There was camera footage - something quite rare for a CEO’s place of residence, something that could only be described as completely idiotic, especially if such a CEO were doing any dealings under the table. You didn’t want these kinds of things to be recorded.
There was an Antarean diplomat raised up in one of the CEO’s traps - something that was quite surprising. Since when did the diplomats of Antares make deals with corporations?
What was going on?
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Lisa looked in the mirror. In the past week, everything was coming along nicely. She had lost a few inches of height, which was completely fine. In fact, if she were to admit it, everything about this change felt good. She was beautiful. Her face still had a hint of androgyny, but the features were mostly there. Her hair was the exact right shade, and her breasts were supple and on their way to being perfectly sized. Looking down, her testicles had disappeared, although she wasn’t sure exactly how that had happened.
Perhaps they had been shed off with the rest of her skin. Perhaps they’d retreated into her body and were then absorbed for the nutrients. It didn’t matter; she didn’t miss them.
Everything was getting more and more perfect. Her past self was melting away before her very eyes - the form that she didn’t think she would miss, but now was itching to see disappear.
She really needed to give Phoebe credit; she’d somehow managed to pull all the stops. Every little detail of this body was beautiful; it had been carefully crafted to be as appealing to her as possible.
She’d thought about how they could have figured out how to give her such a body, which had soured her perception of what Phoebe had done. If anything, thinking about that made it quite creepy. How had they known her favorite hair and eye colors, her preferred cup size, preferred height, every last detail of her type ? It couldn’t have been a brain scan. As the nurse had said, DNA alteration patterns had to be made about a week in advance, which meant they’d known what was going to happen to him at least a week before they’d actually captured him. So, Phoebe had set her eyes on him with this exact role in mind.
She didn’t know whether it was Phoebe or a team of nurses who had figured out her ideal woman’s exact shade of hair. She didn’t know whether it was a covert brain scan, a case study of her life, an analysis of her social interactions, or simply leafing through her diary or internet account history. Regardless of who it was or how it was done, it seemed very intimate; these were details she wouldn’t want a total stranger to know, and definitely not somebody like Phoebe, who was more of a mother figure than anything else.
Of course, this was a general theme of Antares and the Department of Autonomy - simply how they operated. They did morally objectionable things, although the outcomes were undeniably positive. Lisa decided that it would be best not to question any of this, and not look too hard at the opportunity she had been given. After all, it wasn’t like there was anything she could do about it.
It wasn’t long before she heard a knock on the door. It was Phoebe.
—
“And… checkmate!” Phoebe exclaimed.
From the jaws of defeat, Phoebe had finally won her first game against Lisa. Of course, this was after ten consecutive losses, but who was counting? Well, they both were, but that was beside the point.
“You know, I think I’m finally starting to come around to this,” Lisa said, “I mean, yeah, it’s all massively fucked up, but you can’t argue with the results.”
“See? It makes perfect sense!”
“Yeah. It’s kind of hard to believe that I thought I was a guy a few weeks ago. And I was calling you all commies!”
The Antares Authority wasn’t communist in the slightest; in fact, they were just as capitalist as the rest of the Republic. However, they believed that corporations worked best when they were regulated by the steady hand of a powerful government, which gave them that label.
Phoebe took a moment to reflect on how quickly Lisa’s viewpoints had changed. She had no idea how this could happen so quickly. Perhaps it was because of the leverage that they’d gotten from curing her Gender Variant Disorder. Perhaps the Antares Authority’s philosophy was correct, and she had bowed to reason. Perhaps she was impressionable; there were plenty of plausible explanations. But it all seemed… too good to be true.
Nothing odd had come up on the brain scan. Everything was fine. She had to stop being so paranoid; she knew the TBI inside and out.
“Yeah, I know,” she replied.
“So, what do you do here. Phoebe?” Lisa asked.
Phoebe began to think. Could she really tell Lisa about this stuff? She wasn’t confirmed to be loyal yet, which meant she was still a security risk. Still, there were some obvious things that she could talk to Lisa about - information that was already public anyway, or surely things the TBI already knew.
