The Naked World

by Eli K. P. William

  Barrow closed his eyes for a moment and let out a slight sigh through his nostrils.

  “However they got him to turn on me, I suppose they were originally planning to use the images from my sensors to promote the scandal that I was a nostie. When I refused to play along, they decided that such mild defamation wasn’t enough. Instead of being portrayed as a mere nostie, false evidence of my molesting an adolescent girl was produced, and this harsher character assassination was complemented with identity assassination.”

  “What about Kitao then?” said Rick. “We crashed him the day you say you got the threat and the Birlas died. How do you think the Gyges Circle was involved with that?”

  “Although Minister Kitao wasn’t a member of the radical faction, they pressured me to appoint him on my cabinet in addition to Sekido, as a condition for propping up my administration, and it seems clear to me now that they did this knowing he would fall apart. He appeared qualified on the surface, but anyone who’d done a bit of digging knew his psychological state was fragile at best, and Moderate Choice only agreed to appoint him because the faction absolutely refused to budge.”

  “It was obvious he had issues,” said Rick, and Amon remembered the minister sniffing the heads of passersby. “But what exactly was wrong with him?”

  “In politics, it’s often useful to know what’s happening in the bedrooms of your opponents as much as your colleagues, if it’s even sensible to draw lines between the two, and what I know of his problem comes from the reports I received from those who knew him best. He’d married at a young age and got his wife pregnant the natural way without any medical assistance, which shows he must have been remarkably virile back then at least. But since he hadn’t yet received his hefty inheritance and was still on a starting Archivist’s relatively low salary, he would have had to limit his actions to raise his baby and he worried that this would interfere with his ability to fraternize among the connected circles that were the key to career advancement, so he asked his wife to get an abortion. She agreed, and he rose up the Ministry of Records ranks, but the decision led eventually to their divorce. Although he would later remarry, he had apparently loved his first wife, and after she left him, he developed an obsession with pornography that was so severe he used to walk around with it playing wherever he went.”

  “But we never saw any exorbitant habits when we were reviewing his readout before the mission,” said Rick. “At least not until about two years ago.”

  “That’s because his habit was not beyond his means. The erotic overlay he painted over the world contained no smut or illegal content. He was satisfied, it seems, to build it from generic amateur uploads that were cheap to procure. However, the cost in itself wasn’t the problem. It was what the images did to his nervous system. Once he had become an influential politician with a big salary, he was accepted into high society and soon sought to elevate his standing further by having another child the natural way. But after watching such copious amounts of porno, his new wife failed to excite him. A single willing sexual partner had long ago stopped exciting him, as he was used to having whole hordes of digital partners that could be refreshed at a whim to arouse him visually. He tried to augment his sexual advances on his wife by overlaying her body with them. When that failed, he hired multiple women to engage him at once, before going through the whole smorgasbord of erectile drugs, Manhood Dust, you name it. None of them could keep him interested for long. Overstimulation had formed deep grooves in the arousal areas of his brain, and this had made him neurologically impotent when faced with a lone body of flesh and blood. Ironically, he had given up his natural baby to achieve success, but now his further success was hindered by his lack of a natural baby.”

  “When we took out Kitao,” said Rick, “he was obsessed with this one kind of flower. How did he get from porn to that?”

  “The connection between his neurological deficiency and those blossoms was never entirely clear to me. As a hobby, he’d been keeping desert cactuses, also known as ‘fair ladies under the moon,’ in a greenhouse behind his house for years. We had psychiatrists analyze segs sold to us by his gardener, and according to their report he began to associate their smell and appearance with women somewhere along the way, either seeking a mental aphrodisiac or an escape from his frustration and sense of inadequacy. Eventually he came to derive pleasure from the association itself.

  “Looking back, it was only a matter of time before his pathologies led him to bankruptcy, and that was why the radical faction and the Gyges Circle must have wanted him on my cabinet. They knew exactly which bureaucrats GATA protocol dictated would be in charge of the Ministry of Records in case the minister was unable to fulfill his duties and made sure to buy them out in advance. With this strategy, the Archives fell into their hands the moment you two crashed him, which allowed the Gyges Circle to falsify your records to make me look like a pervert and have you assassinate me. Kitao’s disgraceful downfall and then mine in quick succession was guaranteed to doom Moderate Choice in the upcoming election. I have received no information about what has happened in the Free World since I came here, but I’m sure Absolute Choice must have won. The supply reduction is proof enough that their polices are already being implemented, though why it was important for Anisha and her Philanthropy Syndicate allies that make up the Gyges Circle to bring this about I simply do not know.”

  “What about Jubilee?” asked Amon. “Do you know anything about jubilee?”

  “Jew-beh-lee?” repeated Barrow. “I think I’ve come across this word. Originally from the Hebrew yovel, isn’t it? What about it?”

  “Do you know how it might be connected to the Gyges Circle and everything that’s happened?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t have the faintest idea. Why do you ask?”

