by Adam Rakunas
I signed all six lines. Vikram blinked at each one, then handed them back to me. “You might want to make copies for yourself.”
I pointed at my right eye. “My pai’s a little busted. What now?”
Vikram scooped up the papers and put them inside his jacket. “Now, I’m going to help you make a metric fuckton of money. You ready?”
I smiled. “I like the cut of your jib, mister. Let’s go.”
TWENTY-ONE
Vikram and I had gotten to the lobby when he stopped and blinked. “Holy cow,” he said. “My pai just came on.”
“Big surprise. Letty’s probably watching all of, ah, OW…”
My right eye burned as hot orange text scrolled past. I clamped both hands over my eye, but the letters and the fire continued. Any screams I might have had were caught in my throat as the text turned into error messages. Angry error messages. The kind that transformed into lightning bolts that ran from my pai straight into my brain. And I couldn’t turn them off.
I might have heard Vikram calling my name. I know I felt someone try to pull my hands off my face, but I sent my elbows flying. Moving my hands would mean taking away the pressure that was keeping my eyeball from exploding. It also meant that I couldn’t escape the onslaught of messages until they suddenly stopped on their own. I caught my breath. The burning had stopped, too.
After a moment, I looked at Vikram. He rubbed his thigh. “That hurt.”
“Sorry,” I said, my heart still pounding. “Did you get a bunch of errors?”
He shook his head. “You okay?”
“No, but I’ll have to deal with it later.” I lifted my hands from my eye. It didn’t blow up, which was nice. It still hurt like hell. I opened my eye, and Vikram made a face. “Looks a little bloodshot, but not too bad,” he said. “Can you see me?”
I nodded, then tried blinking. Another jolt, followed by more errors. “Guess mine isn’t back online. Can you make a recording for me?”
“Of course.” He squared his eyes at me but didn’t blink. “You want to clean up or anything?”
I looked at my ragged clothes, touched the streaks of dirt on my face. “No,” I said. “I want everyone to see me as I am. Hit it.”
He blinked and pointed at me: You’re on.
I took a breath and smiled. “Hi. Believe it or not, I’m Padma Mehta, and I’ve had a really, really weird forty-eight hours. We can talk about that later, because I want everyone to know now that I’m putting the Old Windswept Distillery up for sale. You can find the particulars on the Public, along with the terms of the sale. If you’ve ever wanted to roll with the swells in Chino Cove, now’s your opportunity. My share price is firm, so don’t bother to negotiate.”
I was about to say, I can’t get your messages anyway, when, for once, my brain’s better judgment kicked in. Letty may have had a backdoor into my pai, but she might not know that it wasn’t working properly. “Seeing how everyone’s pai access has been spotty, the best way to reach me will be through any Public terminals that are still operating. I’m in Xochimilco Grove, and I’ll be making my way to Brushhead. I hope that some of you have heard or seen the presentation I made this morning in Bakaara Market. If you haven’t, start asking around.” I leaned toward Vikram and smiled. “It’s the one where I accuse Leticia Arbusto Smythe of engineering the strike to cover up her malfeasance. Oh, and she murdered two people in front of me before she tried to burn me alive. So, you know, I wouldn’t really put a lot of stock in what she has to say.”
I nodded at Vikram, and he stopped recording. “How long until the shares start moving?”
“No idea,” he said. “It’ll have to filter out across the Public, and that could take–”
He flinched and blanched. “What is it?” I said.
“They’re gone. All sold.” He laughed. “I think you should check your bank account, Padma. You’ve just become insanely rich.”
We left the Co-Op Building for the nearest Public terminal. It stood on the corner of Chung Kuong Street and Singa-Laut Boulevard, covered in tags. Someone had lit a trash fire next to it, and soot filmed the screen. I wiped it clean and logged in. The number that popped out of my bank account made my heart skip a few beats. I had never seen that many commas in a number that belonged to me. Three million forty-six yuan. Tonggow’s asking price had been a whole lot less. My guts twisted. She had built that distillery from nothing, and she was going to hand it to me for a song. I wondered what she would have thought about all this. Maybe she would still appreciate the romance of it, though damned if I could find any right now.
“Is there any way to know who the buyers are?”
Vikram shook his head. “One of the perks of being a member of the Co-Op is that you don’t have to tell anyone outside of it who’s in.”
I narrowed my eyes. “So I’m really out? No longer a part of the Co-Op?”
He shook his head again, and his eyes were actually sad. “You don’t have a distillery anymore, Padma. I wish you still did, ’cause getting all these new buyers involved is going to be a massive pain in my ass.”
“Well, like they say, when one door closes, an entire house falls on you.”
“Are you really going to start spreading that money around?”
“Looks like I have to now.”
“Any way I can help?”
I thought for a moment. “Tell everyone you see that I’m making payroll.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Everyone?”
“Well, everyone you think needs the cash. If you run into anyone from the Executive Committee, for instance, feel free to tell them to go to hell.”
He gave me a nod and made his way up Singa-Luat.
