The Naked World

by Eli K. P. William

  “The official pronouncement of the council,” interrupted a third man, with a deep nasally voice, “is non-admittance, and you will now be escorted out of the compound. Bring forth the next applicant!”

  The shuffling of several feet receded out of the room.

  Guessing he was in some sort of courtroom where he would soon be judged, Amon felt a pang of fear travel up his spine when hands reached under his armpits to lift him to his feet and guide him a few paces away. “Kneel,” said the man who owned the hands right beside him, and Amon dropped back onto the wooden floor, sensing the breath and presence of various people around him. He flinched as hands touched the cowl, unzipping it and pulling it off.

  Although the space was not particularly bright, Amon had to blink several times after being covered so long before his vision cleared. He found himself kneeling directly on a wooden floor facing a line of people.

  Glancing quickly around, Amon saw he was in a large empty room that resembled a dining hall cleared of furniture and fallen into disrepair, the floorboards scuffed, warped, and discolored. About a dozen people formed a circle with him at the center. Like him, they were seated with no pillows or rugs, either cross-legged or with their feet flat on the floor. Behind him were a woman and two men lined up with paddles laid horizontally on their laps. Everyone present wore the standard camp outfit and kept their eyes trained steadily on Amon. Ty and Vertical were nowhere to be seen. They must have passed his chain to someone else and slipped away without his realizing.

  In the spot in the circle directly in front of Amon was a man he immediately guessed to be Hippo. The moment he saw him, Amon was reminded of a certain African mammal and remembered that “hippo” was the English word for it. Hippo looked to be in his late fifties or early sixties, with deep wrinkles in his forehead and radiating from the outer sides of his eyes. He had one of those squat, stocky builds that wasn’t exactly fat but was never without a bit of padding, his neck, chest, waist, and fingers all thick. What particularly made him resemble a hippo was his large bald head, gray-brown leathery skin, large mouth and deep-set, small eyes. These seemed to regard Amon with penetrating attentiveness.

  To his left was a lanky man, with skinny arms and legs but a slight paunch. It was difficult to tell his age. Though his black skin was smooth and seemed relatively youthful, his short Afro-textured hair was pure white and patchy, a thin crescent scar curving from the center of his forehead to the center of his crown. He wore large-rimmed, almost windshield-thick glasses with one missing lens, so that his right eye appeared enormous while his left was at regular magnification. He blinked frequently, and seemed to squeeze his eyes shut with the surrounding muscles rather than simply lowering and raising his eyelids, his long, bony fingers interlinked on his lap.

  To his right was a boy who looked to be about ten. His skin was pale and speckled with moles, his hair sandy brown and arcing about wildly like flaccid porcupine quills, his eyes hazel. Balanced on the palm of his right hand he held what appeared to be a jade-colored tablet, the screen unlit. In his left hand was a digital pen. Though his features didn’t resemble the lanky man’s whatsoever, the two shared the same hunched posture and distant, thought-filled eyes, which seemed to be taking Amon apart, component by component.

  Stenciled in chipped black paint on the off-white wall behind Hippo was a sort of logo or emblem of a young girl inside a bubble or cell. The girl stood there defiantly with her arms at her sides as a pin poked towards her face into the membrane, the surface bending inwards, either resisting or about to pop.

  “The initial inquiry for a new applicant will now commence,” said the man with the broken spectacles, who was the owner of the deep nasally voice. “Do the councilors present wish to raise any comments or objections at this time?” The man’s unevenly magnified eyes swept once around the circle. Then, apparently satisfied when no one stirred, he turned to Amon and said, “Kindly provide your name, sir.”

  With piercing gazes skewering him from all directions, Amon fought to subdue the cold jittery fear seizing his stomach and give them his name. But when he opened his lips to speak and the air slipped inside his mouth, he realized how dry and pasty it was, as of course it would be after all his exertion on the way here. Already the new T-shirt he’d been given was damp and sweat was dribbling down the back of his neck.

