Memoirs of a Kogan refugee

I walked into an Optus shop today, and announced that I am a Kogan refugee.

The emperor of Kogan (a small state of ispONE, itself a proxy/puppet realm of Telstraland) had told me (and around 120,000 others) that I was to be permanently exiled from Kogan on seven days’ notice in the near future. The emperor implied that his hands were tied, and that it was dark forces from within Telstraland that were to blame for our forced exile, although, while I had long sought to flee the dictatorship of Telstraland myself, I suspect it was more to do with the emperor of Kogan finding his investment less lucrative than he’d hoped.

So I drove to Optusland and explained my case. The young gentleman who served me expressed sympathy for my plight, and set about providing a solution. He didn’t seem to be interested in whether I had walked, driven, flown, or sailed to Optusland. He set me up with a temporary visa SIM, which gave me limited access to Optusland for a trial period. No-one in the mall outside seemed particularly concerned that I might be there to steal their Optusland bandwidth, or their children’s or grandchildren’s bandwidth, nor did anyone comment on how easily I managed to pay for the deposit and for my fuel to make the trip. People with cameras weren’t taking photos of me arriving with a mobile in my hand already, and a laptop over my shoulder, and posting them online, suggesting that I was an economic “parasite” who clearly had no need for the Optusland allowances designed for Kogan refugees – the bill for which would ultimately be footed by existing ‘true blue’ Optuslanders. Politicians didn’t use me as a political football, justifying policy position backflips with unsubstantiated claims.

Processing my application was relatively quick and painless – I was asked to provide photo identification, no doubt as a wise security measure, and one to which I had no objection – and the overall experience left me without the slightest desire to burn the Optusland shop down, which was a stark contrast to my indignant fury the last time I had to visit a Telstraland shop due to circumstances beyond my control, and waited around, on my feet, for over an hour waiting to be seen – a fury that wasn’t isolated to myself, judging from the vitriol that was vented by others as they left in disgust, without having been attended to.

I’m still not sure I’ll stay in Optusland. But it’s very nice to know that I don’t have to put up with the treatment I got at the hands of Telstraland, just because I happen to have been born closest to a Telstraland tower. Indeed, I’ll still probably have to do a bit of legwork to find the plan that works best, but now I can be confident that I won’t just be left out in the cold when I’m kicked out of Kogan. That was where the sense of urgency came from. Now that I’m safe, the more complex details of how my mobile life will work from now on, can be sorted out later.