Ambiguity Machines

by Vandana Singh

  And the humans honored his memory at every meal. They remembered, the vid said, that life is short and precious, and sacrifice is worthy of honor, and animals are our kin.

  The story always made Jhingur weep, and he wondered if it had ever been true. He wanted to eat the meat of such an animal, to become like him, to sacrifice himself for his tribe. He wanted his mother and sister to view the story, but they didn’t have the time or patience for it.

  “You live too much in stories,” his mother said. “You want to be a hero. Here in Patal there are no heroes, no gods, not even demons, no matter what they might call themselves. Just a bunch of sorry folk. You dream too much, Jhingur!”

  It was true. When Jhingur was a child, just recovering from his illness, she had told him an old story about gods and demons and the battle that raged between them. It was a great story, full of the clash of steel and the rumble of war chariots and the tears of brave warriors. Jhingur had become so immersed in it that when he got better he had pretended for weeks that he was a god, or a demon. He stole a pike from a smoke depot to use as a spear and was chased and thrashed by a minion of the demon-king. His mother thrashed him too, in her anger and fear.

  But that day as he lay in Langra’s shop, waiting for customers who never came, he caught sight of his sister staggering home in the middle of the afternoon. When he caught up with her he saw she was in tears. He put his arm around her and helped her home.

  “My protein shake spilled,” she said when they were inside. “At lunch. I was too embarrassed to ask for another one so I went into the afternoon shift without it. And it was horrible, Jhingur! The animals were so terrified. My ears were filled with their screaming. They don’t always kill them before they load them on the conveyor belt, you see. And when they hit them or shock them, the animals scream. All this time I couldn’t see some of the animals were alive when I cut into them. I didn’t know! The animals behind can see what is happening to the ones in front, and they can’t move, because they are injured, and they just cry. Or they look at you, with those eyes. I couldn’t do it, Jhingur! I couldn’t!”

  “Don’t go back,” Jhingur said, horrified.

  But then his sister’s supervisor came in, all smiles, swarming her way up the rope-ladder like a big spider, entering the round hole of the swing-shack. She wrinkled her nose at the smell but didn’t stop smiling. She had a tall bottle of protein shake in her hand, and when Jhingur’s sister drank it up she was ready to go to work as though nothing had happened.

  In the evening Jhingur tried to remind his sister of what she’d seen, but she was feeling particularly cheerful just then and shrugged him off. “I was just feeling a bit unwell,” she said. “I was just babbling nonsense. How silly of you to believe me!”

  That night there was the weekly meat-fry. Jhingur couldn’t bring himself to go, although the aroma of meat cooking made him faint with longing. He lay in their swing-shack, chewing insta-meal strips and feeding crumbs to his pet mouse, feeling useless and miserable. He didn’t know whether his sister had really seen what she had said she’d seen that afternoon. If only he, Jhingur, had the courage to find the truth! He wished he were a hero. But it was much more sensible to accept that his sister had been mistaken.

  The next day Langra told Jhingur he was packing up.

  “Nobody wants my mind-patches,” he said. “Or the dream-vids, or the old books. They are all working at the slaughterhouse and they are content. Nobody needs my fantasies. So I’m off.”

  “Where will you go?” asked Jhingur.

  Langra grinned his lopsided grin. He said: “There’s always work for a guptman! I’m going to be working with the Reality Deep Down shows, boy! I’ll be living one level up, like a star.”

  Working for a famous Net show! Jhingur couldn’t imagine it! He tried to look happy for Langra, but Langra saw through the attempt.

  “I’ll give you my Net-link number, boy,” he said. “Send me a photo some time, or a tip next time the demons have a fight. The show might use it.”

  Already Langra sounded as though he was a Citizen, even though living the next level up didn’t make you one. It seemed like he was going big places, though. He patted Jhingur on the shoulder, gave him a present of his favorite books and dreamvids (not that anyone wanted them anyway) and scuttled off toward the capsule, which had descended for him on a long, metal rope. Jhingur watched the capsule go up at impossible speed into the darkness between two roadways.

