“I wanted to help them help themselves, to lead them back to their own self-determination and autonomy. Because only in this way, by taking back some power to control their own lives through their wills, could they realize any kind of freedom worthy of the word. Unlike the venture charities, we would not decide what people needed and force-feed it to them. We would help them to discover their own needs and realize how to satisfy them themselves while opening up ways for them to spend their time meaningfully.
“Still, as much as I wanted to help all the bankdead in this way, I knew we couldn’t go head-to-head with the venture charities. If we began depriving them of marketable resources, the Philanthropy Syndicate would surely invest in having us destroyed. On the other hand, if we refrained from interfering with their profits then they would have no reason to interfere with us. To achieve this neutral state, I decided that we would only accept the giftless as members. In particular, we would take in orphans, abandoned infants, pregnant woman, single mothers, the postmenopausal, the infertile, and others that are not of interest to the Philanthropy Syndicate because they are not or do not produce marketable resources. I had seen other alternative communities outstep their bounds to become too revolutionary and get squashed by the MegaGloms. If we were antagonistic in the same way, we would inevitably meet the same fate. Instead, neither capitulating to nor resisting the Charity Gift Economy, we would become a xenocyst.”
“What exactly does that mean?” asked Amon. “I thought ‘xenocyst’ was just a name.”
“Just a name? Names are important, Gura! Do you think we would make such a fuss about choosing names to fit each of our members but pick something meaningless for the whole membership? When our community had grown enough that we needed something to call it, it was a challenge to choose the right one for us. We started out with a number of ideas like ‘Open Arms,’ ‘Roof Over Heads,’ and ‘Habitat For All,’ but they all sounded too much like the names of venture charities that spun them as kind and compassionate while marketing human lives. That was when I remembered something I’d come across at conglommercollege. I think it was in a Canadian textbook or essay collection, although I’m not sure. A xenocyst is a foreign cell trapped within another organism. Although it does no harm to its host, it can neither be incorporated into nor rejected by the body that surrounds it, an indigestible outsider right in the belly of the beast.
“Our emblem, which I hired a well-known designer to produce, is the image behind me.” Hippo gestured to the stencil of the girl in the bubble. “Back when we still produced much of what we use, it appeared on all our uniforms and equipment to set us apart from the brandclans and OpScis.
“By the time we decided on the name Xenocyst, the systems were in place to gradually increase our self-sufficiency and wean ourselves off the funds of my foundation as much as possible. I was beginning to spend more and more money on the project and was on the verge of going into debt when I realized I wasn’t afraid of cash crashing anymore. Not only had I spent enough time with bankdead at this point that I was habituated to the idea of living as they do, but I began to think that there was no other way I could make this hospital work.
“One of my reasons for believing this was purely financial. I’d been delegating as much of the work as possible to bankdead members so as not to accidentally perform any of the exorbitant counter-cultural actions owned by one of the Philanthropy Syndicate’s most active members, No Logo Inc. I’m thinking of properties such as grassroots organizing, community building, awareness raising, and so on. But as a result of this delegation, I had already been fined heavily for exploiting and enslaving in spite of having consulted lawyers every step of the way. This all had to be paid out of the foundation, and if I continued functioning as the central manager while remaining bankliving it would have eventually been depleted entirely.
“More importantly, I realized that the digital divide not only separates the two cultures of bankdead and bankliving, but also their cognition and consciousness itself, so that their worlds are almost mutually unintelligible to each other. If I didn’t want to help the bankdead as a form of charity, removed from them, I had to become one of them. I had to abandon the apps and databases I’d always depended on to understand the issues they faced in the flesh and in full solidarity. That is, I had to sever myself from the ImmaNet and the AT market forever.”
Again Amon thought of the slum tourists, and all the impassable barriers between their minds and the education the pamphlets promised.
