The Naked World

by Eli K. P. William

  Arriving in their room, Amon and Rick peeled off their sweat-drenched clothes and lay side by side beneath their Fleet blankets. They pressed the side of their bodies against the walls in an effort to plug up some of the expanding cracks in the expiring room and reduce the drafts for each other, hoping for the advent of dreams. (Would they ever come? Could they truly forsake Amon forevermore?) But when heavy droplets of rain began to pelt the upper reaches of the roof canopy and the floor began to rock, they sensed the growing force of the storm and, giving up on any pointless attempt to sleep, began to chat.

  Apparently it was common in the fall for typhoons to enter the shallow mouth of Tokyo Bay and head straight for the District of Dreams, which served as a sort of storm barrier for the rest of the metropolis, perhaps intentionally positioned so by urban planners half a century ago. Though both of them had waited out typhoons many times before—inside the sealed, sturdy confines of the BioPen, their apartments, GATA Tower, or wherever they happened to be in Free Tokyo—never had they felt its raw power like this before, and Amon was unnerved by the absence of the cajoling ghoulish voices and heavypromometal always brought by InfoTyphoons.

  In the utter darkness of the fracturing windowless chamber, deep in the belly of the ever-dissolving architectural beast, enveloped in the swelling tumult of elemental power, they tried to forget where they were and talked of many things—the quirks of their co-workers and neighbors, their work schedules, their plans for tomorrow—carefully orbiting but never confronting the indescribable horror they had seen in the hidden heights of Xenocyst that day. All the while, Amon’s resolution poked out from a corner of his mind, his urge to tell Rick tickling at his attention as he kept up his end of the conversation, the right opening never seeming to present itself.

  “Fucking shit I’m hungry,” said Rick after a short lull in their chatter. It was his constant refrain of late.

  “Oh, me too,” said Amon. “But it feels good to do this, don’t you think? Just talk like this.”

  “Yeah. It’s been a long time, what with everything that’s been happening here …”

  “Who would have thought back in Free Tokyo that we would ever go even a single day without speaking our own dialect?”

  “It’s not the same, is it, Hinkongo?”

  “No. I mean, I’m starting to feel comfortable with it, but even if I understand what they’re saying and my point gets across, it always seems like … well, like something is missing, you know?”

  “Like the words are never quite the right shape to fit what you want to say.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Something like that.”

  Now that Amon and Rick were frequently working in close cooperation with crashborn residents without the supervision of standard Japanese speakers like Vertical and Ty, their Hinkongo had been improving rapidly. Amon had always thought of the camp dialect as a crude, lowly pidgin, but despite its many foreign words it turned out to be easy to pick up without rigorous study once his ears had adjusted, as it had the same grammar as the standard dialect they were used to. Now that the linguistic door was open, they often made small talk with co-workers, though the best opportunity to practice had been the stargazing rooftops, where Xenocysters sat around telling stories, much as Hippo and his group had at the festival. If they were lucky, Amon and Rick would hear the fast, unsoftened Hinkongo of talented raconteurs, and found the crashborn residents just as eager to hear their stories, as chances to interact with crashdead were rare. No one had ever met an actual Liquidator, let alone an Identity Executioner, and they were eager to understand what these jobs signified, to imagine a world they had never known. With their limited vocabulary, it still took much pausing, backtracking, and gesturing to get across complicated messages, though the effort only raised their proficiency further. Yet now that the suposhu and embyrbrycks were scarce, and people were too hungry to climb any higher than they had to, these circles had mostly stopped gathering, and without Rick to accompany him Amon had stopped attending the ones that remained.

  “But don’t you think,” Amon continued, “it’s also kind of depressing?”

  “What is?” asked Rick. “Not being able to communicate the way you’d like to?”

  “No. The opposite. Being able to understand what everyone’s saying now. You don’t find that disturbing ever?”

