Labour Banishment Nexus

A prison island housing the most persistent NonComps on the planet as its InMates. 80% of the landmass is taken up by a massive, densely populated GigaCity sized prison complex. The complex is officially named Labour Banishment Nexus, or LBN, however the island, the prison, the populace, and the FED guards, are all more commonly known individually and collectively as The Filth.

Within The Filth there are businesses, communities, and countless strict yet contradictory policies, much like any other GigaCity. It has its own internal economy, with most professions equating to either some form of hard physical labour, or despairingly mind-numbing tedium, or both. Chemical refineries, factories, and waste processing plants form the blue collar sector, and manual data checking facilities and corporate customer services HiveLink complaints centres are the main white collar work spaces. The industrial belts of The Filth are part of the reason LBN earned its nickname, a constant thick and toxic smog permeates the entire facility.

InMates occupy HabLocks, modified HaBlocks of a quality not much worse than the Outer Belts of typical "free" GCs. InMates form family units, breeding second and third generation prisoners, destined to live and die inside its walls, unless they breach policy and get a sentence of their own, and thus, a release date. Like most GigaCities, it has its own unique TimeSlice Protocol. Time in LBN is measured as a countdown to release. Each occupant only knows how many people will get to leave before them. Their place in the queue, or Q_Rank. Tens of thousands of people arrive each day, and the island prison operates a one in one out policy, so Q_Ranks shift by the second.

Q_Ranks are an InMate's own private timeline, displayed as a vibrant red countdown timer taking up 33% of their visual field, projected directly in to the brain via an interruption in the optic nerve. The Q_Rank and the InMate's Percentile (which percentage of the Q_Rank they occupy) alternately blink off and on again continuously with no respite, permeating the dreams of the incarcerated. A Q_Rank can also shift based on behaviour. Good citizenship rewarded by moving up the queue to freedom. Bad behaviour resulting in moving down again. Get a high enough Q_Rank, and get promoted to FED guard level.

Individual ReproUnits in each HabLock take care of most permitted consumerist activities. LBN ReproUnit files are restricted to the cheapest, lowest quality specifications, usually lower tech variants with transparent shells printed from weak materials; all painstakingly designed to be ineffective as weapons. Sanctioned vehicles, upgrades and 'non-lethal' weaponry are obtainable at larger ReproUnits, dotted throughout LBN.

The bleak form of cyclical consumerism that keeps The Filth ticking over is unitarily utilitarian, devoid of the pretence of entertainment value or worth beyond basic usage as a tool or object. All screen based media is restricted to black and white only, with no audio. The small print is the only copy in every ad, and coloured pigment is prohibited. McOlor transmissions throughout the LBN are broadcast in greyscale, combining demotivational slogans with nauseating visual static, InMates regularly complain about the endless re-runs, along with literally every other aspect of LBN life.

Hive access is reduced to a minimal base-line service that results in severe withdrawal for most new InMates. Entertainment is mostly self made and hosted underground, consisting largely of various forms of DethSports. Street racing, pit fighting and extra brutal vehicle combat contests are extremely popular.

The dreary weather patterns and distinct lack of any sanctioned entertainment or a service industry, combined with the brutalist cubic architecture and pigmentless garments, make for a mightily depressing lifestyle. If it wasn't for the absurdly high murder rates, suicide would be the most common way to die.
On every gridded street of The Filth, Rooks trundle back and forth, to and fro, 'non-lethal' weapons systems continuously panning and rotating, scanning for policy breaches.
LBN is the most highly surveilled population in the PBA. With facial recognition, thermal imaging and motion tracking cameras outnumbering InMates 10:1. As a result, fashion within the walls of The Filth has become a powerful weapon of dissent. Using angular hair styles and the application of jarring, graphic, asymmetrical make-up designs combined with thermal masking tape binding the ubiquitous LBN overalls in to irregular shapes, wily NonComps are able to game the system.

