Mab Westell used to describe herself as a ‘chaos operative’ back in InterAct. She often hints at a history of illegal behavior, of defiance of the TA/UC, of hacking, and it’s easy to forget she left there when she was barely 17, although she lied about that when she registered here, just in case anyone was going to try to take away her freedom because she was underaged. She only admitted it later.
Mab has fully functional implants, likely jailbroken by herself, and often operates as her own camera because she has an implant that records everything she sees and hears and can stream it in real time, which she has apparently altered to work on Haven’s networks. And for those who know anything about implants, it’s clearly a professional-grade journalism implant with stabilization and real-time post-processing. What she was doing with that at age 17 is anyone’s guess, as is what other implants she might have.
And she certainly was a ‘chaos operative’ the first couple of years she was here, starting a ‘flow’ (An InterAct term that is basically streaming and stream-of-consciousness blogging, and what is essentially social media posting. Basically, the concept of a flow includes anything that isn’t scripted or edited, it’s supposed to be completely off-the-cuff mixed-media content.) called ‘Zero Flux Given’. Not just one flow, actually, but she built a system that let other people join and start flowing.
This concerned a lot of people who had not been used to that sort of direct communication, and concerned a lot of other people who know the existing crappy networking couldn’t handle that sort of load, and sure enough, it kept falling over repeatedly until Jeremy Touze showed up and helped stabilize everything.
Politically, she seemed to be option 3 when pressed, and perhaps the only person who made a somewhat well-crafted argument for option 4, just because she thought every position should have someone competently argue for it at least once.
However, she also argued that she was not technically in politics, because the news should be unbiased. No one was quite sure how she was ‘the news’ at that point.
She then, rather infamously, brought a 21-year-old Ambrose Bierce to 23 HY, who she proceeded to marry and, more importantly to both of them, start a newspaper called Zero Hour with. So she is now legitimately the news, and is currently the Editor-in-Chief.
She has calmed down a lot…probably?
Arrived 19HY from 2059 InterAct.
Mab Westell, one of the almost infinite photos of her she’s uploaded on Zero Flux Given. Hair color varies.