The Naked World

by Eli K. P. William

  “Rather, it was practically impossible to include most human beings, largely as a result of what is often called the AutoPoetic Revolution. In this subset of the Digital Revolution, developments in automation, nanotechnology, and self-assembly reduced the cost of production for most items almost to zero and rendered the majority of jobs obsolete in the process. Only certain types of technicians, researchers, creatives, sex workers, healthcare providers, and similar professionals that provided services not replaceable by robots and applications were required. The homeless, the stateless, the criminal, the racially or culturally marginalized, the mentally ill, the handicapped, the unpensioned elderly, the victims of natural disaster, the orphans, and the refugees who already filled our planet’s numerous slums were joined by even larger crowds of those who were simply unemployed and now forever unemployable. Whether outsiders by choice or circumstance, all became bankdead. As such, they would have no money, bank account, citizenship, official identity, access to information technologies, or jobs, and by design never would …

  5

  Since exiting the north-west checkpoint of Xenocyst, the supply crew had maintained a roughly north-westerly course. Amon knew this because of the radiant blankness that to his still-recovering vision was the morning sun. He always noted its position whenever it peeked into view as the Books had taught him, and saw that it remained at their backs. Navigating using directions still struck him as primitive and strange, for one’s orientation with respect to the North Pole was irrelevant if you had a program to tell you the shortest distance from any point A to B, as he always had. But he was grateful for the skill now because it reduced the sense of aimlessness that traveling in the District of Dreams brought, making the labyrinth feel traversable if still beyond fathoming.

  After climbing out of the buffer canyon through the crooked maw of the crevice, they had stepped out once again into light from the sky, a jagged scrap of white-streaked blue in the jumbled-toy-block canopy above. There, on a square platform that was the bottom step of a series of terraced rooftops, Ty called a break and had the guards hand out fizzy-sweet drinks. He explained that they would soon move from a proxy enclave into a neutral one and should be on the lookout for Opportunity Scientists.

  Setting off a few minutes later, they scaled ledges from rooftop to rooftop, snaked down squeezeways, wound up stairpaths, as Ty guided them up and down within about a dozen stories’ range. Occasionally Amon had to duck through holes in rooms, reach around shafts to shimmy up steps that didn’t quite connect, or leap over yawning cracks of indeterminate dark depth. Few local residents showed themselves, aside from those occasionally slipping furtively in and out of distant rooms, and dim figures huddling in tight passages far below, their murmurs echoing eerily up the misformed walls, though several times Amon spotted other supply parties disappearing into slumscape holes or around bends up ahead.

  Wherever he went, Amon was discovering, it was difficult to find a good vantage on the District of Dreams. He had seen its exterior on the riverbank with Tamper, and its underbelly on the way to Xenocyst. Now he was trekking its middle reaches, but nowhere on their undulating journey could Amon see the asphalt of the ground level, making it difficult to judge their elevation. His view never extended more than a dozen meters in any direction, with buildings ever leaning close around them like tidal waves made of cubes crashing together, Fleet petals falling like spray from their crests. Whether outside or in, high or low, it was all just as cluttered and confusing, the constricted routes intersecting and ending with no logic, the immediate shelters forming vast, intricate structures that he could never take in as a whole. Occasionally Amon would hear the crackle of unfolding Fleet as disposcrapers around them grew taller, or as a stack of rooms popped up in their way, forcing them to backtrack on a circuitous detour. Once there was a crunch, crash, and tinkling cascade as a room buckled, the stories above it toppled, and an entire expiring shaft crumbled on impact with an adjacent wall, the lay of the slumscape gradually being replaced as they traveled it.

