The Naked World

by Eli K. P. William

  At the same time, while the sky seemed to promise wisdom, it reminded him often of his great ignorance, in the form of the sun that still eluded his perception for some reason. While his eyes seemed to have recovered in every other way, he sometimes spotted that strange visual lacuna—an absence that was neither black nor white nor any color, but simply not there to be seen—floating in a crack in the slumscape from which the light and heat shining around him radiated. In this bright, warm celestial nothing that stubbornly resisted the unveiling power of his naked gaze, all Amon observed was his own lack of knowledge, and sensed somehow that the sky had more to teach, though he could not fathom what that might be.

  Then, on the perfectly clear day after the typhoon, Amon was walking back to his room after sundown when a breeze snaked its way down through the clutter of towers to brush his skin. Carrying with it a distinctively autumnal scent, it reminded him of a similar breeze that had beckoned him up to the stargazer’s rooftop that first time. Instead of just carrying a hint of fall, this breeze was thick with it, just saturated with its chill, melancholy essence. Again he followed it, zigzagging and spiraling upwards along a busy stairpath until he reached a wide ledge, bordered on the left by the summit of a disposcraper mound rising up and on the right by a steep ridge that dropped sharply away. Not the same viewing platform as the first time, for the whole slumscape had shifted and been replaced, but one with similar dimensions and location. It was just as crowded as before except, instead of gazing upwards, everyone crouched and sat in huddles with their heads drooping, muttering quietly to each other or simply resting.

  When the breeze blew again, Amon looked up to find a diamond-shaped patch of sky filled with stars. Immediately the nostalgic feeling returned, a precious memory just out of reach, when finally he grasped it and found himself transported to that moment with Mayuko on the rooftop of the BioPen that he had forgotten until he met Tamper. Fall. It must have been fall when that happened, he realized. They had seen the first star of the evening appear in azure, and wanted to stay there together to watch more of them twinkle into existence until the night came and the sky looked just like it did now. Amon savored this earliest of recollections with bittersweet longing, imagining Mayuko looking up at that same sky from a rooftop in Free Tokyo, remembering that same moment, their gazes set at just the right angle that their attention was reflected off the distant galaxies into each other’s eyes, jointly partaking through this subtle exchange of awareness in both past and present in spite of all the distances that might divide them.

  Sorrow quickly overtook him, for he realized that he was indulging in fantasy and that they were not really together—nor could they be. Even if Mayuko managed to find them, if she was indeed searching, there was nothing she could do to help Amon and Rick escape. Maybe Rashana could liberate them with her great amount of freedom, but unlikely exceptions aside, the free and unfree worlds were all but impossible to bridge. Vertical, Tamper, Ty, Book, Little Book, Barrow, Kitao, Hippo, and so many others were trapped here and forced to suffer in countless ways because of the system Amon had supported. The crowding, the volatile architecture, the pointless effort of constant resupplying, the hunger and fighting and boredom and stigmatization, the ignorance, the self-loathing and guilt, the apathy and despair, the charity-sponsored religion that took advantage of all these feelings … He wanted these horrors to end. Not just for his own sake, not just so he could escape from it, not just to placate his guilt, but so the others, the ones he had put here personally as much as everyone else, could have a chance for a respectable life. Only then could he make amends for the harm he had done, and hold Mayuko’s hand beneath the trees of his forest, gazing together at the stars between the leaves with his soul at peace.

  All this had been roiling just beneath the surface of Amon’s awareness as he listened to the discussion and considered the various proposals made. Then disparate elements in his memory had collided suddenly—Tamper’s vending hack<<>>the supply mixup at Delivery<<>>Rashana’s interest in him<<>>Atupio’s media campaigns<<>>the Philanthropy Syndicate<<>>the SpawnU Consortium<<>>Opportunity Science—and a vague flicker sparked to life in the back of his eyes, impelling him with its faint light to speak. Now he had to take a moment to form its glow into words, to blow a sentence out of molten thought.

  “Yes Amon,” said Hippo, when his pause had stretched out to an awkward length. “You were going to make a contribution?”

