What's in a Name [Tarak]

[Victoria Jefferson]

Brown eyes stared fixedly at the inspirational poster framed on the wall across from her. Plump lips were pursed in thought and the end of a pen tapped a tattoo against the top of her desk.

Be All You Can Be was already in use and a hook for the general population. She needed something more. Something that made the meta population feel wanted. Desired. But most importantly NEEDED. That was the crux. She needed what was called a 'hook' in the publishing business. That short, two-line blurb that grabbed the reader's attention.

With cookbooks it had been easy. Savory words that tingled the senses were all that was really needed. Delight, entice, and enchant the would-be home chef with a few little things and you had your sale. It helped, of course, when one had a celebrity chef as the cover. The recipes weren't really theirs, but they were the hawkers. The pretty face on a product that actually did something.

"Empowering You." Vikki wrinkled her nose. No, that wouldn't do.
"Every Meta Has a Story." mmmmm, that more or less worked, but it didn't get the point across. If she were writing a hook for an anthology of famous meta's maybe it would work better.

Lifting her head, she pointed at the man walking past, "Tarak! C'mere, I need to bounce some ideas off of you."

[Tarak Rana]

Tarak was wandering past Vikki's cubicle, stack of papers in hand. They were resumes, meant to be critiqued and edited until he had a product no employer could resist. He had intended to make copies of a few of them so that he could mark them all up with red pen, but the copy machine was broken.

Again.

He was beginning to wonder if it ever actually worked.

He was planning on perhaps going to the library to make copies there when his coworker called his name, freezing him in the middle of the hallway.

"Yes?" He queried, edging toward her with a look of mild curiosity, "What sort of ideas are we bouncing?"

He shifted the papers in his arms, leaning against the frame of the door to glance at her questioningly. He certainly had no qualms about pausing his work to help her, but he did need to know what exactly he was supposed to be helping with.

[Victoria Jefferson]

"Slogans." The word was both a curse and a blessing. "The hook," she explained, "That little thing that people remember most and will associate with us and empowerment. With employability. With not having to hide a part of who they are."

Waggling her fingers at a bare corner of her desk, Vikki invited Tarak to rest the resumes for a moment. "Most slogans are wonderful, but already taken, so it's an iffy task. There's also my bias. It helps to have someone not me hear things out loud." Besides, he would have a perspective she didn't, and they both knew that.

He was a hard worker, from what Vikki had observed, and personable. She liked him, but then she liked all of the folks she worked with so far. They were all on the same team, angling for the same goal. Meta Integration.

[Tarak Rana]

Tarak tacitly accepted her offer, placing his resumes on the portion of the desk she'd indicated before moving closer to her, leaning against her filing cabinet now instead of her door frame.

"Slogans?" He repeated with interest. She was, of course, the communications officer, so she would be the one in charge of that sort of thing. He felt that their respective jobs were both very similar, in that they relied on packaging and linguistic slickness to sell a product: In her case, Operation Patriot, and on his end their clients.

"So tell me what you have so far and I'll be glad to give an opinion."

[Victoria Jefferson]

Wrinkling her nose at him in a smile, Vikki leaned forward in a near conspiratorial manner and shot out the first few slogans she'd liked enough to jot down. Later, she would play with font and sizing for the pamphlets. But only for the ones that survived the culling process she and Tarak were about to go through.

"The Power of Progress," she paused and allowed that one to sink in.
"Absolute Ability, though I'm worried that the vodka company might take issue with us using Absolute in that way, I'm fairly certain it's been trade marked." It sounded good to her though.
"Live to Your Worth." She liked it, though it sounded more like a threat if said the wrong way. A father scolding his child. That was part of the trick. Finding something that was hip, memorable, and usable.

[Tarak Rana]

When she leaned forward he found himself leaning in as well, leaving the relative comfort of the filing cabinet to be closer as they brainstormed. He wrinkled his brow in concentration, listening intently as she listed off the slogans she'd come up with so far.

"Hmm." He mused, considering the options she'd presented before him. He wasn't a sloganeer himself, and resumes allowed for more verbose attempts at capturing attention. Catchy and concise was always the ideal, but he had a bit more wiggle room than she did in his profession. Still...

"None of those really jump out at me," He confessed, folding his arms across his chest. "Doesn't the vodka spell it without the e?" An inane point; they still could consider it infringement.

"The power of progress is positive, I like the concept but it doesn't really tell me about the product. There's a lot that falls under progress."

[Victoria Jefferson]

Nodding her head, tight curls bobbed from behind the wide headband, Vikki jotted down "tell about product". Her product was integration. Giving the Meta community a chance to 'come out' as it were. With "Don't ask, don't tell" ending for the LGBT community it was still in full effect for the Metas, more or less. That was something she, and the rest of Operation Patriot were trying to end.

"Mm, that's a fantastic point. It still needs to be short. The army has the whole Be all you can be. thing that doesn't even need the last three bits." The last three, she and every other American over the age of 7 knew was In the Army. But that had essentially been dropped.

"Maybe Use the Power in you. Though it doesn't trip off the tongue it's closer to what we're aiming for. Being out. Using the natural abilities given to the individual meta. They're already IN society. A part of it, but only half way." And that made her sad. If the 'general populace' was more aware, more in tune, then maybe her sister wouldn't have died. Vikki believed that in her heart of hearts, and didn't want that to happen to anyone else if she had anything to do with it. And she did.

