The Crest advocate, Selena Parmenter, is in her early thirties if appearances can be trusted, and she acts bored. She has said little to Mary as they wait for t

The Crest advocate, Selena Parmenter, is in her early thirties if appearances can be trusted, and she acts bored. She has said little to Mary as they wait for the deputy district director of Seattle Oversight, the honorable Clarens Lodge, to take his seat and listen to their appeals. Oversight was created in the teens. The first states to use the procedure were California and Washington. With so much information on citizens recorded daily by vid, home monitors, fibe and satlink uploads, and neighborhood surveillance systems, a separate branch of the judiciary was established to hear appeals from those seeking to use that information for legal purposes. Early abuses--and the far worse systematic abuse under the Raphkind presidency--has made the system painfully complex for all concerned. Each avenue of information has been wrapped in labyrinthine rules of legal engagement; and an appeal for release of data can be made only once a year for any given case. -- Slant, Greg Bear