At night power is cut and HabLocks are sealed closed until morning. This happens whether or not InMates are in or out, and often leads to roaming street gangs seeking brutal after hours conflict with others of their ilk, the darkness allowing for constant cyclical ambushing.

Structure

Penthouses and BlastWall caps are home to the top 1% of Q_Rankers, or 1Percentiles. Their newfound loyalty to the system ready to be rewarded off LBN. These are the FEDs that run The Filth, they live in luxury compared to the rest of the InMate population, having a walled off toilet and 2 extra hours of electricity a day, as well as the privilege of observing the marshy scrubland OutSide of The Filth, in all of it's beige and muddy glory. These are also the only InMates that ever communicate with the prison warden, Guvn0r, the Syntient Management representative in control of LBN. They pilot the Rooks, as well as Class 1, 2, & 3 patrol vehicles. The have access to basic body armour, helmets, batons and a vicious loathing for the rest of the InMates they guard.

The middle class, often called 49ers (due to making up the remainder of the top 50% of the Q_Rank), are mainly data crunchers and corporate complaints handlers. The only aspect of their lives that distinguishes them from those that are committed to a life of hard labour, is not being committed to a life of hard labour. Their quarters and wages are identical. Outside of their 14 hour shifts sorting endless multi-digit alpha-numeric strings into specific sets based on constantly shifting parameters, these white collar InMates often focus on acquiring, maintaining, and upgrading a modest but dependable vehicle to keep them alive and mobile in the monochrome gloom of LBN.
The lowest Q_Rankers are manual labourers, collectively known as Plus50s. They are the most physically impressive Specimens in the LBN. Augmented with BioMods and plenty of Chemix and driven insane by constant exposure to industrial chemicals, they form violent gangs. Using their tools as weaponry, from sledge hammers up to large scale industrial machinery, they often use motorcycles to weave around the LBN's endless, undulating landscape of concrete HabLocks in pursuit of good times and skulls to crack.

Overlaying this three tiered societal structure, there are nuanced gang subcultures based on Q_Rank Percentile. The Percentile an InMate is within informs their loyalties, customs and philosophies. Although the different Percentile groups mix throughout the LBN, there are population hubs within the GC that appeal more to one Percentile or another, the level of savage violence dependent on how long the majority of InMate locals have left in The Filth. Each of the 100 different percentile groups have subtly different priorities, slang, and codes of conduct. Percentile numbers are often displayed proudly as gang signs, and with around 40 million people in each percentile, an InMate can often remain in the same percentile for years, decades, or even permanently.

The desolate marshes that cling to the BlastWalls are haunted by a rabble of tens of thousands of escapees who find their desperate bid for freedom blocked by the ocean. The FED generally leave these forsaken InMates to their miserable fate, however persistent reports of devolved cannibal tribes establishing territories in the scrub result in sporadic sweeps and purges. Rumours of monstrous creatures and hybrid humanoids released into the marshes to manage the escapee population are as old as the LBN itself.

Culture

Featureless monotony punctuated with extreme violence. Eyes to the floor paranoia, evening curfews, restricted access ReproUnits filled with low-grade Flude Brix. The washed out, colourless, faded existence is reflected in the culture, but pockets of violent resistance, attempted escapes, permanent gang wars and policy breaches keep InMates from becoming too numb to the futility of waking life. Prison riots ripple across LBN constantly, never fully dissipating before flaring up elsewhere. At least one sector of the LBN, Block404, has been declared a state of permanent riot.

The grey boredom of daily life is only the top layer of filth. Accessible from certain areas of LBN are huge networks of underground drainage tunnels and caverns, commonly referred to as The Tubes. These are home to vibrant black market economies, selling everything widely available in the rest of the PBA, as well as numerous underground DethSports leagues. In The Tubes a vibrant interlinked system of under cultures flourishes below the surface, accessible to those in the know. These under cities have become safe haven for all sorts of NonComp resistance movements and wannabe escapologists. Illicit pigments obtained at these secret subterranean areas of The Filth, when applied judiciously to semi-hidden areas of clothing, become marks of allegiance, recognisable in an instant to allies in an otherwise misty grey reality.