  “I don’t know. Not really. How so?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to finally get a handle on the language. Work is so much easier now and we’re finally starting to make a few friends. But … well … talking with everyone, we’re learning about their lives, right? Not just elite members like Ty, Book, and the councilors, but regular people, and now they don’t seem like just ‘bankdead’ anymore, the way we used to understand what that meant. Do you know what I mean?”

  “I think so. Like how we never used to really respect them.”

  “Respect them? They used to be faceless to us! Faceless! Just a category we could stick labels on. All of them. If we were feeling mean, they were ‘lazy,’ ‘lecherous,’ ‘discreditable.’ Or if we were feeling generous they were ‘underprivileged’ and ‘left behind.’ We didn’t even see them as individual people. And now that I understand how the Charity Gift Economy works, I can’t stop thinking back on our previous life. We used to believe we were making the world a better place, just by working and living. But that was all bullshit! Trickle-down charity from our actions!? The best of all possible slums!? Maximal freedom for all!? Through liquidation!?”

  Amon remembered his talk with Makesh in Sushi Migration, and all the things he had said with such certainty about the justice of the AT system. What a fool I was, he thought, and felt the harsh, clenching tingle of shame climbing his back as he sympathized with the Birla sister’s impatience with him.

  “I know,” said Rick. “It’s painful to think what we used to do. I always—”

  Broosh-krah. Rick’s words were erased by a juggernaut blast of wind, the force of which Amon felt slamming the wall to his right and heard bending the surrounding buildings too far for comfort—kricka-kra-kra-kra-kra—the floor now tipping to the side so that he had to grip it with the flat of his palm to stop from sliding.

  No other blasts followed, and the floor soon righted itself, the wind settling to a sharp, whistling hiss. Still, Amon couldn’t help imagining their building collapsing and, in his mind’s eye, he was back wading through the rubble during the rescue efforts yesterday, calling out and digging for survivors. What if they were the ones buried next time? Would they have the luck to be found?

  He was reminded of one crisp, sunny afternoon when a skyscraper avalanche forced them to change their supply route on the way back from Delivery and they saw Welcome Chasm for the first time. With shelters being replaced less frequently, the carefully constructed buildings in Xenocyst were somewhat unstable, as the cave-in would soon demonstrate, but in the haphazard architectural mess elsewhere, collapses were happening on an almost hourly basis. Finding a heap of shattered walls, squarish hunks of room, and a powder of crushed Fleet blocking their way, they were diverted to a rooftop that ran along the jagged edge of a thin chasm. With a glance of concern at Rick and Amon, Ty ordered everyone in the crew not to look in under any circumstances. But, sensing from Ty’s expression when he’d met their gaze that the chasm concerned the two of them somehow, Amon couldn’t resist his curiosity. And when Ty was busy arguing with a gang of locals who insisted on receiving supply tolls for the right to pass an alley ahead, Amon lay down on his belly to peer in, with Rick following close behind.

  Past the layers of sharply jutting ridges formed of room corners that composed the sides of the chasm and the layers of dark petals fluttering between them, they saw a truck driving along a two-lane road at the bottom. It was unmarked, without any brand name or logo, though they both guessed soon afterwards that it was operated by venture charities who received giftless crashnewbs from the GATA Displacement Crews—what Amon had always thought of as the last socia
l program. They watched as the truck stopped, a stretcher was rolled out, and a person lying inert atop it in bankliving clothes was carried off and laid down on the concrete. There, before their eyes, was the fate of the majority of those whose identities they had executed—the ones who had genomes unlikely to produce marketable resources and who were therefore denied admittance to Er (with the exception of Atupio facilities that only took in a select few).

  Unlike Amon, the nerves of their visual and auditory systems would have been surgically repaired during BodyBank removal, so these crashdead were not blind and deaf, though they still had to cope with cogwither, crowdcrave, and all the other symptoms of webloss. He could hear the raving shrieks and cries of those who had crawled away upon awakening echoing up to his ears, and wondered how many would survive the week. Some would be assimilated by the Opportunity Scientists, who offered religious practices and beliefs to help them deal with their psychological deficits and madness. Others, like those who’d crashed because they couldn’t pay their medical bills, would already be on the verge of death upon arrival. Most would be unable to cope and become so-called fragparrots: men and women whose identities were so fragmented they spoke in promotation scripts and whistled edutainment jingles until they were too weak to stand.