  So now there was no longer work for Jhingur. His mother and sister were not pleased, and people looked at him in disapproval at the community kitchen. He wondered whether he should leave home, but beyond the neighborhood was unknown territory where the demon-kings unleashed their monsters every day and recruited unwilling young men for their battles—and besides he loved his mother and sister and mouse. And every night his mother would sing her old songs of loss and longing, which, Jhingur realized, he could not do without anymore. He had been born with her singing to him; he wanted to die like that too, to fade away in her arms to the sound of her voice. When she sang, his very soul found sustenance.

  But he wasn’t happy because of the way the slaughterhouse had changed everything, and because he could no longer eat the meat. Some other old people went away from the neighborhood, but they sent postcards from the old-age facility, and they all seemed content. Then the neighbor’s aunt went away.

  This made Jhingur quite miserable because although the aunt was crippled her mind was just fine and she used to tell Jhingur stories of the old days. It was a sort of secret between them, because nobody really had the time to listen to the old lady and they didn’t know she had anything worth sharing. But she had told Jhingur about the life she had led in a far-away place, driving goats over hillocks, working in paddy fields, throwing handfuls of rice out for the birds. Her stories had made Jhingur happy because it was good to know that the things his books talked about had actually existed somewhere, sometime: grass, trees, wildflowers.

  Now she was gone. And the postcards she sent sounded like they were written by someone else, which (he thought) they probably were.

  There were other disappearances, even among the rat-folk, and the smoke people with their pipes and dried herbs, and the riff-raff and knife-wielding thieves and troublemakers, but who cared about them? People who worked at the slaughterhouse said that the streets had become easier to traverse, even in the deeper darkness of night.

  Only Jhingur wasn’t happy. He began to wonder whether his sister had indeed told the truth the first time. I want to be a hero, he thought. I want to find out what really happens to the animals and the old people. Obviously the only way to do this was to join the workers in the slaughterhouse. But he had to be careful not to drink the protein shake, because it addled the brain and made everything seem fine when it was not. So he attached a little spy-eye to his shirt lapel and announced to his mother one morning that he was coming with them.

  “It’s about time,” she said, smiling. “You are young and strong, and we can use you.”

  The first thing the manager did was to ask him to change his clothes, but while he was doing that (in their presence) he managed to put the camera under his tongue. When they weren’t looking he set it on the collar of his new blue shirt.

  They gave him a glass of the protein shake.

  He muttered and made excuses, and they were polite but firm. He had to drink it.

  So he did. Immediately he felt relaxed and cheerful. He could have danced with joy. He went to work with hope in his heart.

  The world looked different. The slaughterhouse was still clean and beautiful but people’s faces looked strange. He couldn’t tell one person from another very clearly. Even the animals on the conveyor belt looked a bit like people. Only the orange flashing lights on the workers’ shirts distinguished one from the other. It was as though everybody had become strangers for a spell. All the world took on a soft, mushy quality—boundaries were smudged, details blurred, even sounds were mu
ffled.

  But he found that he didn’t mind this. It really wasn’t so bad. It was like being in a painting, or a dream. The animals were quiet and cooperative. They did not scream or kick; their eyes did not roll in fear. Jhingur busied himself in keeping the floor clean, picking up meat chunks that fell off the conveyor belt. He forgot all about the camera.

  While she worked, his mother sang. She was happy too, as was his sister. It was nice to work together, even though their faces were unclear and his mother’s voice sounded as though she was at the other end of a tunnel. His sister said:

  “Animals really don’t feel pain like we do, Jhingur. So don’t feel bad.”

  “I don’t,” he told her, smiling.

  At home he felt content. He was earning for his family and soon they might have enough to go on a holiday, perhaps to some place with air and light. Maybe even grass and wildflowers. He played with his mouse, fed it, and fell asleep dreaming.

  The next day was Sunday so everyone stayed home. Jhingur had a bit of a headache so he lay in his sack after breakfast. It was then that he remembered the spy-eye. He had snapped it off the workshirt and put it in his pocket without really thinking about it. Now there it was.

