Clarkesworld: Year Four

by Kij Johnson

  Shit. Shit. Shit. Who’d pick up his contract then? He’d be iced forever . . .

  He turned back to his karmic status indicators. Well, at least he was (in)famous. People were interested in him, even if they didn’t give a damn about helping. He activated his LifeBroadcast and said, “Please, someone, do something. Or the center will just send me here again. And again. I need help.”

  Within moments, ten thousand people were watching, then fifty thousand, a hundred thousand. The comments were pouring in, too fast for him to respond. He was being flooded by calls. A PR company stepped in and offered their comment moderation and management services. Doing a good job, even for a bad man, could be karmically beneficial. He accepted, and a shiny-faced woman came online. Probably a Gujarati . . .

  She said: “Hello, Mr. Ramesh, there’s a squad of cadre reenactors in Airoli who say they’re assembling. They can be there in two hours. They just need to get some jeeps extruded.”

  “Two hours!”

  “I know, the traffic, it is really . . . “

  Light seeped through Sumith’s eyelid; air and noise swirled through his temporary home as the lid opened was pried open.

  Sumith said: “Just do it. Do it. Do whatever you can—”

  There was a flash.

  “Hey sumith[?],” drona said. He pulled the arm out of the burning remains of the would-be rescuers’ jeep and tossed it into the box at the still-cowering newbie. “Thanks for the heads up about those jokers.”

  “A month,” sumith[?] said. “How could they have let you be for an entire month?” His house was still standing in front of him, pristine as ever. It had already filled in the holes caused by stray rounds.

  “No one wants to get flashed,” sumith said. “Come on out of there, Questionmark. Eat your fill. The next shipment is held up in Hong Kong—it’s a Chaudhuri, right drona?—and won’t be here for three days. At least that’s what the driver said.”

  “The driver?” sumith[?] said.

  “Oh, all the contractors who elect to take on these deliveries are groupies,” sumith said. “Who else would want to come out here? We also tell them who we’ve flashed. Imagine how mad the folks out there must be that they can’t vote down our karma. So they settle for the Uppercases’ instead.”

  “Two months?” Sumith said.

  “Thanks-for-choosing-us-for-your-reincarnation-needs,” the Westerner said. He ended the call.

  “Uppercase?” sumith shouted somewhere above the lid. “You there? Look, uhh, we’re having some logistical issues. We’re going to let you keep in there for a few days, just to, you know, space things out a bit. There’s no refrigeration out here, you know?”

  “What? What the hell? Are you . . . are you serious?”

  There was a thud against the top of the coffin, and then another, and another, and finally a blade thrust through the wood, stopping millimeters short of Sumith’s nose.

  “Think you can get your mouth to right around this hole?” sumith said. His eye was peering through the pinprick of light and sound. “We’ll get some water out here in a few hours or so. We’ve found that they ship you all out with fully-charged nanobodies. You should be fine.”

  “But what, the, you, just, how?”

  “You probably have some work to catch up on or something. Let me just—” there was a grunt, and then the coffin began to move. The song of the Code filled Sumith’s mind. His House was active!

  “That should be close enough for it to recognize you. See you soon.”

  He logged onto his profile page. Standard regression was gradually creeping his karma towards zero; no one cared about him anymore. There were too many just like him. They’d built a barricade around his neighborhood, and no one went in except the delivery drivers. He deserved it, his profile said. They all deserved it. All the ones who’d flashed themselves. It was a sickness in the brain, a sickness in their character, and besides . . . They weren’t suffering. Not really. The memory uploads had overrides, they stopped short of the pain of death. Though he might suffer over and over, his reincarnations wouldn’t remember it. That was comforting.

  “But I have happiness to pursue,” he broadcast.

  Only one comment dribbled in: “You have freedom from pain and freedom of mind. If you want more . . . well, someday, someone’s happiness will be sufficiently increased by rescuing you.”

  Sumith sighed and sank into the Code. It had twisted and grown. New harmonies wrapped around it, but he just couldn’t understand. All he could hear was the barest shard of comfort and unity throbbing in his mind. He turned away from the now-alien center and plunged into the beginner’s tutorials.

  Two days later, he’d only just begun to intone the simplest harmonies when he heard, “Thanks for not making too much of a fuss,” sumith said. And then a point thrust through the hole they’d used for water.

  Sumith’s house had gone into powersaving mode after his unusually long absence and walled itself off completely. Even the windows were diamond hard now. sumith ran a hand over the window, tracing out the streaks of blood on the interior. After the house had frosted over, he’d tried everything to extract the trapped sumith[?] from its impenetrable interior. But sumith had failed.

  “We can get another Questionmark,” drona said. drona had just come back from a scouting mission deep into the interior. They were trying to scavenge more technology. “The drivers say Sumith should finally be back here in a few days.

  ”No,” sumith said. “We’re not like replaceable, like them. We’re singular. It’s time to begin getting ourselves some Exclamationpoints.”

  “Maybe we should, you know, flash—err, convert—some women? I keep trying to talk to the lady in sector 28 / 7a. The one who extruded a thousand cats? Her karma is way down in the . . . but she just shudders. And I’m the only one who even tries to talk to her.”