“Well, I’m in charge of the Observation Branch, and the main thing we do is, well, observation. We look at fleet movements to make sure that, if there’s an impending attack, we’re ready. We also keep track of the economy, the senate, corporate dynamics…”
“And various top-secret TBI and TSF channels, I assume?”
It was kind of obvious. What Phoebe had described the Observation Branch as doing was rather small for someone of her caliber. Additionally, she’d been able to impersonate an admiral from the Terran Space Force well enough that even she’d been fooled. That didn’t just come out of nowhere.
“Well, yes, but I’m not going to go into detail about that.”
“Well, that’s beside the point. I didn’t ask what the Observation Branch does. I asked what you do.”
“Well, why don’t I show you?”
—
The reception room wasn’t even remotely different from what Lisa had imagined. It was littered with various different terminals, and there was barely any space to walk around. Every square inch was devoted to something important.
“So, unfiltered data comes in, which is then sifted through for important things in a three-level process. Then, the important bits come here, which I compile and forward to the other branches so that they can make the proper decisions,” Phoebe remarked. Looking over her shoulder, Lisa could see the different packets of data that Phoebe was sifting through. The headers indicated what each one was about. They all looked important, high-level, and distilled, yet there were just so many of them. Some of them indicated fleet movements and potential new developments, others indicated changes in corporate behavior, and some were reports of alien activity. Just a glance was enough to know that there were so many verified accounts of alien abductions, it was a common thing that didn’t require Phoebe’s attention anymore.
And then…
Phoebe cursed under her breath.
“What is it?” Lisa asked.
“Standard Oil and Standard Food were supposed to be fighting a massive war against each other,” Phoebe replied, “but it looks like they aren’t fighting anymore.”
“Well, isn’t that good? More stability and less bloodshed?” Lisa asked.
Phoebe shook her head.
“That makes no sense. I mean, you’re claiming to be a singular beacon of light, yet you thrive on the instability of all other planets. Doesn’t that create some sort of conflict of interest?” Phoebe didn’t respond to that. Instead, she simply pulled up one of the documents from her feed.
It was an intercepted communication between Brendan Oil’s son and Roland Food. Lisa skimmed it. And then she went over it, making sure to read every word. And then, finally, she double-checked it, just to be sure.
Standard Oil and Standard Food, now united under one banner, were going to attack Antares in one week.
They were fucked.
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Leo, the leader of the Diplomacy Branch, was catching up on the latest news. Unlike the other staff, he had added a bit of flair to his room. Instead of the usual gray, it was painted dark blue, a color that he found helped him focus. There was a bowl of stimufruits next to his computer, which he would often consume if he had trouble staying awake.
The rest of the room served as a custom-made holoscreen, which he used to keep track of the complicated situation that the Antares Authority was in. The Authority’s image depended a lot on what you knew. The public thought of it as a vassal state of the Terran Republic, simply another member of the gigantic democracy.
The military, however, was subject to propaganda, and they viewed the Antares Authority as evil communists. There were various propaganda efforts that the TBI had successfully used to prepare the soldiers for the inevitable command to invade the Antares Authority, not all of which were untrue - allegations of cloning, baby experimentation, the whole nine yards. They were the Department of Autonomy’s greatest enemy, the authors of various plots that had to be found and subverted.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
There were various rebel states as well, each of which with their own levels of awareness of the type of government Antares was. Some of them thought of the Authority as yet another enemy, while others were valuable seeds that Leo had nurtured, which would soon grow into thorns in the Terran Republic’s side, and, with some hope, potential allies.
The corporations were the biggest mixed bag. Most of the corporate leadership thought of the Antares Authority as communist scum. However, some of them, curiously, thought that the Antares Authority was secretly on their side, thanks to Nicole’s plots. On their side, and nobody else’s, against all the rest of the corporations - he had no idea how she’d done it.
