by Samit Basu
A quick foray to his brother's (fortunately empty) bedroom later, Rudra is relaxed, confident, and positively social. The family ghost drifts down the stairs and floats around the edges of clusters of conversation, accepting condolences with grace, wincing only slightly when the screenshades descend around the hall, cutting out the slanting afternoon sunlight and scrolling black and white graphics about his father. He is an ambassador from another planet, come to gather anthropological information about this place and time, and return to his own world with fascinating facts: it's not that much different from getting lost in wikis.
Most of the conversations are immediately discardable ones about numbers: square-foot costs, mileages, exchange rates, multibagger potentials, cash components. He stumbles into a group of women discussing their designer vaginas, and beats a hasty retreat. He’s thrilled to hear that a long chain of murals on the highway depicting the transformation of Hindu men into gods through bio-augmentation have been burnt and covered in blood by unknown vandals, and the culture-terrorist E-Klav is a prime suspect. A man pitches a location-based mob aggregator app at him, thinking he's his brother. He meets a neuromarketer, a flying warehouse distributor and a cognitive linguist, a memorial monument optimiser, a detention centre designer and a friend-renting social maven. He pretends to understand complaints from smart city investors who all bought land in the hills and seem surprised that construction is at least five years delayed, though this has happened every year for the last ten. They all want to move out of Delhi to find cleaner air. They will not. Everyone keeps complaining about the Chinese buying everything while scanning the room to verify there are no actual Chinese people present.
Rudra has always been skilled in knitting together the effluvia of other people's loose talk. He finds soon that he'd chosen, with his typical unerring accuracy, a very poor target for imaginary assassination: Chopra, whose daughter he'd recently offended, was just a medium-visible propagandist five years ago when Rudra last saw him, but is now access-caste elite, and the most important man at the party. You never know with people who claim to be access-Brahmins, some of them are just frauds claiming real connections to power to get invited to enough parties to launder their lies, but a quick look at Chopra's Flow Highlights reveals casually stockpiled one-degree relationships with real power. He's likely to be the real deal.
A single hour shadowing Chopra as he circuits the room, smoothly discarding unworthy networkers, and Rudra learns things he's sure he couldn't have off mainstream news if he watched it, and one of those things even he will remember: the social-credit rankings are coming back soon. His gaming circles had all been very excited when the Indian government had tried to set up human scores in the early 20s, and had failed spectacularly, because after a new government had decided that having Chinese companies building India's surveillance infrastructure was not a good idea, the Indian companies building the system had decided that since India was still nominally a democracy, everyone should be able to rate everyone else in public. The resulting avalanche of online hate-mob attacks, offline revenge killings, and general furore over mass-downratings of every single well-known person on every point on the political spectrum had almost brought down yet another government.
'This time, the new idea is the old idea: we're just buying the Chinese systems wholesale,' Chopra says. 'Yes, I know, security concerns, but why pretend, yaar, the Chinese will find out everything anyway. All our data will be sold anyway, better we have some stake, no? What everyone forgets is that the Chinese are our friends now: we keep naming whole neighbourhoods in Delhi to remind people this, but people forget.'
This time, Rudra learns, your average Jyoti will never know what his rating is, or get to rate anyone else: it'll be wholly secret, wholly automated, based on every transaction, every observed adherence to or violation of every unwritten rule, every movement, every word spoken or messaged, every act of consumption, participation or expressed emotion, and then categorised and filtered, obviously, by Jyoti's family, his community, his friends, his biometrics and his overall performance relative to the ideal life he should be living as a Good Citizen. Only the Chopras of the world will have access to who Jyoti really is, will have a seat at the ceremony where Anubis weighs Jyoti's heart. No wonder everyone in the room is treating Chopra like a minor deity. Rudra's just grateful that he'll never see any of these people ever again. He wonders if Chopra's daughter and her boys were making actual death-lists on the stairs: if this was the sort of job daddy assigned them while he was catching up with new old friends.
