The Naked World

by Eli K. P. William

  “Who are you?” said the woman.

  Amon—battered, thirsty, and exhausted, lost in an incomprehensible city, robbed of his food, drinks, and only weapon—wanted to run. But he had no illusions he might escape this pair with their long-range weapons and the woman’s great speed. So he simply stood there dumbly, his lips quivering.

  “Quickly!” snapped the woman. “Before they come back with more men.”

  “She asked you a question!” barked the man, drawing the wheel further back threateningly.

  “My—please,” Amon blurted. “My name is Amon Kenzaki. I’m—”

  “We don’t care what your name is,” said the woman. “What are you doing dressed like a Liquidator and how did you get this?” She shook the duster she was aiming at him.

  “I—p-please. I-it’s a long story. You …” His intention was to stand proudly and face them, but his nerves were frayed and he cowered involuntarily, lowering his head.

  “You think he’s one of those fuckers?” the man growled.

  “No,” the woman replied. “They were sampling him when I got here.”

  “Doesn’t mean anything.”

  “He nerve dusted one before I took this.”

  The man glanced at the duster in her hand. “He can’t be bankliving?”

  The woman shook her head. “No drones,” she said, arcing her eyes across the empty air above as if to illustrate.

  In his shock and fear, Amon found himself gesturing compulsively, and before he could stop himself, he clicked the man and woman to check their profiles. Their anonymity is just … wrong, he felt. Who are they?

  As Amon twitched under their gazes, he watched the man and woman exchange looks.

  “Crashnewb?” the man asked the woman.

  “I’ll take care of him,” she said, tipping her head towards the mother trembling on the ground a short distance away. The man nodded, snapped the wheel in his hand onto the axle of the tricycle on his back, walked over to the mother, and bent down, starting to console her with whispers and a hand on her back.

  “Get out of here,” the woman said, glowering at Amon and giving the duster a flick in the direction the three men had exited the square. “Now!”

  “Hold up!” said Amon. Only a few moments earlier he had wanted to get as far away from these people as fast as he could, but now that it was clear they weren’t out to harm him he saw a desperate chance to seek help. “Let me ask you a—”

  “Forget it. Get moving!”

  “No. Please. I-I’m looking for a place called Xenocyst. Do you know the way?”

  “We don’t take crashnewbs. So off. Now! Before I dust you.”

  We?

  “Please …” Amon dropped to his knees overwhelmed, droplets of blood dribbling off the end of his chin. “I have something for—for Hippo. A man called Tamper sent me with it.” Amon looked up at the woman, begging her with his eyes. “Could you please just tell me where it is? I can’t speak the dialect here. I’ve got no one else to ask.”

  She paused momentarily, squinting as though in thought, before calling out, “Ty. Have you ever heard of someone named Tamper?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said the man called Ty. He now had the woman on her feet and was helping her along with an arm around her waist. Her swollen eye had purpled darkly, though her limp seemed to be gone and she could almost walk at a normal pace. “He was an electronics engineer. Lived with us a while before you came. Weird guy but very useful to have around.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Went over to Free Tokyo a few years back. Wouldn’t say why.” While the woman spoke in perfectly natural Japanese, Amon detected a thick camp accent in the man’s, though he was fluent enough. “Got some reports in the beginning, but no one’s heard from him for months. We were startin’ to worry.”

  The woman nodded and turned to Amon. “Take off your clothes.”

  “Excuse me? You want to see the p-package, right?” said Amon, reaching inside his jacket for the plastic roll. “I can—”

  With one firm shake of the gun, “Hands away from your pockets!” Amon froze. “Your clothes off now or I’ll rip them from your dusted body!”

  “But—”

  “You think we care about you? We’ll leave you here for those OpScis when they come back with a whole gang of field priests. Is that what you want?”

  Trembling, he stared into her fed-up eyes.

  “Starting with the jacket.”

