The Naked World

by Eli K. P. William

  “In my banklife, before I founded Xenocyst, I originally trained to be a medical researcher. I graduated from medical school in my early twenties and, just like you and Rick when you graduated from the BioPen, I hoped to work for Fertilex. Also like you two, I failed the entrance application and was instead picked up by GATA Osaka. I spent a few years there as a technical assistant in the Ministry of Access before receiving a promotion to Identity Vitalator.

  “Although I was reasonably good at my job, I had no passion for it. Not only was it outside my field, but I had a very specific idea that inspired me—and the only way I could see to bring it to fruition was by working at Fertilex. The topic of my dissertation had been the problem of so-called ‘assisted natural impregnation.’ As you know, the Fertilex monopoly over action-properties related to life gives them a corresponding monopoly over artificially generated human resources, whether cloned or otherwise, and the MegaGlom does good business charging introduction fees for access to the profiles of promising young workers. But they also cater to the top one percent of income earners who want to make babies through sexual intercourse, as heirs produced naturally in this way are very rare and are therefore considered a symbol of the highest success. While some of these couples choose to have their fertilized ovum implanted in a SubMom to avoid the fuss of nine months’ pregnancy and simply purchase a fake certification of natural birth, most are concerned about the embarrassing possibility of being found out, especially since the Phishers who sell such forgeries are known to use their knowledge of the sale for extortion, and so there is a high demand for natural birth among the apex class.

  “Now do you know what one of the main problems with impregnation through intercourse is?”

  There was a pause as Amon and Rick exchanged glances to see who would speak first.

  “Um … it’s expensive?” said Rick.

  “Well that too, yes, but I’m thinking of the fact that most Free Citizens have fertility difficulties. I had a hypothesis for a novel treatment that would improve their chances of success more safely and effectively than the other treatments on the market. This hypothesis remained in the back of my mind for years until, over the course of my ID Vitalator duties, I had a chance to speak with Shiv and Chandru Birla. I had been called in to oversee what my supervisor described as an ‘important’ Identity Birth. As is sometimes the case with such high-profile assignments, I was invited out to celebrate afterwards and was entertained at a restaurant. It was about an hour in when I discovered that the young man I had bestowed with an identity signature was a nephew of the Birla founders, and that the quiet, dignified Indian couple sitting beside me were them.

  “I spent the remaining hour smiling cordially and pretending to enjoy the fine drinks and food, of a level of refinement I never experienced before or since. All the while I was thinking of my idea. If I was ever going to realize it, the Birlas might be my only chance. Finally, as the dessert plates were being cleared away, I mustered the courage and made my pitch. I was expecting them to sniff and perhaps make some noncommittal remark before excusing themselves politely. But to my amazement they both seemed intensely interested. By the following week, I had my own lab and several talented young researchers to help me put my idea into practice.

  “To describe the method I developed in the simplest terms, I would take numerous semen samples from the father-to-be and use a device I invented to locate the most potent individual sperm. I then separated and recombined them with superior sperm from other samples. Sperm, of course, are polymorphic, meaning they have different shapes and characteristics. Some are bigger or smaller, faster or slower. Some are fatter or have multiple tails. These differences mean that compatibility between the individual sperm in a given ejaculation has an impact on the probability of one of them fertilizing an ovum. Therefore, I had to recombine not only the strongest individuals, but the ones that would work together best as a cohesive unit. Once I’d discovered a technique for calculating this ideal combination, I designed a method to alter the testicles of the patients so that it would be reproduced, more or less, in each ejaculation. Although the procedure was pointless if the ova were defective, it increased the odds by a higher margin with fewer side effects than the alternatives, which was good enough for our clients, who wanted a natural birth by any means necessary. While in principle my method had multiple applications and could have been used to raise the efficacy of test tube samples as well, it was cost-intensive and time-consuming because it needed to be personalized for each man’s reproductive organs. So it was targeted at a very particular, read ‘highly liquid’ niche.

  “Our lab’s marketing team gave the treatment the ridiculous name All Star Natura. In spite or perhaps because of this, it was a big success. For moving so rapidly from concept to popular product, Fertilex gave me a huge promotion and provided me with a state-of-the-art laboratory, staffed by a team of the best and brightest in the field. Another team of ‘all-stars,’ if you will.”

  Hippo smiled to let them know that this was a joke, but Rick merely snorted and Amon could only force up one side of his lip in a mirthless smirk. Genuine humor eluded them in their predicament, it seemed, and Amon wished for days when they might laugh again.

  “Now I had a seemingly limitless amount of funding—whatever equipment and personnel we requested they provided—and we were rumored to be developing these treatments for the Birla parents themselves. Decades later, I am now confident that this is indeed true, as the Birla sisters are said to have been produced naturally, perhaps with the help of All Star Natura itself.

  “Almost overnight, I was wealthy and respected, both as an entrepreneur and a specialist. In the beginning, the Birlas had arranged for me to retain my position at GATA, since they were only hiring me on a trial basis and were kind enough to ensure I stayed employed if my idea failed. Now GATA named me ‘Honorary Identity Vitalator’ for ‘notable contributions to the Freedom of the Market.’ The title was as symbolic as it sounds: I was only expected to facilitate Identity Births on an occasional basis. Though in such a capacity, I did preside over the ID birth of Rashana and Anisha Birla. This is no accidental digression, as I’ll soon explain.

