Sabine Doust
Contracted Comportment Sitter
Politest Woman on Kestrel Row
She reads one of the cards before she leaves the flat. They all say the same thing and she has read it eleven hundred times.
Overview
Sabine Doust keeps a dented biscuit tin on the kitchen table. It holds 1,182 cards, and every card says the same thing: This shift is recorded. Your conduct is the material. You may stop at any time. She reads one each morning before she leaves the flat. She cannot say why.
In 2177 Nexus Dynamics hired her to sit. Fourteen months, 394 shifts. She processed real refunds for real customers on a recorded floor, and Nexus built a courtesy standard out of her. It paid ¢340 a shift. The returns counter on Kestrel Row paid ¢85. She took the money for her son's schooling. She would take it again.
The counter is shuttered now. She lives in the flat above it.
What Stayed
She has not raised her voice since 2178. She did not choose this. A follow-up study found that sitters stay courteous after the cameras stop. By then it was hers. She will not call it an improvement.
She is sitter 4,417 in the Attested Baseline register, page forty-one. Weight: 0.011 percent. Every service clause in the district cites the composite. She did the multiplication at the kitchen table in pencil. It came to thirty-seven slowed determinations last year. At a panel she asked which thirty-seven. A kind officer explained that the composite does not resolve to contributors. She thanked him. Of course she did.
Every year Nexus pays her fare to the verification panel that checks the effect still holds. She has attended six. The tin goes too, in a canvas bag.
The Public Row
She sits on the third bench of the public row at every session of the Dregs filing brought for Zhang Lei. She offered to testify. The advocate read six years of her panel records and did not call her. A witness who cannot have a bad hour does not help a man who had one.
She tried once to be short with someone on purpose. She could not manage it.
The Untuned refuse the mood-dial and feel everything at its natural pace. She visited their stall once, bought a tea, and said it was lovely. It was not.
Appearance
Forty, even-featured, in a worn grey cardigan. Her hands stay still on the table. Being thanked for her patience stops her for half a second. It is her only proof the thing shows from outside.
Voice
Level. Under pressure she does not get louder; she gets slightly slower. She finishes other people's sentences when they struggle. She does not interrupt.
She accepts a first apology. A second one asks her to perform absolution, and she is done performing.
Her son Teo is seventeen. He has told her twice that he can never tell when she is angry with him. She did not have an answer either time.
Connections
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