  After gripping the collar and pulling the sleeves off his arms, Amon folded his jacket and held it in the crook of his elbow to begin unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Quickly!”

  Jumping at her voice, Amon dropped his jacket on the dusty ground, the plastic sheet from Tamper still in the inner pocket, and hurriedly finished undoing the remaining buttons on his shirt. He then tore off his garments one by one—his dress shirt, undershirt, shoes, socks, belt, and pants—plopping them at his feet. When he was standing there in his underwear, feeling embarrassed and vulnerable, he paused, and looked questioningly at the woman.

  “Slide them down and lift up your balls.”

  Amon was going to protest, but balked at the impatient look in her eyes and sent his shaking hands down to the elastic around his waist.

  When his underwear topped the pile, he lifted his scrotum and the woman bent down slightly to look beneath, saying, “Now turn around and spread your cheeks.”

  Amon did as she asked, and could feel her gaze burning a spot he wasn’t sure anyone had ever looked at before.

  “Stay like that,” she said, and Amon watched from beneath the dangling obstruction between his legs as she trotted over and picked the plastic roll from the pile of clothes.

  “Okay. You can put on your underwear. Ty!” she called. “The cowl.”

  “You’re not bringing him along?” said Ty as he helped the woman onto the stairpath.

  “The Books should see this,” she said, holding up the plastic sheets.

  “Let’s just take his stuff and go.”

  “He could have more information about Tamper.”

  “He could be one of their spies.”

  “I told you he dusted one—”

  “We can’t be sure.”

  “There’s no time for this!”

  Ty grunted with a shake of his head. “Alright, but this is your call. And if those fuckers catch up, we’re leaving the dead weight.”

  The woman nodded.

  Ty left the mother sitting on the stairs and jogged towards Amon. When he reached around his back towards his tricycle, Amon flinched, fearing an attack on his defenseless, sore body. But Ty merely plucked a piece of black fabric from where it dangled from the handlebars.

  “Put this over your head,” he said, handing the fabric to Amon, who took it and saw it was a sort of cowl with a zipper at the bottom.

  “Why do I have to—”

  “PUT. IT. ON,” the woman demanded, giving the gun a shake.

  With panicked hands, Amon fumbled the cowl over his head. A sharp stink hit his nostrils and he wondered how many people had layered their breath in it before him. Just enough light seeped in that he could see the texture of the fabric, though the world was completely cut off. Suddenly hands grabbed at his neck and when Amon shrunk back, “Hold still!” the woman shouted from a few paces away.

  Quickly the hands closed the zipper tight, and something hard and intricate was wound around his wrists. When it was tightened and he could feel links digging into his skin, Amon guessed it was a chain made of plastic. In less than a minute, his wrists were tied together in separate loops in front of him. Then, cowled and bound, Amon felt a tug on both of them simultaneously.

  “Move!” said the woman, and Amon trudged out of the square on his leash.

  2

  Amon found himself blind once again. Except now ruthless strangers were leading him like a slave or beast through an unknown space, full of unknown dangers, expanding around him like a great burrow of hidden s
corpions.

  They took him first up a stairpath that had to be the one his captors and the Opportunity Scientists had used to enter the square. The hard grating of the steps dug sharp squares into his soles. Following the slight pull of the chain on his wrists, Amon felt along the curving walls for reassurance, until they ended and his fear of falling increased at every unsupported step. If these paths were anything like the ones he’d climbed that morning, it could be a long way down … When Amon proceeded too warily, a strong tug came on the chain and he tripped, his right shoulder slamming hard into the next stair.

  “Hurry!” said Ty. “We’ve got to move before those assholes come back.”

  Getting to his feet, Amon continued up the stairs, focusing intently on the chain now, speeding up when it grew taut while keeping his footing as best he could. Soon they reached a level path where Amon felt something hard and granular underfoot, perhaps gravel. People kept brushing and bumping past him in muttered conversation as wafts of sewage and effluent filled the air.