  Ty was too busy haggling with the gang to notice what Amon and Rick were doing. Nevertheless, after he’d negotiated the crew’s passage he tuned in to the gape-mouthed, harrowed expressions they wore the whole way back, and swore at them with wheel clenched in fist for abandoning their guard posts during a potentially dangerous confrontation. For days Amon and Rick hardly spoke, having only the will to barely fulfill their duties. Amon lost his appetite and had to force himself to eat, suffering a relapse of the dissonance he’d felt after first seeing the supply crews returning to the Xenocyst border. If not for Rick budging him out the door each morning and forcing him to down his rations, he might have shriveled up on the floor and starved.

  “I guess the one consolation,” said Amon, “is that we managed to bring Barrow to Xenocyst.”

  “Sure. He did earn us a place here.”

  “No. I mean consolation for everything that we’ve done.”

  “Oh. For you maybe. I never knew him personally so it doesn’t really matter to me either way. Though he does seem to be fitting in pretty well.”

  “I’m amazed at his energy. After everything that’s happened to him and all that he’s lost, he just seems to accept his place here and get on with it.”

  “You always were a fan of Minister Larry.”

  “What do you mean? You voted for him too!”

  “Only after you twisted my arm with all that bullshit about the equality and fairness of nationalized bodily functions. If it wasn’t for you I would have abstained.”

  “You mean would have ‘been a politically apathetic asshole.’ And don’t try to pin the responsibility for your decisions on me, even if it was a good decision. They do call it the Free World for a reason.”

  “Sure. But is it a good reason?”

  “Let’s not get sidetracked. You know what I mean.”

  The moment after Barrow had offered to guide them to the stockpile of analog detritus and asked for permission to take the Xenocyst screening, Ty flew into such a rage—cursing and kicking Barrow repeatedly as the disgraced politician curled up in the fetal position in the corner—that Amon and Rick had to restrain him. Anyone who had ever followed Opportunity Science, Ty snarled, was forbidden from ever joining Xenocyst, and that was that. Besides, the council had ruled that they had no resources for new members and how did they know he wouldn’t be leading them into an ambush?

  Once Amon and Rick got Ty to calm down, Amon spoke up in Barrow’s defense, feeling obligated to protect him in return for bringing him to this pathetic fate. First, while the rules might forbid OpScis from joining Xenocyst and urge rejection of new applications, admission was ultimately up to the council to decide, not mere patrolmen, and if they brought Barrow in for a hearing the council would likely extract further information that would aid them in their conflict, whether or not he was allowed in. Second, if you knew anything about Barrow’s career, then it was impossible to take seriously the idea that he might be a sincere believer. If Barrow worshipped anything, it was anadeto—a nostie through and through. Finally, the chance to acquire a stockpile of equipment and weaponry that wouldn’t dissolve, if it could be found, was too good to pass up in these volatile times, and didn’t the presence of the rare machine pistol in the hands of the field priest prove that it likely existed?

  Frowning with stone-faced indecision, Ty had nothing to say in response and Barrow had filled the silence with a plea for his own case. Infusing each syllable with his enchanting timbre, he insisted on the sincerity of his desire to join. Since cash crashing and losing his position as CEM, his plans to help the bankdead had been cut short, but Xenocyst offered a chance to continue his work, if in a much-reduced capacity. Only months earlier he’d been the most powerful politician in Japan, and he promised that if he was accepted he would harness his unique set of skills and know-how for the good of the community.

  Between Amon and Barrow, with Rick interjecting occasionally as mediator, the two of them managed to convince Ty to reluctantly let Barrow take them to the trove. But only under the condition that he stay two meters in front of him at all times and with the understanding that Ty would wheel-rim his skull open at the slightest hint of disobedience.