I pulled up Public profiles of people who could get things running again. The city had to be fed, cane had to get pushed up the cable, and everyone probably needed a doctor. The closest address was a family of longshore crew two blocks over. It wasn’t just any family: the Shavelsons were three generations of Union stalwarts living under one roof. They were the kind of people who showed up to every committee meeting and complained, even for meetings outside of their Ward. Ethylene Shavelson, the matriarch, would spend her allotted two minutes of public speaking to denounce me, the Big Three, the Union, and anyone who was on her ever-growing list of People Who Had Done Her Wrong.
The Shavelsons’ house was four stories tall and looked like it had attacked and grafted other houses on to it. Ethylene had buried four husbands, and each one had added a few kids to the brood. Some of them moved out, but most stayed under the ever-expanding family roof. Each Shavelson kid who brought home a spouse added on to the house by cannibalizing bits from other neighborhoods. There were pieces from the striver rowhouses on Cheswell, panels from cargo can hutongs, even some black glass roof tiles from the Union office at Beukes Point.
I banged on the door, and got a gruff “Fuck off” from inside.
“I’m here with payroll,” I yelled.
There was a pause. “Bullshit,” came the reply.
“There are sixteen of you in here who haven’t gotten paid in weeks, and I am prepared to drop nineteen thousand yuan into your accounts. This offer expires in two minutes.”
The door swung open, and Ethylene Shavelson, all one and half meters of her, filled the doorway. The streetlights glinted off her face. She had decorated her tattoos with dots of reflective ink so her face looked like stars on black velvet. She had done the same with the tattoos on her massive arms. “That should be nineteen thousand twenty yuan,” she said, her voice sweet as honey. Behind her, in the shadows, I could see a few grandkids peeking out from the end of the hall.
“Really?” I said. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re on top of your family’s salaries, Ethylene.”
She sniffed and wiped her upper lip with her thumb. “What are you doing here? You’ve got nothing to do with payroll or cargo.”
“It’s a new day, Ethylene, and I am putting myself in charge of both. I want you and your family to get b
ack to work.”
She squinted up at me before bursting into laughter. “Oh, that is funnier than the time you tried to punch Diesel at the Union Hall.”
“She was prying the ornaments off the clock face,” I said.
Ethylene shrugged. “She wanted to make a mobile for her baby. Do you not like kids?”
“I love kids. I just don’t like it when their mommies vandalize an important piece of neighborhood art ’cause everyone’s too afraid to call them on their shit.”
Ethylene tightened her smile into a smirk. “You come here to sour talk my daughter?”
“I came here to get your family and your entire crew to work sending cargo up the cable. That’s forty-five seconds. You want to get paid, or you want to hide in your castle for another week?”
She rolled her eyes. “We’ve been through strikes before.”
“They had a point. This one doesn’t. Or are you going to tell me otherwise?”
Ethylene leaned against the doorjamb and sucked on her teeth. “I’m going along with everyone else. I hear there’s a strike, I go on strike.”
“I admire your sense of solidarity. Can you eat it for dinner?”
“We got plenty stashed.”
“I’m sure. What about your crew? Have you checked on them?”
Her smirk crinkled. “Some of them aren’t doing so hot, no. Georgiou Little, he’s out of insulin. Lucy Cousins, her little girl’s inhalers are out.”
“Then help me help them by getting back to work. Make the call. I’m good for the cash.”
“We’ll get paid when the strike’s over.”
“Then you can send my condolences to Georgiou and Lucy. ’Cause the strike isn’t going to end, Ethylene. Letty’s going to drag it out as long as possible because it’s the only way she can get the Union to cover its debts. If people are dead, they don’t draw payroll. If their families are dead, they don’t draw benefits.”
“That is highly nihilistic.”
“And it’s the truth.”
She shook her head. “You got video to back that up?”
“We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about you getting back to work. And my two minutes are almost up.”
“Send me a peek at your bank account.”
I shook my head. “You want to get paid, you come with me to the Public terminal on Oshkosh and Bloor.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“I want people to see you with me. I’m good for the money. You good with letting Georgiou go into a diabetic coma?”
“I want to know what your game is.”
“There is no game, Ethylene.” I stepped back from her front stoop. “There’s just people who work because we don’t live in a future where we’ve become beings of pure thought who subsist on light. We live in the future where we’ve got to work to put food on the table to keep from starving. We chose to Breach and join the Union, and that means a lifetime of looking out for each other, even if we don’t like each other. Letty may have failed you, but I won’t. Twenty seconds, and I’m walking over to Jack Lopez’s house. You know he’ll take my offer, and he’ll be the one convinces everyone else to go back to work ’cause people listen to him.”
She bristled. “They’ll listen to me more.”
“Then walk with me to Bloor.”
“Gran?” One of the kids appeared behind Ethylene. He struggled to hold up a kit bag bigger than his torso. “You going back to work? You need your gear?”
“Oy, Markel! Didn’t I tell you to stay away from that?”
The boy beamed at her. “I like to help.”
