Hedon

by Jason Werbeloff

  “Woah!” A voice called from the other side of the room. The Tax Man hadn’t seen the man in the corner, a shadow shifting against the flashing television screens that plastered the far wall.

  The Tax Man raised his pistol, and fired three times. The figure went down, blood splattering against the shifting wall of imagery. One of the screens died, but the rest continued playing a cheap porno.

  “Don’t move,” The Tax Man said to Donys and the woman behind him, aiming his pistol at them as he moved to the body to check it wasn’t breathing. Ah good, the hedometer was intact. He’d repossess the memories soon.

  “Step back from his hedometer,” he shouted, and the woman did as she was told. Donys sat, gaping at the sight of the Tax Man striding toward him.

  “Venerable Sir,” the woman said, “I ask of you to show me the compassion of the Devas. I –“

  Without blinking, he shot her between the eyes. Fuck, he thought, that’ll ruin her hedometer. Repossession would be impossible now. He needed to be more thoughtful in future. He made a mental note to shoot for the chest-cavity from now on.

  In the profundity and brilliance of dharmakaya …

  Donys was chanting, his eyelids crinkled shut.

  The compassion of Avalokiteśvara arises.

  He rocked back and forth as he prayed, tears glistening on his porn-lit eyelashes.

  The Tax Man recognised the words – from the death prayers Master Dzogo taught at the monastery. Hedometer hacking was a capital crime, and Donys knew what came next. He pressed the pistol to Donys’s heart.

  The Tax Man’s cellphone rang. “Kwan-yin!” he swore, and took the call.

  “Now isn’t a good time,” The Tax Man said.

  In the magnificent and victorious vision …

  “Uh, sir, we thought you’d want to know that we can’t track the hedometer IDs you sent us.”

  We proclaim the jñana of Amitabha.

  The Tax Man was caught off-guard for a moment. “Which hedometers?” he asked the tech. He pistol-whipped Donys across the cheek to shut him up. But the faggot spat out a tooth, and continued.

  You are in the state of simplicity.

  “Shutup!” he yelled. He couldn’t hear a thing with that infernal chanting.

  “Uh, sorry sir,” the tech said, thinking the rebuke was meant for him. “Anand Nair and … Cyan Rustikov, sir.”

  The Tax Man sighed, and ended the call. He thought for a moment.

  You are free from fetters.

  It happened irregularly. Occasionally the transponder on a hedometer malfunctioned. But the chances of two transponders failing, of related suspects, was next to zero. They had removed them. And there was only one place you could live without a hedometer: the ghetto.

  Please look upon us –

  “Turns out it’s your lucky day, pal,” said The Tax Man.

  Donys finally went silent. A thin line of blood streaked from the corner of his mouth.

  “I have a job for you,” The Tax Man continued. “An offer you don’t want to refuse.”

  Before the libraries were burned, Donys had read about Nazi Germany. He’d read about the ways the SS officers would promise the Jews a better life. And then, they’d ghettoed them, jailed them, and gassed them. He imagined what those initial conversations would’ve been like. How those promises would’ve tasted to their recipients. The soothing tones the SS officers would’ve used.

  He thought about those promises, those tones, as The Tax Man made his promise.

  “Find them, and you will be granted tax exemption for the next five years.”

  The Tax Man made his promise while he drove, his expression illegible behind his reflective glasses. Donys shifted in the Merc’s seat. He worried that TBone’s blood on his shirt would rub off on the white leather. How many stains had been scrubbed away, Donys wondered, from the seat where he sat now? Blood and mucus and gray matter. His skin crawled.

  “Yes, Venerable Sir,” Donys said mechanically.

  “Repeat their names to me.”

  “Anand Nair, and Cyan Rustikov.”

  “Find them, dead or alive, and you will have your exemption.”

  The Merc stopped. They were at the gates. Two immensely high, rusted-metal doors were set into the center of the Wall. Donys was barely five years old when the Brownies had erected the Wall, and the gates. They were burnished silver then, shaped into magnificent monuments to the God of Compassion. But now, almost twenty years later, the gates were rusted to a brown-black metallic mess that creaked every night in the north wind.