“At the same time, I had no intention of undergoing the traditional humiliation of being liquidated. So while I started to prepare by undergoing a rehabilitation program similar to those offered in Er, I began searching for a way to cash crash without going bankrupt. First I made a special request to the Liquidation Ministry, but they had no protocol for such an exception and refused. When I tried to bring a petition to the Executive Council, they ignored it despite the assistance of my GATA contacts. Finally, an old colleague who’d been transferred from the Ministry of Access to the Ministry of Liquidation introduced me to a young Identity Executioner who was sympathetic with what I was trying to achieve. I arranged to have him meet me off duty and execute my identity. And guess what his name was? It’s someone you both know.”
Amon frowned and glanced at Rick to see if he had the answer, but found him crooking his neck quizzically. He thought about it for a moment and tendered a guess. “Lawrence Barrow?”
Hippo shook his head. “No. I never met Lawrence Barrow personally until a few days ago. I mean Yoshiyuki Sekido.”
“Sekido?!” Rick shouted in exasperation as Amon flinched backwards in surprise.
“Yes. I was surprised to hear what you both said about him in your hearings. He was a different man back then, and not just an able Liquidator with a strong sense of duty. He was also a true contributor to various humanitarian causes in his spare time as a way to give back for what his career took away. His girlfriend was an activist involved in an Ogasawara community that served in part as my inspiration to create Xenocyst, and it was her that woke him up and showed him the true impact of his job.”
Sekido had had a girlfriend? Amon couldn’t even imagine it. And that wasn’t the only puzzle. “How did you arrange this without getting Sekido into serious trouble?” he asked.
“I sought legal advice beforehand. To ensure Sekido-kun’s action was classified as ID euthanasia rather than ID murder, I was told to not merely consent but to specifically request the execution. Apparently, I was the first person in history to have ID euthanasia, just as you were probably the first to commit ID suicide, and when the case went to the Fiscal Judiciary a new precedent was set. At the time, Judicial Brokers in the pocket of Moderate Choice outnumbered the pro-banklifers in the judiciary, and while ID euthanasia was designated a credicrime, the fine they decided upon was nothing compared to ID murder. In fact, it was small enough that I could leave Sekido with the last of my personal savings to cover it. However, my lawyers also predicted that the Liquidation Ministry would punish him severely for using the Death Codes contrary to their intended purpose. It seems that Sekido-kun was giving in to his activist tendencies at the time and was willing to take the risk. Perhaps he was hoping that his otherwise exemplary record would lessen the punishment. I cannot say for sure how GATA responded to his subversive behavior, as he’s never visited Xenocyst and I haven’t seen him since. But as for his apparently meteoric rise up the ranks in the years that followed, I find it simply baffling. Sekido-kun the Liquidation Minister!? Something must have happened in the interim to save his reputation, though I cannot even guess what.
“In any case, I had arranged to be transported immediately to the Cyst after the execution, and following a brief recovery period, I continued to assist with administration. I seemed to have been right that I needed to become bankdead to guide the community properly, as I found myself imbued with fresh inspiration and enthusiasm. Although we couldn’t open the doors to everyone as I would ha
ve wished, since this would have increased the community to a size that would threaten the venture charities, we began to send out doctors and educators to our satellite communities and were planning to eventually expand our facilities so we could allow in the handicapped.
“Xenocyst was functioning so smoothly, in fact, that we started to get media attention, especially from the organization run by Rashana, about whom I will have more to say in a moment. This brought industry leaders, scientists, activists, and regular citizens who offered funds so we could provide more care to more people or set up a sister organization using ours as a template. I refused them all. We were Xenocyst and our objectives were modest. Aim too big and our host would see us as malignant and do everything it could to eliminate us. But I had miscalculated here, and it was just as our future stability seemed assured that everything started to go wrong.”