  “In our new lab in Tokyo, we continued to refine and improve the treatment. Soon several of our more creative assistants were developing unique ideas of their own. When I had finished training several of my staff to serve as independent supervisors and the research operation began to run itself, I turned my attention to a deeper problem, as I was not at all satisfied with the method upon which I had built my name. Undoubtedly, we had made it easier for a select group of men to impregnate their partners without artificial insemination. But we had employed the greatest of artifice in altering the bodies of these men in carefully planned and intentional ways. It hardly seemed that impregnation following from this would count as natural. On the contrary, it was hard to see how it was any different from all the so-called ‘artificial’ in vitro methods you can imagine. No, rather, for me to be satisfied that we had truly facilitated a natural process, we had to go beyond a mere symptomatic approach to resolve the root causes of infertility itself so that each impregnation would arise spontaneously from the amorous relations of two individuals without such designed interference. In this way, we would expand the sphere of freedom so that people could reproduce of their own volition without helping hands. You’re probably thinking I was caught up in a purely academic, dare I say philosophical, problem. In actuality, I was still thinking within the constraints of my role as an inventor and developer of marketable products. Because, you see, if we could permanently and completely cure infertility for our patients then we would be able to assert, without any disclaimers or exceptions, that we had totally and absolutely endowed people with the capacity for natural impregnation. Against such a categorically superior product, I was convinced that competing Fertilex subsidiaries wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “Driven only by these enterprising motives, I began to investigate the root of the
fertility problem. Quickly I discovered that very little research had been done on the subject—or that was how it seemed. It would be many years before I became convinced, as I am now, that the reports had merely been hidden from the gold-class academic databases I was given access to. At the time I naively thought the topic had been neglected and fancied myself a pioneer in a new sub-discipline. Following the chain of cause and effect, I would journey out into the dark unknown and locate its first link so as to forever eliminate the ills of humankind, or at least of the demographic that could afford and appreciate my services. What a fool I was.”

  Hippo shook his head ruefully and continued.

  “Infertility can arise due to all sorts of factors, from deformities in the Fallopian tubes to dysfunction in the thyroid, but we had no evidence for any one of them or a worrisome combination of them being widespread across the populace. So our first step was to gather the necessary data. The easiest place to start, I thought, was with the bankdead. Only a minuscule percentage of bankliving reproduce and only a minuscule percentage of these do so in a human body. Since that wealthy segment is very tight-fisted about personal details, their cooperation in a study was out of the question. In the District of Dreams, however, was a large population that reproduces exclusively in this way. With the Birlas’ backing, I even had the funding to break the international credilaws against enrolling individuals of low social standing into clinical trials and was able to use bankdead as subjects. I set up my own clinic and subject-recruiting center near Delivery. In retrospect, this was the very first beginnings of Xenocyst, though it hardly resembles anything like the community today. Although we did provide some basic medical care, this was only to attract subjects that met our selection criteria, and the overnight accommodations for our staff were only for temporary stays during test periods rather than permanent living.

  “What we seemed to discover was that the fertility rate among bankdead was much higher than among bankliving. Particularly fascinating for me, likely due to my specialization, were the sperm samples we analyzed. They were like nothing I’d ever seen in all my years of research. If I were to boil our final statistical results down into the simplest laymen’s terms, they were just buzzing with vigor and genki. By contrast, bankliving samples were lethargic, indecisive, distracted, and aimless, even the fine specimens selected for All Star Natura teams.

  “But why? To answer this, I would have to isolate the factors that might explain the difference. Was it diet? This seemed unlikely as the bankdead subsist almost exclusively on nutritional inks. Although the adverconsensus is that these technically meet all the body’s needs, I doubted the studies that supposedly demonstrated this as they were sponsored exclusively by subsidiaries under the same MegaGlom ownership as the manufacturers. Moreover, the quantities were slightly low, leaving many on the threshold of malnourishment. Therefore, for these and other reasons, I determined that the bankliving diet would be more conducive to fertility in general.

  “So could it have been toxins then? No, because here again I found the bankliving to be in a better position. Bankdeath camps are usually built on unwanted lands and the District of Dreams is no exception, as the island is composed mostly of garbage and chemical waste. This foundational pollution is compounded by the Fleet flakes blowing around, which again are perfectly safe according to research done by the manufacturer. In fact, these nanoparticles are liable to slip inside cells and do not-insignificant damage over years of exposure—notice the low lifespan here and the fact that Fleet products are not approved for Free Citizen use. After ascertaining all this and performing a variety of other tests on our subjects, we concluded that the bankdead environment should be more detrimental to overall health than most environments in the Free World and that we would predict on this basis that bankliving ought to be more fertile than bankdead, though we were observing the opposite.