  “First …” he rasped, reaching out his hands palm-up along the floor, “water …”

  “Have you come here with nothing to drink, young man?” Hippo asked.

  Amon gave a feeble nod, wishing he could explain about the vending machines.

  “Well showing up expecting charity is hardly going to help your application,” Hippo said, shaking his head. “Does anyone have a drink to spare?”

  A bottle rolled gently from the right side of the circle and stopped just short of Amon’s side. He shoveled it close to him with his elbow, picked it up with his other hand, sat up, popped the top, and chugged the fizzing sports drink down in one breath. Water, Amon was learning, was something that had to be taken in when you had the chance.

  “Alright,” said Hippo after Amon had gasped in refreshment. “Let us begin again. Book, please.”

  “Kindly provide your name, sir?” said the man with the nasally voice who was called Book.

  “Amon … Kenzaki.”

  “Your age?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Your place of birth?”

  “T-Tokyo.”

  “Free Tokyo or the District of Dreams?”

  “Free Tokyo.”

  “What skills can you offer?”

  “Skills?”

  “All able members are required to provide their labor. If perchance the council were to grant you a hearing and issue approval of your application, what manner of valuable contribution would you be capable of?”

  “Well … I-I …” Without his intending, it seemed, Amon was applying for membership. But to what? Since he had found Hippo, this had to be Xenocyst, which ought to be reassuring since Tamper had told him to come here. Yet he had no idea what Xenocyst was or what membership in it might entail. Here he was in these strange clothes, in this strange room full of strangers staring at him with strange eyes, in the middle of the strangest place he had ever been, and he was supposed to somehow convince everyone of his value to them? Still, as baffled as he was, Amon saw that he had to follow along. Otherwise he risked being dumped in the camps alone like the previous applicant, or suffering whatever punishment might go along with rejection. No one had threatened him yet, but after what the Opportunity Scientists had tried to do to him, anything seemed possible. “W-what sort of skills are you looking for?”

  “Are you completely ignorant of our needs, young man?” asked Hippo. “You didn’t even bother to ask around before you came?”

  “S-sorry,” said Amon, wracking his brain for something to tell them. “I-I used to be a Liquidator. Maybe my experience will come in handy here.”

  Amon heard someone click their tongue in disapproval.

  “So you made a career out of banishing innocent people from the Free World? What use, exactly, might that be to us?”

  I … Amon tried to move his lips in response to the question, but his jaw only moved soundlessly as a wave of trembling started at his mouth and spread down his body. Fear and anxiety had rallied together with his restlessness and confusion—the primitive ignorance of his time, place, temperature, vital signs, and names or even pseudonyms of these people. He didn’t want them to misunderstand him. Though he had sincerely believed in his job for years, the events of the last week had awakened many doubts. But were his doubts enough to convince them he was a decent human being when there were people here who might have suffered at the hands of his colleagues? Would they ever recognize his usefulness? What if they dumped him out there again, with all the robbers and filth and chaos? What if those men cut him up? What if he ended up like those bones in the open sewer? As all the shocking memories of the day rose up into hi
s mind’s eye and he imagined the similar horrors that awaited him if they cast him out, he felt overwhelming pressure to somehow say what they wanted to hear and soon panic had fully hijacked his being, dominating every nerve in his body, until he could no longer keep his head up and bowed it to the floor, shaking and panting rapidly.

  The room erupted into chatter that sounded like Japanese but none of which Amon’s troubled mind could translate into meaning. “Answer when you’re addressed!” growled a man’s voice from behind as something hard jabbed into his lower back. Tensing with terror, Amon dropped onto his side and curled up into a ball. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of the guards standing over him with his paddle outstretched, the other two poised with theirs behind him.

  “Relax, young man,” said Hippo, the stir of voices settling when he spoke. “They’re just here to maintain order. Back up on your knees and please do your best to answer our questions.”

