Chosen Spirits

by Samit Basu

  Rokheya's fable's hero gets to Narak, and Narak is truly the opposite of Swarga. Slave markets, highways lined with brothels full of children, a brutal tyrant in charge, burning forests, poisoned rivers, no laws, hordes of barbarians roaming the land abducting women and children, or disguising themselves as noblemen and tricking women into slavery with promises of marriage. Our hero, in disguise, joins such a group of slave-herders, and journeys towards Narak's capital while setting many slaves free. He finds that the slave-trader captain is troubled: earlier, there was rich trade in sending slaves to other lands, but now no country will trade with Narak: they don't want slaves anymore; they have marvellous machines built by Swarga's magicians, and are building walls to keep the people of Narak out. Where are we taking these slaves, then? The hero asks. The trader merely laughs.

  'Where's the girl?' An avatar asks.

  'Patience,' another says.

  Rudra's either imagining things — but there's no blue pangolin in sight, and usually Bon-Rui shows up in times like this — or they've really invented a new way of doing things, because he can tell them apart now. Without nametags, without voice association, he can see them.

  He realises the story has moved forward without him, and hurries to catch up: Rokheya has now moved to a great fortress and its deep dungeons, where the slave-traders take their catch. The hero wanders through pits of despair where Narak's people are tortured and re-educated into mindlessness, whipped into armies that the tyrant of Narak uses to attack his own people, and one day other lands. But deeper still, the hero finds worse: demons and sorcerers who perform vile magic, so far removed from that of the noble magicians of Swarga that the hero doesn't even recognise it as magic at first. Magic that is used to transform women and children into demons, demons who are then sacrificed to create creatures the like of which the hero has never seen before: perfect, beautiful, angelic beings that remind him terribly of the noble children of Swarga.

  A cluster of link-balloons floats up in front of Rudra, and his impulse is to tap one and see what it all means, but he's terrified: what if Zaria sees? But how is he to find out more, find out how it all works, what they’re really saying, what they plan to do about it, unless he dives into one of the links and sees for himself? What is the scale of this organisation? Who are its owners? Are all of the Sadface café ladies Zarias in their own countries, notorious, privileged, absolutely reckless? Is this all just some upper-class people in a digital club networking and politicking and letting off some steam while building career-expanding alliances, or a resistance that will one day change the world? How is this the only safe space they have to meet?

  He doesn't need to see her links to know what's in them. He knows they're about trafficking, mass abductions from refugee camps and villages, concentration camps and other things he's spent his whole life avoiding conversation about. He knows they're about perfect-child breeding projects using bodies from around the world, the birth-outsourcing industries booming in post-law nations, organ-growth sweatshops, body farms, womb-renting factories, sex-slave training centres, cell-harvest centres, gene-testing prison-camps. He knows humans will never go really obsolete, because there'll always be uses for their bodies, right down to the last cell, there'll always be people willing to use them.

  He wonders how many times his family's name comes up in the reports behind the links.

  The hero finds the girl and she tells him that Narak was Swarga all along, he just hadn't been looking, but the hero decides she's a lying witch, kills her, burns down the fortress and returns to Swarga. Rudra had seen this one coming, though, and he's not listening as well as he should be because he finds it a little hard to breathe.

  'There are more stories, there always are,' Rokheya says. 'And none of these stories are new. My next story can wait: let me ask the question Omu-Ako did. How long will we wait before things change? Why should those who have learned not to see for centuries suddenly wake up now?'

  'Swarga used to be known as a place where empires went to die,' Rokheya says. 'Now, like Ife, it is a battered coast where failed utopias drift ashore, like millions of flip-flops, and are put to new uses. Ancient blood-feuds, failed methods, obsolete systems, told stories, broken laws are carried here with each new tide, and we take them in and make them something new and even stranger.'

  'And it would be worth something, still, if we learned lessons from the past,' Omu-Ako says. 'But we don't. Millions die, and no one blinks. New crimes stack up while we debate old ones. Who will help our people when their water is gone? Who will take responsibility when a bioweapon project goes rogue?'

