Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 100

by Aliette de Bodard

  The treatment was effective. I gradually grew used to the tepid TV programs and online forums. I grew used to society being peaceful, simple, nice, indifferent. I grew used to seeing the shade of my father, and tried not to argue over things past. Then this person in a black hoodie barges into the monotony of my bachelor’s life and hands me a choice, a choice whose meaning I don’t understand. But I do know that finger-talking has brought me a sense of groundedness I haven’t had in a long time, made the things I felt that had slowly died off eight years ago return from the grave like beetles bursting from their underground cocoons in spring.

  I don’t know what “tomorrow in the city square at 6 AM” will signify. Normally, when I’m faced with a choice, I toss a coin. The answer naturally appears as the coin whirls through the air: which side do you hope will land face-up? But this time, I don’t toss a coin, because when I get off from work, leave the Social Welfare Building, I unthinkingly walk in the opposite direction from the subway station. Next to a spinning pole, I push open the glass door. I say to the fat man across from the mirror, “Hey.”

  “Hey, long time no see.” The fat man waves me in. “Same as usual?”

  “No.” I smile. “Shave me bald. The sexy kind of bald.”

  10.

  I startle awake at 3:40 in the morning and can’t sleep after that. I take a hot bath, change into my Steve Jobs hoodie and khaki pants, put on my sneakers, put in my earphones, and listen to the metal bands of olden days. At 5:00 exactly, I leave Roy a message, drink a cup of coffee, and leave my apartment. The sun hasn’t risen yet. The early morning breeze caresses my freshly shaved scalp, cooling my feverish brain. I take the first subway that comes, unperturbed by the strange looks I get from the sparse fellow travelers. At 5:40, I arrive at the city square. I stand in the middle of the green. The streetlights are bright, and the morning mist is rising.

  At 5:50, the streetlights go out. The first ray of dawn illuminates the thin mist. People are slowly gathering. Someone in a black hoodie takes my right hand, and I pick up the arm of the stranger next to me. “Good morning” spreads palm to palm. More and more people are appearing in the city square, silently forming themselves into a growing circle.

  At 6:10, the ring stabilizes with more than a hundred people in it. The participants of the finger-talking gathering begin to rapidly transmit information. I close my eyes. A drop of dew falls from the brim of my hoodie.

  The person to my right is an old gentleman, by his flabby skin and the refined construction of his sentences; the person on the left is a well-preserved lady with a plump, smooth palm and a large diamond ring on her finger. The topic arrives: “Compared to the gutless bands of today, what bands ought we to remember forever?”

  “Metal. U2. And rock and roll, of course.” I immediately add my own opinion.

  ”The Velvet Underground.”

  “Sex Pistols.”

  “Green Day. Queen. Nirvana.”

  “NOFX.”

  “Rage Against the Machine.”

  “Anti-Flag.”

  “Joy Division.”

  “The Clash.”

  “The Cranberries, of course.”

  “Massive Attack.”

  “Hang on, does dance music count? Add Pussycat Dolls, then.”

  I grin knowingly. The second topic appears, then the third. I’ve missed this sort of easy, organic discussion, even if it’s via a mode of information exchange out of a kids’ game. The fourth and fifth topics appear. My fingertip and palm are hard at work, avoiding typos while trying to use as many abbreviations as possible. I think I’m slowly mastering the skill of finger-talking conversation. The sixth topic appears, followed by the seventh. This seems to be the bandwidth limit for finger-talking gatherings. The commentary appended to each topic would steadily grow until everyone interested has finished speaking. The creator of the topic has the right and responsibility to end its transmission at a suitable time to make room for a new topic. The first and third topics have disappeared. The second topic, on the First Amendment, is still gaining comments. The creators of the other topics independently choose to stop transmitting. Only the second topic is left in the circle, and the participants come to unspoken agreement to stop carrying the topic itself, transmitting the commentary only to save bandwidth.

  It’s an inefficient use of the network to transmit only one data packet at a time. Someone realizes this and starts a new topic in the lull. The network is occupied once again, but soon the data clogs up at one of the nodes.

  A memory from my distant college years suddenly surfaces. “Let’s look at a now-obsolete network topology structure,” the network systems professor had said behind the lectern, “the token ring network, invented by IBM in the seventies of the last century.” So the finger-talking gathering was really an unscientific token ring network reliant on the members’ responsible behavior. I hurriedly finish sending the enormous data packet of the second topic and use the bit of free time to consider how the system might be improved.

  A very brief message appears. It’s uneconomical, I think, but its contents make me gape. “To the sexy bald guy: my name is Daisy.”

  I can feel the serotonin forming in every one of my hundred billion neurons, the ATP sending my heart pounding furiously. Every living bit of me is jumping and hollering in victory. In the place of this message, I send out: “Hello, Daisy.”

  The size of the second topic has slowed down the network so that it takes me ten minutes to receive the data from upstream. It’s clear that someone’s stripped down the commentary to the second topic to the essentials. After the compressed file is my topic “Hello Daisy” and its legion comments.

  “We love you, Daisy.” “Our daisy blossom.” “Pretty lady.” Then “Hello, Uncle Baldy!”

