State Tectonics

by Malka Older

  “The election,” Nejime says, and throws the projection up in front of them.

  Maryam studies the question about who should control data in growing shock. “That was on the official ballot?”

  Nejime doesn’t seem to hear her. “How did I not see this? All those distractions, the different points of attack … and now this.” She sits back into a chair Maryam has rarely seen her use. With a quick movement of her hand, she changes the projection to up-to-the-second voter data, the numbers spinning upward as they watch. “Millions already. There’s no running this back.” Her eyes come back to Maryam. “You don’t remember what it was like before Information.” Nejime’s voice trembles, and Maryam wonders if this is going to be the melt-down-and-admit-all scene, but Nejime has far more self-control than a film villain and she continues in her usual dispassionate tone. “Competing data sources tore down any idea of truth; people voted based on falsehoods. We didn’t invent surveillance: there were plenty of feeds and search trackers, but they were fragmented and firewalled by governments and private companies. The surveillance was used to propagate falsehoods.”

  Exasperation creeps in, and she stands and walks to the window, staring at the monochrome desert sky before swinging back to face Maryam. “I hate feeling like a parent raging at an ungrateful child who doesn’t understand my sacrifices. We knew our system wasn’t perfect; we knew it wouldn’t last forever. But.” She strides back to stand in front of Maryam, gestures as though about to take her hand. “Don’t ignore what we were trying to do, the lessons that we were taking from our early lives. Don’t swing the pendulum back too far, if you can avoid it.”

  “I’m not … I’m not the person in control of this.” Maryam still feels as though she’s here by accident. She should be reading about this, or watching from against the wall while the important people around the table make the decisions.

  “You’re here,” Nejime says, grim. “Right now, you’re what I’ve got.” She shakes her head. “It’s my fault for connecting you with Taskeen in the first place.”

  Maryam panics. “I only called her to—” She remembers that she was calling her for exactly the reasons Nejime is suggesting, stumbles, and picks it up again. “Ask for her help figuring out what was going on with the outages.”

  “And what did she say?” Nejime’s voice is cold, and Maryam realizes that Nejime hadn’t seen the call after all.

  “She didn’t answer.” Nejime says nothing; she has already shifted her attention to something Maryam can’t see. “Maybe … maybe this is fixable. We can shut it down, explain it as a joke, an attack…”

  Nejime sighs. “The problem with democracy,” she says, “is that sometimes the wrong people win. But go ahead; work your techie wizardry and let me know what you come up with. Remember,” she adds, as Maryam turns toward the door, “no announcements or action without approval. We must be careful here. People have a tendency to cling to their votes.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Maryam walks out of Nejime’s office shaking her head. An hour ago, she and Roz were agreeing that a change would be a good thing, then Nejime tears up and she’s fighting to save Information. She hates herself for being so fickle.

  Realizing Zaid is looking at her funny, she goes out into the corridor. The news about the voting mechanism hack has spread. The quiet intensity has been obliterated by an urgent buzz of reaction, gossip, and brainstorming. Maryam hesitates by the railing of the atrium. She could find Hassan and figure out how to help him or … Or what? Leave? Work on her own, try to figure out what’s going on, and then decide how to act? She is wondering whether there’s any chance she can find a quiet place to work (probably not) when Taskeen pings her on the secret channel.

  “Did you do this?” Maryam whispers.

  “Do what?” Taskeen asks in a normal voice.

  Maryam almost stamps with frustration. “Stop playing with me! What is going on?”

  “You called me,” Taskeen points out.

  “If you have nothing to say to me,” Maryam hisses, “then this isn’t exactly the best time—” She stops. Five floors below her, coming into the main lobby of the Hub, she sees the glint of garnet from a dark head.

  Maryam ducks behind the fronds of one of the palms ornamenting the lobby and peers down, only partly aware of Taskeen gabbing something in her ear. “Hang on!” she whispers. The figure below her turns toward the reception desk, and the angle reveals enough of her face for Maryam to confirm what she already knew. “I have to go,” she murmurs.