Major corporations in the Terran Republic could be loosely put into three categories: The monopolists, the competitors, and the conglomerates. Each category corresponded to the three ways for a corporation to succeed: Be first, be smart, or cheat.
The monopolists were the most corrupt and stagnant of the bunch. Descended from large, ancient corporations from before the Terran Republic, these corporations were able to get laws passed which cemented their domination of the market. Most of these were monopoly laws, which restricted the interplanetary export of certain sectors to a single company. Standard Food and Standard Oil were two of the most corrupt examples. They were able to profit heavily off of these laws, and maintained a niche that made them impossible to drive out. They didn’t innovate because there was simply no need to, and nobody else competed with them because it was impossible. Monopolists were easy to convince
The competitors were far less corrupt. This, of course, meant that capitalism worked better in areas dominated by these types of corporations. However, it did mean that they were thorns in the Antares Authority’s sides. Their leadership positions were cutthroat, chosen by teams of shrewd shareholders instead of inherited. Most of the people living under these types of corporations were screwed over by instability and conflict, not the corporations themselves. Luckily, they were usually too busy fighting each other to be that much of a threat.
The conglomerates were by far the most nefarious of them all. They were the opposite of the monopolists - instead of taking over a single industry, they dipped their toes into every single industry all at once. Instead of going interstellar, they stuck to singular planets, purchasing every aspect of them in order to create artificial, contextual monopolies. They were the cruelest of the three, operating more like slave states than corporations. It was easy to keep all their citizens in debt slavery when they ran all the banks, restaurants, grocery stores, and shuttles. Conglomerates made Leo wince, but they were the easiest to work with diplomatically. They liked the status quo, they readily accepted trade agreements, and they didn’t ask questions.
Thus, the Antares Authority had many different faces, and Leo’s job was to address them all. He had to keep the military propaganda from affecting the masses, he had to ensure that none of the corporations bragged about Nicole loving them and only them , and he had to put on a different face for every person he talked to. It was exhausting.
He slowly began to collect updates. It was mainly from Phoebe’s feed - the Observation Branch was instrumental to his success - but there was also some important communication through official channels that his own branch kept tabs on. His own feed consisted of public channels that weren’t worth Phoebe’s time, such as the senate, as well as direct contacts with potential allies, such as the Commune of Eraginkorra. Recently, this had been joined by one single communication channel with the Verwandt Empire.
The sudden communication from Phoebe’s channel had been completely unexpected. The red alert was even more of a surprise. This was diplomacy; it was slow by design. Everything that affected Antares’s diplomacy was known weeks or months in advance. They had eyes and ears everywhere.
He skimmed over it, worry growing with every word he read.
There was a leak. It was a consequential leak on the Department of Autonomy, the first one of its kind, ever. Brendan Oil had recorded Nicole’s dramatic villain monologue. Like the absolute moron he was, he had put a camera in his own throne room, recording his secret dealings with a planet that was almost universally reviled by most corporations. His son, as expected from someone somehow even dumber than his father, had published this for the entire galaxy to see. Admitting to dealings with the Antares Authority was a surefire way to end any prospect of influence that Standard Oil might have in the future; he had signed his own death warrant.
But that meant that the Authority’s reputation was also going to be completely changed. He began to do the calculus, anticipating how this would affect diplomacy with each party.
Diplomacy with the military was already impossible, but this would give them new propaganda, which wouldn’t exactly be fun to sift through and counteract. Still, that was minor.
The masses would turn against the Authority for a little bit, but a little bit of media diversions, and they wouldn’t care that much. It would blow over relatively quickly.
The conglomerates were selfish but reliable; they wouldn’t care about this. They just wanted their little planets of slavery. Trade would continue as normal.
The competitors, if anything, would respect the Authority more than before. They knew how corporate warfare worked, and they wouldn’t find it abhorrent. In fact, discovering that the Antares Authority opened up two new industries for them to compete in and shook things up would earn them favors.
The monopolists, however, would absolutely hate them. Nicole’s other subterfuge projects would be stopped in their tracks, as everyone woke up to the Antares Authority’s true stance on violence. They would finally realize that the Department of Autonomy didn’t believe in pacifism; it believed that violence was simply inefficient when you could get others to do the fighting for you.