  Amon nodded and took a deep breath to muster his courage before opening his mouth.

  “All the proposals so far have had their strengths and weaknesses and might aid us to varying degrees if we could make them work. But what if we could cut deeper to the core of the problem … the issue … The political issue is that the Philanthropy Syndicate is forcing the Absolute Choice and Full Choice coalition to reduce credicrime fees so that they can reduce supplies. This is only possible because the public, and probably some of the lobbies, aren’t aware of this policy and its impact. So what if we could show Free Citizens that the charity and gifts are two sides of an economic exchange based on genomic discrimination? Then pressure could be put on Absolute Choice and the Syndicate to treat us better or at least return the supply levels to normal.”

  When Amon stopped, the councilors who had been ready to challenge Hippo as the debate about war was heating up now directed mocking snorts and sour expressions of derision his way that seemed to say as if! But Amon hardly cared, because he could see the sheen of hope on Rick’s brooding eyes beside him. And Hippo regarded Amon with solemn seriousness, as though reevaluating the very fabric of his being, when he said, “How do you propose we go about that?”

  17

  THE BRIDGE TO DELIVERY

  The glass forms of multifarious drones swirled above and around the bridges. Butterflies, moths, dragonflies, hummingbirds circling and orbiting each other in fixed patterns—an elaborate, aerial parade of glittering graceful force masquerading as fragility beneath the fall-blue firmament. Afternoon sunbeams shone over the mirror-plated rim of Delivery, refracting through the drones into a whirling constellation of light flecks that dazzled Amon and warmed the exposed skin of his face after the dark, congested chill of the labyrinth.

  Only a few paces from the entrance to the looming distended cube, he looked around one last time. There was Rick beside him and the other members of their crew just behind, all wearing the generic autumn uniform of Opportunity Scientist research assistants: sneakers, tight pants, and a tight hoodie all stitched of various fabric patches. Into the crisp air, flakes drifted about like slow-falling multicolored snow. Puffs of white breath wafted from the mouths of those pressing close around them in line and those on all the other bridges reaching over the moat, a lavender-turquoise mist rising from the flake-heaped bottom. The supply pilgrim crowds appeared different from before. Each time the quantities were reduced, they seemed to get skinnier and dirtier, their skin more haggard, their clothes more ragged, their eyes draining of vitality.

  Glancing over at Rick, he saw a look of tense, fearful determination and knew it reflected his own feelings, his friend a mirror not just for Amon’s body but his soul as well. Amon gave a firm nod. Let’s do this, the gesture said, and in Rick’s nod back he knew that he had understood perfectly as they took the final step to the end of the bridge.

  “Okay … Well … first try to imagine the supply line at Delivery,” Amon had said at the council. “Reporters and sousveillers like the ones working for Atupio sometimes go in there to record what they see. But their videos alone reveal almost nothing to Free Citizen viewers about what’s going on there. Everyone lines up and puts their finger in a hole. Those with a baby put their baby’s finger in the hole. Sometimes a tray comes out to accept a baby into the receptacle, sometimes not. Since the dispensing of supplies in Delivery is automated, it’s impossible to tell which bankdead are getting what and why. Watching the vending machines carefully, you might notice that some get more and some less, but it isn’t clear t
hat the difference is connected to the result of sticking their finger in the hole or whether their baby was accepted, and it’s not immediately clear that some get better quality goods. Very few Free Citizens have an opportunity to view this process from start to finish because only a tiny minority can afford to search for it on a platinum engine, and only a tiny portion of these would even bother to look it up. But even for the ones that do, there’s no way they’d be led to the conclusion that some bankdead are getting more than others depending on the structure of their genomes, or that this is decided by MegaGlom designed algorithms, or that these algorithms are designed to maximize yield of human resources. They might think that people getting less now got more on a different day or maybe that the supplies are divvied out for each in accordance with his needs, with some getting more or less calories than others, for example, depending on their body size and metabolism.