  The pictures were not very good but he could make out a few things. A cow, mouth open in terror, on a conveyor belt. A goat, legs hacked off, half-drowning in its own blood, its eyes white and terrified. And a human hand in a bin. Not attached to a body, as far as he could see. And a rack of sheep hanging from a series of hooks, bleeding, their intestines spilling out. Their eyes were full of a terrible awareness.

  The world turned sick again for Jhingur.

  His mother and sister were drinking their weekend quota of protein shake. They glanced at the pictures and shrugged.

  “It’s your wild imagination,” they said. “You can’t tell anything in these pictures. Besides, it’s illegal to take pictures in the slaughterhouse. Promise you won’t do this again.”

  Jhingur promised.

  But he thought: How can I go back to work now?

  He lay there feeling miserable. What could he do? Who could he tell? After some thinking an idea came to him.

  He used an empty bottle of protein shake. He filled it with a shake of his own, made from pseudomilk and banana powder. It looked about the same.

  The next day he took the spy-eye to work again. In the workers’ café he took out the shake and began to drink it. Left over from yesterday, he said to the manager. I forgot to drink my quota on Sunday. The manager frowned at him and told him not to forget again.

  This time he couldn’t take it. The terror of the animals, the relaxed composure of the workers, his mother’s voice singing his favorite songs over the screaming.

  He threw up. He found himself falling to the floor. Other workers came running, and Jhingur was sent home.

  The pictures were clearer this time. Jhingur climbed shakily out of his shack and wandered the grimy streets in the brown light of afternoon. He found his way to a local nexus, paid all his scrupulously saved earnings to connect to Langra’s Net-link number, and sent the pictures off.

  At first there was a problem because of the way Langra had scribbled down his Net-link address: was it Sannata3154 or Sannata3159? Jhingur couldn’t be sure so he sent his message to both addresses. One of them ought to be the right one. He didn’t know how to write, but he told Langra in an audio-message what he had found. “Tell someone who will stop the slaughterhouse people,” he said. “Let it run on Reality Deep Down. Patal is not just demon-king fights. Tell them how the animals suffer. They feel pain, like we do. And sometimes . . . there is human flesh . . .”

  People would see the pictures, know the truth, be horrified. He didn’t know what would happen to him in the meantime. But he would be the hero who gives it all up for his tribe.

  He could not bear to go to work next morning so he feigned illness. After his mother and sister left there was a knock at the door.

  It was his manager, with two guards. “Jhingur, you are under arrest,” he said. “Someone saw a spy-eye on your shirt last time. Where is it?”

  Jhingur saw that there was no point in denying the truth. He had already sent the pictures to Langra. He handed the manager the empty spy-eye without a word. “There are no pictures on it,” he said. “I didn’t take any.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” the manager said. “You have to come with us.”

  He went with them through the litter-strewn mean streets, under the web-ways of his home. A dreamvid cover glittered in a trash heap. He took a deep breath and smelled the familiar smells: filth, rotting matter, a pungent smell of demon-smoke.

  When would the cameras come? Where was Reality Deep Down?

  The manager said: “Why do you keep turning around? Looking up?”

  Jhingur said, with a touch of defiance: “I’ve sent the pictures to a Net show. Whatever you do to me, the world will know tomorrow.”

  “You stupid boy,” the manager said. “That fellow, the guptman whom you contacted, was the one who told us. Reality Deep Down would never show anything like this. You must have been crazy to think it.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” Jhingur said. There was a terrible cold feeling in his stomach.

  “You’ll find out,” said the manager.

  Jhingur thought he knew. A shudder went through him. His knees began to shake, and one of the men had to push him to get him to move.

  Then he remembered that he had sent the pictures to two addresses.

  “Sannata3159,” he said aloud. “I hope there is a Sannata3159.” The manager didn’t seem to hear him.