  When they reached a high roof-patch where strong winds blew between narrow gaps in the towers looming around them, Bané’s baby—who she told Amon was named Arata—began to cry unconsolably. As though this were a signal to the other babies, two more began to wail and Ty was forced to call another break. The two other mothers rocked their babies softly and repositioned them in their makeshift harnesses while Bané pulled up her shirt and gave Arata milk. When they had eventually quieted down, the four fathers unburdened their partners by taking a turn carrying their babies and, feeling likewise obligated, Amon offered to take Arata for a while. Bané thanked him and showed him how to hold the boy, as it was Amon’s first time, before tying the fabric around his his shoulders. Then, with a warm ball of well-behaved curiosity staring eagerly up at him, Amon followed Ty’s lead along a narrow ledge at the edge of a long drop, where he had to lean into the bluster to keep his footing and worried constantly for Arata’s safety. Thankfully, the trend soon shifted to descent, and before long they were sliding down a crawl-alley slope. There were no longer any flat surfaces to walk upon. Everything had a slant. Moving forwards or backwards always meant moving up or down. It was exhausting, especially with the added weight of the baby, and Amon felt new admiration for the mothers, as Ty never let them slacken their pace, trying to minimize the time they spent exposed.

  Rick too was carrying the baby under his care, looking as scared of slipping and hurting the fragile new life as Amon felt. Amon wanted to ask him how he had ended up on the supply crew that morning, but it was impossible to talk in single file while keeping his attention on the unfamiliar, precipitous course. Though it felt condescending to be forced to link hands whenever they could, as if they were all children, he was glad for Rick’s hand. Its lower grade of warmth compared to the baby against his chest and sultry air around them seemed to imbue his skin with reassurance, leaving him no doubt that his best friend was indeed back, as substantial and enduring as he could hope …

  6

  “However,” tap-taptaptaptap-taptaptap, “the exclusion of the bankdead from the AT Economy cannot conclude any meaningful account of our origin. That is to say, we cannot adequately understand ourselves merely by indicating who we necessarily are not, namely Free Citizens. In addition to this negative account, it is incumbent upon us to also develop a positive one and outline who, or rather what, this denial of legitimacy forced our kind to inevitably become.

  “Our identity is clarified when we consider the problem confronted by the Tokyo Roundtable, and the MegaGloms who wielded the most influence over it: what to do with all of us? No resolution was forthcoming at the Tokyo Roundtable and all proposals offered subsequently at numerous conferences were rejected. Exterminating us was not a viable option because a holocaust would be expensive to implement and potentially create a PR disaster for all the parties involved. Leaving us to decide our own affairs was no more feasible because we might organize and create black markets to rival the legal economy or form financially destabilizing hotbeds for dissent and terrorism. Perhaps in another era we might have been made slaves, forced workers, illegal migrants, serfs, proles, concentration camp inmates, or some equivalent underclass. However, there was no longer any demand whatsoever for unskilled labor and this presented a unique conundrum elites had never before confronted. The bankdead were a kind of anomalous byproduct of the action-transaction market that stood outside its usual mechanisms of organization and control. We could not be categorized as property the way dead matter and concepts could and yet we could not be charged for acting the way living citizens could either. Despite input from the whole gamut of relevant experts, the problem was proving intractable until a second problem was discovered that led the MegaGloms to a solution to the first …

  7

  After several hours of trekking, the style of the buildings began to change, as they entered another gifted community. It resembled the one on the edge of Xenocyst, with larger rooms in consistent d
esigns that matched the outfits of the residents, though the pixelated propeller logos and orange, brown, and yellow Aztec-style patterning were distinctive. This enclave was also much more expansive, blending into neighboring sections of slum with shelters in other styles.

  This was the Gifted Triangle, a huge isosceles tract of land with its tip pointing dead south and the opposing side running along the front of Delivery. It was heavily concentrated with a variety of brandclans enjoying proximity to Delivery and its supplies.

  When the design of the slumscape had shifted twice—from Aztec to the whitish stone of English cottage to art deco steel and stained glass—they reached a platform overlooking a road of shoulders and bobbing heads that snaked along a cleft in the buildings. The cleft was bounded about five meters away by an irregular wall, and over the heaping layers of jutting corners that extended far beyond its upper lip a mountain reared into the sky. This Amon had seen the day he entered the District of Dreams and knew it was called Opportunity Peaks, the holy center of Opportunity Science. Having a closer vantage this time, he could tell that its two great peaks were landscaped out of thousands and thousands of rooms, dropping in slopes pleated with cube-built valleys and veined with crowded staircases.