  “Get out,” said The Tax Man.

  He didn’t want to. Didn’t want to leave the whitewashed interior of the Merc. What waited for him outside was worse than The Tax Man. “They eat young boys,” Master Dzogo would say. “They drink the blood of children,” his mother Evelynn had confirmed. “You don’t want to live in the ghetto, son,” was all Henry would say on the matter.

  And now, Donys stood before the massive rusted gates, listening to the sound of the north wind whistle along the rusted edges of Avalokiteśvara. The sound was high and long, a wail that he knew was the collective cry of those beyond the gates. The Breeders. He swallowed, and clasped his hands together, as the Tax Man shoved him forward. The wind whipped at his shirt.

  He remembered the day Evelynn and Henry had collected him from the orphanage. “Giving parents a child brings them joy,” Master Dzogo had said to him. “You must love them as if they were your own.”

  “But I don’t want to go,” Donys, only nine, had replied.

  “But you must.” The lines around Master Dzogo’s mouth were hard. All the male adults at the school and at the orphanage were called Master Dzogo. He’d never understood why.

  “But I don’t want to,” Donys had whined.

  “But you must.”

  Henry and Evelynn had arrived. She’d smelt old, and had hair like a rat’s, coarse and thick. And Donys didn’t want to be around her. Didn’t want her greasy white fingers on him.

  “Oh he’s SO lovely,” Evelynn had said, ruffling a puffy hand through his mane. “Isn’t he lovely, Henry. Henry …”

  “Oh yes dear, splendid.”

  She lowered her voice. “Is he clean?” she’d asked Master Dzogo.

  “Inoculated and ready to go,” Master Dzogo had replied. “All education credits are in order.”

  “Oh good,” Evelynn exclaimed. “Isn’t that good, Henry?”

  “Jolly good.” Henry eyeballed the room. His nose curled whenever his eyes came to rest on little Donys.

  And then Master Dzogo had prodded him toward Evelynn, so that he stood against her leg. It was lumpy and covered in an itchy-blue material. He leaned against it, against that old-woman smell. And wondered why having parents was so important. He looked back at Master Dzogo, imploring silently to be allowed back into the orphanage. Whatever it was that he’d done to deserve this, this woman, he would make amends. He’d do a hundred and eight prostrations every morning, a thousand, if Master Dzogo would let him stay. Allow him to sleep in his cot at the end of the dorm, while the soft chorus of children’s breathing lulled him to sleep.

  The colossal gate juddered, its hinges singing and groaning as the metal shifted hardly a yard. The Tax Man tossed Donys across the threshold, and threw a cellphone and a police-deputy badge at him before it closed. “Call the saved number when you find them,” The Tax Man said, “and I’ll come.”

  The gate clanged shut, and he was alone. The ghetto, dark and alive, had found him.

  Chapter 11

  May those afflicted with cold find warmth.

  – Shantideva

  The knocking was incessant.

  “Coming!” Chokyong shouted as he stumbled down the stairs.

  Who could it be? The Tax Man? No. Chokyong adhered strictly to the Middle Way. He maintained a careful hedon-altruism balance, and never dipped below the Minimum Hedon Threshold. The Brownies? Could be. The servicemen who worked for Chokyong at BIGS could be a h
eadache. Many were closeted heterosexuals, and were often brushing against the rough edges of The Law. Chokyong turned a blind eye to all but the most flagrant Breeding behavior. Many of the young men kept holo-pics of their women in their lockers. Some even smuggled women into the bathhouse after hours. He let these visits slide, but he insisted on no hanky-panky. They could sit at the bar and chat, but overt Breeder behavior was dangerous in Shangri.

  Chokyong hadn’t had sex in over twenty years, not since that day he’d left his wife in the Himalayas. By now, she would have found another man. Had the children he always wanted. He knew he could have one of the servicemen as a replacement for his wife. But he didn’t want them. He wanted her. Nobody knew this, of course, but he suspected that they suspected. So, at the bar, he played the jovial, queer bartender. He laughed and joked with all the men that passed through. They respected him. He was a father to the young men. Or a wise older brother.