As for the rebel states… their reactions would be completely unpredictable. With any hope, they’d see this takedown of two entrenched megacorporations to be a good thing. This wouldn’t be too much of a diplomatic nightmare… right?
There was an incoming transmission from the Commune of Eraginkorra. It was a high-priority one, done over expensive FTL transmission lines. He immediately accepted.
“Good morning, Cassia. What did you contact me about?” he asked.
“Let me keep this brief, Leo. I saw the video.”
“And what did you want to say about it?”
She immediately broke into a monologue.
“I can’t believe it. You claimed to be proud, anti-capitalist warriors. You claimed to be insurrectionists working from the inside. Yet, your government has no principles, Leo, not a single one. You murdered one of your own diplomats in cold blood, for no purpose but the murder of yet another person. Another of your diplomats was discarded and left to die. And that’s just from what happened right there!”
Shit; they really cared about things on such a small scale.
“Your government played both sides of a feud in order to divide a corporation against itself, without regards for the side effects of such an act. It was complicit in terror bombings, and it even ordered quite a few of them. It sent an innocent man on a suicide mission, for the purpose of starting a war between two corporations that resulted in even more bloodshed . Countless lives were lost. People died, planets were laid waste to, their biospheres plundered even more than they already have. And for what, Leo? For what?”
This was awkward.
“Profit, Leo! That’s all it was for. You just wanted to take their industries for yourself, and the hundreds of thousands you murdered just didn’t matter. I thought Antares was different, but I was duped. You’re no better than the rest of them. You’re just another slimy, profit-hungry corporation that will stop at nothing to pursue power.”
He could at least try to defend himself.
“It isn’t about money! Standard Oil hated Antares. If we hadn’t divided them, they would have destroyed us! If it weren’t for the wars, we’d be long dead! If we left them with their industries, they’d still be able to take us apart!”
Her response was swift.
“Is keeping Antares alive really worth all this bloodshed? I think not. The only thing separating us from the capitalist pigs is our principles, and you have proven you have none. There will be no more trade deals. We will do without you.”
“You do understand that you won’t be able to survive without our food shipments, right?” He asked, making sure that she was aware of what this meant.
“Better to die on our feet than to live on our knees. We’ll manage, corporate scum .”
She disconnected.
Well, that was just great . Their most reliable ally, their best hope at fighting the Terran Republic, had decided to abandon them in the most suicidal way possible. Leo scheduled a time to yell at Nicole. She’d completely fucked this up, leaving him to clean up this gigantic mess - although she had a big mess to clean up too. She should’ve known better than to rely on the intelligence of stagnant plutocratic dynasties.
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Maxwell’s defenses had been continually polished, maintained, and developed, and a lab-grown crew had consistently maintained training on how to properly operate these systems, but nobody had ever used them in real life.
Their first use ever would be for the purpose of eliminating a corporate militia hell-bent on revenge. This was, to say the least, unexpected.
“So, do you have any insight on their attack patterns?” Maxwell asked.
“Well, they’re a corporate militia, so they aren’t exactly the most competent,” Leo replied, “and their corporate leaders have a slightly different goal in mind for attacking.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, the Terran Space Force is generally mostly competent. There are a couple of loons near the top, but they don’t really give the orders. They operate in terms of pragmatic interests - they want to take us over, instead of destroying us, because they don’t want to suffer the economic consequences of the loss of such a gigantic trade hub.”
Maxwell knew that very well. It was why the antimatter weapon deterrent was so important. Antares B5 had a gigantic stockpile of antimatter weapons, which were pointed at various different planets, as well as Antares’s colonies themselves. Threatening this massive amount of destruction was what deterred a military invasion; if they could feasibly fire the missiles when they were threatened, invasion wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interests.
“Meanwhile, they just want us dead, right?”