  Beset with all manner of discomforts—his ribs throbbing individually at different frequencies of pain, his wrist sore from the strike of the wheel, his gut aching from the punch, blood and sweat pooling inside the cowl, nauseous, dizzy, disoriented, his thirst worsening by the second—Amon fidgeted the commands to activate MyMedic. Maybe he was just bruised as it seemed, but what if his bones were broken and needed to be set? What if he’d sustained hemorrhaging, or contracted a fever in these unsanitary conditions? What if he was about to die? Without sensors to scan his vitals and an analyzer to provide a diagnosis, he had no objective way to determine what was actually going on with his body. Despite his senses telling him that his injuries were not mortal, he anxiously repeated the same gestures in a loop, knowing that no windows would pop up in the darkness of the cowl but unable to stop.

  Presently he heard the mother sobbing quietly just up ahead and the consoling coos of the other woman. Over the murmur of the crowd and the rakhaw of crows, fervent shouting echoed from the distance, the tone reminding him of the Preacher’s when addressing the crowd. Who had those three men been? Opportunity Scientists, or OpScis as the woman had called them? Surely, but then what the hell were those? The shouting grew louder, soon accompanied by howls and drums and clangs and rumbles. Increasingly he was buffeted by passing shoulders as the crowd thickened, until he was squeezed in with other bodies, their coarse-rubbing fabric and heat on his bare flesh as the chain continued to tug him along. The ground against Amon’s feet changed several times, from tile to more grating to soft cobbled foam. When he stepped onto what felt like flake-strewn concrete again, the space opened so that he was no longer touching anyone and he was brought to a near standstill. Only directed to take steps forward occasionally, he could soon hear a familiar ka-chunk, ka-chunk not far ahead, and knew they were lining up for vending machines.

  “Alright pal,” said Ty eventually. “Stick out your pinky.”

  “I’m not sure if—”

  “Stick out your pinky!” snapped the woman.

  Although Amon was afraid of getting revulsion dusted again, he was in no position to argue and let his chained hands be lifted up to shoulder height, his finger brushing the rim of the small aperture as it was inserted. Immediately he heard the familiar hum and tensed up with fear until Ty jerked his hand out.

  “Vertical! Did you hear that?” asked Ty.

  “Yes,” replied the woman called Vertical. “What was it?”

  “The alarm.”

  “Are you sure? How?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Why don’t you give it another try?”

  Again Amon’s finger was inserted into the hole in the same way. Again the machine hummed.

  “What is this?” said Vertical. “Who sets off the alarm on this side?”

  “Forget it now,” said Ty. “Let’s just get back as quick as we can.”

  The chain continued to tug Amon along, through all manner of cramped pathways, rooftops, and stairs that he could not see. After a while, the footsteps and murmuring began to reverberate differently, telling him they were now indoors. Presently he heard sizzling and a steady hammering, as the smoke of burning plastic choked his lungs. Then they were outside again and his soles kept splatting blobs of something wet and sticky on the spongy ground. Without his thick suit, he wasn’t as hot as before, the faintest breeze now directly cooling his sweaty skin. Still, his thirst kept increasing. The hot moisture trapped in his cowl only reminded him of his dry mouth and throat, the serrated growl of hunger in the depths of his stomach almost forgotten alongside it. Soon the dim and quiet created by the muffling fabric around his head took on a keen, nagging edge. Before stepping into the District of Dreams, in spite of his efforts to avoid distractions for the sake of frugality, Amon had been accustomed to daily doses of advertainment—images dancing in the corner of his eyes, audio humming at the threshold of hearing. With his bankdeath, countless new sights and sounds, not to mention violence, in this harrowing labyrinth had busied his mind. Yet now this stimulation too was stifled and there was nothing to help him forget the awful present. His ears began to ache for theme songs, tear-jerking monologues, catch phrases, his eyes to burn for strobing colors, 3D starscape dramas, special effects. He would have even taken the pandemonium of the spammers if only they would be so kind as to swarm him again, his whole body atremble with pointless gesture after gesture and—

  “Gyah.” Amon let a sob escape in spite of himself when his restlessness and discomfort and terror became unbearable.

