Polis - No. 2
The early years of the Polis of Detroit were marked by two conflicts: the shooting war against the environmental extremist forces known as the Echoes (a corruption of "Ecos," from their self-description as "Eco-Fighters"), waged first under the banner of the United States and later that of the Polis; and the simmering conflict between the inhabitants of the old City of Detroit and the wealthier and far more numerous refugees from metro Detroit, the rest of Michigan, northern Ohio, and Windsor, Ontario. The "Old D's" (eventually, "Oldies") resented the imposition of law and seizure of property by the "Oaklies," even though most of their number originated not from the eponymous Oakland County. The gulf between Oldies and Oaklies was most stark between the blue-collar, union, New Deal Democratic ideals of Detroiters and the socially conservative, financially austere, neo-Puritan philosophy of those from the more prosperous western half of the Lower Peninsula.

The Oldie-Oaklie compromise was enshrined in the charter of the new Polis. (I don't know its formal name. Is it a charter, a compact, a constitution? Search me.) The head of state of the Polis is the Governor, formally titled the Governor of Michigan, and to the modern day, ninety-two years after the Polis's founding, inaugurated in a formal ceremony in the ruins of the State Capitol in Lansing. (Compare to the Presidents of Israel and Germany.) The head of government is the independently elected Mayor of the Palace*, colloquially known as "the Coleman," after the Coleman A. Young Municipal Palace and also to distinguish the office from the numerous other mayors within the Polis. The Mayor of the Palace (the Coleman) is elected by majority vote in a polis-wide election, but among the duties of the office is to chair meetings of the Council of Mayors, composed of the locally-elected mayors of the Polis's vestigial municipalities. I am not familiar enough with the geography of metro Detroit to tell you the modern extent of the Polis's borders, but most of the major suburban cities have Mayors, as well as such non-local municipalities as Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Flint, Lansing, Saginaw, and others. Each Mayor exercises carefully circumscribed executive authority within his electoral municipality, but there is no doubt that the Coleman is the chief executive of the Polis. Additionally, the populace of the Polis is represented by the purely legislative Senate, its members elected proportionally from party lists, an idea foreign to pre-Polis American politics, but introduced in the hope of reducing the parochial rivalries stirred up by the Council of Mayors.

The Mayor of the Palace runs the Polis, the Senate holds the all-important purse-strings, and the Council of Mayors, though wielding limited veto power, seems naught but a soapbox for those who fancy themselves fine candidates for the office of Coleman, which has lead some academics and newspaper editors to question if the unified Polis still needs as divisive an institution as the Council nearly a century after the Fall. The Mayors, of course, counter that they serve a vital, though vague, purpose in the grand design of the Polis.

The executive arm of the Polis is divided into seven Bailiwicks, each headed by a Bailiff nominated by the Mayor of the Palace and approved by the Senate: Husbandry, Reprisal, Light & Power, Justice, the Treasury, Health, and Commerce. Relative to any 21st Century city, or even nation, the Polis is a closed system, and it falls to the Bailiwick of Husbandry to preserve and maintain the resources of that system. Husbandry oversees the rooftop, vertical, and underground farms that keep the Polis fed, and manages the recycling of damn near 100% of the Polis waste. Husbandry also operates a temporary employment program for those down on their luck, as the Polis can always use more bodies working the fields and processing whatever outside supplies Commerce's Forager Corps can scavenge.

The Bailiwick of Light & Power works hand in glove with Husbandry, emphasizing the physical infrastructure of the Polis, keeping the lights and the mag-lev tracks on and the buildings standing despite the Arctic winds. The Polis derives over 96% of it's electricity from Light & Power's half-dozen nuclear fusion power plants, the remainder coming from Husbandry's garbage incinerators.

The Bailiwick of the Treasury collects the taxes and tries to keep the markets within the Polis on an even keel, though it has a limited toolbox of options as the Polis is predicated on faith in the invisible hand of the market. The Bailiwick of Health funds research grants and verifies all the hospitals within the Polis are operating up to code, but primarily it is occupied with watching for any sign of plague or mass infection. A closed, completely urbanized system like the Polis is vulnerable to contagion, and levels of watchfulness have neared the threshold of paranoia since the Polis of Indianapolis (the name is silly, but irresistible) was nearly halved by plague a decade ago. (Foul play, either be remnants of the Echoes or the Polis of Chicago is suspected, but has been neither confirmed nor dismissed conclusively.)

The Bailiwick of Justice oversees the courts and the network of penitentiaries, as well as the Polis Criminal Police (CP), the unitary law enforcement agency for the Polis. The seven regional CP commanders are colloquially called "sheriffs," but none wields independent jurisdiction and all answer to the Chief of the Criminal Police. (Fearing confusion between "Polis" and "Police," I have toyed with the idea of calling the constabulary the Polizei, but for now I think I'll stick with Criminal Police or CP.) Justice also operates, jointly with the Bailiwick of Reprisal, the Polis Security Police (PSP), the Polis's counter-espionage and domestic intelligence branch. Though aggressively named, Reprisal's focus is upon the defense of the Polis, specifically maintaining the integrity of the Pale, the literal boundary of the Polis proper, and the inviolability of the Polis's airspace. Reprisal also maintains forts and listening posts in the ruins of abandoned satellite cites, claiming exclusion areas around the Pale of Ann Arbor, the Pale of Flint, the Pale of Toledo, and, most contentiously, the Pale of Grand Rapids. The Polis of Detroit makes no claim to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, though several survey missions were mounted before the middle span of the Mackinac Bridge was collapsed by an unknown agency.

The Bailiwick of Commerce is the most debated and opposed arm of the Polis. By its nature and the circumstances of its founding, the Polis is inherently xenophobic, and though few in number there are even those who argue against foraging for supplies among the abandoned cities outside the Polis. Formal trade is conducted between poleis under Commerce's auspices, but the Bailiwick's main portfolio is the Forager Corps, brave patriots who venture beyond the Pale (most Polis denizens will never even see the Pale, much less set foot beyond it) to bring back raw materials from the cities, towns, and villages of the fabled Michigan that predated the revered Polis. Clashes with foragers from other poleis are rare, but not unknown, and are increasing in frequency as the areas near each polis have been stripped bare over the decades, forcing the foragers ever farther afield. Though initially Detroit had no interest in maintaining a presence in Grand Rapids, eventually a Pale was established to protect Forager Corps expeditions to the Lake Michigan coast from the depredations of the foragers and, yes, even raiders from the Polis of Chicago. Service in the Foragers and the expeditionary branches of Reprisal is revered, as setting foot outside the Polis is considered a grave personal sacrifice.

To be continued...

No. 1

*My selection of the title "Mayor of the Palace" was of course influenced by my familiarity with pre-Charlemagne Frankish politics. The ceremonial-actual gulf between the Governor and the Coleman is very intentionally reflective of the fascinating duality between the Merovingian kings and the Carolingian Mayors of the Palace. The Polis of Detroit is less than a century old; so, in the fullness of time the powerful Colemans may well do away with the "do-nothing" Governors.