  Ty called another break and the guards handed out more refreshments. Amon—who had given Arata back to Bané a short while earlier when he had begun to cry again—sucked his blue sports drink down eagerly as the others drank theirs and Ty stood to face them on a rooftop elevated slightly like a stage.

  “Here we are at the Road to Delivery,” he began, pointing diagonally down to conduct everyone’s gaze into the cleft. The crowd about three stories below them was denser than any Amon had witnessed before in his life. Nowhere did a pocket open up even momentarily, those with babies holding them protectively above as though offering them to the eclipsed eye of the sky. Without space to fall through, the flakes accumulated on shoulders like snow. Aside from a slow swaying, the only movement Amon could detect was a slight drift in different directions, the far side creeping south and the near side north. Though no visible markers indicated the division between the lanes of this two-way thoroughfare, a sort of equilibrium formed with curving spillover on either side of the middle.

  “It’s easy to get pulled apart by the force of the crowd, and some robbers will form currents to drag you away on purpose. But lose your grip for one second and you’ll never make it back to us. I promise you that. So if you wanna return to Xenocyst in one piece, bunch up tight. Hold on to the shoulders of two others, and if anyone outside the group grabs you, shout ‘pervert’ and we’ll do what we can. Okay! We all refreshed?” Then, without waiting for an answer, “In you go!”

  Ty and the guards led them stepping along a spiral of pegs in a rounded wall to where they ended just a meter above the heads. The two guards brandished their nightsticks and Ty took one of the wheels into his hand, shouting, “Make room!”

  At first there was no reaction, so Ty signaled to the guards, who crouched down to club a couple of the nearest men on the shoulders. “This is a supply expedition from Xenocyst. Make room NOW!”

  As the men who had been struck yelled out in pain, Amon winced. They appeared to be unarmed and were jammed in so tight they could only cower as the crowd’s startled eyes went to the guards. Everyone looked exhausted, overheated, and afraid, and Amon didn’t know where the space came from but a wave of jostling spread, opening the narrowest rift in the bodies. Immediately Ty leapt into it and spread his arms to hold it open with the flat of his palms. The guards waved the other members past them to the final step, from which they began to hop in one by one, prying apart the crowd inch by inch as they filled the wound Ty had started. After hesitating momentarily at the edge, Amon dropped in too, his hips propped up on a bed of shoulders and heads for a moment before they moved apart and he plopped in with the rest. Once Rick and the two guards had dropped into their midst, they all held on to each other, forming a tight cross-stitched bundle of bodies on the Road to Delivery …

  8

  “This second problem that eventually guided the MegaGloms towards an answer to the bankdead problem was a particular threat posed by Fertilex. They, the MegaGloms, had to discover a means of acquiring human resources in spite of the fact that Fertilex had seized all life properties immediately following the outset of the Free Era. In the case of other essential resources, joint ownership arrangements and mutual inter-investment provided the MegaGloms with a share in each other and kept each member of the Twelve and One in check. For example, although R-Lite is commonly said to own energy, in actuality it only owns a majority of energy-related properties. A certain share in each stage of the production cycle, from patents on generation technologies to transmission and operation of plants, is owned by other MegaGloms, with their combined share exceeding that of R-Lite alone in some areas. R-Lite, therefore, could not unilaterally wield its influence in energy markets to dramatically increase prices to the detriment of other members. Fertilex, by contrast, not only possessed complete ownership of all life properties—including sex, inception, procreation, and birth—but the entire MegaGlom was in the hands of just two individuals who cooperated consummately, Shiv and Chandru Birla. This provided Fertilex with enormous profits from all reproductive efforts while threatening to drive the other MegaGloms into complete dependence on it for their entire workforce.

