The Naked World

by Eli K. P. William

  “The videos of the conditions in the camps fabricated by the MegaGloms that I and other Free Citizens often saw made them appear horrible enough to guilt us into donating, but just hopeful enough that we could feel as though our donations might make a difference. In particular, they were highly effective in encouraging impulsive donation even in those of limited means. Here the venture charities were selling the promise of satisfying the needs of the poor as a product, which simultaneously satisfies the customer’s desire to alleviate their guilt in that moment. And the higher you move up the income scale, the larger impulsive donations become, with philanthropy motivated to a certain degree by the credicrime fine deductions offered by GATA to major donors. At the same time, the videos had the effect of making us afraid enough of bankruptcy to work hard to stay out of it, while also keeping up the façade that the AT market was a utopia that produces the best of all possible slums. Since independent research and investigative reporting went unfunded, unorthodox presentations of the camps were rare and could be labeled as anecdotal quackery. They would then be sorted into silver, gold, and platinum search engines. Unsearchability is the new censorship, after all. In this way, pitypromo kept up economic morale while bringing in enough capital from investitarians and philanthropaneurs to pay for bankdead supplies and thereby fund the rampant consumption of the poor that is an unavoidable part of the Charity Gift Economy. Decades later, my guess would be that the situation hasn’t changed much. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” said Rick. “Everything you said fits.”

  Nodding in agreement, Amon recalled the satisfied looks on the faces of the slum tourists when they watched the bankdead eating the food they had given them. “Can I ask you a question?” he said.

  “Of course. If you two are going to be able to help us in the way I’m hoping, I need you to have a solid grasp of what I tell you today. Is anything I said unclear?”

  “Sort of. I mean, it’s something that’s been unclear to me for a while. So you say that pitypromo keeps the camps funded, but I don’t see how donations could possibly be enough. Providing supplies for millions of bankdead, maintaining all those vending machines, and paying the salaries of career volunteers and freekeepers has to be incredibly expensive. It seems impossible to me that the MegaGloms of the Philanthropy Syndicate could recover their costs from donations, even if we add on the introduction fees for human resources twenty years down the road. Wouldn’t it be much cheaper to simply buy resources off Fertilex from the start?”

  “I thought so too when I began looking into this issue, but no. To bring expenses in line with donations and introduction fees, the Philanthropy Syndicate cuts costs in various ways. Action fees are kept low through automation across the entire supply chain, from distribution to security. To reduce labor costs further, construction of the camps is left to the bankdead, and maintenance drones do the minimum required to keep infrastructure like suspension pillars and open sewers functioning. Meanwhile, risks and losses are offset through plutogenic hedging. For example, investments are made to establish brandclans that are not expected to produce marketable resources but that would be expected to do so if current expectations turned out to be false. Or a brandclan might be packaged as a derivative that will pay out in case a particular industry doesn’t require as many employees as expected, so that investments in raising youth for those jobs are hedged.

  “A variety of other derivatives help to generate additional profits, on top of the introduction fees, as part of the thriving industry of plutogenic speculation. Such assets are based on rights to assign brand membership to particular genomes, the expected value of a future profile, and so on. For example, investitarians often buy shares in “unmined genomes,” with the value fluctuating depending on how close the genome or genetic sub-population approaches gifted status or, if gifted, how close it drops to the threshold with giftlessness. After all expenditures—PR, labor, supplies, security, and so on—are subtracted from income, the Charity Gift Economy remains slightly in the red for the Philanthropy Syndicate. But they are able to acquire human resources while preventing Fertilex’s global hegemony, which is the whole point.”

  “If the Philanthropy Syndicate is doing so well acquiring their own human resources,” said Rick, “then wouldn’t they run Fertilex out of business?”

  “Once again, my train of thought in those days was much like yours, but no, because Fertilex is still left with a number of incredibly profitable businesses. For one, the Syndicate MegaGloms must still purchase a portion of their human resources from Fertilex. This is partly due to population limits in the bankdeath camps. Only a certain percentage of bankdead are gifted in any particular sample group, and while it might be theoretically possible to increase the population in the camps to ensure that quantity meets demand, when density reaches beyond a certain threshold the population becomes too expensive to manage. Through adjustments of supply disbursement, the population of the camps is kept growing at the same rate as the Free World but no higher so as to keep resource supply steady. Yield of extractable marketable resources is also subject to random fluctuations, whereas the supply of engineered resources is stable, so Fertilex must be relied upon in times of scarcity.

  “Note moreover that it controls several niche markets. In addition to the market for naturally born babies that my research contributed to, one such market is for top-quality resources. While gifted bankdead can produce highly marketable candidates, they’re never as likely to be well suited for their future jobs as those that Fertilex specifically engineers and rears for them. By providing personalized laborers for even the rarest jobs, Fertilex can charge significantly higher fees than the cost of securing candidates through charity, since any company unwilling to pay will be stuck with whatever the camps offer. Fertilex also has its own venture charities that it uses to secure resources, and in many cases launder them. Baby laundering obscures their bankdead origin so their profiles can be sold at a higher price, and only Fertilex can pull it off because none of the other MegaGloms can claim to have acquired their resources anywhere else.

