After Wyatt Bradley retired as White Savior, the world went back to the way
it was. Cops were murdering black people, and giving free passes to
civilians who wanted to get in on the action. If someone was caught
committing a crime on camera, there was a decent chance that they would pay
for it, but unlike the way things were handled on other worlds, there was no
guarantee. It wasn’t unusual for the judge to just decide that the
photographic evidence was irrelevant, and he didn’t care one way, or the
other. This was pissing a lot of people off. While Wyatt Bradley’s actions
were largely considered counterproductive, both his appearance, and his
disappearance, gave a lot of people some much needed perspective. Things
actually did get moderately safer for black people while he was around, and
the fact that racist crime went back up after he left proved that it was
real. To put it another way, as a problem, it was a lot harder to ignore
than it once was. He shined a light on the problem, and the afterglow would
last forever. No one suited up and became a vigilante, but they did start
fighting for change. They organized peace rallies, and protested police
violence, and a major surveillance trend began. They called it the Wide Eye
Movement, after the product developer that started it all. Cops were not
obligated to wear body cams, though they did exist, and they sparked the
idea for regular people to wear them. They sold them at an extremely low
price, and it was not uncommon to wear multiple ones, to get different
angles. Whereas before, everyone had a cellphone they could pull out, and
document a horrendous crime, now they didn’t even have to do that.
Accountability became this world’s resting state.
Recordings were sent to the Wide Eye servers, and kept for a period of time
before being overwritten. Day-length storage space was free to all, and
extra storage subscriptions came at an affordable price, though they weren’t
usually necessary. Anything that needed to be kept could be downloaded to
some other device. If someone believed that something unjust had happened to
them, they could post their experience for all to see on the Wide Eye app.
They could also technically save a clip of something fun or interesting that
happened to them, but they would have to download it to their own device,
and upload it somewhere else, if they so wanted. That was not what the app
was for, and other users helped distinguish the important, from the less
important, or the not important at all. The purpose of this was to make sure
no one hurt anybody without being seen. Every customer was required to have
at least one trusted buddy, who would receive their footage if they were to
be killed, be it by murder, or anything else. The cameras were motion
sensitive, so if a user stopped moving for a week—or the cameras were turned
off without being suspended virtually using proper procedures—their buddy
would end up with proof of whatever had happened to them. If the police
weren’t going to police themselves, then the people were going to have to do
it for them, and if the courts did not accept such evidence as legitimate,
then the offending party was at risk of being crucified by the court of
public opinion. The problem wasn’t fixed overnight, but it made it a hell of
a lot harder for racism to go unnoticed. Even snide remarks were uploaded to
the Wide Eye site. They weren’t labeled as urgent, but people still saw
them, and this forced many to be more careful with their words and actions.
Of course, this was not without its consequences. Even embarrassing moments
could be uploaded to other places, and Wide Eye Services had a hard time
regulating this. They tried to exclude such behavior in their Terms of
Service, but it was nearly impossible to enforce. As a result, people were
afraid to be themselves around others, for fear of being ridiculed for
walking around with a stain on their shirt, or tripping on the steps.
Fortunately, the age of Wide Eye was limited. Offenders were weeded out of
the system, and replaced by decent human beings, with good training in
things like sensitivity, and open-mindedness. Policies were changed, and the
right people were voted into the right public offices. Twenty years later,
Wide Eye Services deliberately shutdown, and ended support for their
products. Bad things still happened after that, but it wasn’t nearly as bad
as it was in the olden days.
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