  “Wait!” Taskeen commands, but Maryam has already cut the call. She takes the stairs at a run, and gets to the lobby, breathless, while Núria is still negotiating with the receptionist.

  “Hey,” she gasps.

  Núria turns, cries out in relief and recognition, and throws her arms around Maryam, who can see Saeed roll his eyes toward the ceiling and go back to whatever he’s projecting at eye level.

  “Come over here,” Maryam says, and draws Núria over to one of the sets of chairs airscaped to provide some measure of privacy in the panopticon of the Hub lobby. “What are you doing here?”

  “It was the only place I could think of to look for you.” Her eyes fill. “I knew it was stupid, that you’d probably come home and we’d cross paths in midair, but…”

  “But I didn’t,” Maryam says, stunned. A long time ago, she developed a theory that one of the key indicators for relationship success is compatibility in translating love into action and action into love. Some people say I love you a lot, some don’t. It doesn’t mean the latter love less. But knowing that is going to be small comfort if hearing I love you is one of your primary routes to the feeling of being loved, especially since studies have shown that these habits, in both directions, are particularly hard to change. Núria has just maxed Maryam’s feeling-of-being-loved meter. Maryam, faced with the same predicament, felt the same impulse but didn’t act on it.

  “It’s fine,” Núria is saying, smiling through the tears. “I wasn’t home, anyway. It’s fine, really.”

  Maryam realizes that her face isn’t expressing the complexity of her feelings, that she probably doesn’t look as happy and moved as she is by Núria’s presence, so she throws her arms around her. As their lips meet, Maryam’s brain, determined to ruin the moment, wonders whether Núria might have just played her perfectly.

  * * *

  They go to Maryam’s hotel, sneaking around the feeds in the lobby like teenagers because Maryam’s room is designated single. She’s already turned off all her notifications; Taskeen and her games can wait, and she doesn’t want to have to answer a call from Nejime asking how the work is going.

  As soon as the door closes behind them, Núria grabs Maryam in another hug, murmurs, “I was so worried about you,” into her ear, but Maryam can’t help feeling like it’s forced this time.

  She disengages. “Why didn’t you send a message?”

  Núria drops her arms. “Why didn’t you?” When Maryam doesn’t reply, she goes on. “I wasn’t sure you’d answer, and I didn’t want to sit around waiting, not knowing if you weren’t answering because something had happened to you, or because you were too busy for me, or because you didn’t want to talk to me—”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to talk to you?” Maryam asks.

  “I don’t know!” Núria shrugs exaggeratedly. “With all this going on, I figured you’d be working on something you couldn’t talk to me about! Which I understand, it’s fine, but I just wanted to see you, you know? I know it was silly…”

  “Of course it’s not silly,” Maryam says, but automatically: she is thinking about the all this, wondering how much Núria knows. “Have you voted yet?”

  Núria gives her a quizzical glance. “No, but there are, what, twenty hours left? I think we have other things to talk about first.”

  “Just—try to vote. You’ll see why.”

  As Maryam watches Núria’s skeptical face clicking through the options, it occurs to her that sh
e hasn’t voted yet either, but right now, she can’t face that decision—any of the decisions, really, because she’s still not sure whether she can vote for Valérie, or whether she can vote against her.

  “¡Coño!” Núria’s eyes rise from the unseen voting mechanism to meet Maryam’s. “How did this happen?”

  Maryam shakes her head, holding Núria’s gaze. “I don’t know. But I have to ask you: given that choice”—she hesitates, takes in a breath—“Which side are you on?”

  Núria answers without hesitation. “Yours.”

  Maryam swallows. “What does that mean?”

  “What does it mean? It means I don’t care about any of this stuff! If you ask me, really—” She stops for a moment to think. “I guess I’d vote for whomever I choose, because, bé, maybe there’s something better?” She shrugs. “But if you tell me to vote for Information, I’ll do it, not”—one finger up—“because you are corrupting my principles or any such comemierdería, but because I don’t care that much and you do and I trust you to lead me well.”

