Archive / Narratives

Kila Vas: Economic Recovery, Crime, and the Police and Crime Act (Full Detailed Account)

Type: Narrative — Canon History (Full Dictated Account) Status: Canon (confirmed by creator) — full text preserved per archival standard

This significantly elaborates on the existing Police and Crime Act of 1999 page — see that page for the Act's mechanics, and this page for the detailed economic/historical context behind its creation.

Wartime Industrialization

During WW3, millions of refugees fled to Kila Vas, at the northwest end of the conflict zone. The Empire established its Northern Army Headquarters there, and the remnants of many defeated nations' military forces made their way there as well. Kila Vas had always been a port city; with the discovery of oil just offshore just before the war began, port facilities expanded rapidly. During the war, Kila Vas became the industrial hub for war production — stretching nearly 70 miles north of the city and more than a dozen miles inland, factories, warehouses, storage yards, train yards, refineries, and (along the seafront) port after port filled the former desert landscape. Just beyond this industrial belt lay a 20-mile stretch of air force and Marine Corps bases, training facilities, and a huge naval port, with housing inland for millions of soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and refugees.

Laissez-Faire Banking

Kila Vas's economy was (and is) laissez-faire, with banking given preferential treatment. Kila Vas banks loaned billions during the war to corporations and governments, and continued lending billions more after the war to nations and organizations rebuilding.

The Great Migration

In the initial post-war era, many refugees-turned-immigrants arriving in Kila Vas were adept entrepreneurs, corporate chiefs, skillful bankers, and talented negotiators. Kila Vas was seen as "safe" (not literally true — crime was high and rising — but safe from war), centrally located, with affordable housing, free schooling, and extensive healthcare for all comers. To nations ravaged by the war — no homes, no work, no schools, no hospitals — Kila Vas seemed almost a paradise, "a human version of heaven" to some. Major corporations recognized the trend; many relocated headquarters to Kila Vas, including Jonesboro's LMT Corporation, the world's largest and most technologically advanced company. Others that didn't relocate opened Kila Vas offices instead.

This influx further integrated the planet's economy into one; nearly every war-affected nation came to see Kila Vas as a benefactor — directly, through Kila Vas corporations rebuilding shattered homes and infrastructure, or its banks lending to businesses and governments across half the world; or indirectly, as a source of planetary stability. This perception drove still more migration.

Inflation and Crime

This huge influx produced two unfortunate results: inflation continued to rise, and crime soared. Not all the refugees were visionary entrepreneurs — many were hardened criminals or aspiring gangsters, and the world's organized crime factions took notice too. The flow of money and priceless treasures some refugees brought with them made Kila Vas a magnet for criminals of every type. The influx of corporate money combined with lenient banking regulation kept inflation rising essentially unabated. Every conventional remedy was tried — none worked; the problems were simply too large for conventional methods.

The 1999 Solution

Recall that Perold Jonas had been Commanding Officer of the Empire's Northern Army, headquartered in Kila Vas, which grew to many millions of troops. Post-war, in 1988, Jonas became Helvatica's first Chief of Military Forces. In 1984, as Helvatica's military governorship prepared to transition to independence, Jonas and an Empire-born economist, Ravel Magrep, were drafted to write Helvatica's Constitution and business law.

Through the 1990s, crime and inflation continued unabated despite every attempted remedy. The city and nation again called on Jonas and Magrep for a solution. This time, it worked:

Anti-inflationary measures:

  1. Stricter regulations were imposed on the city's banks and financial institutions. (Almost no one lives in the rest of Helvatica, a desolate desert, so "Kila Vas" is often used interchangeably to refer to the whole nation.)
  2. The printing of money was eradicated entirely for one year.
  3. New money creation was thereafter regulated to only occur at a rate equivalent to the prior year's GDP increase — deliberately not called "printing," a wording choice with real psychological significance.

Crime measures (technology-driven):

  • Peacekeepers, advanced AI combat robots in tall, robust humanoid form, had already been replacing human soldiers in Helvatica's and the Empire's armies. Given how corrupt the Helvatica police force had become, the entire force (barring a few officers of outstanding character) was dismissed and replaced entirely by Peacekeepers.
  • Time viewers had been invented — devices allowing several months of retrospective viewing, or a few minutes of foresight into the future. Highly regulated, permitted only to government agencies (including the new Peacekeeper-staffed police), these were used both to solve past crimes and foresee future ones.
  • Teleportation technology had been perfected, allowing Peacekeepers to respond instantaneously anywhere in the city.

The Free Zones: Magrep and Jonas believed these draconian measures needed a counterweight to be politically palatable — so the "Police and Crime Act" included 17 Free Zones, areas where city law and Peacekeeper jurisdiction were entirely suspended. This was highly controversial, effectively criminalizing people who hadn't yet committed any crime and raising serious privacy concerns. Both Jonas and Magrep felt ambivalent about the rights issues involved but saw no alternative. The proposal passed the city's and nation's legislatures after heated debate, with few changes, then went to public vote. It failed in Workqib and Mahas (two of the four original emirates of the former United Kaolsan Emirates) but passed overwhelmingly elsewhere. This vote occurred in 1999; both measures — the anti-inflationary policy and the Police and Crime Act of 1999 — took effect January 1, 2000.

The Free Zones in Practice

Free Zones were true free-law zones — no law existed within them except whatever law their own residents established. The idea was that the draconian provisions of the Police and Crime Act elsewhere in the city could only be made palatable if the public had somewhere to go entirely free of police surveillance or authority. It was hoped the city's criminal element would migrate there, reducing crime elsewhere. No one knew what would actually happen inside the Free Zones. At first, they became true lawless territories where crime ruled — but over time, even the criminal elements and organizations that had migrated there recognized that some form of internal policing was necessary, if only to protect their own members. Over time, most Free Zones became nearly as safe as the rest of Kila Vas.

"Kila Vas's Cold"

The anti-inflationary policy triggered a short, sharp recession in Kila Vas — just 8 months, dubbed by the media "Kila Vas's Cold." But by this point, over 3/4 of the planet's nations had economies so tightly integrated with and dependent on Kila Vas that even this minor economic event rippled outward and was magnified globally: while Kila Vas caught a cold, the rest of the world caught pneumonia. Much of the rest of the world entered an economic depression lasting from just a year (in the Empire) to over 5 years elsewhere, though most nations experienced 3-4 years. This depression brought yet another wave of immigrants to Kila Vas.

Appearances

  • Creator-provided detail (ChatGPT export, "Government to Commercial Shift")

Open Questions

  • Workqib and Mahas (two of the four original UKE emirates) do not otherwise appear named elsewhere in the archive