  'New Tion hears you both,' Olamina says. 'We will work together to overcome these dystopian times.'

  'There's nothing dystopian about it,' Zaria snaps: Rudra can hear the change in her voice, and so can everyone else. Formal Rokheya's left the cafe.

  'Dystopia is pornographic, Olamina. You see it and shiver but it's also kind of fun because it's happening somewhere else, to someone else, you know? It requires distance. Some of us are actually sitting in the fucking middle of it and we may never learn to care in time. This isn’t dystopia. This is reality.’

  'Rokheya.'

  'Yes, sorry.' Rudra can hear Zaria take a few breaths, and when she speaks again, she's back to her Rokheya voice.

  'Humankind will survive this century,' she says. 'And when the survivors look back, they'll ask themselves why we didn't see the arrival of the great mind-plagues that already afflict so many of us, epidemics that rage unchecked and are allowed to do so because they help the powerful. Just as we look back on the great wars, and the great plagues before them, that kept our species in check before we learnt to overcome them. Looking back, we'll feel thankful to have escaped those backward times. But with all this knowledge, we refuse to learn. Each new generation, swaggering in arrogance because it thinks it invented enlightenment and resistance, until it is trapped in the same net as the last one. I don't see how Swarga can survive, Olamina. I just don't see it.'

  'You will. And we are with you in this journey, Rokheya. We will look them in the eye and tell them we know what they're doing to us, we see what they're taking from us, we know its worth. And we will carry on doing this, even though they will not stop. Thank you for your stories, Rokheya. New Tion hears them.’

  'Thank you for listening, ambassadors of New Tion,' Rokheya says.

  The chatboxes vanish, one by one, until all that's left is the avatars around the table.

  'For New Tion,’ Olamina says.

  'For New Tion,' the ambassadors say in chorus, softly, and Rudra says it too, though no one hears him.

  The screen goes dark.

  He doesn't remember taking the helmet off, or walking to his old room, or talking his way past Zaria's bodyguards standing outside it. The next thing he remembers is standing in front of Zaria and telling her what he's done, and watching her struggle to not punch him in the face.

  'Forget you told me this,' she says. 'And I'll forget I heard it. You saw nothing. You heard nothing.'

  'I want to help,' he says.

  'Walk away. Right now. Did you record anything?'

  'No.'

  'Good. If you're lying, I'm going to find out. Now go away.'

  'Zaria, I want to help. I can help. My brother, you know who he is, I'm sure, I think he's in charge of-'

  'Listen, fuckface. You found a hole in the girl's locker room and peeped in to see if we were changing. I get it. Now you're coming and telling me about it hoping that'll make you feel better. It won't. Maybe you're hoping we'll become friends. Maybe fuck one time. We won't. Now get the hell away from me.'

  'I have a login and password into a family bank account. I think you have friends who could do things with it.'

  She swears at him for what seems like forever, and gestures towards a chair. He sits.

  'I think this room is clean,' she says. 'But then I thought the bloody helmet was clean, like an amateur. Rudra. Why are you offering me this?'

>   'I think my family might be involved with some of the things you were talking about. I'm going to find out more. I'll figure out how. I'll go to the clinics, and see what they do there.'

  'You don't know? Let me spoil it for you. Yes. The Gupta clinics are right in the centre of it. Trafficking, body farms, mass testing, gene hacking, all of it. Where do you think your family gets its money?'

  'I want to tear it all down. I know you do too. Tell me what you need.'

  'No,' she says. 'I don't believe you.'

  'I'll let you into the account right now.'

  'What is wrong with you? Your brother's biggest rival is literally my boss. Why are you doing this?'

  'I told you,' Rudra says. 'I heard what you said. I believe in you. I want to help.'

  She paces the room, her eyes fixed on his.

  'No,' she says. 'You think you're having some kind of awakening, but that's not my problem. I won't be responsible for it, or you.'

  'It's done. I want to join your movement, whatever it is.'

  'You want to get into the zenana. I've seen it before. You're empty, and you just want to follow someone. Go join a cult like the rest of your family.'

  'I have no family.'

