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Back to Maida’s flat.
The woman in the second panel is a “community safety volunteer.” Her job is to make sure certain public standards of decency are upheld. We’ll see her again later on.
↓ Transcript
Panel 1: Maida's block of flats is grey, blocky, and everything is concrete, metal, and brick.
Panel 2: Maida walks home along her floor's balcony. She passes an old, white woman with a black armband and an uncovered head.
Panel 3: Maida looks into her front door's camera. Door: "Identity confirmed."
Panel 4: The door clicks unlocked. Door: "Welcome home."
Panel 5: Maida enters her crowded, little flat and closes the door behind her. Ujana (in Martian Swahili): "Maida! How was school?"
Panel 2: Maida walks home along her floor's balcony. She passes an old, white woman with a black armband and an uncovered head.
Panel 3: Maida looks into her front door's camera. Door: "Identity confirmed."
Panel 4: The door clicks unlocked. Door: "Welcome home."
Panel 5: Maida enters her crowded, little flat and closes the door behind her. Ujana (in Martian Swahili): "Maida! How was school?"
A former British Empire nation must be leading the Earth Government, to have people like that. We’ve always been bad at spying on ourselves. Other totalitarian states just call those people “your neighbors.”
My inspiration for the “community safety volunteers” was the old people in China whose job title I had to look up just now because I’d forgotten it- they’re called “qunzhong.” They were originally employed as volunteer community spies, but these days their main job seems to be enforcing the social contract rather than the law. In other words, their job is to nag you into being polite and presentable, not to turn you in to the revolutionary guard. Unless you’re actually a danger to the public (or a counter-revolutionary), then they’ll call the real cops.