  “The fact that an exchange is occurring is no clearer from watching the bankdead called over to the manual supply tables. A few people put their finger or the finger of their baby into a genome reader. Some babies are given a quick health check and accepted into a crib before being stacked out of sight in containers. The lined-up bankdead are then given a pre-prepared bag of supplies, but it’s unclear what they contain. Once again, the connection with the genome readers is impossible to determine just by watching a video.

  “And this is assuming that they’re naked recordings. Most footage released comes from Philanthropy Syndicate reporters and gets carefully edited so it can be incorporated into pitypromo, with the containers being rendered as smiling volunteers, the health check cribs as nurses, and so on. Few other reporters are allowed in the vicinity, and if they’re able to get in as Atupio staff do, they’re quickly escorted out the moment they cause trouble.

  “But the day the supply reductions started after the equinox, when I was on a supply run and saw a bunch of dispensers refuse to give out their contents, the situation was a bit clearer. The brandclan who were denied created a disturbance, so to keep the crowd flowing, the freekeepers redirected them to the tables. This forced the career volunteers to prepare new bags of supplies on the fly. If there had been any sousveillers there, it would have been obvious on video that some bags contain more and better supplies. Even so, it was only a small group that was denied, and the incident was short-lived so I doubt there would have been enough footage to show that this depends on their giving up babies.

  “So what if we could have Tamper engineer a total breakdown of all the receptacles and vending machines in an entire lane when Atupio reporters were there? Then, if we could release the recording online, Free Citizens would see hundreds of people come through, some getting more than others, and witness the direct handover of supplies for babies. To anyone watching, it will be obvious that some babies are accepted while others are rejected depending on their genes and the health check. They’ll also see that parents who gift their babies are given more supplies than those who don’t, and more than those who are rejected despite the fact that they have an extra mouth to feed. Though viewers still might not immediately connect it to the human resource trade, if a reporter were asking tough questions and providing commentary the scene would be easy to understand and persuasive. The usually heart-warming spectacle of mothers voluntarily offering up their babies for a new life of Opportunity will become the horror show of babies sorted by their genes and packed into boxes.

  “Once the public sees this, it won’t be difficult to connect with the BioPens and convince everyone that donations are being used to secure human resources. Then the entire Charity Gift Economy and the plutogenic principles it’s based on will spill out into the open. Everyone will see that the charity and the gifting are not two separate activities, but the two sides of an exchange supporting a whole massive industry that makes the existence of the Free World possible.

  “Of course this isn’t going to magically rouse the masses or anything, but once this revelation is out, it will discredit the MegaGloms that form the Philanthropy Syndicate. The viewers will see many sick, skinny, dirty bankdead in the video, and this can be linked to the Syndicate supply reduction and from there to the slash on crowdcare fines that enables it. Then it will be clear that the giftless are living near starvation levels because of policies concocted by MegaGloms. What the result of citizens’ realizing this will be is difficult to say. At the very least, I bet it would lead to a drop in funds from angry donors and a corresponding rise in Syndicate pitypromo investment, which will force them to decrease the ephemerality of supplies in order to balance donations with production, and so we’ll end up with more durable supplies. In the best-case scenario, the Full Choice Party may turn on Absolute Choice, collapsing the coalition, and maybe the policy will even be canceled. Then the situation here might just return to how it was before the reduction began.”

  Once Amon had made his proposal, a debate broke out. Most spoke out vehemently against it, but the fact that the discussion continued at great length without any new plans being proposed told him just how seriously even its detractors were taking it.

  The first objection was raised by Yané. He was skeptical that the Charity Brigade would respond as Amon was predicting. Rather than conduct the entire charity-gift exchange manually, they might simply send the bankdead on their way.

  Ty jumped in to defend Amon’s description of Delivery procedures, saying that he had seen such a manual handover when machines had broken down on multiple occasions. Yané responded that just because this was how they dealt with a single malfunction, it didn’t guarantee that they would deal with a large-scale breakdown in the same way, especially if sabotage was suspected. But the freckled councilor raised doubts in support of Ty about whether any other response was feasible. The Brigade couldn’t shut down the lane or try to send the famished bankdead away empty-handed, as that would cause a crowdcare disaster with everyone pushing their way in along the Road to Delivery. Moreover, quick reprisals were unlikely, as the freekeepers wouldn’t expect the desperate bankdead to disrupt their own lifeline. Eventually Yané conceded that they might pull the sabotage off temporarily, but reviewing their sensors later, the Charity Brigade would surely discover it and realize that Xenocyst was to blame. Well then, they’d just have to acquire Opportunity Scientist outfits and disguise themselves, Ty proposed. Then they could bring Charity Brigade retaliation on an enemy and boost their relative position, whether or not Amon’s PR plan succeeded.