  She stops as though she’s run out of words, and Maryam lets air out that she didn’t know she was holding. “You—you don’t know what this is about or where it comes from?”

  “How would I?” Núria asks, incredulous. “I’m a soldier, not—I’ve never dealt with anything like this.”

  “You had nothing to do with this?”

  Núria laughs. “Of course not!” Seeing that Maryam is still skeptical she casts around for an explanation. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin, whom to talk to … I’m not connected to anything like this, not really! Why would I be dreaming revolution with my friends if I were already a part of one?”

  “I hate your camaradas,” Maryam blurts.

  “What?”

  “I’m jealous of them. All the time you spend with them, your shared cause…” Their beauty, their style, their effortless wit …

  “And you think I’m not jealous of Valérie?” Núria tightens her fingers around Maryam’s.

  That possibility had, in fact, never occurred to Maryam.

  “Mira, amor meu,” Núria starts. The Catalá possessive pronoun makes it sound so much more intimate and real than Núria’s usual flippant use of the endearment. “Yes, there are some things in my job I can’t talk about—just as there are in yours. But believe me”—another little laugh—“I have never been such an important person in YourArmy as to work on things like these. And I never wanted to be.”

  “I never was, either,” Maryam murmurs. “Until now.”

  Núria pulls her into her embrace again. “I don’t care!” she whispers fiercely. “I don’t care if you have to keep secrets all the time. As long as they’re not secrets about you cheating on me. But keep your work secrets. I don’t want them. I just want what we have together.”

  Maryam sighs, trust rising in her like slow floodwaters. “I do too.”

  * * *

  Maryam wakes up a few hours later, Núria’s arm over her belly, Núria’s face in her shoulder, Núria’s hair against her cheek. The futon feels luxuriously clean and flat; Maryam remembers she hadn’t slept since the flight from Paris, and before that in Cuba. She should still be asleep. But there is daylight glowing faintly through the window filter and her mind is wide awake, clicking away.

  Núria stirs when Maryam clambers off the futon but doesn’t wake up until Maryam is dressed and kneeling beside her. Núria smiles. “You’re going in?”

  “Yes,” Maryam says, running her hand through her lover’s hair. “Is that—”

  “It’s fine,” Núria murmurs. “As long as you come back.”

  “I will,” Maryam promises. And then, just in case: “If I don’t, come looking for me.”

  “Flamethrowers blazing,” Núria agrees. “Oh,” she calls as Maryam walks out. “Don’t forget to vote. The last polls showed Liberty ahead in our centenal.”

  Maryam stops. “Ahead by how much?”

  “By enough.” Núria shakes her head, furious. “I don’t understand how anyone can vote for them, knowing what they did.”

  Núria works for YourArmy; she and her friends worked to clean up Liberty’s mess. “Maybe they don’t know,” Maryam offers.

  “In that case,” Núria says, “I’m sorry, amor, but Information failed.”

  Maryam has no answer.

  As she leaves the hotel, Maryam pulls open the voting mechanism. There are still fourteen hours left in Election Day, but this is probably the latest she’s ever waited to vote. 888. Valérie. And then, after a brief hesitation, whomever I choose. Having the choice means she can still choose Information, she tells herself.

  The choice made, she opens her comms again and calls Taskeen.

  CHAPTER 27

  Maryam expected Taskeen to be furious or at least frustrated, but although she answers immediately, her voice is distracted. “Yes?”

  “You wanted to talk to me yesterday?” Maryam tries to sound equally blasé.

  “You called me first,” Taskeen says, sounding more guarded now.

  Maryam cannot deal with coyness any more. “I wanted to know if you were responsible for the Information flicker. Now I need to know if you are responsible for the new voting category.” When she thinks about it, over the last week she’s talked truth with a former head of state, two of the most powerful women in Information, and—no less intimidating—her own girlfriend. No need to doubt herself now.