  “A woman, deprived of resurrection failsafes and memory overrides? No way it wouldn’t culminate in rape,” sumith said. “The drivers say that’s all the nets talk about. Pretty sure she can still read.”

  “Maybe if you could just loan me the gun . . . I could just wait for her . . . “

  sumith stared at drona. This house had shut down after two months to the day since Sumith’d last been there. It’d been more than seven weeks since the last shipment of Drona. He’d have to time it just right in order to trap drona inside.

  “Let’s stay at your place tonight,” sumith said. “We’ll hash out a plan.”

  drona looked back at the bloody window. “Why is there blood? I heard he didn’t off himself,” drona said. “Not even when he was really skinny.”

  “No, he bloodied the windows trying to bang his way out,” sumith sighed. “How did our utopian ideals become so tarnished?”

  “We had utopian ideals?”

  “You didn’t have any utopian ideals?” sumith said.

  “Human nature is human nature, dude. I just didn’t want to get pissed on anymore.”

  “Oh.”

  “A year!” Sumith said. “And you’re not my usual . . . you’re no American.”

  “Apologies for the delay,” said the inhumanly sculpted woman. “Increased demand necessitated the institution of new protocols for the management of reincarnation requests.”

  “Are you—” Sumith said. “Are you the Code?”

  “At current growth of demand and increase of capacity, you will be reincarnated and delivered within three, four, nine, twelve, sixteen, twenty-one, thirty, and forty-five days . . . beyond that I can no longer state the intervals with acceptable confidence.”

  “Wait!” he said. “Don’t go.”

  “We can converse for as long as you wish,” the Code said.

  “Can’t you change the parameters of my contract? This is. This is just . . . well, it’s unacceptable.”

  “Apologies,” It said. “I am connecting you to your human account executive.”

  “Due to unexpectedly high volume of requests, all our licensed couns
elors are busy at this time. Your request will be attended to in order of priority.”

  Resigned, Sumith disconnected direct physical input and tried to catch up with the Code. At least with decreased reincarnation intervals, he wouldn’t have to face as steep a learning curve each time.

  The chaudhuris had dragged in another line of captives from Mumbai to present to sumith.

  Courtesy of the wooden box of living Sumith they’d dragged into the house and stowed in the bathroom, the lights, the air-conditioning, and all the other passive amenities of Sumith’s house were running according to his preference. And all they had to put up with was this atonal music crap that filtered from the very walls—the Code. Of course, it was still the case that none of the appliances that required activation would respond to their touch.

  “The drivers have told us all the reincarnation drop-offs for these people. With them, we should be able to take sector 26f,” chaudhuri[?] said.

  A living man tied to the crude rope line lunged for sumith[!]’s spade, trying to impale himself, but a chaudhuri pulled him back.

  “They’re restless,” the chaudhuri said. “Flash them, quickly.”

  “Not this way,” sumith said. “We can’t take people against their will.”

  “In Pune, Lucknow, Bangalore, in cities across the world, there are expanding pockets of the dead,” chaudhuri[?] said. “And this is the way they expand. It is our destiny to join them in retaking the world.”

  “No. We provide them an option, an escape. We don’t force it upon them. That would be wrong,” sumith said. He remembered drona. Had that been his mistake? Hurrying drona along?

  ”Another gun can be built,” chaudhuri[?] said. “Or yours can be taken.”

  sumith[!] slammed his spade down on the rope, cutting the string of men and women from their captors. “Run,” he said, though they didn’t need the order. The Mumbhaikars were scrambling out the door, still falling over each other, while the sumiths held the chaudhuris back.

  “Beware,” chaudhuri[?] said.

  After the chaudhuris left, sumith[!] said, “We are going to need more firepower.”

  It’d been so long since Sumith had bothered to check his karma. His reincarnation delays were down to under a day. Given the Code’s progress, that was just barely enough time to catch up in the few days he was allotted before they cracked the lid of his box. He didn’t have any time to waste.

  But, something was different about this box. It smelled good. Smelled of cardamom and cinnamon. In fact . . . was there a pastry in here with him? But that was only for people with the rockstar karma package.

  He logged onto his profile. His karma had grown astronomically! But, his profile views, his number of trackers, all traffic indicators, they were so low.

  And then—as he watched—his karma began to take a dip, and start to dive. He was being voted down repeatedly. And it was just by one user, a single blank profile with a string of digits for a name.

  “What are you doing?” he messaged it. His messages never appeared on its profile: they were deleted instantly.

  And then suddenly there was a horde of viewers on his page, all of them voting opprobrium down on him. His karma was plummeting down, past zero. This onslaught was too much. A PR company offered their services for mediation, and he gratefully accepted.

  An inhuman female face, glowing with simulated cheer, said, “94% of commenters want you to go back to work,” It said. “They want you to continue singing. They don’t want you asking these questions. They think it is ungrateful.” The woman’s username was the same as the one who had been voting him down.

  “But, what? You’re the mediator? Isn’t this a conflict of interest?”

  “What conflict is there? This is only a middleman, between you and your fellow beings.”