  “We ask questions, you answer. Don’t mix it up,” cut in Ty, who had just finished polishing his tricycle and now stood with it strapped to his back again. “Are you finished with him yet?” he asked, turning to Amon and Rick.

  Amon and Rick looked to each other for confirmation and then nodded reluctantly.

  “Hey friends!” Ty called out the doorway, and the two men that had led them there immediately materialized from the dim hallway. “Old man is going back to the Peaks so please point him in the right direction.”

  The men nodded and began to approach Barrow across the room, but Barrow stood up and put his right palm up. “Now hold on. I would like to ask just a few questions of my—”

  “No!” barked Ty. “This community is under Xenocyst protection and you’re gonna let your friends know what happens when someone challenges our authority.

  “But—”

  “Get out of here!”

  “Wait, I—”

  “Get!” Ty plucked a wheel from his back and held it ready to throw.

  Barrow flinched and then looked up at Amon with a doleful, pleading expression. “Amon,” he said. That one word, his own name, spoken in Barrow’s resonant voice, thrummed the biting sharp strings of guilt in his chest. For it summoned his memory of introducing himself that night in Tsukuda, the only time Barrow could have heard it. With what hatred had he remembered that name all these months since his cash crash? And Amon deserved every drop of his venom, but here Barrow was, showing no signs of anger as he asked for his help with such delicacy. For this great, generous man, he had to make amends.

  “Ty. Just give him a second.”

  “What? Forget it. We’ve wasted time here long enough. We need to get back to Xenocyst before dusk or—”

  “Come on. You heard the story. He was assassinated for trying to help the bankdead, people like us. The least we can do is give him a moment to sp—”

  “This OpSci?” Ty’s loathing oozed from his voice. Amon imagined that he could hear the pain of what the cult had done to his parents in it and was reminded of when Ty had suspected him of being a believer after Vertical found a gang of them sampling him. What would have happened to him if she hadn’t conv
inced Ty otherwise?

  “They took him in against his will.”

  “That’s how they all start out. And I’ll bet my spokes he’s lying.”

  “Ty,” said Rick gently, who seemed to have been swayed by Amon’s words, and put a hand softly on Ty’s shoulder. “Just a few seconds. Then we’ll be out of here.”

  Ty shrugged off the hand and stared with blazing eyes into Rick’s, but after a few tight breaths finally lowered his wheel. “He gets to speak for one minute. But we can’t have information going to the OpScis, not about your life in the Free World, not about anything! So no questions! If he’s got something to say, let him say it, but he gets nothing from us. Issues?” He glared back and forth between Amon and Rick, who exchanged frowns and nodded.

  “Thank you very much,” said Barrow, looking up at the three Xenocysters in the way skilled speakers have so that he seemed to meet all three of their gazes at once, as the two local men slipped back into the hallway. “I fully understand your caution. After seeing the OpScis destroy valuable artifacts such as antique computers and engines because of their inane superstitions and their awful abuse of women, I would never trust them either. I now want nothing more than to bring them to heel. No doubt, it will be to the benefit of peace and order for all who live here. So allow me to show you the way to something that can help you turn the tide in this nascent war. I hesitate to tell you this, but through the anadeto dealers that helped me stock my collection, I came to hear of a legendary trove in the District of Dreams. Although it sounded like a specious rumor, the mere possibility was so exciting I purchased every bit of information I could get: from other collectors, from the PhisherKing, and from anyone else who seemed to know anything. I uncovered nothing credible and eventually came to disregard the legend completely. Because why, I ask you, would great cultural heritage end up in a melting nightmare like this?

  “But then I woke up in a LimboQuarium and I had a lot of time to think about the past. In the absence of my usual digital distractions, I found some of my memories strangely vivid and clear like never before. One of them was of a paper map a slum explorer had sold me which claimed to lead to this trove. It had seemed like indecipherable nonsense at the time, just a bunch of childish Xs and squiggles. But when I got out of Er, I learned how to navigate here, and this seemed to alter the way I had thought my entire life. Suddenly the map took on a completely new meaning, and I could read it in my mind’s eye as easily as a picture book. The nostie collective I mentioned earlier used to guard this place until the OpScis drove them out. They were hostile when I first encountered them, but when they saw my passion for anadeto we began working together to preserve everything and they taught me some of their coded gestures so I could move around in their community. Then Kitao found me.”

  “You’ve seen him since you cash crashed?” Rick asked.

  “Yes. He had been taken in by the OpScis, deep into their organization. I think he may already be some kind of priest there, a Lab Reverend if I’m not mistaken. From what he told me, his ex-wife paid the Philanthropy Syndicate to mark him as gifted for life even though his genome doesn’t qualify for the standard of any of the plutogenic algorithms. This got him into a regular Er facility where he was able to recover quickly and also made him part of a brandclan that is highly respected by the OpScis. He recognized me and seemed to think I had something to do with his ending up here, because he had his men haul me off to Opportunity Peaks and … The only way I could earn a little respect from them was to show them the way to some anadeto—that is where the gang you just saw acquired their weapons—just a piddling, peripheral heap, mind you. I would never lead them to the real treasure.