  “Oh, that. Yes, of course.”

  Maryam finds herself doubting. “¿Perdona? Yes, of course what?”

  “I arranged for both those things to happen. Collaboratively, you understand; I’m not trying to take all the credit.”

  Maryam stops walking. She’s on a small side street, it’s early in Doha, next to her a shopkeeper is pushing a display case out of his store, down the street a woman is programming the daily menu projection for a restaurant. “Credit?”

  “Look,” Taskeen says, reasonably. “We’re a little busy here taking over the world; what exactly do you want to know?” Before Maryam can manage an answer, she amends, “Well, not taking over the world, exactly. We don’t want to end up running it. But definitely kicking Information’s ass.”

  “Why?” Maryam gets out at last, thinking as she does it’s a stupid question, a comic book question for an evil megavillain. “Information’s not that bad.”

  “And there you have your answer,” Taskeen says cheerfully. “‘Not that bad’ was worth something at the beginning of this experiment, but it doesn’t cut it anymore.”

  “So, you’re upending the status quo and just hoping it works out.”

  “That’s the only way to do it, dear. Nobody ever knows whether something this big is going to work out. Political systems, macroeconomic policies, coding languages, algorithms: there will always be unintended consequences.”

  “Except,” Maryam says, remembering Nejime’s warning, “we do have an idea how this will turn out. Multiple sources of data means people will believe what they want.”

  “Unless we do better at teaching them how to choose. No reason Information can’t fill that role.”

  Maryam tries to imagine Information as an underfunded public media literacy service. “That’s going to be a tough transition for a lot of people.”

  “Exactly!” Taskeen pounces. “That is exactly the key issue right now. The important thing is for the transition to be as smooth as possible. Thankfully, we are finally at the stage where we can truly have a bloodless revolution.”

  “Bloodless because most people won’t notice!” Maryam shoots back. “You did this with no discussion, no debate—”

  “We didn’t hide anything! If people aren’t paying attention, that’s on them!” Taskeen snaps. “Are you going to tell me you of all people pine for the false heroics and desperate actions of trying to get everyone to agree with you?” Taskeen throws up a projection of Maryam’s public history and draws lines in the air from places she’s lived—Beirut, La Habana, Lima—to im
ages of violent revolution. This is not a prepared projection; she is finding and throwing up the images in real time, and adeptly.

  “You’ve been practicing.” Maryam swallows. “You haven’t been locked away from Information technology in that sanatorium.”

  Taskeen ignores her. “Tell me that you haven’t bought into the narrative of the heroic resistance paying in blood for some abstract notion of freedom! Do you really think it’s better if people wring some small concessions from power by dying?”

  “And what are you giving the people? Not more power.”

  “A deconcentration of power. The removal of the giant undemocratic blockage in the system.”

  “That you set up!”

  “In part, yes,” Taskeen says. “The system was supposed to evolve.”

  “It has! The Secretariat, the new environmental regulations…”

  “The environmental regulations are a sop, and the Secretariat barely worth mentioning. Maryam! You know that Information holds the power in this system, and it is completely unelected. Are you really arguing for that?”

  “I’m arguing that we need a source of data as close to impartial as we can get! We need a way to give people the data they need to make the decisions democracy depends on.”

  “Information has spent the last twenty-five years trying to force people to pay attention to issues they don’t care about. And despite all your meddling, people still care more about their friends, and clothes, and sports, and what to eat for dinner, and whether they can find a better job or where to go on vacation than about any question of governance. And how has that worked out?”

  “So, your solution is to let people not care.” Maryam is walking again, angrily, toward the Hub.

  “No, my solution is to decentralize and democratize the process. It won’t be perfect. But it will be a step, an improvement. We have to keep finding ways to improve! We have to keep trying, we have to be willing to break in order to build! Now, Maryam, you have to decide: are you going to help?”