  He wasn’t much good at giving advice. Words weren’t Chokyong’s strong-suit. But in the servicemen’s eyes he was a mountain of calm transcending the torrential pleasures of Shangri. He didn’t feel calm, but he liked the way they looked at him. He was always there to rescue them from a tax violation or a Breeding infraction.

  So when he opened the black double-doors of BIGS, and found Anand and a clearly pregnant, bloody girl standing in the cold spring morning, he didn’t hesitate. It was still dark outside, but patrons would be arriving with the sunrise in an hour or so. “Come. Quickly.”

  He guided them to the locker room, and examined the pair under the fluorescent light. Anand was silent, his face waxen and swollen into an unblinking stare. Chokyong focused his attention on the girl, who was more animated. Her fingers were never still, her darting eyes seeming to find danger in every shadow.

  He placed a finger under her chin, and raised her gaze gently to his. “What is your name, girl?”

  “Cyan.” A tear fell from her cheek.

  The only change of clothing he had for her was the silk robe the servicemen wore. But it fit, and covered all the important bits. “There you are,” Chokyong said, standing back. In fact, the robe looked very good on her. Her rounded breasts sashayed beneath the flowing silk as she moved.

  Anand hadn’t moved from the corner of the locker-room while Chokyong tended to Cyan. And he hadn’t spoken.

  “What happened?” asked Chokyong. He asked a second time before Anand’s eyes focused.

  “There’s a body in my apartment,” Anand replied. He was staring at a spot on the floor a few feet away. “It was self-defense,” he added.

  Given the appearance of the pregnant woman at his side, Chokyong knew there was plenty more to this story. But he didn’t ask. The Brownies didn’t hesitate to use memory reads in their investigations.

  Chokyong placed a hand on Anand’s shoulder. “I know someone who can get you across the Wall.”

  Anand’s eyes flashed. Chokyong was well aware that fleeing to the ghetto was a drastic measure. It meant giving up all security. Food, shelter. Pleasure. It was possible to survive in the ghetto, sure. But impossible to live.

  “Okay,” Anand said. Lines of loss carved his usually-smooth forehead. He was years older than when Chokyong saw him that morning.

  “First we need to get those machines out your heads.”

  The whites of Anand’s eyes were bloodshot.

  “Have to. They’ll be tracking you soon enough otherwise,” said Chokyong.

  Anand slumped onto the bench. Placed his head in his hands, as Cyan watched on. They hardly know each other, thought Chokyong.

  “Come, come. Get going. No time to sit. You’ll have a lifetime to do that in the ghetto,” said Chokyong.

  “Hold still.”

  Anand squirmed on the bar stool. Chokyong spoke in careful tones, “We have to remove it, boy. They can track you otherwise.”

  Anand thought about protesting. He’d had the hedometer since he was ten. Almost fifteen years. It was part of him. Removing it was like … removing his hands. “Okay,” he said eventually, feeling like a child. Chokyong went to work with the screwdriver. Every tap and turn of the tool sang in his skull. “Will it hurt?”

  “Less if you stay quiet.”

  Chokyong pulled at the glass-front of the machine, and Anand’s scalp tightened, as if to keep the tech inside him just a little longer.

  “Thaaaaaat’s better,” Chokyong said.

  “What? What is it? Are you done?”

  Chokyong laughed, that deep-belly mirth that spilled out of him at the strangest times.

  “No, boy. But we have the front off. Now I can enter the removal codes.”

  Anand could feel Cyan standing beside Chokyong, scrutinizing the insides of the machine. The insides of him.

  “Hhhha,” she inhaled. “So many wires. What if you cut the wrong one?”

  Chokyong didn’t answer.

  “Now don’t move, boy.”

  Anand nodded.

  “Hey!”

  Anand sat, forced his head to stillness. He held his breath. When he was a child, learning to meditate in the school hall, Master Dzogo used to carry around a Keisaku. A flat wooden stick with perfectly engraved cloudy swirls. If a boy fell asleep, or talked, Master Dzogo would slap him across the shoulder-blades. It had happened to Anand. One moment he was breathing, breathing. Counting one. Counting two. The next moment, he was dreaming of Nurse Mantel’s breasts, falling between them, burying his face in them, licking –

  Whack!