  “You also need to understand that Fertilex is the exclusive supplier of the six SpawnU Consortium MegaGloms, who have banded together to keep the Syndicate in check. Fertilex provides them with rebated human resources and they in turn cut costs for Fertilex on a range of essential action properties. This is the bulk of Fertilex’s sales, and all of these businesses’, not to mention its enormous share in properties unrelated to life, maintain its position as the largest MegaGlom in the world in spite of the Philanthropy Syndicate challenge.”

  Hippo paused for a moment, his eyes shifting back and forth from Amon’s gaze to Rick’s. When neither followed up with further questions, he continued. “So after I learned about the Charity Gift Economy and the way pitypromo had so effectively roped us into supporting or acquiescing to it without knowing, I was utterly stunned and appalled. Due to the success of my research, I happened to be in a privileged position, with plenty of funding and access to the best information money could buy, but very few knew what I did about how the Free World functioned and I began to worry about my role within it for the first time. Up to that point, as I’ve told you, my inquiry had been driven by the desire to produce an unbeatable product. Now I was losing sight of why that was important. Every business and individual livelihood seemed to operate on the basis of an arrangement that was horrendously unjust, with the whole mess obscured and tucked carefully out of sight. The treatments I hoped to market suddenly seemed like a contribution to this state of affairs and I felt no attraction to pursuing their research further. Nonetheless, I was still engaged by the fertility problem, and for the first time in my life I felt something driving me that had nothing to do with profitability.

  “At our fertility hospital in Free Tokyo, I got to know a number of our wealthy clientele over the course of their luxury treatments, hoping in my naive pragmatism to make influential friends and connections. In gratitude for a successful delivery, th
ey would occasionally invite me into their private worlds, where I witnessed them spending time with their babies. At meditation gaming soirees and massageathon health food tastings, my hosts would keep their babies on hand in elaborately digimade cribs and carriages, often lidded with glass cases and placed under bright lights. They would always find a way to mention the baby’s natural pedigree, slipping into the flow of the conversation the fact that he or she had not been test-tubed or artificially transferred, though as their doctor I could see this for the concealment of bragging it was. The unwavering cheerfulness of the babies was a sign of the infant mood enhancers in their nutritional formulas. They would smile and blink wide-eyed on display along with the furniture, rugs, and other elements of the domestic overlay the parents wanted to show off. If they did happen to cry, rearing staff hovering nearby would handle and feed them with the utmost delicacy while their parents simply watched and talked about them from a distance, or picked them up with feigned tenderness for a social media photo op. Their expressions and embrace were so stiff it was obvious that they never did this without an audience, except perhaps to practice for such moments.

  “The bankdead parents who visited our fertility research clinic in the District of Dreams couldn’t have behaved more differently towards their children. Most of our subjects who brought infants and children were giftless who had decided not to abandon their rejected babies in the Sanzu River as many do when they turn one and are no longer considered malleable enough for BioPen education.”

  Amon thought of the floating faces that had slapped the side of the boat as he crossed with Tamper and shuddered, wondering if that’s what they could have been …

  “The rest were those rare gifted who decided in spite of the bonuses to keep their offspring. In other words, they were all parents who genuinely wanted to raise their children. I remember vividly the very first subject that walked into our clinic. A woman cuddling a baby boy with a young girl clinging to her leg. I was immediately struck by how gently and tenderly she rocked her baby, and the way the girl looked so safe, as though all the dangers in the world could never touch her if only her mother were there. This was mutual caring and affection. This was intimacy and humanity. Perhaps there are people like this in the Free World, people like you, Shaké, who really want a family from the bottom of their heart.”

  The council had decided to name Rick Shaké, Japanese for “salmon,” on the basis of the story from his hearing. He had had a family, lost it, and now wished to return to how he started out, like a salmon swimming upstream to its birthplace. Glancing over in concern as Hippo reminded Rick of his dream, Amon saw the brooding sadness in his eyes, and something else in his expression, a hint of melancholy in the lines of his brow that had never been there before. But he had no time to think what it might reveal as Hippo went on.

  “But all the ones who could afford it were as I described, so I’d never seen anything like this. Though my bankliving patients had all the money, Freedom, and standing they could hope for, I caught glimpses of the emptiness lurking at their core that I knew from speaking with psychiatric colleagues was hidden only with the help of PharmaJoy cocktails. Meanwhile the love and hope my bankdead subjects shared for their offspring seemed to give them infinite determination and strength in spite of all the adversity and humiliation they suffered.

  “It was while I was thinking about the correlation between this difference and the fertility gap one night in my lab that I was suddenly overcome with the strongest emotion I had ever felt. For the first time in my life, I was truly angry—no, not anger. Rage is a better word. I was enraged. I wanted to take it out on something, anything, and I saw a vision of my lab destroyed. Our diagnostic drones were battered wrecks along the walls and glass shards in puddles of gunk from shattered sample containers littered the floor. It took all of my self-control not to fly into a frenzy and make my imagination a reality at that moment.