  “Thus the MegaGloms recognized that if they allowed Fertilex to expand without hindrance, it would gain leverage over them in a variety of ways and thereby guarantee its market hegemony. Firstly, by engineering order-grown babies and rearing them all in Fertilex BioPens, it could regulate the quality of resources produced and decide where particular workers were distributed. Then it could keep talent to strengthen its organization relative to the rest and intimidate other MegaGloms by threatening to cut off supply, or destroy them by only divvying out the incompetent. Secondly, it could control prices not merely for all actions related to reproduction—from natural impregnation and artificial fertilization to cloning and synthesization—but additionally for the introduction fees that prospective employers were required to pay to access eligible adult profiles in the BioPen databases. The profits accumulated in these areas would fuel Fertilex’s growth and allow it to buy an increasingly larger share of properties outside its traditional sector, until it was only a matter of time before it subsumed or subdued all competition.

  “This production and supply monopoly would also endow Fertilex with the capacity to sculpt the market more generally. Through its adjustment of BioPen curriculums, it could instill the populace with particular preferences such as loyalty to Fertilex products. These preferences would influence their actions, which would decide the allocation of profits and losses, and therefore which companies succeeded or failed. Moreover, it could adjust the rate of population growth and thereby manipulate the size of the economy, since fewer people entailed fewer actions and transactions. This essentially translated into control over the quantity of available Freedom itself, as a smaller economy would result in reduced opportunities to earn.

  “To prevent the imminent Fertilex dominion such powers would inevitably facilitate, the MegaGloms considered an alternative. Within the bankdeath camps there appeared to be an enormous supply of untapped human resources. Thus if Fertilex controlled all production, then perhaps they could instead rely on extraction. Unfortunately for the MegaGloms, however, this option too was precluded by GATA policies that outlawed economic exchange with bankdead. Simply purchasing babies from bankdead or employing them as SubMoms and SubDads might seem to be the obvious solution. However, since bankdead have no account with which to receive money, and barter exchanges are considered valid forms of compensation only insofar as they represent action fees—which bankdead cannot receive—it is impossible to pay them for any goods or services. Therefore, such arrangements would need to be labeled as expensive credicrimes such as forceful appropriation, kidnapping, theft, enslavement, extortion, exploitation,
and duress, and the costs of hiring bankdead would far exceed that of acquiring all resources through Fertilex. More coercive means, such as fertility penitentiaries, were obviously financially precluded as well for similar reasons.

  “Although the MegaGloms certainly considered pressuring the Executive Council to have these rules overturned, this, in fact, would have worked against their advantage because excluding bankdead from the market is one of the conditions that makes it possible. If exchange was allowed with those who were not monitored by BodyBanks, this would amount to accepting transactions that were not technically actions and the line between the formal economy of the Free World and the non-economy of the bankdeath camps would collapse. Since MegaGlom influence rests upon the system these status quo delineations support, this approach could have potentially destroyed them. Therefore, Fertilex appeared to be the only viable supplier after all. While all other natural resources could be synthesized and manufactured or mimicked on the ImmaNet at virtually no cost, the resource at the center of the action transaction economy—the actor itself, the human being—was set to be under the sole management of a single family, and the danger of a global monocorpocracy loomed …

  9

  What followed in the northbound lane of the Road to Delivery was a hot, slow grind. The absent circle of noon roasted their heads and their torsos trapped its heat, magnifying the warmth of communal blood that Amon could feel pulsing all around him. Their hearts all beat off rhythm, like a thousand metronomes out of synch, as Amon’s flesh blazed. The sweat ran from his forehead to his tightest point of contact with the crowd around his diaphragm, where it pooled with the sweat of others, his body making a hopeless effort to cool this conglomerated being that had asborbed him, their combined stench so thick Amon thought he could almost see it. Despite the presence of so many, there was little conversation. The supply pilgrimage on the Road to Delivery was a solemn affair, everyone too focused on withstanding the discomfort and danger to do anything but breathe through it, sigh, and occasionally groan. Bare feet pattering, and a thousand babies crying, as crows rakhawed constantly out of sight. Amon and the companions he clung to took occasional steps when the pressure from behind forced them to keep their balance. But minutes passed without him noticing any progress and he became somewhat woozy, as though he would march in place until this corporeal inferno consumed the thin air of his consciousness.