Colour, in the form of pigments, illegal colour screens, and vehicle PlastiCals, is a mark of status in The Tubes. Vehicles, clothing, and large parts of the underground infrastructure are bright and garishly coloured in flamboyant displays of relative wealth. Parking garages and storage units are available at a premium price for the champion contenders of various underground sports leagues to store their illicit treasured vehicles and brightly coloured yet lethal weaponry.

Public Agenda

Serial NonComps and potential No1s are brought from around the PBA to serve an amount of time in the Labour Banishment Nexus relative to their threat to Management. Death is no solution for these dissidents, most NonComps have backup personality drives, clone archives, ExtraLife subscriptions and all manner of failsafes and pandora protocols rigged to stir up serious trouble upon their death.

LBN exists to contain these most dangerous of criminals, and through a gradual neutralisation of thought space via the greyed out reality of The Filth, and the tedious march up through the Q_Ranks over multiple decades, re-code their personalities to be loyal to Management. They finally leave the island as fully paid up FED officers, ready to die for policy. In theory that is. In practice, only a fraction of InMates ever make it out of the other end of this behemoth of a human meat-grinder.

Assets

A small country sized GigaCity built out of modular cubes stacked in seemingly infinite permutations. The Filth is host to one of the most viewed sports events on the planet, the KillMedia DethCity1000. (See also: LBN KillMedia Arena).
LBN is renowned for its diverse and creative InMate management systems, many of which are integrated with the uniform architecture of the island. IceCubes provide space efficient cryonic storage for the millions of InMates whose sentences far outstrip their natural life spans. While in suspended hibernation InMates brains are used for data storage and processing, this is reportedly experienced as an endless nightmare of confusion and data-processing based torment that continues to haunt the InMate long after their reanimation. In exceptional circumstances prisoners undergo radical life extension allowing them to serve extremely lengthy sentences.
The bleakest Blocks are reserved for the DeadLine, oppressive sectors where InMates awarded a terminal sentence are incarcerated. The most dangerous of these unfortunates are generally offered an LBN AutoKill career, their termination suspended until their ultimate demise on the track. With nothing to lose they fight for their lives.

Demography and Population

Estimated InMate Population: 4 Billion 70% Incarcerated, 30% Born InSide

Territories

A 93627.8429mi² island in the northern hemisphere of the PBA.

Agriculture & Industry

Re-process plants convert human excrement, waste products and corpses in to a food safe slurry which is combined with sea algae slime and packed in to Flude Brix sold at the ReproUnit re-stock points within the GC, the closest you can get (legally) to a food market on LBN.
Chemical works, alloy production plants and industrial facilities are active day and night, vents, outlets and chimneys flushing areas of the ever present smog with a brief pale yellow glow, mocking the vague nostalgic yearning for colour that exists in the subconscious of every InMate. Nobody seems to know, care or even discuss what these industrial units are for, or where the finished products end up.
Once an InMate's Q_Rank is high enough, they graduate from handling highly toxic materials in a physically demanding environment, to cross referencing strings of too-small-to-see numbers on endless sheets of paper in city sized networks of office cubicles, each containing a fellow InMate trapped in bureaucratic torment, or handling complaints from the most demoralising and psychologically damaged consumers in the PBA.
When the Q_Rank is in the top 1%, InMates get promoted to FED guards. All work positions on LBN are paid a flat wage, enough to afford the bare necessities, plus an allocated amount for personal items.