  “While people who deserved so much better were being stripped of their dignity,” Hippo said, his voice trilling with an echo of that emotion, “all we did was pity them from a distance and allow others to profit off our pity while preventing change, not realizing that our own wealth and donations were only possible on the basis of that exploitative arrangement. I could not forgive us, them, myself, for continuing to live this way, and if I didn’t channel my rage into more productive directions I knew it was only a matter of time before I gave into pointless destructive impulses and lashed out in ways that I would regret. Either that or I would go on as before while my newfound knowledge and rage catalyzed together and began to eat me from the inside out.

  “I soon came to a profound and irreversible decision. My expertise was wasted on Free Citizens. I had been working all my adult life since graduating conglommercollege to serve them, and ever since the Birlas had set me up with a lab I had toiled away developing new solutions for those who wanted babies. In that endeavor, I had achieved as much success as anyone could hope for in their mid-thirties. But what was I doing?! Wielding nature to help the wealthy use living creatures as trinkets to impress their friends?! Shouldn’t I have been dedicating myself to people who actually cared about their babies? Even the question of the fertility problem stopped interesting me. I began to feel convinced that it was not answerable through science at all and rapidly lost faith in my profession. Churning my mental juices over abstruse theoretical concerns seemed like so much wasted energy when people who deserved better were being disgraced. Let there be mysteries! Something had to be done.

  “So I would use my know-how and reputation to set up a hospital in the camps—not a research center, but a place that would give aid and shelter to those who needed it most. I resigned from Fertilex, sold off my shares in All Star Natura, and began to seek support for my project, financial and otherwise. In my youthful idealism I expected everyone to wake up to the iniquities of it all. Unfortunately, the cost of accessing the sources that justified the need for my project despite the existence of countless venture charities, the contradictory view spread by pitypromo, and general skepticism and disinterest, served as obstacles as I tried to get the word out to colleagues, journalists, politicians, and other influential people. Though the reality propped up by vested interests was not to be toppled easily, I rallied all my resources and connections with persistence, and began to gradually increase my list of supporters. Soon I had wealthy philanthropaneurs willing to assist me, knowing they would receive no return on their investment and would relinquish all say in how the organization developed to the bankdead that composed it. I insisted on these conditions and was willing to reject many donors who disagreed because, as much as I needed funding, I had seen the way other venture charities had gone—even ones that started out with good intentions—when their backers began to meddle in their affairs. If you were dependent on corporations or individuals, it was only a matter of time before they began to pull the strings their money was attached to and the aims of the project were distorted until they lined up with profit margins. If I was going to realize the vision crystallizing in my mind—a union of bankdead run democratically by bankdead for bankdead that was completely independent and self-sufficient—I would need to ensure all decision-making power remained completely internal.

  “I began to set up a foundation that would pay for everything we needed. Not just shipments of essential items like medicine, diagnostic tools, and bedding that we couldn’t yet produce ourselves, but also the salary of a team of doctors, nurses, lab technicians, mercenaries, engineers, and other core personnel from the Free World who I needed to train bankdead staff to eventually replace them. We purchased a condominium full of nostie squatters and convinced most of them to join us or lured them away with attractive supply packages before modifying the building to our needs—this became the Cyst. Over time, we used the same combination of persuasion and bribery to take control of larger and larger areas. There our urban planners began to assemble structures similar to the disposable skyscrapers you see today, t
hough of a more longer-lasting variety, which we hoped to later replace with permanent buildings. By the time the Opportunity Scientists learned of us and began to send in violent bands of Quantitative Missionaries, we had already set up defense systems including human guards and drones and were beginning to make pacts with surrounding communities to establish the buffer ring we have today. Once we’d reached a large enough size, we began to divide up our territory into administrative units, the residents of which began to elect representatives to the council. Everything was decided democratically, except that I stayed on as a special advisor to the council and still retain tie-breaking power in case of an even split. It was at this stage as the medical, social, infrastructural, diplomatic, military, political, and administrative facets began to take form that the project finally began to seem less like just an agglomeration of disparate humanitarian services and more like a city of its own.

  “Our resources were limited, so we couldn’t help everyone, and our main goal at the Cyst was to serve those the venture charities ignored. The gifted already received some limited services such as basic pre- and post-natal care insofar as these helped to increase yield. We would not simply provide services as the charities did, but provide the opportunity for those most in need of such services to provide them to each other.

  “As you mentioned at the festival, Gura, Free Citizens are said to have all the freedom they can earn, or capital F Freedom, whereas the bankdead are said to have lower case f freedom because they’re unable to earn anything but are otherwise free to do as they like. The venture charities deprive them of even this nominal freedom by making them dependent on the hand that feeds. They’re driven to exhaustion by the constant need to get new supplies by, how did you put it, ‘a tough slog’? At the same time, they’re forced into idleness because they’re prevented from finding livelihoods to support themselves in any other way or resisting the system that regulates them. Whether rushing about or lounging around, all bankdead are kept completely passive, unable to actively pursue any goal that they set.