  When the guards sat back down, laying the paddles over their thighs, Amon rose timidly to his knees and faced Hippo again, still shaking.

  Hippo nodded to Book.

  “The council returns to the previous question,” said Book. “How might your experience as a Liquidator serve this community?”

  I have to tell them something! Amon’s thoughts screamed. I have to show them that I’m not who I was, that I have so much to offer! But his desperation to explain only summoned a stronger wave of shaking and his head dropped to the floor again.

  Mutters went around the circle for several seconds until Hippo asked, “Listen, young man. Can you speak?”

  Yes, Amon failed to say. He tried to nod his head but only managed a slight jerk and wasn’t sure if it was distinguishable from his tremors.

  Ta-tap, ta-tap, taptaptaptap, ta-tap … Amon heard a tapping noise coming from the direction of the boy. The sound continued even as Book said, “His symptoms of webloss are severe. We conjecture at least several days before he can communicate normally, on the assumption, of course, that he is capable of recovery.”

  “Then I propose we eject him without wasting our time with the hearing,” said Hippo. “The council has heard the stories of numerous Liquidators in the past, and I doubt there’s anything exceptional to learn from this one. Even if he were accepted in this condition, it would be weeks before he could contribute anything.”

  Tap-ta-tap, tap, taptaptap, taptap … The sound from the direction of the boy started up again, and Book said, “We are not expressing either support or opposition to this proposal. However, membership protocol states that due to limitations in resources and a lack of psychiatric facilities, adults who are not mentally healthy are not to be admitted unless the council finds special reason to justify their eligibility.”

  “Well, any special reasons?” Hippo addressed the circle.

  A brief silence followed.

  “Do any councilors wish to raise any comments or objections at this time?” asked Book. There was another silence. “Then let the voting commence. All in favor of ejecting the applicant?”

  Looking around the room as his visual field quaked, Amon saw the nine men and women in the circle raise their hands.

  “All against?”

  The hands all went down and then there was stillness. Hippo, Book, the boy, and the guards had not raised their hands and did not seem to be participating in the vote.

  Book nodded and turned to Amon with his mismatched gaze. “The official pronouncement is non-admittance, and you will now be escorted out of the compound.”

  Amon sensed the guards reaching for him from behind.

  “PLEASE!” he shrieked, finally finding his voice and suddenly too much of it. “T-Tamper told me! Th-there’s a package! Ask V-Vertical! A p-p-package!” He flung his hands out to Hippo beseechingly as the three guards began to shunt him out of the circle with firm hands.

  “Hold on,” said Hippo to the guards just as they were about to cowl Amon before the doorway. “This young man just said, ‘Tamper and Vertical.’ How does he know the names of two people very dear to this council?”

  The guards gripping Amon stopped and there was a moment of tense silence before one of them said, “They’re the ones that dropped him off in the holding room.” From her voice, Amon guessed it was the woman who had led him to the council chamber.

  “Well where are they then? They were supposed to bring him themselves, were they not?”

  The guard said nothing and silence followed until the tapping from the boy began again and Book said, “Regulations require that the escorts of applicants report promptly to the council and remain available for subsequent inquiry.”

  “Then better bring him back and sit him down,” said Hippo to the guards. “And can someone go call Ty and Vertical? I don’t think we should throw him out until they’ve explained their reasons for bringing him. Unless someone objects?”

  “Do any councilors wish to raise any comments or objections at this time?” asked Book.

