Bennett: S-stricter? That sounds great! Fantastic! I’m always for . . . uh . . . Stricter how?
Walker: Right now, Beings are legally treated as a kind of extension of their Masters. If one commits a crime, the Master is responsible for the repayment.
But the Rabbit’s Master has vanished. The City of Boston can’t get restitution. What are they going to do? Keep it locked up forever?
Eventually Cohen will start charging for the use of that cell of his. And it’s not as if the Being will pay its own way. Without its Master’s order,
there’s no carrot or stick you could offer to make it a trustworthy worker. The only way to get value out of it . . . is to do things to it.
All it would take is one new clause in your bill. Reclassify Beings like the Rabbit as seized property. That would make them available for any kind of research the government wanted to do. Whether or not the Master approved.
There aren’t even any pesky regulations governing their treatment. Think of the potential! The only limiting factor would be whether you could do a thing while holding it down.
Ow.And thus, we’re about to find out what Bennett values more – Cybele, or his career.
Ann. <3
"I want to do SCIENCE to them!" Love that motivation. Even if it's on the evil side of things, it's awesome to have a character who wants to do science stuff.
Only route I can think of for Bennett to object might be a private property or "illegal search or seizure" argument. I'm curious where he'll go.
Now don’t you wish you were a real genius now, Bennett? The stakes have been raised.
Wow, reeeeally don’t like Walker now.
Oooooh, now we see just how far Bennett is willing to go for his “cause”.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Walker’s doing this to push Bennett’s buttons, and already suspects Cybele belongs to him…
I suspect the same thing, this seems like the kind of play someone would go for to expose someone. After all his plan to push his bill was to use his own Being to cause havok. So if he is exposed his political career is over.
I’m guessing Walker is a great poker player – so long as the cards are marked for her convenience. ^^
Third option, she’s making the bill so odious that it won’t get passed, and tarring Bennett for proposing it. It’s easier to kill an extreme bill, especially if you can get someone else to put their reputation on the line by proposing the amendment while you go build the support to oppose…
I wouldn’t say so much extreme, but it is political suicide on two fronts, on one front it could be viewed as “excessive” and “obsessive”. Given that there are estimated to only be about 100 beings in the whole world, and only 40 known to be in the USA; and unlike Pokemon or Medabots in which regulations would make sense given that anyone from small children too the criminally insane can use them to cause havok or commit crimes *Medabots even worse as they are assumed for children, and with their guns, blades, flamethrowers, and such extremly stupid to take to school*, the small number of restrictions on Beings makes it pointless. Beings can’t directly harm humans, and are under the full control of their masters; thus no wild golems (Enchanted Arms), or raging Gyrados scenarios.
So his pushing the issue, which would directly effect only about 40 people out of the hundreds of millions in the country would roll eyes; especially if the attitude is like what we saw in the Transgender club.
On the other hand the siezed property laws…are…complicated, to say the least. This wouldn’t be eminent domain, and seizure of a deadly weapon doesn’t really apply either, more mis-use of a utility but you can’t so much sieze this as punish the owner, and I doubt that one case known where the Master can’t be found is enough to push for this.
Not to mention he wants the law to also effect those traveling in the United States; which siezure of property of visitors to the country is even muddier waters and given the extrem rarity of the “items” in question cause some head-butting between ambassadorial factions which basically just means really bad PR with the politicians likely being accused of setting things up to experiment on the Beings (which seems to be the point).
On another note, she could easily be setting him up to reveal that he is doing this to push his own agenda. He doesn’t seem too big on planning ahead and may have missed something very important; that being that his Being goes where he goes. *note the earlier “I though the bunny was in Chicago”, so if Bennet has already been trying this whole bit during his traveling campaignes (which can be implied if anyone other than him has followed where Cybele has been) then the fact that Cybelle has been spotted and changed locations at the same places and times as him might be noticable to certain individuals, like our blind tiger-tamer here.
Basically, no matter how you look at it, he’s screwed. Even if its possible for him to “get rid of her” AKA break the contract and thus allow her to acquire a new Master so as to try and get the scent off his trail (if he is willing to do so as he claims he can) then he runs another risk if the new master does this “I order you to tell me the name of your previous master”.
Bit late to comment this…but that last line from Ann is *exquisitely* disturbing. Well done.
Thank you :)