  I recall how I’d looked in the mirror before I let home: my skinny body, drooping cheeks, red nose and comical bald head, my outdated sweatshirt. I look like a clown. I smile.

  I’m writing my reply when a commotion ripples through the network. I open my eyes. The sun has long since risen, and the mist has disappeared without a trace. Every blade of grass in the city green sparkles with dew. The members of the finger-talking gathering have formed an irregular circle, linked hand in hand into a silent wall. Many people watch from a distance: morning joggers, commuters on their way to work, reporters, policemen. They look perplexedly at us, because we have no signs, no slogans, none of the characteristics they expect of a protest.

  A police car is stopped at the edge of the green, its exhaust pipes billowing white smoke. The car doors open, and cops get out. I recognize their leader, the short policeman who’d interviewed me. He’s still wearing the same apathetic expression and walking in the same careless swagger. He strokes his neat little mustache, considering us, then makes a beeline for me. “Good morning, sir.” He takes off his cap and presses it to his chest.

  I look at him and don’t say anything.

  “I’m afraid you’re all under arrest,” he says without energy. Six hulking black police vans glide silently into the city square. Riot police in full gear flood out, approaching us with batons and riot shields raised. Our onlookers don’t react at all. No one shouts, no one moves, no one even looks in the direction of the neat marching phalanx of riot police.

  I can tell the people beside me are anxious by the sweat on their palms. The second topic’s data package has disappeared. A single short message replaces it, traveling at the highest speed our network can sustain.

  “Freedom,” many fingers write rapidly and firmly into many palms.

  “Freedom.” Our eyes are open. Our mouths are shut.

  “Freedom.” We shout to the black machinery of the government in the loudest form of silence.

  “I love you, Daisy.” I send my last message before the riot police slam me roughly to the ground. The network has collapsed. I don’t know if the message will get to Daisy. Where was she in the network? I don’t know. Will I ever see her again? I don’t know. I’ve n
ever really seen her before, but I feel as if I understand her better than anyway.

  Don’t make trouble. My father looks down at my squashed face. The riot cop is doing his best to mash me and the lawn into one.

  Fuck you. I spit out grassy saliva.

  11.

  I’m getting ten minutes on the phone, and I don’t want to waste them. But beside Slim and Roy, I can’t think of anyone to call. Strangely, Slim spends the call talking about the Arawak language of Jamaica. Roy doesn’t pick up. I put down the receiver, at a loss.

  “Hey, old man, how much time do you have left to waste anyway?” The line behind me is getting impatient.

  I dial the familiar number without thinking. Like always, the phone rings three times before someone picks up. “Hello?”

  “How are things, Mom?” I say.

  “I’m well. How about you? Do you still get the headaches?” Through the receiver, I hear the scrape of a chair being dragged over. My mother sits down.

  “I’m much better nowadays. And . . . and what about him?” I say.

  “You never ask about him.” My mother sounds surprised.

  “Ah. I was just wondering . . . ”

  “He passed away last month,” my mother says calmly.

  “Oh. Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have anyone to take care of you?”

  “Your aunt is with me. Don’t worry.”

  “His grave . . . ”

  “Is in the church cemetery. A long ways from your sister.”

  “That’s good, that’s all I wanted to make sure. Then . . . have a good weekend, Mom.”

  “Of course, and you too. Good-bye.”

  “Bye.”

  She hangs up. I rub the age spot on my right hand as if trying to wipe those memories away. My father, reeking of alcohol. My sister sobbing, my mother growing withdrawn and numb. The memories from my college breaks are far enough downstream in my life that they no longer seem so unbearable. “Old man, time is money! Tick-tock, tick-tock!” The person behind me taps at his wrist, imitating the tick of watch hands. I hang up the receiver and walk off.

  For lunch, I end up sitting next to a red-haired guy with a man’s name tattooed on his face. His arms are garishly patterned, as if he were wearing a Hawaiian shirt. “That guy’s gay! Don’t go near him. And don’t let him grab your hand,” the Mexican who shared my cellmate had warned me—I’m guessing he meant well. I take my tray and move a bit aside.

  Redhead scoots closer, smirking. “Want to share my goat milk pudding? I’m not a big fan of lactose.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine,” I say as politely as I can.

  Redhead reaches over. I snatch back my hand as if jolted on a live wire, but he manages to grab it anyway. He grips my right hand tightly and tickles at my palm with a fingertip.

  I can feel every hair on my body standing on end. “I don’t think I’d be very suited to this type of relationship. If you don’t mind . . . ” I struggle in vain. The bystanders are laughing raucously, smacking the dining tables like a drum.

  The sensation becomes familiar. It’s finger-talking, the same abbreviations, rapid and precise. “If you understand, tell me.”

  I calm down and give Redhead a careful lookover. He still wears the same stomach-turningly lecherous expression as before. I hook my finger and tell him, “Received.”