There's just one major decision left as afternoon sinks angrily into evening: should he have the last joint right now, or wait until after the long trek home? A decision he still hasn't reached when his brother's hand descends on his shoulder like the hammer of Thor.
Rohit semi-drags Rudra out of the hall, out through the kitchen where a small army of secret Bangladeshis is cooking for the guests, out into the farmhouse grounds. No doubt he has a small speech prepared about land and blood and how far they've come, but he checks the time and grimaces: always running slightly late, our Rohit.
'I don't even want to talk about what I saw you doing in my room,' says Rohit. 'It's not important, I'm just glad you didn't ruin the Mehta plan. Bastard doesn't even know he works for me now. Listen, let's just put the past behind us and talk brother to brother, okay? Baba's dead. Things will be different now. The last couple of years have been difficult, you didn't know, but now the family has to come back together. Better days are coming again. So let me just ask you one question. Can I depend on you?'
'Yes,' says Rudra on autopilot. Always agreeing with Rohit was something his lizard brain had taken charge of long ago.
'Do you know, when you were a child, Baba thought you were a retard? They were going to send you away, but I didn't let them. Whatever my brother is, he's my brother, I said. He's family. You'll realise this later, no one has ever been as good to you as I have.'
'Yes.'
'But I can't handle the whole family on my own any more, and god knows Ma isn't any bloody help. We need you back. Playtime's over. I got mine too, I spent it neck deep in red meat and white girls in Berlin, and why you spent yours in Kalkaji surrounded by Africans and Bangladeshis-’
‘Bangladesh’s economy has been growing faster than India's for a whole generation.’
‘Quiet. Why you live like a middle class loser stuck on your stupid computer I'll never understand. But blood is blood. Rudra, I was planning to tell you all this peacefully tomorrow, and move you back in here, and have the big meeting next week, properly prepared, but then you went ahead and showed up, so I've got to throw you in.'
'In what?'
'Into your new life, idiot. You're getting a job. Now I can't let you fuck up the family business, but there's a huge expansion coming, and I need you to take charge of it in two years. You'll work for Chopra until then. Learn how the world really works.'
'It's best for the family if I'm not given this sort of responsibility.'
'Believe me, I know, and so does Ma. But it's good you've understood this. Means there's hope. This is a huge step up. It was supposed to be me, but Baba had to go and die ahead of schedule. This is everything we've ever dreamed of, so do not fuck it up, do you understand?'
He squeezes Rudra's shoulder, hard.
'I love you, brother,' he says.
‘I love you,' Rudra says. It seems polite.
They hug. There's no time for further questions: Chopra steps out of the kitchen. Is there a Sinister Silent Entry app? Rohit introduces them and vanishes.
Chopra tells Rudra he's been watching the excellent work he's been doing at Harvard, while his eyes tell Rudra he knows absolutely everything about his real life, probably had a tracker inserted into his spine a few days ago. Rudra's lizard brain tells him to run, but his legs stay rooted as Chopra explains the job. The joints are kicking in now, and Chopra's talking really fast. Normally Rudra's good at just taking in words, leaving them in
a pile in his memory to process later. But someone in the kitchen has switched on a massive exhaust fan, it's droning like a helicopter and he can't really hear anything. Is it all on purpose, so Chopra can't be recorded? Is he supposed to know how to lip-read? His throat is suddenly blocked: he can't summon up the courage to interrupt the access-Brahmin, he's flashbacking to childhood beatings from his brother. So much energy, even then. Chopra's saying something about human resources, competing with the Chinese on their turf, migrants, human utility and purpose, Kalkaji, domestic workers, missing children, opportunity, Rudra knowing how it is... the African exodus? Climate change? The Libyan slave markets? European blockades? Digital solutions? Immigrant control? The caste pyramid? Communist terrorists? Pragmatism?
It dawns on Rudra that he's being told about a slavery app.
His family is sending him to work as a slave trader.
The fan in the kitchen turns off.
