The Naked World

by Eli K. P. William

  Not long after setting out with the dawn on the fourth day, Barrow told them that they had reached the trove. He led them through a maze of downward-sloping corridors, along narrow causeways and catwalks over raw sewage, facedown bodies, and worse, up dim tunnels that often branched in dozens of directions using the mental map he had somehow decoded in his memory. All the while Ty ordered Amon and Rick to take turns gripping the scruff of Barrow’s neck to make sure he couldn’t abandon them, for they would be mortally lost without him. At last, they reached an underground chamber delved into the island itself that was piled to the domed ceiling with what appeared to be broken junk. The flattened frames of cars, ripped panty-hose, empty lip balm tubes, used batteries, snapped brooms, tangled netting, holey plastic bags, bent bicycle seats. Yet when Barrow instructed them to dig beneath the surface, they discovered that the garbage had actually been propped up and counter-balanced carefully to create pockets that sheltered items of greater value beneath. In one such pocket, they found salvageable electronic components, transistor radios, tablets, smartphones. In another, materials like screws, nails, plywood, poles, metal sheets, planks, cables. In another various tools like wrenches, knives, abacuses, flashlights, slide rules, binoculars, hourglasses. Elsewhere there were toys, figurines, antique furniture, oil paintings. And finally, as promised, in a great alcove beneath a reinforced gray tarp, an array of weapons and armor: flak vests, shotguns, rubber bullets, longbows, whips, swords.

  Barrow explained that such stashes were unheard of these days because they had all been seized by anadeto dealers, who could affordably take what they wanted from the legally unpropertied bankdead and auction them off to dandy nostie collectors. The fact that this one had escaped their notice, obscure and unguarded, was a miracle, he said, and noted that they had the nostie collective that took him in to thank for it, now eliminated like the ghost town earlier. This, to the other men’s surprise, brought tears streaming down Ty’s cheeks, and he knelt atop an area of the heap full of bicycle-related items, picking up bunches of various parts and tools and then letting them fall from his hands. When he’d regained his composure, he explained that this might very well have been bequeathed by the community that raised him, or his parents themselves. For Ty, the trove wasn’t just useful to get them out of the pinch: it was a part of his heritage.

  From then on, Ty stopped being suspicious of Barrow and, when they departed for Xenocyst the next morning, no longer told Amon and Rick to keep watch on him. They made much faster progress this day, as they were close to southern proxy territories that Ty was familiar with, and reached a Xenocyst checkpoint by early evening. After dropping Barrow off in the library to describe his map for Little Book to draw, Ty promptly gathered a recovery team with Amon and Rick and left for the Tumbles that very night to haul back whatever useful wares they could find. By the time they returned the following night, the council had finished its ruling on Barrow. He had been granted a trial period in Xenocyst. Asking the Books about it later, Amon and Rick learned that, after the council had subjected Barrow to an intense round of questioning and extracted a lengthy narrative confession, there had been little opposition to allowing him in in spite of his OpSci history and the ban on new memberships, with Hippo himself being his most vocal supporter. Though the Books had been too busy for them to glean further details, Amon had no doubt that Barrow’s humanitarian political aspirations, expressed with heart-resonating eloquence, had played an essential role in winning them over.

  Now Barrow was surely busy with whatever menial job they had assigned him, as Amon only saw him occasionally at night, huddling with a group of crashborn around some scrounged-up embyrbrycks on a low rooftop near the Cyst. It was the only story circle still going that Amon knew of, and he could have used company now that Rick was around less, but he never approached, feeling awkward to intrude on Barrow’s personal sphere given their history. Though when he saw the exuberant sparkle in Barrow’s eye over the lurid glow as he told some tale with great animation and held his listeners rapt, Amon almost felt for a moment that he could forgive himself, one day, for his gullible sins.

  “Sometimes being here feels like a penance for what we’ve done,” said Rick, and Amon remembered how Tamper had used the same word in his letter. “The hunger just nibbles away inside me and the chill comes through the holes in my clothes, and I’m always afraid something is going to collapse on my head especially in this typhoon, and I feel like we’re getting just what we deserve. But then I remember the other crashdead who don’t deserve it—at least not as much as we do—and they’re suffering in the same way because of us. Under the circumstances, I might feel better about who we are and what we’ve done, you know, if there was a little bit more to go around. But there’s no way I can even begin to forgive myself when I see what everyone’s going through. How long is this supply problem going to continue?”

  “No one seems to know,” said Amon. “And if it keeps going on like this, I wonder how long it’s all going to hold together. I mean, with so many essential things missing, is the community going to keep functioning? And if everything breaks apart, what happens to us?”

  “Yeah. I can’t stop worrying about the same thing. Have you noticed all the hungry ghosts around lately?”

  “So sad,” said Amon, remembering the first time he’d seen one just a few weeks earlier. On lunch break from construction duties, while he was standing on the edge of a feeding zone eating with Rick and some of their crew, one of their members had approached, unwrapping his rice ball. When he went to take his first bite, it crumbled and slipped between his fingers like sand. Wearing an expression of astonished horror, the man dropped into a squat and hung his head between his knees. One of the others went to pat him on the back consolingly, and their crew leader kindly dismissed him early.