  'Well, you can't have mine. I don't want you. My people don't want you. This is our space. Our place of power, not yours. You can't come in.'

  'Don't want to. But I can help you. Let me.’

  'You want to go on a spy mission now? Look at you. You wouldn't survive a week outdoors.'

  'Let me try.'

  'If you want to help people suddenly, go join a charity. Go join some activists. There are lots of men trying to make things better. Go follow them. Find some other space. Seriously. You'll get killed. I don't want that on me.'

  'I'm not your responsibility, or your friend,' he says. 'I really don't like you at all. And believe me, I don’t have a sinister plan, or any kind of plan at all. I’m offering you all I have in case you want it. Have your friends get into the Gupta systems, and tell you what they find. We'll take it from there.'

  'I think you're insane,' she says. 'Go to your room, and stay there.'

  That evening, when there's a knock on his door, he leaps to answer it. It's not Zaria. It's not Tara, whose calls he'd missed while immersed in VR. Twelve of them. She hadn't taken his calls later, and he's been fighting complete panic.

  It's Zaria's bodyguards, and they're giggling.

  'Bro, have you seen it?' Husain asks.

  He hands Rudra his phone, where a Flow is replaying. It's Tara. She's launched her solo Flow, which she says is about empathy, human connections and making other people's lives better. Her mission is to change a life every day, and have her followers help her make the world better one person at a time.

  Her first episode is about a dear friend who's stuck in a shell, unable to move forward, because he's ashamed of who he is, and is hiding from the world. She wants all of India to join her letting him know that things are okay, that he'll be accepted for who he is. Interestingly, he's also one of India's first viral sensations, and she thinks it's time for him to join her as the show's co-host. Millions of people agree with her. She's a hit.

  He stares, blank-faced, at the video of chubby-little-boy Rudra dancing around the family living-room. He watches himself turn red, try to escape, get pushed back into his performance, then embarrass himself. He watches Tara thank her loving audience for making him viral again, for welcoming him back. He hands the phone back to Husain. The bodyguards guffaw, and slap him on the back, but stop when he neither laughs nor runs away.

  'I want to be free from all of this,' he says. 'All of it. I'm done here.'

  'Bhai, you okay?' Faiz asks.

  'Yes,' Rudra says. 'I'm fine. Yes.'

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE QUEUE AT the ICF Place metro station entrance is always one of the shortest in all of Delhi: very few residents of the neighbourhood use public transport. Joey hasn't seen the insides of a metro compartment in a while, but the line doesn't bother her as much as the short walk to it. The temperature's hit 50 again, and while she's dressed appropriately, like a space explorer on a desert planet, and carries a backpack full of cold water, and has covered every exposed inch of skin (very few, given her large mask and larger sunglasses) with a variety of anti-sun creams, she can feel herself drying, cracking, wilting as soon as she leaves her building, waves of pure heat washing over her, almost blowing her away with their intensity.

  Some of the expats she'd recently been pushed into going on dates with had described walking in Delhi as similar to having a smoke inside a microwave: she'd scoffed at them, told them how she used to take the bus to college sometimes, braving the heat, the pushers, the nation-builders, the gropers and the public masturbators, all for a sense of independence, but two minutes away from the metro station she's ready to give up, call them all and tell them to take her back with them, to their cold, distant lands. She curses herself for being foolish enough to embark on this quest, but most of all she curses Rudra and Zaria.

  They've been missing for a day now. Tara had called her in a panic last morning, convinced that Rudra had run away because of her now-viral Flow about him. It's possible, of course, but all Joey's instincts tell her this is about Zaria and whatever her secret mission is: she's convinced Rudra has once again managed to make poor decisions while unsupervised. Either way, they're gone. Just wandered out of the flat with a bag each, out of the building, into a car, leaving behind most of their belongings and two bodyguards who swear they don't know anything, but are not at all worried because this is just something Zaria does from time to time. They'd towered over Joey for a very tense second after she'd asked them to move out of the flat.