  The issue was decided by another moment of silence, and the woman who had brought Amon hurried out of the room as the other two guards led him back into the circle. Returned to his knees in the center, Amon let out a long, quivering sigh of relief and let his head down to the floor. Nothing had been decided in his favor, but the mix up might have given him another chance to express what he wanted to say if he could just get his nerves under control. So, closing his eyes while the council waited for Ty and Vertical, he took this opportunity to breathe deeply. The faint chatter around the circle and occasional footsteps in the hall made him anxious, but he did his best to focus on the sensation of his chest expanding and contracting, disregarding as much as he could what was going on around him. The cool wood on his forehead, the cold sweat coating his back and scalp and armpits, the toxic buzz of terror in his skin, the ache in his ribs that sharpened with each inhalation, the sting of the cut on his brow, the weight of his exhaustion pulling him into the floor, his warm breath rebounding onto his face, his heart pulsing a beat of blood into his temples. Amon lost track of time as everything faded into the shadows of his awareness except for his body reflecting on itself.

  When his shaking was beginning to subside and his respiration slowly settling, he heard Hippo say in a clear, firm voice, “Let’s get started.” Only then did Amon finally raise his head.

  Inside the circle in front of him, Vertical and Ty were kneeling and facing each other in profile.

  “The inquiry will now recommence,” said Book. “Vertical, Ty, it has been brought to the council’s attention that you were the individuals who escorted the applicant to Xenocyst. Is this account correct?”

  “Yes,” “Yup,” they said almost simultaneously.

  “In consideration of these facts therefore, the—”

  “Then why didn’t you bring him yourselves?” Hippo cut in. “We almost ejected this man thinking he was applying on his own. We could have missed out on valuable information!”

  Ty and Vertical glanced at each other before Vertical said, “I was attending to Shari, a woman we brought back earlier today. She’s in shock after the OpScis beat her and took her baby. I wanted to make sure she was receiving the right care. So we asked one of the guards to drop him off in the holding room until we came back. I had no idea that someone was going to bring him in so quickly.”

  “Well it’s true that council business is moving faster today than usual. But that doesn’t mean you can leave it all up to the guards. Many of them are new to our procedures as you know.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said Vertical with a bow.

  “And how about you, Ty?” asked Hippo.

  “I had to leave my supply crew today on an emergency, so I stopped by the warehouse to see they’re all back okay.”

  “You abandoned a supply crew you were in charge of?”

  “They kidnapped Shari and her baby from our crew. I had no choice.”

  “Well, we’ll leave it up to the council to consider your decision once we hear what happened.
Go ahead, Book.”

  “The council now requests your report on the events concerning the applicant, Amon Kenzaki, not excluding all background incidents such as the involvement of the aforementioned Shari. What is your reply?”

  “You wanna take this, Vertical?” asked Ty.

  “Yes, fine,” said Vertical. Then, raising her voice to address the circle, “This morning, I was on a routine scouting mission into the southern buffers when I heard one of our alarm bells to the west. Rushing over as quickly as I could, I found a supply crew led by Ty en route to Delivery. They all looked battered and ruffled, and Ty explained that they had just been attacked by a group of OpScis. They’d managed to fight them off but a gifted woman and her baby had been kidnapped in the confusion. Ty and I decided that we had to try and rescue them, so we left the other two escorts to take the rest on to Delivery as planned.”

  “Would the other party present, Ty-kun, wish to add any testimony concerning the kidnapping incident?”

  “What’s there to say?” said Ty. “We tussled. Some of ’em went down, some didn’t. When the flakes had cleared, we were one short, plus a baby. A few must have snuck in behind when we were busy busting the others up. I was raring to go after them but they were too tough for me to handle alone, and if I took either of my escorts the supply crew would be vulnerable. So I rang the bell and Vertical came in no time.”

  “Are you happy with that?” Vertical asked Hippo and looked inquiringly around the circle.

  Hippo nodded. “Yes. That level of detail is fine. Please continue.”

  “So after that, Ty and I went to the edge of the nearest OpSci outpost. We started asking around with the locals. All of them either hadn’t heard anything or were playing dumb. Then Ty heard a woman scream just across the border and I ran there ahead of him.”

  “You violated our treaty?”

  “They kidnapped a woman and a baby in our buffer zone. That was already a violation.”

  “Yes, but OpScis don’t often see the logic of tit for tat. You do realize this could mean retaliation?”