  Now Amon saw emaciated wraiths in all the feeding zones, lurking around the edges as they eyed the feeders covetously. According to the Books, their genomes had been blacklisted so that vending machines ejected different food. Though their meals looked normal, they were printed with a highly ephemeral molecular structure, lasting just long enough to reach the target’s lips. Hungry ghost labeling was supposedly punishment for dissent—trying to rob vending machines, insisting on more supplies to career volunteers, talking revolution—though it wasn’t always clear what the alleged perpetrator had done, if anything. Those who complained to Delivery consultation officers were told they had already received their supplies, which was true in a way, and inventory would always back such claims, so that no one, not even the officers, could believe otherwise.

  “If only we had Tamper’s vendor hack,” said Amon. “Then we could give them all the food they wanted.”

  “Sure. A feast until the CareBots come.”

  “But a feast all the same.”

  “Okay. I know I started it, but can we stop it with that word? It’s too painful to even think about. Not even the gifted have enough these days. Have you seen how they’ve stopped tossing their wrappers?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Before, I took it as a sign of solidarity, the way the privileged ones would kind of share out what they got, even if it wasn’t much and the giftless had to scrounge for it. They don’t even do that anymore. Everyone’s keeping every scrap, looking out for themselves instead of the group.”

  “I know,” said Amon. “But what worries me more is the kids.”

  “What about them?”

  “The other evening I saw this group of boys around ten on a rampage. They were kicking holes in the walls of a disposcraper slated for demolition and hurling chunks of Fleet at other kids that passed by. They were bashing in the heads of the action figures and dolls that were about to disintegrate, probably stolen ones. I just hope their behavior isn’t a barometer for how the situation is progressing. Kids do have a tendency to, you know, give away what everyone is thinking when no one wants to say it and …”

  A few moments after Amon trailed off, another blast of
wind shook the building, tilting the floor so that Amon had to grip it again. But instead of righting itself like before, their shaft began to sway steadily in circles like an egg-beater, buffeted by gusts from all directions. This continued for several tense minutes until the floor seemed to bob up and down as though the patch of artificial island their building stood upon was trying to break off and float away. Soon a mist of rain began to slip in through the cracks of their decayed room, spattering onto the side of Amon’s face and dampening his thin blanket. Gradually, a cold seasickness-like nausea set in, and they tried making a bit more chit-chat to distract themselves from the fear. But having trouble hearing each other’s voices over the architectural grind, liquid hammer-tap, and whistle-roar of the winds, they soon gave up on asking each other to repeat what the other was saying. Instead, they lay there hanging on queasily in the churning, bumping darkness for perhaps half an hour until the rain shrank to an intermittent patter and the gale waned to mere brushing along the exterior. Then, at last, their voices could carry again and Rick said something that Amon could hear clearly.

  “Fucking shit I’m hungry.” Something in the tone of his refrain sounded different to Amon this time, the desperation he sensed in it reminding him of his resolution earlier that day. The time had come for them to get out.

  “Rick?” he said perhaps a minute later.

  “Yeah.”

  “I finally decided today.”

  “Okay. Decided what?”

  “About Rashana.”

  “You’re going to see her?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got to.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as you want. Tomorrow?”

  “As soon as I want? You want me to go with you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Mmmm …” Rick hummed pessimistically.

  “…”

  “…”

  “What? You don’t want to go?”

  “…”

  “Why don’t you want to go?”

  “…”

  “…”

  “…”

  “Rick?”

  “I—I don’t know …”

  “…”

  “I …”

  “What?”

  “Talking to Rashana is kind of dangerous, don’t you think?”

  “Well, we can’t be entirely sure about her,” said Amon, “but you heard what Hippo said about the Birla Guard?”

  “What about the files that link Atupio with the Gyges Circle?”

  Towards the end of their talk in the digital quarantine, Amon had reminded Hippo and Rick about files from the PhisherKing that he’d mentioned when telling his story. They were marked as authentic and showed that Atupio had paid the fines for Amon’s ID assassination of Barrow along with the cover-up at the Ministry of Records that hid these crimes from his AT readout. He had also discussed how Sekido’s crime of infecting Amon with a parasite had been covered up in a similar way, suggesting that this had been funded by Atupio as well. Since, according to Barrow, the Gyges Circle was behind his assassination, Amon had concluded that Atupio was funding this secret organization.

  “I think Hippo argued pretty convincingly,” said Amon, “that Atupio was most likely manipulated by Anisha to frame Rashana.”

  Hearing Amon’s conjecture, Hippo had suggested that Anisha might have temporarily seized control of Atupio to divert its funds to the Gyges Circle’s coup d’état while framing her sister for it in the process. After taking the reins of Fertilex, it wouldn’t be difficult for her to tamper with one of its subsidiaries, and—given the sisters’ hatred for each other since long before the inheritance issue came to light—that was just the sort of rivalrous machination he expected from her. While Anisha, in Hippo’s experience, was downright devious, Rashana had his whole-hearted trust, having supported Xenocyst and other genuine humanitarian initiatives for years. After Amon hemmed and hawed skeptically for a while, their conversation had ended with him saying he would think Hippo’s advice over. Today, at last, he had arrived at his conclusion.