  The stick had hit him across his spine, beneath his right shoulder. It was hot and loud and fleshy, the sound echoing from the high ceiling. By the time the sound had faded, the burn had started. A sizzling itch that crawled under his armpit. Oh, how he’d wanted to touch it. To rub it. But he’d returned to his breath. Counting one. Counting two. Forever after, he’d felt Master Dzogo at his back, the swirled clouds imprinted on his shoulder while he meditated. While he drove to BIGS every morning. While he fucked the patrons. Even in the shower, his hair wet and shampoo in his eyes, he would turn and check sometimes, to see that Master Dzogo wasn’t standing behind him.

  Now, sitting on the barstool under Chokyong’s hands, he counted his breaths. And by the time he reached three, he felt Chokyong’s hands withdraw from his head. Where his hedometer had been was now a cold, naked patch of skin. He stood, and looked at the machine lying in Chokyong’s hands. It was about three inches wide, and two high. The glass-plated front was lying on the bar-top. Yellow and green and blue wires snaked through the unit, tracing the lines of his life. Buried in those wires, he knew, was recorded every memory, every second of pleasure he’d had since he was ten years old. His life was in that box.

  “Your turn,” Chokyong said, and sat Cyan down on the stool. Anand took her hand, squeezed it, as Chokyong did his work.

  “How’d you know how to do this?” Anand asked.

  “The army,” said Chokyong.

  Ten forever minutes later, Cyan’s hedometer lay beside his on the bar-top. The skin where it had been was pale as snow.

  “Must destroy these before we go,” Chokyong said, scooping up the machines. He dug inside each, removing a pea-sized transponder. “That right there,” he said, “is a world of trouble.” He placed them on the floor, and smashed them beneath his hefty heel.

  Anand’s head felt lighter. The sun was just appearing over the dusty horizon as they left through the back-door behind the bar. The world looked just as it always had. But now, thought Anand, only he was seeing it. Nobody was seeing it with him, through his eyes. Nobody was watching. He was alone, and for the first time, free.

  “Milton!” Chokyong whispered. “Milton!”

  Cyan saw movement in the turret above the Wall. A pale arm waved to them, and Chokyong returned the gesture. A rope ladder fell down the side of the Wall to where they stood.

  “Quickly!” whispered a voice from above.

  The night was windier than usual, and the gusts concentrated along the side of t
he Wall. Cyan’s hair blew behind her as she stared up at the turret, trying to see the figure within.

  Anand shook Chokyong’s hand, and climbed first. His strong legs wobbled, but after a few steps he became accustomed to the rope. Cyan watched his buttocks move just like buttocks should beneath his polyester slacks.

  A minute later, he was atop the Wall, standing beside the pale figure. Cyan’s eyes met the aging man who had given her this chance. His face was square and hard, but kindness filled the crow’s feet that cradled his eyes. “Thank you,” she said to Chokyong. She felt the baby kick, then. A hard, twang of pain and delight. “If it’s a boy, I’ll name him after you.”

  Chokyong bowed to her, and rested his thick hand on her stomach. “May your journey be safe,” he said, as much to her child as to her. “Till we meet again.”

  She had lived outside the ghetto for just under three months, and if she had to be honest, she was happier before the move. The thought of returning warmed her hands as Cyan took the rope in her fists. The synthetic material was hard and worn between her fingers. She placed her foot on the bottom rung, and pulled herself upward. The ladder slipped to one side, and then away from the Wall, as the north wind caught her. She stared up at the impossible steps to the top, and almost gave up before she’d started.

  “Look ahead of you,” Chokyong’s baritone voice said from behind her, as his hands steadied her hips. “Don’t climb the ladder. Climb one stair.”

  She pulled again at the vertical ropes, and this time, she found the next step with her foot. And then the next, and the next.

  When hands touched her shoulders, she almost fell, for she didn’t realize she’d climbed to the top. But she had. Anand and Milton pulled her over the edge of the Wall. She sat on the floor of the turret, catching her breath. The three of them filled the tiny room.

  “You didn’t tell me she’s p-p-p … that she’s fallen.”