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Jeremy Holland is the personal assistant to Prime Minister Aaron Roth of the Republic of New England. He holds a Masters degree in political science from Columbia University and has been in PM Roth's employ since his campaign for the junior seat of the Civic Party eight years ago.

 

Mr. Roth is a very busy man. Very busy. He's currently on a conference call with the NA trade commissioner and the New York Port Ministry brokering a deal to bring Italian steel products to the Great Lakes factories. It's very sensitive. Very sensitive. Mr. Roth is doing this from his bathtub. He often multi-tasks like that. He is a very regimented man, very dependent on his schedule. Am I saying "very" too much? Sorry. I'm just a little... this is a very... it's a busy time of year for us. A lot of material comes through the port and that means there are a lot of scans to do, a lot of forms to fill out and upload, a lot of government labor that needs to get reassigned. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge supporter of the CitArm program, but it is an awful lot of work.

 

How did that come about, the Citizen Army?

 

Oh, well it was really just an attempt to keep everything filed properly. The founders, they had a pretty good idea of how they wanted to situate things during the Transition, they just didn't anticipate the level of participation in the populace. Some insist it was out of a new sense of patriotism, but if you ask me the news footage makes it look like people just wanted to make a living. See, the Transition government decided it was most important to keep all of the necessities running, so they nationalized water, power and transit. Then somebody, I think it was Kevin Marshall, got the idea to include the taxis in that transit plan. It made sense, seeing as they weren't sure what hard currency was going to do over the next decade or so. It made sense. They nationalized the cabs and started funding them with taxes, but they knew they had to come up with some sort of program to keep people from abusing the service, ya know, like telling the driver to go to Buffalo from Manhattan. I'm not sure about the specifics, but this is how the I-Bar system was first implemented.

 

Please, explain.

 

How else are you supposed to keep track of who messes with the cabs? Sure, the government wanted to use I-Bar for other things, but this was the first incentive. They told people they could either pay cash for taxi service on top of their new taxes, or they could get a little tattoo on the back of their hand under local anesthesia that could be scanned in the cab for a free ride. A lot of people signed up in the first few weeks. Soon the I-Bar was tied to medical records, driving permits, bank accounts (when the banks were nationalized)... everything. I mean, there was some resistance from some of the religious conservatives. Chasidic Jews and Muslims mostly. Mostly. They didn't want to be forced to get tattoos, but when they tried to take the issue to court they couldn't prove citizenship without an I-Bar. There were some big protests. Now the only people without one are foreigners. And separatists.

 

And the CitArm?

 

Oh, right. Sorry. That came about five years after the Transition. The parliament had nationalized so much by that point that it became too cumbersome to recruit from all over the different ministries. They streamlined the process by reconfiguring the state universities to train people in job-specific programs as per the needs of the state, then transferred all graduates into an appropriate ministry. The recruitment policies evolved out of simple service contracts. In exchange for education and job placement, recruits have an obligation to fulfill a certain number of years in government service. Like an army. So they just folded everything into the RNEDF and made it so there were no full-time soldiers, just a country full of doctors, teachers and cabbies with military training.

 

How do people feel about being required to serve in the army?

 

I can't speak for everyone, but I'm rather proud. Rather proud. I saw combat in Vermont when I was 19. That's what got me into politics... um, speaking of which, Mr. Roth should be done with his bath. I'm going to have to cut our meeting short. I'll, uh, I'll be in touch.