'Formalities will be sorted next week, but I need to know if you're on board right now,' says Chopra. He extends a hand. A blue pangolin appears on his shoulder.
And Rudra finds himself unable to speak. Chopra's eyes grow even colder. How is that even possible?
'Look, I'm really sorry to interrupt, Chopraji, but Rudra's hiding something from you,' says a voice from behind the access-Brahmin.
It's Joey. Rudra's noticed her a few times during the day, running away from people pitching her Flow ideas.
Chopra raises an eyebrow.
'Rudra accepted a job offer from me this morning,' she says. 'I guess he's too scared to tell you? His family doesn't know yet. So, sorry if this is a problem, but he can't take whatever you're offering him.'
'Is this true?' Chopra snaps at Rudra.
'Yeah,' he says. 'Sorry, I-'
Chopra flashes his perfect teeth at them in the approximation of a smile, and silences him with a gesture. 'Sorry for your loss,' he says. 'Good luck.'
'What a dick,' Joey says as they watch him stomp through the kitchen. 'Sorry, was that your dream job I just dumped on? You looked like you were going to say something stupid, I waited and waited. But you weren't doing it, so I did.'
'Thank you,' Rudra says.
'So... my folks are finally getting the hell out of here and I came here to see if you wanted a lift,' says Joey.
'I do,' Rudra says. 'I also want that job you just made up.'
Joey spends a few seconds looking at him, and then shrugs. 'Can you edit Flows?'
'Yes,' Rudra says. 'Can you pay me in cash? And can I live in the office? I think my family might unperson me. Or kidnap me.'
'That's nice,' Joey says. 'Do you have any more of that weed you've clearly been smoking all day?'
He hands her the last joint.
'You're hired,' she says.
CHAPTER FOUR
LATE ONE NIGHT a week into his job, Rudra finds himself seated at a sprawling screen array watching in disbelief as his new Flowstar boss/flatmate has enthusiastic sex with his chief stylist.
This wasn't part of his schedule. The video starts autoplaying at 2 am, popping up over Rudra's Blockhead Combat multiplayer session. Possibly cued up by a two-person movement sensor? Indi and... he's forgotten the stylist's name: he was introduced to all of Indi's wellness team at one go, and he's never been very good at several name-face associations at once. He's often wished he could remember the names and faces of meat people instead of his immediate recall of every game character's full backstory and stats: rediscovery of those would have been so much nicer, so much less fraught.
Indi makes it worse by constantly referring to famous people by their first names like they're his closest friends: It took Rudra a while to understand that Toomas, some friend who said clever things about living in people's minds, was actually Estonian brain-tech icon Toomas Nigola, but Ailya the artist is not Hollywood MR-tist Ailya Kabaka but one of the make-up people. Indi is a mystery to Rudra, an antikythera device — he changes his own personality settings quite visibly, boosting his sociability, lowering his authority, channel-switching his humour like he's adjusting a photo for upload. He's sure Indi's sex-game is impeccably curated off top pornstars as well, but his ability to erase the men in those videos has rendered him incapable of spotting references.
He's seen the woman, the stylist, several times over the last week, walking past his editing suite on her way to the set of rooms that make up Indi's onscreen penthouse: she always smiles warmly. She's smiling now as she arcs acrobatically over Indi, spectacularly lit by the amber glow of his bedside mood-reading lamp-set.
Rudra's fellow gamers shout in his ears in a range of languages, the auto-translator repeating their choice invectives a second later, but he ignores them: he's hypnotised. Behind Indi and his stylist, his forgotten Blockhead avatar abandons its cover, walks out into the open, and crumples to the floor, headshot by some amused opponent. He's never seen people he knows in porn before, and this is porn. They're on display. Indi's making sure her body catches the light as it changes colour off his smartatt reads, always a spectacular angle, never missing a beat, turning and placing his partner in an impressive sequence of positions, switching every few minutes in response to some internal timer, performing as ever for whoever his audience is: does he see his own life in third-person? Their bodies are impeccable, their movements in perfect sync, he wants to give them full marks, share, subscribe. This isn't their first time, and he has many questions: is this another Flow that they're secretly recording, or is this how the audience-obsessed behave even when they're alone?