14
THE DIGITAL QUARANTINE, AFTER TEA
The subtle earthy bouquet of the gyokuro lingered at the back of Amon’s mouth as he placed his empty ceramic cup on the wood board to his left. He was grateful to Hippo for letting them sample the reserve leaf he rationed out for special occasions—which was delicate glowing ambrosia after months of sugary, fizzy vending drinks—and for having the Books procure some of the Cyst’s scarce supply of hot water to steep it. The nearly twenty minutes in which Hippo had poured the tea from a small gray teapot into their brown cups and Amon and Rick had sat before him sipping away without saying a word had been a much needed respite from a day of nearly continuous discussion on an empty stomach. The Books, by contrast, had wasted no time in carrying their sheets to the back, from which the alternation of tapping and low-spoken words could be heard as they set to decoding the letters, their teacups long empty. Though the stimulation of Amon’s pallet and warmth in his belly seemed only to stir up his hunger pangs, his awareness felt sharper now, and he met Hippo’s gaze with his full attention as he began again.
“The problems started with our vertical nutritional ink factory. Some of our key equipment was malfunctioning. We were struggling to deal with this when a newly constructed building collapsed. It had contained the purifiers we were using to process the sewage and rainwater we collected. This was a major loss already, but the building also struck a neighboring building as it fell and did damage to the medical equipment factory housed inside. We were still trying to figure out whether the accident was caused by a negligent mistake during construction when the batteries for two separate solar and biochemical energy stations located in different places malfunctioned inexplicably within hours of each other. I had chosen these devices based on their reputation for durability. They were meant to self-power for centuries and had been installed by engineers with my complete trust. It seemed unlikely that all these problems would occur within the same week by chance, and we began to suspect sabotage. The council and I first started to investigate within Xenocyst—our screening procedures were strict though certainly not infallible—but when our supply centicopter didn’t show up one day, we realized that the trouble undoubtedly originated externally.
“Whoever was trying to ruin us had waited until I was bankdead and our first-generation bankliving staff had moved on after passing on their skills, leaving us with few agents able to liaison with the Free World and gather information about the supply disruption. Nevertheless, by relaying messages to the managers of my foundation through career volunteer contacts, I discovered that all disbursements had been halted. Apparently, a group of businesses, that I later found out were all subsidiaries of Philanthropy Syndicate members, had sued my foundation. It had allegedly breached the Sustainability Promotion Act, which contrary to its name is primarily concerned with encouraging economic stimulus. Though no monetary exchanges were taking place between bankliving and bankdead at Xenocyst, Syndicate lawyers claimed that our foundation had nonetheless done harm to the economy and was therefore in violation of this legislation. Essentially, their case was that any enterprise using funds to generate any kind of value that is not subject to action fees but that reduces demand for them causes the market to shrink and is therefore illegal. This is similar to the laws that place a time limit on anything remaining in the public domain, which I’m sure you’re familiar with. The more bankdead consumption is satisfied with products and services that are produced, marketed, and supplied by MegaGloms collecting licensing fees for this production, marketing, and supply, the more the economy will grow. The less bankdead consumption is satisfied in this way and the more they become independent, the more the economy will shrink. Every need not satisfied by the AT market is a chance for profit at the bottom of the pyramid lost and therefore a hindrance to growth. This is why sustainability law bans initiatives that attempt to satisfy bankdead needs by any other method. Since our foundation was funding bankdead activities that allowed them to produce and supply their own goods and provide their own services, it was supposedly preventing Free Citizens and MegaGloms from producing and supplying those goods and providing those services through actions that incur fees, which equates to a reduction in total transactions. In other words, it was siphoning large amounts of money from the AT market into a black market that fed nothing back into the market. Legality and illegality were irrelevant from the perspective of us in Xenocyst since we were outside credilaw jurisdiction, but my foundation was not and it was charged with ‘supporting anti-economic industries and obstructing sustainable profitability.’