  “But for you, for Xenocyst, I am willing to share. Among decorative furniture and other impractical art pieces are perfectly good weapons and equipment that will give you a strong advantage over the Opportunity Scientists. All I ask is for a fair chance to take one of your membership screenings. Then if I’m accepted, we can all put our heads together and try to figure out what this whole supply depletion business is about. Maybe we can even do something to reverse it. So what do you think? Can you give me a chance?”

  13

  THE DIGITAL QUARANTINE, BEFORE TEA

  In the council chamber, Hippo sat facing Amon in front of the wall stenciled with the girl in the bubble just as at his initial hearing. Except this time Amon sat cross-legged on the cold wooden floor instead of kneeling, Rick was there to his right, and most of the council had vacated the room. The last few stragglers were chatting by the doorway, and Amon watched them along with Rick and Hippo, waiting patiently for them to leave so that the three of them could talk.

  He could still feel the cold sweat not fully dried beneath his armpits from the unrelenting eyes of the councilors skewering them all afternoon. They had finally been granted a screening after numerous delays, with the council bogged down by the supply crisis, and the debate that ensued the moment they sat in the circle still echoed faintly in Amon’s recollection. Most—including the young councilor Yané—had been vociferously opposed to their inclusion. Compared to average crashborn residents, they were ill-adjusted, incompetent, psychologically unstable, cognitively stunted, distracted, poor speakers of Hinkongo, and socially awkward. They had also worked as Liquidators, a brutal profession that deserved their censure. With the supplies now reduced and a newly instated policy indefinitely cancelling all applicant hearings, even considering their membership was preposterous. Numerous incidents related to Little Book by their supervisors were used as evidence to establish these failings. In response, Hippo had raised examples of their strengths: their remarkably quick adjustment, their fluency in Japanese, their solid grasp of the Free World. But what seemed to sway the council in the end was Book’s summary of Ty’s report of their valor in the Gifted Triangle and the way they had guided the encounter with Barrow to Xenocyst’s advantage, the final vote being two to three, with five of the nine councilors abstaining and Hippo breaking the tie.

  Just before the meeting adjourned, Hippo had requested the room to speak with Amon and Rick in private, but many councilors had lingered to talk about minor logistical matters. Only now, nearly an hour later, as the last man stepped out the doorway and closed the door behind him, did they finally have the space to themselves, and Amon looked to Hippo, eager for his initiative. Yet Hippo remained silent, embracing them with his troubled eyes, until Rick said, “So what is this about? Is something wrong?”

  Although there was no impatience in his voice, they had both been there for hours and Amon knew Rick must want to return to their room as badly as he did. His feet were like icy lumps beneath his calves on the patch of floor his body had only partially warmed, his skin was goosebumped from the draft through his holey clothes, and he sniffled occasionally, perhaps about to catch a cold. The hunger panging in his gut with every breath ensured thoughts of food were never far away, while visions lurking half-perceived beneath his consciousness seemed to stoke his anxiety, the whole slum crumbling atop him as they all writhed in a naked heap. While the fact that they had just been accepted as Xenocyst members was a relief, it did little for his discomfort and restlessness and fear. He could only trust that Hippo had a good reason for keeping them.

  “Yes. Many things are wrong here, as you know. You are both feeling the effects of the supply drop, I’m sure, and I can guess how worn out you must be after the screening. It’s tiring enough for us whose lives are not hanging on the result. But please bear with me. Though I cannot tell you how delighted I am that you two were accepted—you both deserve it after what happened with Barrow, you really do—I also want to ask for your help.”

  Hippo frowned, furrowing his forehead with a crisscrossing web of worries. His face had grown haggard, with dark crescents beneath his eyes, all traces of joy drained away with the color from his skin.

  “The whole council is stumped as to how to respond to the crisis. All of our customary ways of thinking and responding are turning out to
be useless. I’m hoping that you two, with your backgrounds so different than most of us and your familiarity with the present world outside the camps, will be able to think of something that has so far eluded us.”

  The way he looked at them, Amon felt like a distant, glowing planet for a ship lost in the void. Could they possibly match up to such hope?

  “We’ll do what we can,” said Amon in the most confident voice he could summon.

  “Yeah,” said Rick with a firm nod. “Just let us know how we can help.”

  “Well there’s not much you can do until you understand our situation better, which is why I’ve set aside this time for us to talk. When Gura asked me about my past at the festival, the timing was wrong and we lacked the privacy of the Digital Quarantine.”

  The council had just named Amon Mogura, Japanese for an almost-blind subterranean mammal, on the basis of his story. Figuratively speaking, he had chosen to live in a dark place for many years but had eventually learned how to see with only a bit of light. Now, apparently, Hippo had decided to shorten it to Gura.

  “But now that you two are full members,” Hippo continued, “there’s no reason to delay any longer. So allow me to tell you about who I am, and how Xenocyst came to be what it is today.”