  “WHAT?” said Ty, yanking so violently on his chain that Amon thought his shoulders would pop out of their sockets and nearly fell on his face. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I just … I just want to … N-nothing … It’s nothing.”

  “Come on!” Ty gave the chain another yank, so that it cut off circulation to Amon’s hands and a pulse of numbness spread to his fingertips. “We’re almost there.”

  “Should we leave him after all?” asked Vertical. “I doubt we’ll get much out of him. Not with webloss this bad.”

  “We’ve already dragged him this far,” said Ty. “Anyone this weird should tell us something.”

  “Have you ever heard of someone like this?”

  “Never. Not once in my whole life here …”

  After that they were silent.

  Despite his shaking, Amon forced himself to continue plodding and squeezing and climbing along with Ty tugging him when he lagged behind. His inability to see through the cowl, to rotate his perspective and look down on his captors from above, to take snapshots of their faces and image search them, to research who they were and who they served, was maddening. His vision was not supposed to be bound by his eyes, his hearing by his ears, his thought by his brain. But with the satellites and sensors and spatial models that were once extensions of his body now severed, he was reduced to a mere hunk of itching aching dumb meat, lost and helpless, beaten and humiliated, wearing nothing except the cowl and his underwear—but why leave those on?

  I ought to be as naked as this world, he thought. I ought to touch the air directly, to be here without mediation. That would complete the stripping away of his former life, the disrobing of his common sense, the peeling away of all the truths he had ever held dear.

  Amon wanted to scream.

  But fearing further reprisals from his new masters, he clamped his quivering jaw and followed their lead, in thrall to whatever unadorned destiny might await.

  3

  “Stop here.” Ty put his hands on Amon’s shoulders and spun him in circles before leading him onwards. He did this several times at intervals of about ten minutes, apparently to disorient him, as if Amon had the faintest idea where they were going. Soon they paused as Vertical briefly explained who Amon was to someone, and Amon guessed they were passing through some sort of checkpoint.

  Up many steps they went, along narrow ledges, down the slanting face of leaning buildings, and into some kind
of flat passage made perhaps of cracked tile. Sounds had that indoor reverb again and the voices grew more clamorous, less furtive and subdued. Soon Amon could hear babies—crying, gurgling, laughing—with mothers babbling to them soothingly. A woman’s animated voice, apparently reading a children’s story. More tiled passages and stairwells until, echoing faintly as though from a distant room, women were groaning and shrieking in pain, a bustle of chatter around them. Then several rises and turns later they took a sudden left and Amon felt hands undoing the chains. He gasped with relief to be unfettered but the moment they fall clittering to the floor, he was shoved down from behind onto a fabric-covered floor.

  “Get dressed!” barked the voice of a woman that wasn’t Vertical, and Amon realized he was on top of clothes.

  Crawling off onto the tiles, he groped the garments and was disappointed to find the texture was not that of his uniform, but thinner and softer. It was a T-shirt and shorts, and the moment he slipped them on, “Come,” the woman said, grabbing his left wrist to pull him along.

  After traversing several more corridors and stairwells, Amon was led into a room where several people were talking, the echo of their voices suggesting spaciousness.

  “Kneel,” said the woman behind him, and Amon sank to his knees on a hard floor.

  “… background is the issue,” said a man with a soft voice that was thoughtful and slow yet commanded attention. “While we acknowledge your skills, positions and resources are scarce and we simply cannot take the risk. We also have doubts about the truth of your account.”

  “But that was just a brief period in my youth,” whined another man. “I haven’t volunteered at Delivery in years and—”