  But Jiku objected that it wasn’t worth it just to frame the OpScis, and the Philanthropy Syndicate would use their ownership of Delivery image rights to keep the naked video relegated to gold search engines. There it would go largely unwatched except by the wealthiest, who were likely to have a stake in the Charity Gift Economy and the status quo it supported. Only the edited version would appear on bronze search engines where most people might view it, ensuring their perception of the incident would be distorted. As was well known, this was precisely what happened to the blog exposés of slum tourists and activists who traipsed a bit deeper into the camps than their guides recommended, so there was no reason to think this time would be any different. Hippo disagreed, saying that Rashana had the funding and media influence to pay the fines for having a naked seg with an authenticity stamp disseminated on bronze engines and mainstream sites. She might even collaborate with the SpawnU Consortium, who would be eager to cause problems for the Syndicate and the coalition government it colluded with. But usually, Yané countered, information on bronze engines is drowned out in a flood of noise, making it unlikely anyone would take note of it, let alone be swayed to change anything. Vertical, unexpectedly taking Ty’s side, suggested that if they could orchestrate a short, easy-to-understand scene, and the SpawnU Consortium was buoying it on social media, there was a good chance it could go viral.

  While the circle was discussing this issue, a senior councilor who Amon had never heard speak queried whether Rashana would actually fulfill her role. They would have to
rely on her to record the incident, compile the naked video into a punchy seg, and seek the assistance of the Consortium to propagate it. If she refused to cooperate or failed in any of these tasks, they would be taking a huge risk for nothing. Hippo then pointed out that Rashana and her organization, Atupio, were already committed to spreading information that counteracted the Philanthropy Syndicate’s pitypromo, and now that executives from the Syndicate were partnered with her sister Anisha to make conditions even worse for the bankdead, she would surely leap at this opportunity. Disagreements lingered, but the discussion was speculative and ended when someone suggested that the only way to resolve it was to consult directly with Rashana and confirm her intentions.

  The final doubt was raised by Book. Even if the sabotage went smoothly, the venture charities responded as expected, Rashana collected good footage, and the seg went viral, there was no way to be sure it would have the impact they wanted. As everyone knew, elections were merely public dramatizations of backroom deals and competing interests. The electorate was largely irrelevant, and even if the public eye was brought to bear on the Charity Gift Economy, it might have no effect on the allotted supplies.

  “Furthermore,” Book argued, “if we consider the manner in which the entire system of the CG Economy is programmed into the objective workings of the machines, it appears improbable that there will be any recourse against the MegaGloms. If, let us suppose, the existence of the CG Economy was exposed and someone accused the Philanthropy Syndicate of, for example, operating an illegal black market or embezzling donations, individual engineers might be held culpable. However, each engineer is employed by a different MegaGlom sub-subsidiary designing the software and hardware for particular sets of machines according to specific instructions from research teams, and no one set of machines produces the CG Economy alone, just as no individual polluter caused global climate change but only the sum of all polluters. As it is the coordinated total effect of the set of all the vending machines of all MegaGloms that realizes this economy, the Syndicate could simply shift responsibility for each set onto the various technicians immediately in charge and deny they are in any way involved in coordinating their projects. An inquiry could theoretically succeed in holding responsible the technology managers in charge of creating and constantly updating the plutogenic algorithms. However, the command chain is too diffuse and convoluted for liability to ever reach any higher. Thus, as much as I support the theoretical possibility of educating the world about the iniquity of contemporary reality, I do not believe the Philanthropy Syndicate or Absolute Choice Party would ever be implicated.”