Trade & Transport

The main trade that exists between LBN and the rest of the PBA is black market trade. Most of this happens in the underground infrastructure beneath The Filth, pigments, Chemix, and non-non-lethal weaponry all brought in through tunnels in the ocean floor coming from a neighbouring island off the west cost of LBN, officially designated GigaCity19, it is more commonly known as The Fury.
This is the first part of external society former InMates come in to contact with when they get off LBN, whether they are smuggled past checkpoints, or legitimately attained the evasive Q_Rank:0. GC19 is famous for its hedonistic debauchery, obscenely bright and jarringly colour clashing street advertising, and glorification of gambling, sex, and ultra-violence.
Transport within the LBN complex is similar to other GCs, with some marked differences. All vehicles are monochrome, and their weapons are (supposedly) non-lethal. Most InMates are prohibited from anything above Class 3 vehicles. Only the top 1% of Q_Rankers, the FEDs, get access to larger vehicles. There is no public transport, no rail network, no officially available maps.

Education

When InMates first enter the Labour Banishment Nexus, at roughly Q_Rank:4,000,000,000 (this number immediately starts fluctuating as InMates are constantly entering, leaving, being murdered, rewarded and getting pushed back in the Q_Ranks for policy breaches), they begin their re-education.

At its core LBN is a correctional facility. The greyness of everything artificial blending with the grey-beige of the smog that desaturates the only flushes of colour that exist in the The Filth, the skin, eyes, hair and blood of InMates. It is a desaturated, low contrast universe, this fuzzy sameness permeates the psychology of InMates at different paces. This is tracked through complex behavioural factors that are monitored constantly, affecting Q_Ranks live. The more malleable and blank the mind becomes, the higher an InMates status in the populace. By the time Q_Rank:0 is attained, InMates should be sufficiently trustworthy to take their place in society.

It should be noted that addictions to Chemix, ultra-violence, hardcore DethSports, and all manner of other deviancies are not considered harmful to Synt Management, so InMates will often leave the LBN as FEDS with all of these vices and more, and be considered harmless to the integrity of Now. AntiNow Infractions and Crimes Against Management are the only offences severe enough to warrant incarceration on LBN.

Adjustment Facilities are commonplace, ultra high security units where InMates that fail to respond to their re-education programme are detained until considered Q_Rankable. Experimental mind control processes and Chemix are combined with Musick and full spectrum McOlor therapy; this sensory bombardment frequently traumatises the InMates hue starved brains, often producing evermore psychotic responses requiring yet more radical treatment.

Infrastructure

The Filth takes up about 80% of the land on LBN, it is complex formed of billions of modular habitation cubes, stacked in to HabLocks, offices, re-stock points and factories in a sprawling landscape of grey voxels. Grid-like streets are patrolled by Rook crowd control units.
If InMates want to travel to other near identical sectors of LBN hundreds of miles away, it means days of travel through hypnotic iterations of the exact same scenes of drudgery, the only notable differences being the aesthetic and style of violence exhibited by the local gangs. Of course, illicit maps of varying accuracy are passed around under tables and public toilet stalls, although even the most accurate of this sought after cartography is objectively confusing, as The Filth from directly above basically looks like graph paper on a tiny scale due to the grid-like modular formations of cubes that make up the landscape.

WELCOME TO LBN, IT'S STATISTICALLY UNLIKELY THAT YOU'LL EVER LEAVE!

Type

Geopolitical, City-state

Alternative Names

The Filth, LBN

Demonym

InMates

Leader

Guvn0r

Head of State

Guvn0r

Head of Government

Guvn0r

Government System

Machine government

Power Structure

Autonomous area

Economic System

Command/Planned economy

Currency

UniCred

Major Exports

Rumour has it the dangerous chemicals and meta-materials created inside The Filth are exported for use within the children's toy industry, although it is not actually known where the chemicals and alloys produced by the InMates ends up, it is more likely that it is used within LBN itself to repair infrastructure and replenish ReproUnits.

Major Imports

Illegal imports include:

Chemix

Illicit Brix

Colour pigments

Lethal weaponry

Illicit vehicle upgrades

Legislative Body

Guvn0r

Judicial Body

Guvn0r

Executive Body

FED guards/InMates.

Controlled Territories

• The Marsh
• The Taint

Notable Members

• Guvn0r