  When Jhingur was brought into the slaughterhouse, they didn’t make him drink the protein shake but gave him something else that tasted bitter. He couldn’t understand what was happening to him. Even if Langra had betrayed him, someone would have gotten his messages, surely? If Langra was Sannata3154, it stood to reason that there must be other Sannatas. Maybe they were around him, in disguise, waiting for the right moment to rescue him and reveal all, like on the Net shows. In his imagination he saw Sannata3159: the shadowy hero, the rescuer who was going to save him. He wanted to tell Sannata3159 that he, Jhingur, was in danger, and the time for rescue was now. He kept asking the people in the manager’s office: “Are you Sannata3159?” Nobody answered. They made him go into a small, empty room after his drink was done. Behind a partition he could hear the hum of the conveyor belt.

  They stripped him, hit him with something that made his whole body sing with electricity, and threw him onto the conveyor belt. When he came to he realized that he was not dead, although he couldn’t move one arm and his legs no longer obeyed him. Suddenly he was in the bright light of the carving hall. On both sides of him were great masses of animals. Their terrified screams drowned his. There was thick, half-clotted blood on the conveyor belt; his back was sticky with it. He tried to lever himself off the belt, but the pain nearly made him pass out. He fell back and lay gasping and crying. How could this be happening? How could there be so much pain?

  His mother! His sister!

  He called Mama! Into the cavernous ceiling his voice went. Surely she would hear him?

  There she was, smiling. She began to sing, her eyes lighting up the way they always did when she sang. It was a song he had always loved. He could hear her clearly now: her voice soared like a bird, singing of freedom. He called again, Mama!

  She saw him and didn’t see him.

  She hacked off the hand he couldn’t move away because that arm was useless. She tossed the hand expertly into a bin, without missing a beat, then aimed a blow at the animal behind him, as the conveyor belt moved him forward.

  He screamed and screamed. He held the bleeding stump hard against his chest. His blood seemed thick and slow. Maybe there had been something in the drink. Then he saw his sister ahead, wielding her carving knife. He called her name. A look of confusion crossed her face for a moment, and the carving knife stayed up in the air, motionless. The
conveyor belt moved on, the knife flashed. Her confusion had spared him being cut up, but the sheep behind him cried out, a long, high sound.

  After a very long time he lost sight of his mother and sister; his throat was bleeding and raw; he coughed up blood. He felt so faint he wondered whether he would die before he got to the guillotine. It was really a coarse chopper, dividing up the rest of the meat when the unwanted parts and the choice parts had been cut. The sound of the blades on bone and flesh was terrifying.

  In the middle of his nightmare his mind cried out: Sannata3159, if you exist, where are you?

  But nobody came.

  He paused for breath, and in the same instant the great mountain of beef ahead of him turned at looked at him. The wild, rolling eye, mad with terror, seemed to calm suddenly. The bull looked at him and in his clear gaze Jhingur felt a tenuous link. For a moment he was on the prairie, a bison in the herd, and he was going out to where the humans waited so respectfully, to sacrifice himself for his tribe. And the bison would remember him, and the humans who ate his flesh would salute him.

  But then it came back to him, where he was; he saw the guillotine ahead, blades stained with blood. He had never known the prairie, or sunshine, or wildflowers, and neither had the bull. And he knew that his sacrifice was in vain, and that when his flesh was packed neatly in plastic and sent away to the Citizens, or to his own people, those who ate him would not know him or honor him, as they would not know or honor the other animals. Their pain, which was also his pain, meant nothing to them, because they could not see the animals as they were, fellow travelers on the great journey, who sang love songs to their mates, and knew joy and suffering and sacrifice.

  Then, without his bidding, he remembered: the woman from the tower who had seen him despite all odds, who had flung a message in light across the canyon that separated them. He had loved her; he understood suddenly his dreams about her flying toward him, crossing that gulf in a great arc. She had fallen to her death, to be scavenged by the rat-folk and turned into a tribute for the demon-kings. He had eaten of her flesh without knowing. In that moment of realization she seemed to sing in his veins, blood of his blood, flesh of his flesh. And he knew there was still something he could do, even in this darkness, this charnel house.