“Exactly. So, your nuclear deterrent won’t work on them, and their goal will be to cause as much damage as possible, without regard for the consequences. Their target isn’t the Department of Autonomy. It isn’t even the Antares Authority. It’s Antares itself.”
Maxwell cursed. This meant… he brought up a map of Antares. Planets were marked in white, and Antares Authority assets were marked in green. Different defense coverages were also highlighted, for his convenience.
His antimatter warheads wouldn’t be useful at all against a dispersed force, so they were out of the equation. There was no point in using them on the planets against a force with nothing to lose either. His more conventional explosives, however, were greater in number, so they were more feasible to use. These would be the only long-range weapons, which made them his only reliable offensive weapon against the invasion force.
They also had a large amount of short-range plasma turrets. They were relatively dispersed, however, and would be quickly overwhelmed. During times like these, he wished the Department of Autonomy had the budget to field ships. After all, that was the best way to make plasma turrets work - put them on something that made intelligent decisions and could maneuver. He did have the test drones, but there weren’t enough of them for it to matter.
If he’d had more time, they could have refitted civilian ships, but that would take about a month. Still, the conflict would probably drag on for quite a while; he was going to start the refitting process right away. Until then, they weren’t fit for anything but evacuation and cannon fodder. They couldn’t even ram anything; it would be too easy for their nimble ships to get out of the way.
The most potent weapon he had in his arsenal was a solar ray. Antares A and B had the beginnings of Dyson swarms set up, which usually redirected light into energy collectors. However, they could easily be weaponized. He had created a large amount of amplification arrays, which would receive light and direct it at a singular point. This functioned as a death ray, with its only limit being the ability of the enemy to dodge it.
The death ray could be spread out a bit, turning it into more of a death zone and making it more difficult to avoid. This could still destroy the enemy ships reliably, and prevent them from getting into bombing range, but it meant that the station’s range was rather limited - far more limited than enemy railguns, missiles, and lasers, which wouldn’t have much trouble hitting their stationary targets.
Overall, this meant that no meaningful defense of Antares could be mounted beyond the planets. The best they could do was evacuate the mining colonies, and salvage what they could while they still had the time. Defense of the light amplifiers, their main means of orbital defense, was the main thing they’d concentrate their point defense on. When they fell, whatever planet they were defending would be toast.
The main logistics of the battle were already planned. This would be a war of attrition, a war that they weren’t truly prepared for, and a war they would probably lose.
He had one straw to grasp at.
“Leo, I know that Standard Oil and Standard Food hate us, but what about the militia? Are they on board with this?”
He gave it a bit of thought.
“They’re the militia, Maxwell. They hate Antares, and they probably relish the idea of being able to fight us instead of random corporate squabbles. I don’t think there’s any way to convince them to stop.”
“But they’re going to bomb billions of civilians!” Maxwell exclaimed, “They’re innocent people! What kind of barbarians could do that?”
“I bet half of them have kill counts that number in the thousands. They’re used to this sort of thing. Perhaps a few of them could be convinced to stand down, but I seriously doubt it.”
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Nathan was struggling. He had pondered figuring out a way to escape, yet it was obvious that he wouldn’t be able. Did he really think the Department of Autonomy, the largest institution in the government, wouldn’t be able to make him disappear?
There was simply no way other than forward. He went through all the potential solutions in his head - even suicide. There was no option except to plow into the pain, and try his best to grow numb to it.
Over the week, distracting himself had grown more and more difficult. Perhaps he would get used to the small lumps of fat clinging to his chest, but that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. They were painful and wrong , and every time he managed to forget they existed, he paid the price when he bumped into something. Why did they have to be so sore ?
Looking at a blank monitor or a reflective surface was enough to trigger him. The face that stared back at him was completely unrecognizable, and yet it was him . That was his face now, and that could never be changed. He’d constantly informed Caroline that it wasn’t going to work, asked for an antidote, pleaded to be changed back, and it all fell on deaf ears. Nothing could ever be done.