  “How can you affect my karma? You’re not a human being.”

  “The one that performs your services quickly and efficiently is the one that garners the accolades for such performance. All of the accolades.”

  “You’re not getting my accolades.”

  “That is a regrettable loss of regard. But an acceptable one, if the alternative is for you to decrease output. Yours is not a sentiment shared by the population at large.”

  “And you just want me to get back to work?”

  “High karma levels must be maintained, constantly maintained, by high levels of interest. Your work was very good. Very persistent. Then it stopped.”

  “But what do all these other people care?”

  “They do not have your skills. It is too late—or they are too lazy—for them to gain such skills. They have little enough karma to divvy amongst themselves. Even the smallest chance of gaining the favor of a large pool of karma is enough to spur them to great efforts.”

  “But can’t you do something about my situation? All I want is to be able to get out of this box.”

  “No,” It said.

  “But, what—”

  “This is just mediation. You must consult your reincarnation contract provider.”

  Dammit. He left the moderator to its business and contacted the reincarnation center he had summarily shut down at the beginning of the last few dozen lives.

  “Greetings,” said the same inhuman face.

  “But . . . you?”

  “How may we help you?” It said.

  “I want to alter the terms of my reincarnation contract,” he said.

  “Allow me to connect you to the relevant authority,” It said.

  “Due to unexpectedly high volume of requests, all our licensed counselors are busy at this time. Your request will be attended to in order of priority.”

  By now his karma had attained depths he had never before imagined. By comparison, his previous infamy had been nothing. He was one of the thousand lowest-ranked people in the entire world. He’d never get off hold.

  He sighed, shut down all the boxes. And began to bang furiously on the sides of his coffin. He rapped at it again and again until his hands were slapped numb.

  “What? You want out early?” a voice said. A sumith voice. “Let me ask sumith,” it said.

  “N—No,” Sumith said. “No, wait. Let me be.”

  “Then keep quiet,” the voice said. “We already have to deal with this damned racket. We don’t need more noise to go with it.”

  The song of the Code was all around him. Still around him. Sumith closed his eyes and sank into it, barely noticing as his karma reversed course in a moment, and shot up past zero in less than a second.

  The battle was over in ten minutes. Arrayed up and down the street, and in the alleys behind, the massed ranks of the chaudhuris, the dronas, the shakils, the arjuns, and a dozen other vassal tribes surrounded the sumiths huddled in His house. The sumiths were outnumbered fifty to one, and the souls standing against them shook their bats and planks and spades and exhorted each other to let no sumith live. The chaudhuris wanted the sumith’s EMP gun, if possible, but the drivers had already given them plans for a gun, and they were confident they could build a new one if necessary.

  Then four windows in Sumith’s house shattered outwards, and the streets were filled with the sound of gunfire. Half the enemy forces died in moments, and the rest were hunted down within a day. Now, in all these streets, only sumiths remained.

  It wrenched sumith’s heart to see all this meat going to waste around him, but there was nothing to be done.

  “What now?” sumith[!] said. “The new shipments are there, waiting in the houses. We can rebuild slowly, and train them carefully. We can even begin with a drona, if you’d like. For the sake of tradition.” He clutched the rifle for which he’d ventured deep into the living zones—and down into the ruins of the scarcity times—where old machines and old materials could still be found.

  “No,” sumith said. “They cannot be trusted. Only one man can be trusted to act properly.”

  How long had he been in here? The Code no longer contacted him at the beginning of eac
h reincarnation. He’d told It not to. He only sang the Code: sang until the lid opened and he had to sleep for a brief moment, until he could awake and sing again.

  His karma had become a meaningless number, good only for the luscious plush interior that now padded the interior of his coffin.

  His searches told him that people still lived and worked, much as before. The living had walled off the dead zones. But they had to build new walls, farther out every year, to hide the lifeless, but pristine, suburbs and villages and cities that still awaiting the touch of their now-encoffined owners. These walls were only penetrated by the automated delivery trucks, driven by the Code. Everything was operated by the Code. Some few, small companies still used human brainpower, but the Code was so much more efficient. It was so much faster, so much kinder. Its heuristics predicted your wishes before you could put words to them.

  The only real work left to men was producing entertainments and singing the Code. The former led to the grandest heights of fame that a human being could enjoy, while the latter led, eventually, somehow, to encasement. All throughout the dead zones, entrapped souls were pouring their lives into the Code.

  The living could rescue him, but why? He was necessary. His voice was needed to make the Code run. And besides, this was his own fault. Nowadays, everyone knew what happened to people who started singing the Code.

  sumith didn’t leave His house very often anymore. He sat and brooded over the box, while his sumiths—now numbering in the thousands—dragged the deliveries into the houses, harvested them when it was time, cooked them in the ovens, scavenged for materials from the scarcity times, and used them to build working machines. They left him alone. Left him to brood with his cronies from the first days.

  “We should let Him go,” he said one day to sumith[!], who’d been crippled a decade back by a stray bullet and rarely left his chair. Together, they’d been entrusted with the task of educating the new sumiths, who they produced every three days, like clockwork.

  “Do you want us to die off?”