“The applicable legislations were extremely convoluted, and it was unclear to us whether the prosecution had a solid case. Unfortunately, the legal fees required to challenge this lawsuit had absorbed all my foundation’s assets, and since debtors refused to lend when they saw our risky prospects, we had been unable to pay our suppliers. Although our suppliers were willing to continue shipments for a time in good faith, this sudden drop in revenue weakened them significantly and the Philanthropy Syndicate soon bought them out. The lawsuit succeeded to boot, and what remained of my foundation was bled dry by the prosecution. So, while I thought I had established a shipping network that would guarantee us with the essentials for decades to come, my foundation turned out to be on much weaker footing than I expected. As they say here in the camps, ‘a building is only as stable as its weakest floor.’
“My research had told me we were the first independent community established right in the heart of a bankdeath camp, run exclusively by giftless for giftless. In retrospect, I should have noticed from the beginning how strange it was that the bankdead had such a low level of self-sufficiency. Why were there no other initiatives like mine? Surely there must have been at least a few others in this whole wide world who had wanted to empower them without asking for anything in return? But I had seen no similar examples in the District of Dreams, only the community in Ogasawara that I mentioned, and assumed in my pride that I’d hit on something original. In actuality—though even gold search engines are silent about this—it is standard procedure for the Philanthropy Syndicate to sue any such organization based in the Free World out of existence, while a special jointly funded task force from the Charity Brigade nips grassroots bankdead initiatives in the bud. Apparently, there is simply no room between the market and the black market for anything but the Charity Gift Economy.”
“I remember seeing news coverage of incidents like what Xenocyst went through,” said Rick. “They described them as random acts of vandalism in the camps.”
“Yes. I’m not surprised. That’s how the Philanthropy Syndicate works sabotage into their docucharitisements. And that wasn’t the end of it either. Soon after, representatives of the ‘world without slums’ movement were smiling before reporters as ‘reconstruction workers’ sprayed demolition dust across whole blocks of our semi-permanent skyscrapers that had been labeled ‘dilapidated’ or ‘unhygienic,’ much like the academy where Book was raised. Of course, the upgraded housing promised before the public never materialized. In other targeted areas I’ve seen feeding stations ‘rezoned’ conveni
ently too far to reach practicably on foot so that all residents must vacate.”
“What’s the point of all this?” asked Amon. “I mean, I understand that donations cover the costs of supplies as you explained, but surely not the large fines for the actions of the saboteurs? Wouldn’t it be infinitely cheaper for the venture charities to help the bankdead become self-sufficient? Then they won’t have to keep funding all the supplies and the donations become pure profit.”
“Actually, the situation is the opposite of what you think. What you need to realize is that the cost of sabotage is actually low. Since bankdead cannot own property, destroying or taking their items is perfectly legal. In fact, keeping the bankdead from becoming independent is crucial to the human resources industry. If they aren’t in constant need of disposable supplies, they won’t be motivated to gift and yield will drop. Moreover, Free Citizens will have nothing to pity and fundraising through pitypromo will turn ineffective. Either way, the Charity Gift Economy collapses. The trick to running a successful humanitarian operation is to appear to be constantly alleviating poverty without solving any of its underlying causes and ensuring that no one else does either.
“As to your question about why the Philanthropy Syndicate doesn’t simply keep the donations, the reason is that they are beholden to charity-accountability apps like TransparaKind that allow investitarians to check where their donations are going. If the various venture charities were to simply keep surpluses or divert them to hiring superfluous workers, their bureaucracy would appear bloated and donations would drop. In some cases, they might even pay fines to GATA for embezzlement. Therefore, since the Syndicate must make it appear as though donations are going to those in need, they have two choices: increase funding to services or to supplies. The challenge for them is to do so without improving the quality of services and supplies, since these must be set at the ideal level to increase bankdead propensity to gift while minimizing unrest. Improve conditions any further and yield will drop, since bankdead won’t feel the urgency of relinquishing the burden of an extra mouth to feed and of giving their offspring up for a better life.”
The Naked World Page 36