But first things first, a slogan.

[Tarak Rana]

"I completely understand." Tarak assured her, finally giving up on leaning anywhere and instead hovering over her shoulder as she wrote. She had very neat penmanship, which prompted him to remark, "I wish my son's teachers could convince him to write half as legibly as you. He doesn't seem to value that skill."

But he was off topic there, and too much time conversing would waste both their time. "But yes, I agree that it needs to be short and snappy and memorable, but if people remember the slogan but don't remember what it goes to it doesn't do us any good. Have you ever seen an ad and thought it was hilarious and you remember the ad but not the product? That's a failure of marketing."

Then again, this was what she was getting paid to do, not him, so of course she already knew that. "But Use the power in you is better. Power and empowerment, that's what you want to convey, isn't it?"

He didn't comment on the fact that the they she referred to included him; he was used to people forgetting. Not a bad thing, necessarily; the prejudice he faced most often tended to be for the things people could see, followed by the things they assumed.

Not that being meta had made that any easier.

[Victoria Jefferson]

It wasn't that Vikki had forgotten that Tarak was a part of the 'them' she had mentioned, but it seemed rude to her to point it out. She wanted Meta's to be completely equal, not their power. Their power was a gateway, to show that just because they had these powers they weren't dangerous. Rather they could be useful.

Not Superman. Not Wonder Woman. Not any of the trademarked Marvel or DC or Image character, but people. People with abilities. People who could help the police, fire department, military. People who could entertain with illusions. People who could teach if they didn't want to do anything with their abilities, but just be. But they could do so without fear of being fired. Or descriminated against because they had a few extra things.

So for her to say "you" would have felt wrong.

"It is what I want to convey! Empowerment. Ability." Pursing her lips, Vikki considered.

"Not everyone will want to use what they've been given though. Not everyone is a trail blazer, or wants to be. But it's a good start, yes?"

[Tarak Rana]

Tarak nodded at his coworker's diatribe. He agreed with her intensely, perhaps unsurprisingly given that they worked for the same organization.

"Integration is key." He agreed, having forgotten about his resumes for the moment. He squinted down at her notes as if they contained all the secrets necessary to mold society into their desired structure. "The ability shouldn't matter unless it pertains directly to the job in a beneficial way and the Meta person wants to use it." He certainly didn't use his ability in his job at all, and there were applications for invisibility in certain areas of the workforce.

And besides, most abilities, unless they were involuntary, weren't possible to use all the time, not enough to be useful in the workforce. He could spy for brief periods of time, but not long enough for it to be worthwhile, and the resultant migraines made the effort not worth it, in his opinion.

"I just want people to know there are opportunities beyond Pilot Ridge." He sighed. So many of his classmates were now teaching at Hammel, just like the generations before them, and of those who didn't work for the school it seemed as if a quarter of them, at least, stuck around the town, not daring to venture out into the world because the Institute had instilled in them a fear of integration.

"We need people to realize that not only can they integrate, but the government is paying money to encourage that. And considering this economy that's saying something. People should be beating down our doors all things considered."

Although Pilot Ridge didn't seem to be hit as hard as the rest of Vermont, or even the rest of the country, it was no secret that unemployment was high and the deficit higher.

[Victoria Jefferson]

Nodding her head in agreement, Vikki felt that familiar pang. The tug of injustice everywhere that needed a champion. She couldn't do everything, but Operation Patriot was certainly a step in the direction towards equality for all. Everywhere. Regardless of ability.

"We're getting there, absolutely," reaching for a highlighter she put a bold, green line over Use the power in you. That was the one for the moment. There would be others, but it would pique the interest of those who were ready to 'come out' as it were.

Setting the highlighter aside, Vikki beamed, "I know we'll get there eventually. Sooner rather than later at that. We've already made leaps and bounds."

[Tarak Rana]

"Yeah. We're getting there."

Tarak wasn't entirely sure he agreed with her that improvement was by leaps and bounds, precisely, not when people were sometimes afraid that he was around and listening in on their conversations when he wasn't -- not because he really respected their privacy that much, but because invisibility was actually not that easy to keep up for that long. Still, people shouldn't assume that he would just because of his power.

And besides, he had to look back on the fight for racial equality for, well, everyone -- African-Americans, Native Americans, the Irish, Jewish, Italians...the Chinese who worked on the railroads, the Hispanics who trekked over the border, and his own South Asian ancestry. There had been anti-Catholic bias since the beginning, anti-Muslim bias in the present that he had to contend with, and antisemitism that ebbed and flowed throughout the centuries.

Progress was a war made up of many skirmishes, some won and some lost, and improvements were incremental.

But life was still better than what it had been even a decade ago.

"So any other suggestions? Or am I supposed to be making some?"

It wasn't his job, but he had agreed to help.

[Victoria Jefferson]

Victoria glanced again at her notes and shook her head. "I think we've got a good one here, I just need to play with fonts and formatting and then submit for approval. The old pamphlets have been circulating for a bit now, it's time for some fresh. Something young." No offense meant to the previous graphic designer and copy writers but the pamphlet had felt 'old' to her. And while that had clearly had results based on the stack of resumes, Vikki wanted a fresh breath.

"You were incredibly helpful, Tarak." And he had been. He'd helped her weed through the few short slogans she'd had, pick one that felt right, and provided her with a little breath of companionship while he'd done it. "You, sir, are the bomb."