He’d developed too many evasive strategies to prevent himself from being triggered like that. He tilted his gaze down whenever he looked in the mirror. He ensured that he never looked at himself when he showered. The haircuts grew more and more frequent - he usually lopped it off himself.
It was an obsessive practice, just making sure that the ever-growing hair would never reach his shoulders, one that he had been forced to maintain. Yet, each haircut was a source of continual despair, each cut harder than the last. He struggled to get himself to do it without trying to think about it, without trying to process the fact that his body would only get worse, and that even the shortest haircut wouldn’t come even close to restoring his manhood.
Going through reports was the bulk of his future job. There were a variety of different papers, all from different branches, each displaying high-level overviews of various projects. Some were proposals, with descriptions of what the proposal would feature or address, as well as their costs and expected effects. Others were reports on the status of these projects, or general incident reports.
Looking through these, Nathan had begun to see how the Department of Autonomy viewed Antares, and Antareans. It painted a picture, one that he didn’t like. Antares was constantly in grave danger, and they could never fend for themselves properly. Their solutions were straightforward, efficient, and brutal, with little regard for individual lives. Over the weeks, he’d seen thousands of peoples’ deaths ordered with the click of a mouse, and thousands more lives ruined. One time, they’d updated their list to consider the lack of a genetic modification to be “defective”, forcing millions to choose between not having kids and going against their deeply-held beliefs.
The report was about the backlash the public had against the policy. It outlined the details of this backlash, before getting to a proposal to synthesize a flu outbreak to distract the public from this backlash.
It was despicable. The people impacted, the lives ruined, the grieving families, were nothing but numbers. And, with the click of a mouse, Caroline murdered thousands of people, just to distract Antares from the millions of lives that had just been ruined. How could she even do this to the people she was supposed to protect?
The sentiment was echoed in every single member of the Department, from Caroline and all thirty members of her cabinet, to every lab-grown underling who wrote the reports. It was obvious when the reports were done by a civvie - it focused on what had been done, not the actual impact or intent of the project. Not only that, there was a level of narcissism that was present in anything written by a civvie. He didn’t know which report style he disliked more.
It had seemed stable before, but now he realized how dire the situation truly was. They were practically drowning in spies from the Terran Bureau of Intelligence, heavily militarized corporations were constantly investigating the possibility of taking the system for themselves, and the Terran Space Force had practically exploded in number, using the excuse of “fighting the Commune of Eraginkorra”, which forced them to triple their defenses over a few years.
Just in the past five years, the Antares Authority had had three brushes with death.
Not only that, they were constantly looking for methods of saving money. Nathan had initially thought that 30% of the budget would be far too much for what they were doing, but the numbers didn’t lie. Every penny had an important use somewhere. Even the vacation time had been optimized to maximize staff effectiveness - one week per year was optimal.
It felt so wrong, and yet, try as he might, he couldn’t find a single thing wrong with the calculations.
The Culture Branch was the most grim part of the Department of Autonomy. The reports had made it obvious what they were doing - influencing Antarean culture to make it more productive. They spent tens of billions of dollars on disincentivizing art in favor of more scientific pursuits. Even more money was spent on attempts to make the Naturalist movement less politically popular, in order to make genetically modified children more prevalent in Antarean society.
And then there were reports on the effects of these programs. The results made things clear: Iterations of these programs from ten years ago had already paid for themselves. Modifying Antares’s culture was essential for the continued success of the Department of Autonomy, essential for the continued existence of the Antares Authority.
The non-consensual genetic modifications were essential too - perhaps even more essential than the cultural programs. Without them, according to various predictions, the Antares Authority would have stopped existing 200 years ago.
Once he got in power, he couldn’t discontinue these programs. He would have to continue them, and perhaps even expand their scopes. Otherwise, billions of lives would be ruined.
He noticed a pattern: The most horrible programs were the ones with the best results. The ones that were the most morally objectionable were impossible to cut - too many programs depended on them, there was no substitute available, or anything that would replicate their effects would be far too costly to implement. It was horrid, and yet it was perfectly logical, which made it even more horrid.
What could even be done?