A week passed with two successful assignment days. To avoid suspicion, Kasia took no leave with Riese Elektronik and worked both jobs back to back. She managed this with energy pills charged with amphetamines. These, added with her anxiety tablets and Sermon's fitness enhancers, left her with the shakes and a distant gaze. Luckily no one mentioned it, and she endured the hormonal tempest in her body by fixating on the cash headed her way.
Her day job was insufferable. She had a new role now; no aspect of her old one was free from scrutiny. When would she leave this office of misery? What was she offering to society? Why did these customers lack the humanity to use an AI service? And the big one: why did Riese make products forever needing repairs and upgrades?
Of course she knew the answer to that.
She hit her call targets. With every encouragement dangled on her portal screen she wondered what she could have been doing elsewhere. One lunchtime Leah ventured downstairs to meet her, offering to help Kasia with German practice so they could be together again. Kasia detected virtue signalling but played along to maintain her cover.
Still, her revolution job was anticlimactic. Getting into a van, collecting parcels, sorting them at a warehouse into the early morning. Her heart clamoured for something greater - something to match the death-defying battle she had fought in, an event now a month in the past and a lifetime ago. Reason reminded her the current job was both safer and easier for her to prove herself.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
She trawled her socials, propelled onward with the occasional kick of dopamine. Her viral moment with Varma had left society's eye, but it remained her proudest profile content. She saw how much she had changed because of it. Like much of the public, Kasia refused to upload real images of herself, mindful of rampant deepfakes. The rare photos she had uploaded were ruthlessly edited, blending her face up beyond recognition, and even they felt exposed. Yet here she was, unedited and unrestrained, taking the first serious handshake ever offered to her. It gave her no sense of anxiety.
She read the comments with guilty indulgence. None of the messages were about her; a blend of blessing and curse. Most reactions were spinning the video into content about themselves. Trending high, a story of cultural appropriation: a privileged foreign star wearing Revolution Britannia’s uniform to a fancy dress event. Listed along the side, recommended watches: a carnival of supposed experts picking apart the revolution’s tactical errors.
Kasia fell into one of the debates - the choice of red uniform over pattern-camouflage. The former came from the demobilised British Army, when private investors demanded brand impact over battlefield safety. Red fatigues were thus condemned by anti-establishment commentators. But camouflage connected to white-supremacy, still fresh in people's memory, and was heard by more progressive minds as a dog whistle.
Before she knew it Kasia had frittered two hours away immersed in arguments, stubbornly pro-camouflage herself, fuming over accusations of racism she would never face.
Ignorant that none of this affected her.
She returned home from the week’s final shift, and found the estate at last cleared up from the vagrant attack. Residents clamoured around the square, louder and more numerous than ever before. It was clear that whatever they were gathering for wasn’t good.