  “Hippo was just making an educated guess,” said Rick. “I don’t think you should risk your life on a character recommendation.”

  “But if there’s any chance for us to get out of this, Rashana is it. We both know that there’s no way for bankdead to live outside. Someone with her type of resources is our only hope.”

  Contrary to what their infoadvercation had implicitly emphasized, the bankdead did not congregate in the camps simply because proximity to donation points was convenient, free to come and go as they might. Even if they could cross the toxic, freighter-clogged currents of the Sanzu River or Tokyo Canal without any materials for rafts or boats but non-buoyant Fleet, or somehow bypass the security barrier on the Bridge of Compassion, a feat only an athlete like Vertical might achieve, all they were free to do was wander the streets and starve or dehydrate as Amon almost had on his way out. Lacking expertise like Tamper’s, their best hope to secure sustenance was begging, though getting attention would be hard while rendered as a generic salaryperson and the few Free Citizens who cared would be reluctant to indulge in the exorbitant action of almsgiving. It was for these reasons that Amon had never seen bankdead walking around Free Tokyo, and Tamper’s and Vertical’s stories seemed to teach the folly of leaving even when it was possible. But all this only made Amon certain that he had to try. For he was an exception. He knew someone with more than enough Freedom to support him if she chose.

  “What, you think she’s just going to wave her magic money wand and give you back your identity signature and then you’ll turn on your BodyBank and everything will be okay?”

  “I don’t know what she’s capable of. But don’t forget, you are standing here right now thanks to the Er center that she funded.”

  “I’m grateful to Rashana. I really am. But that doesn’t mean I have to trust her completely.”

  “Of course not. All I’m saying is, there’s a possibility she can help us and she’s the only possibility we’ve got, so it’s worth a try. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck here forever. Or as long as we last anyways.”

  “But if that’s Anisha, or if Rashana has some secret motives, we just don’t know what she’ll do to us. We could die right there. Or worse. So yeah, maybe Hippo makes the odds sound a bit better, but it doesn’t change the basic fact that you’ll be gambling with your life.”

  Amon frowned at this uncharacteristically conservative response from his usually gung-ho friend and looked at him in disbelief, wishing he could see the expression on his face in the darkness, his words alone mere broken bridges to the thoughts and emotions they attempted to give him passage to.

  “You know I’m no gambler, Rick, but we’re always gambling with our lives, every choice we make. Whatever decision we come to, we always stand to gain or lose something, whether in the short term or the long run. The only difference between one decision and another is how likely it is to go either way. It’s just like we’ve been talking about. The situation here is getting worse and worse, right? So doing nothing is the biggest gamble of all. We could lose everything, and even in the best-case scenario, we’ll just go back to the same pointless routine. Sure, going to see Rashana is a risk too, but we don’t have all that much to lose to begin with and if we guess right we have so much to gain. She could help us get the answers we need and find justice, maybe help Xenocyst somehow—there’s obviously no way to make a difference here, you can see that. She might even set us up with normal lives when this is all over. So don’t you think we should just take the plunge and go see her as soon as we can? I mean, I just don’t see what you’re stalling for.”

  Rick exhaled audibly, seemingly on purpose.

  Amon waited for him to speak.

  “…”

  “Rick?”

  “You act like everything would be so much better if we went back to the Free World! And yes, I want to eat! I’m hungry and I don’t like what’s going on here one bit. But will it make any difference
if we cross back there? We’re still going to be in this shitty world, contributing to this shitty system, so what would it matter?”

  Amon looked in the direction of his friend’s voice but the darkness of the room revealed no more of his friend’s mind than it had before, as rain began to patter and hiss somewhere several layers of building away. He was shocked to hear Rick speak like this. While he had always harbored a brooding sadness in his eyes that sometimes seeped into his character, and he seemed to be struggling with the constant lack more than Amon since he had not cultivated his frugal willpower, Rick had always approached life’s many challenges, in both the Free World and the District of Dreams, with bold, sometimes wanton, optimism. Clearly something here had changed him, and Amon wasn’t sure what that was, but decided, for his own reasons, that he could relate.

  “I understand how you feel, Rick,” said Amon, reaching out from under his blanket and putting a hand on his friend’s warm, damp shoulder. “There was a period of time when I first arrived at Xenocyst that I was almost ready to … well, kill myself. And I don’t think I’m totally over it even now. I used to be worried that one of our targets might recognize me and try to get me back for liquidating them. They would have only seen my digimade face for at most a split second, hardly long enough to remember, but what if my face was burned in the memory of some of them because of their trauma in that moment or something? What would happen if I ran into one of them? It was a scary thought then because I was still feeling the webloss and didn’t know my way around, and I would have been pretty helpless if one of them tried something.