  “Thank God!” His expression doesn’t change, but he writes an abbreviation for a strong exclamation. “I’ve finally found another one. Now, after lunch, go to the reading room. The philosophy section is against the east wall. No one ever goes there. On the bottom of the second shelf, between Hegel and Novalis, there’s a copy of the 2009 edition of Overview of the History of Philosophy. Read it. If you don’t understand how, pages 149 to 150 explain the basics. I’ll contact you afterward. For reasons of safety . . . I suggest you prepare to be thought of as gay. Now, hit me.”

  “What?” I say, caught off guard.

  Redhead leers with utmost lasciviousness and reaches for my ass. I flail out a fist and punch him in the nose.

  “Ow!” The bystanders burst into laughter so loud the guards look our way. Redhead scrambles upright, a hand over his bleeding nose, and leaves cursing with his meal tray.

  “What did I tell you?” My cellmate appears with tray in hand and gives me a thumbs up. “But you’ve got guts!”

  I ignore him and stuff food into my mouth. Once I finish, I go to the reading room alone. On the bottom Philosophy shelf, between Hegel and Novalis, I find the clothbound 2009 edition of Overview of the History of Philosophy. I sign it out from the librarian and take it back to my cell. The Mexican isn’t back yet. I lie on my cot and flip open the heavy covers. I don’t see anything special. From a glance, it’s just a yawning pit of references and citations.

  I flip to page 149, and see that someone’s replaced this page. In the midst of headache-inducing philosophy-related proper names is a sheet of yellowing paper clearly torn from another book. The front is covered with completely irrelevant medical information on joint protection, while the back is mostly methods of head massage and corresponding diagrams. At the bottom is a three hundred word simple overview of a newly invented type of low-error, high-efficiency Braille. However, the development of more practical visual surgery techniques had led to the decline of Braille, the book informed me. The new type of Braille was made obsolete before it was ever implemented.

  Oh, of course. Braille. I shut the book and close my eyes. The outside covers only have the big embossed gold lettering, but on the inside cover, I find little bumps arranged in some sort of dense pattern. If you weren’t paying attention, they’d seem like some oversight in quality control left the paper unevenly textured. I refer to the instructions and slowly decipher the Braille. The information is heavily compressed; it takes me almost two hours to understand the text on the inside cover.

  “The finger-talking gathering welcomes you, friend,” the unknown author greets. “You’ve certainly felt the changes, but you don’t understand them. You’re lost, angry, considered crazy by other people. Maybe you’ve bowed to the way things are. Maybe you’re still looking for the truth. You deserve the truth.”

  I nodded.

  “This was an enormous program. The secretly ratified 33rd Amendment allowed the formation of a Federal Committee for Information Security to filter and replace information that could pose a threat to social stability and national security. After lengthy test trials, a high-efficiency system called ‘Ether’ slowly came together. At first, Ether only functioned to automatically monitor the Internet through network and Wi-Fi equipment. All text, videos, and audio it considered to be subversive would be put through hacking, sampling, and semantic network analysis. Once it found the forum hosting it, Ether would infiltrate all related conversations on that server. Everyone except the poster would see an altered post. In addition, the poster would be recorded by the database. For example, if you posted the topic ‘Senatorial Luncheon,’ it would be flagged as harmful. Ether’s supercomputers had free legal rein to override all network firewalls, and would intercept the data packet at the interface and replace all keywords. Everyone else would see your topic as the uninteresting ‘KFC Super Value Lunch.’ This way, the federal government gained total control over the Internet. The tragedy is that most people never realized what had happened. They only pessimistically believed that the spirit of liberty was gradually disappearing on the Internet—exactly what the government wanted.”

  I feel a chill at my back. The Mexican comes in at this time and throws his dirty towel on my stomach. “Buddy, you should join the group exercises now and then.”

  “Shut up!” I yell with all my might. The Mexican looks blankly at me. His expression shifts from surprise and anger to fear. He looks away, afraid to meet my bloodshot eyes. My fingers move shakily across the flyleaf of Overview of the History of Philosophy.

  “Following the success of Ether, the federal government’s control over radio,
television, and print were a foregone conclusion. The few members of the media who refused to collaborate with the Information Security Bill were isolated using a technology from the same origin as Ether. Nanoelectronic technology had been used to tamper with data exchange, and the people in power soon realized that nanobots could similarly tamper with data exchange through visible light. Seven years after the enactment of the 33rd Amendment, they decided to release nanobots into the atmosphere. These tiny machines could remain suspended in air, using the silicon in soil and construction materials to self-replicate until the desired density was achieved. They were simple devices, activating once they reached the requisite density. They would detect subversive text—information in visible light waves—and subversive speech—information in sound waves—replace them with harmless data, and log their source. They could adhere to printed text and signs, polarizing light so that all observers beside the source would receive false optic data; they could alter the spread pattern of sound waves so all listeners except the source received false acoustic data. Since the source can receive the sound traveling through their bones, they’d hear the message they intended. These little demons floating the air made Ether omnipotent and omnipresent, like the mysterious substance undetectable to mankind that the philosophers said occupied all space—the original ether.”

  I remember the psychiatrist’s words, “All I see is the advancement of society and democracy.” I clench my fists and grind my teeth hard enough to be audible.