  “The other possibility was that the difference was inherited, but investigating whether there were salient differences in the two gene pools turned out to be surprisingly difficult. Although plenty of data from related studies were already available online, these turned out to be useless as they didn’t indicate which samples were taken from Free Citizens adopted from bankdead parents and so mixed up the two populations. To proceed, we needed to perform genetic and epigenetic analysis on our own samples, after ascertaining their descent, whether bankdead or bankliving. However, we were surprised to find no documentation available about the ratio of clones to natural births to order-grown babies to bankdead orphans. When we tried inquiring with the BioPens about the origins of their wards, we were told that this was private information and were refused, even by facilities owned by Fertilex. The putative justification was the prevention of discrimination. But if that were so, the BioPens should have at least had anonymized statistical breakdowns that could be loaned out for a fee, which they didn’t. The other puzzling inconsistency was that BioPen kids don’t themselves have access to this information, so clearly it was not about protecting their interests.”

  Amon thought back to when his SubMom had told him he was half Persian and half Japanese, and wondered if she’d had special access to the Green Ladybug database or had just made it up.

  “The approach I finally had success with was to speak with the venture charities. With my clinic situated right beside Delivery, we had developed relationships with some of the managers and it only took a few modest bribes to get what we needed. What I discovered shocked and surprised me more than anything else. As it turned out, the vast majority of Free Citizens—approximately 90 percent—were in fact crashborn babies given up for adoption. But if that were true, then both bankdead and bankliving were, by and large, coming from the same population and there would be no genetic basis to explain the difference in fertility.

  “At this point I was stumped. Against the advice of a colleague, I decided not to visit the PhisherKing because I was uncomfortable trading him the lucrative information his services usually require. In the meantime, my team had developed new marketable fertility treatments. These included novel drugs that equaled or surpassed All Star Natura, but such progress no longer interested me. I wanted to understand the fertility gap. It was an unyielding enigma that seemed to lie at the center of everything I did and now perplexed me unbearably. This was forcing me to think in unfamiliar ways. The first step, I decided, was to understand the bankdead—who they were and how they came to be this way—as they were the stock from which most living people were derived, and this led me to the idea of the Charity Gift Economy for the first time.”

  “I understand that the Books have been giving both of you lessons in here?”

  “Yes,” said Amon, and Rick nodded.

  “And I suppose they’ve told you something of our origins?”

  “The history of the bankdead was one of my first lessons. I think Rick is caught up now too.” Rick nodded again. “There’s still a lot that I’m confused about though.”

  “It never ends, does it? Well I’m sure you understand much better than I did back then. Information was extremely hard to come by in spite of all my resources and connections, and every one of my questions seemed to only spawn other questions. Once I began to get an inkling of how the whole Philanthropy Syndicate business functioned, I saw that there was a reason for my ignor—”

  Hippo stopped short and his eyes turned to the entrance. Amon’s gaze followed, catching the end of the door’s swinging inwards. In stepped Book, with Little Book in tow cradling a stack of plastic sheets that rose to his chin.

  “Speak of the rumored, and their shadow falls upon you,” said Hippo.

  “We have come to decode a number of highly sensitive letters from proxy enclaves for council intelligence,” Book explained. “We were unaware that you would be occupying the digital quarantine for such a lengthy time period.”

  “We have many things to discuss today, I’m afraid.”

  “Understood,” said Book with a slight bow. “Excuse us.”
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br />   “Hold on,” said Hippo, and the two Books stopped in the doorway to look back over their shoulders in the same posture.

  “If our talking isn’t going to disturb you, you’re welcome to work in here.”

  “Such an opportunity would be much appreciated. I believe the disturbance will be minimal for us. A more significant concern is that our tapping will disturb you.”

  “Naw,” “No problem,” said Rick and then Amon, both shaking their heads. Although Hippo’s talk was meant to be private, the Books appeared to be an exception, and Amon could see no reason why they shouldn’t be.

  “Go right ahead, Books,” said Hippo. “But can I ask you a small favor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you mind having someone brew us a pot of my special gyokuro? We are also celebrating the council’s ruling.”

  “Certainly,” said Book. “We will return shortly.” Then, turning to Amon and Rick with his unevenly magnified eyes, “And congratulations. We look forward to working with you further.” For the first time Amon could remember, Little Book’s face showed emotion as he smiled at them, before he put down the stack of sheets against the wall and the two of them shuffled out into the hallway, closing the door behind them.

  At the council, the Books had maintained their neutral demeanor as facilitators and conveyers of information, showing no signs whether they supported Amon and Rick’s acceptance or not. So receiving their gestures of welcome now brought a quiver of warm gratitude to Amon’s chest that almost made him want to cry.

  Hippo was staring at the door frowning distantly, as though fretting over various thoughts stirred in the air by their departure.

  “You were saying about the reason for your ignorance,” said Rick.

  “Right,” said Hippo, relaxing his brow and embracing their gazes again. “I was going to talk about pitypromo. I realized then how it fueled a certain kind of consumption that the Syndicate satisfied, thereby funding the whole charity gift operation. In the process it generated a particular perception of the bankdeath camps that kept the Free World functioning. It was in this perception that my mind had been entrapped.