  When Barrow agreed and the argument was settled, Ty asked the local residents to send word to the Cyst that they would be delayed a few days and the four of them embarked on a long journey, much further than Rick and Amon had ever traveled from Xenocyst. They started off south—crossing the outer room-hills of Opportunity Peaks that rolled outwards from its base in progressively smaller corner-jutting undulations—cut west when they reached a sharp cliff of disposcrapers to scale its stairpaths to the roofways above, and gradually descended winding ledges and tunnels until they reached the dark confines of ground-level tarmac. There they had lunch at a feeding station and began to spiral upwards again in a westerly direction, eventually reaching the top of several faux-bronze towers leaning out over the Tokyo Canal. By this time night had fallen, and they marched south on a course that zigzagged to and from the edge of the bank, following the canal’s straight form that glimmered gray below them under the flicker of crumbling cookies hung sporadically along its length, dark blots of unmanned boats and cruise ships bobbing up- and downstream, an ocean breeze on their skin. A cloud-hazed crescent floated above the serrated mound of architectural pitch that loomed against the sky on the far side and, when the firefLytes ended, they trudged on carefully under the dim moonlight it cast. But when fissures opened in their path, Ty judged it too dangerous to proceed, and they took shelter in a cobblestone nook.

  Waking with the silver-gray light before dawn, they continued along the shore to a highway that angled north-east across the island from the Miura Peninsula towards downtown Tokyo. Amon heard but didn’t see cars roaring high above, the massive road propped up on sheer concrete cylinders around which CareBots whirled. Rick reminded Amon of one mission motorbiking along this highway years before, and Amon recalled the blue infosea stretching to the horizon on both sides, an ImmaNet veneer nothing like the transient labyrinth they now traversed.

  This highway marked the border of the Tumbles. As the region was inhabited exclusively by giftless and was more than a day’s journey from Delivery, the buildings were always more worn out than elsewhere, leaving a tumbled and often tumbling sprawl of stunted disposcrapers poking from shattered rubble. After passing between the highway’s pillars and crossing the cold bar of shadow it cast, they turned east from the canal into an enclave that appeared to be made of cracking clear plastic. It was abandoned, the reek of decay drafting from dark crevices and tunnels, and Ty supposed that it was too distant from Delivery to be nutritionally sustainable since the supply drops. Hiking the broken roofsteps of
this ghost town, they watched swirls of flakes from brittle translucent shafts glow persimmon-lavender under the sunrise trickling through cracks above, staying well clear of the edges from which huge sections kept breaking off and crashing far below into splinters like calving ice from arctic glaciers.

  To prevent Barrow from leading them into a trap, Ty often broke his own rule of having him stay in front and instead had their captive guide tell them which direction they were going but chose the route himself. This added time onto what was already a marathon expedition, and they were forced to camp out in unknown alleys for several nights. Deep in the Tumbles, far from Xenocyst, not even Ty—a crashborn with more wanderlust than most considered healthy—had any idea where they were, and their one landmark was the distant outline of Opportunity Peaks to the north-west, visible only during lulls in flakefall. Over the desert of Fleet petal dunes and low shelter clusters that rolled in endless tracts around them, great hordes of residents kept streaming north and south like migrating herds, looking even more thin and weary than elsewhere. The ribs of adults showed through the slits in their loose disintegrating shirts, the bellies of children were bloated, and many slumping or laying flopped out on ledges appeared to lack the energy to move altogether. Though they seemed too dissipated to be threatening, Amon and the others tried to avert their gazes, not knowing their affiliation, and Amon feared this was a sign of things to come in enclaves to the north. To ward off brigands as they traveled during the day, Ty made a show of hurling and retracting the wheel of his tricycle when the slumscape opened up while Amon rested his hand on the exposed holster at his side and Rick held out his newly acquired double-barrel machine pistol. At night, Ty, Rick, and Amon took turns keeping watch while the one member they distrusted, Barrow, slept soundly. But perhaps due to their display of force, not one person stepped into view from dusk to morning twilight.