  Rudra's even left her a note, the idiot. Zaria's taking him for a special assignment, it's top secret, she shouldn't tell anyone, he'll explain later, thanks for everything, he'll see her soon. It makes no sense. Why would Zaria take him along and leave her bodyguards behind? What special skills does he have? Of what use could he possibly be? The answer to that is actually quite simple. Is she using him to infiltrate his family and their circles in some way? Was Rudra her secret mission all along? Doesn't she usually have much larger whales to chase? None of it makes sense.

  She has no way to know where they are: the last few years, whenever she'd needed to find wandering Flowstars she'd delegated location tracking upwards to Funder Radha or downwards to Jin-Young, both of whom had access to friendly police and discreet private spycos, but both those routes are closed now. The amateur hackers in Indi's crew can't be trusted any more. After a few dead ends, she'd asked Laxmi to ask her Cyber Bazaar boyfriend if he could help. Laxmi had seemed very confident he could, but had messaged in a few minutes to say he'd tried, and they were both untraceable.

  Laxmi had called again at midnight, from a different number, to say Joey should visit Cyber Bazaar next morning, and come alone. She'd hung up before Joey could say anything.

  The Cyber Bazaar station is just a few stops away from ICF Place, but the challenge isn't the ride: it's getting into the train in the first place. She'd been a regular metro user in her teens, when they'd opened the Little Bengal station with much fanfare. Very few of those stations have escaped renaming. Cyber Bazaar was called Nehru Place then, and it's been called at least three other names over the last decade. For the longest time, Delhi's people used to refer to it as Nehru's Fault. The trains had been crowded then as well, and Joey had grown so used to the whole process that she's ashamed she finds it an ordeal now. The tense single-file queues for the ladies compartments, station police wandering about inspecting them and shooting away lurkers and aspiring queue-infiltrators, including, every day, a couple of optimistic men. The bracing and shoving as the train whistled towards the platform, the shifting into defensive combat stances, the absolute scrum as soon as the doors opened and passengers exploded out into the platform, the mad scramble for a seat if you made it inside. Medieval battle scenes had nothing on this.


  There's absolutely no chance of finding a seat at ICF Place: the whole train is bound for Cyber Bazaar. Joey finds that her train-entry skills haven't faded, largely through muscle memory: now, as then, she knows she doesn't have the raw strength to just walk into the train carrying helpless bodies before her, so she goes into stealth mode, folds herself into a two-dimensional shape, slides in like a rumour, slithers towards the nearest pole, thrusts her limbs into yielding spaces, a sentient Tetris piece, and lets the train fit her body into its slot, strangers' bodies, thankfully female, moving her about, any semblance of control long forgotten.

  The familiar cocktail of overheated bodies, hair oil and perfumes from near and far envelops her: if it weren't a familiar smell, she might have vomited. The sounds are harder to deal with, far worse than they were in her college years — even in this scrum, most of the women standing around her are watching videos at full volume on their phones, drowning the stashed compartment in a melange of Flows, mainstreamer shouting, Bollywood music and, incredibly, conversation. None of this is new to her, but she's amazed at how her body has forgotten, how it cringes and starts at every new audio spike.

  She can hear Narad beeping from her pocket, trying to tell her many things she knows: her stress levels are high, she needs to hydrate, the air quality is low, other modes of transport would be more suited to her health, it's hot, women aren't safe, she should go home. Her headphones are in her bag, and there's no way to reach them now without starting a brawl. Joey always looks for a sanity anchor in times like these, and finds one: a teenager huddled up on a seat, defying the world with an actual book held up like a shield before the aggressive armpit of an aunty looming over her. Joey hasn't read a printed book herself in far too long a while, though she has a book-scented aromaspray for her house, and she wants to fight her way across the compartment and adopt, or at least hire, the teenager at once. Together they will start a new lifestyle fad where customers pay them to go for a walk for an hour, and are then allowed to enter an air conditioned room, take all their clothes off, and have a person of their choice read to them until they fall asleep. A bath, too, in neighbourhoods with water. Even Joey's fantasies come with three alternate budgets. A younger Joey would have tried to see what book the teenager was reading: Present Joey knows the distance between them is optimal.