The video isn't going out on Indi's Flow, fortunately: he has no idea how he'd have stopped it. The live Flowscreens are all normal: a recap of yesterday's events, a visit to a robot fighting contest plus Indi and Tara doing couples yoga and some light scripted flirting. Tara's asleep in her bedroom right now, her smartatt readings all stable. Her onscreen boyfriend has clearly benefitted from all that yoga: Rudra watches spellbound as the stylist has a magnificent orgasm, all performance forgotten as she collapses in a heap on his bed. Indi lies staring at the ceiling, big smug smile on his face, breathing evenly, patting her shoulder absent-mindedly as she recovers. It makes no sense: why would Indi be recording porn when there was already plenty of AI-generated face-pasted material featuring him and other Flowstars available? Is it just a celebrity hobby? Can he not perform unless he's on camera? But he hasn't looked into the camera, not even once. Does he not know he's on camera? Or does he know, and this is some sort of side-project passion of his that his last in-house editor, his cousin who got fired, was helping him with? Or does he not know, and the cousin was secretly collecting or even selling sex videos of him? Did Indi find out, and fire his cousin? No, the video wouldn't still be playing in that case.
Rudra tries to remember if Indi ever gave him some sort of secret wink, some unspoken bro-code signal, to let him know this was about to happen, but he's never been in any sort of situation like this, and he's never needed to know secret male signals. He can't remember when he last saw the penis of someone he'd actually met, and now he can't take his eyes off Indi's impressive specimen. Does it have its own social media presence, its own legion of followers, its own emojis? How much of a pervert is he for already having memorised every inch of the stylist's body? Is it less creepy or more because it's on a screen? He tries to shut the video tab, but it won't close. He turns off the screen.
Suddenly he's sure he's being watched: this is a loyalty test, an initiation ritual. An invitation from an all-seeing exclusive Boys Club, offices in London and Singapore. He looks around wildly, scanning the room around him with his phone, but there aren't any cameras that he or it can see. But there hadn't been any in Indi's room either: it's scanned every evening. Whatever equipment they're using for this is more sophisticated. Actual spyware, government or military or corporate espionage level. Unless Indi or the girl set it up? Whether Indi knows about it or not, this is something Joey and the funders at least know nothing about. Or can they? Is this whole operati
on secretly a porn ring? How well does he even know Joey?
He turns his screen on again. Indi's on top now, pinning her arms down and thrusting violently, she's squirming and moaning under him. Rudra is both disturbed and relieved to find he's not even slightly aroused by this. That's not how this story is supposed to go: he's seen it a million times, Big-Brother Surveillance porn has been the most popular category worldwide for three years running. The plots are always the same, government agent, usually male, surveilling forbidden lovers, then punishing them, then fucking them. He briefly considers barging into Indi's room and demanding an explanation, but he has nowhere to go after that inevitable firing: he left his old flat just in time in any case, another day and he'd have had to face the thugs his brother sent to look for him. This is his life now. This is home.
The video disappears after exactly half an hour, as mysteriously as it arrived. He looks around the computer but finds no trace of it, no recorded file, nothing in the bin, no hidden folder full of similar videos. Rudra is not any kind of real geek, or tech expert: he has no idea how anything really works. He scrolls through the open-area camera feeds, hoping to find some sort of Meaningful Clue. Nothing. The bodyguards are asleep in their off-set section cots. The night guards are asleep at their posts on the landing. The stylist doesn't leave Indi's room. He looks her up: her name is Neha. He puts the computer to sleep, and wishes until dawn that he could do the same to himself, but the memory of Indi and Neha writhing ritualistically before their unseen god is burned into his brain, and it doesn't help that he's now absolutely sure there are eyes in the walls.