Do older people still speak their native languages (ie English) in secret after submersion?
- @purru
it honestly depends on the level of surveillance in that zone.
so Zona is made of 13 zones total, and only two of those zones are free from Society's control. our main setting is Zone 13, the biggest zone and one of the most strictly controlled.
everyone in Zona has a wrist brand -- this is how the Society excises control. through this wrist brand, they can:
listen to convos (this isn't a passive feature so they would have to actively log in, aka they'd have suspicion to do so)
know their vitals (i.e. if they're alive, dead, injured, panicked, running, etc.)
allocate credits + Number status (which is a social status that determines what resources u get + how you're treated)
keep track of your credits + Number
give out + keep track of time violations(1)
zap people for time violations (if they accrue enough; Logan is constantly getting zapped lol)
but since the Society can't be spying on every single person all at once, they only tend to tune in when people are most likely to be talking with others -- i.e. when coming home from work to families, when children finish school for the day, and shared meals. it depends on how High Risk someone is (i.e. someone with a lot of time violations is going to be spied on more than someone who doesn't)
WHICH MEANS: if it's not during the usual Spy Times, elders can get away with it. however, elders have a strong incentive to keep speaking Zona all the time because defaulting to their native language makes it harder to break that habit, and one slip up could be quite bad.
but it happens! Logan even says in How to Speak Zona that David taught him Norwegian and a bit of English, which David naturally would be good at getting away with bc he understands how the Society functions better than most people would.
(1) a time violation is when someone goes out without permission, goes somewhere that wasn't approved, is out for longer than was approved, or is past curfew. the fucked up part is that Zonans have no concept of time; they have to rely on their wrist brand to 'buzz' for each hour and they have no idea how many seconds/minutes are in between, or even what number hour it is. hours are designated by importance: i.e. Waking Hour, Mid Hour, After Work Hour, Curfew, etc.