“Then you can help by doing what I say when I say it. Gimme that.”
Ethylene took the bag just as the kid was about to fall over from the weight. She tossed the bag over one shoulder and scooped Markel into a hug. “You run back inside. I need to finish talking with this lady.”
He nodded at her and gave me the eyeball. “You here to exploit my Gran?”
“I sure hope not,” I said. “Though that’s going to depend on what she chooses.”
He stuck out his tongue and ran into the house.
Ethylene shifted the bag, keeping a firm grip on the straps. “Nineteen thousand, huh?”
“And twenty.”
Ethylene grunted and turned back to the house. She put her fingers in her mouth and blew a whistle that rattled the windows. “It’s a work day!” she yelled. “Get a move on!” There was a clatter of feet, and, within minutes, every working Shavelson had assembled in the front hall. A few of them weren’t wearing pants, but everyone had their kit bags.
Ethylene jerked a thumb at me and addressed her family. “If what this woman has to say is true, then we’re all going back to work. If it isn’t true, you can throw her into the ocean off Sou’s Reach.”
Diesel Shavelson Thompson cracked her knuckles, then cracked her husband’s. I just smiled. “If you’ll all follow me, we can get started.” I hustled down the street, the Shavelsons all muttering amongst themselves. Only Ethylene had a pai; all her kids had to exchange information the old-fashioned way.
When we rounded the corner to Bloor, I saw six other people holding kit bags huddling around the terminal. I stepped back to Ethylene’s side. “Send a little message, did we?”
She harrumphed. “It’ll take more than the sixteen of us to get things rolling.” She smirked. “Besides, if you hadn’t mentioned Jack Lopez–”
“He’s going to get paid, too,” I said. “Everyone is.”
“Yeah,” she said, hitching her kit bag on her shoulder. “But we’re getting paid first.”
I sighed. “Rah rah, Solidarity.”
I looked into the terminal’s retinal scanner and spat on its touchscreen. It unlocked, and I saw that big, beautiful bank account balance stare back at me. There was so much I could buy with three million yuan: the best food, the finest men, the kind of life only meant for the upper echelons of Big Three Shareholders. I could fulfill my every physical need for the rest of my natural life. Hell, I could probably extend my natural life. Lord only knew what weird biomedical kinkiness the Big Three had dreamed up while I’d been on Santee Anchorage. Maybe I could buy myself a brand new brain. That would show The Fear who’s boss.
No. There would always be a mess to clean up, and I would rather spend my money cleaning up this mess. Plus, there was the chance to spite the ever-loving hell out of Letty.
I typed on the touchscreen and beckoned to Ethylene. “You’re due back wages from before the strike. This amount look right?”
She glanced and nodded. “What about today’s wages?”
“You get those when you clock out at the end of your shift. I’ve got it punched into the Public, and I won’t be able to cancel the order.”
“You can always cancel an order.”
“But not this one. We square?”
She spat on the touchscreen, and the terminal said, “Contract approved. Congratulations!”
We shook hands, and she squeezed extra hard. “What about tomorrow’s wages?”
“That depends on how much you dock monkeys can send up the cable.”
Ethylene laughed. “You just watch.” She nodded at the rest of the longshore crew, and they all stepped up to spit on the dotted line.
By the time I had paid out that first twenty-one people, another twenty had shown up. Six of them were Freeborn. “You can march right back to the kampong,” said one of the non-Shavelsons, a guy with a wagon wheel tattoo.
“We heard you’re paying back wages,” said one of the Freeborn, a woman with freckles and a tightly wound bun. “We’re machinists. Did a contract with the Roads Committee that ended before the strike. We never got paid.”
“Show me,” I said, pointing at the terminal.
“Oh, like she knows how to use one of those,” said Wagon Wheel. The rest snickered.
Freckles didn’t hesitate. She stepped to Wagon Wheel, keeping a breath away from his face. “You say something?”
&nbs
p; Wagon Wheel smiled. “You got hearing problems? Cane in your ears?”
Freckles made a face. “That doesn’t even make sense as an insult.”
“Go back to the kampong, lady,” said Wagon Wheel. “You can mooch off us after we get everything working again.”
I took a step toward them, but a powerful hand gripped my shoulder. I looked back, then down: Ethylene held on to me and shook her head.
Henriette Shavelson, the youngest of the clan, marched up to Wagon Wheel. “You got a problem, Nevniz?”
The man shook his head. Henriette was a head shorter, but Nevniz’s spine began to invert until he was looking up at Henriette. “Hey, I’m just fooling.”
“Fooling. That’s funny,” said Henriette, with absolutely no mirth in her eyes or voice. “I could have sworn I thought I heard you say something disparaging about someone who says they’re due wages. And there’s nothing funny about that. Is there?”
Nevniz swallowed hard. “No.”
“Damn right,” said Henriette. Nevniz took a step back.
Freckles stepped up to the terminal and spat on it. Sure enough, a signed, unpaid contract for five thousand yuan popped up for services rendered to the Roads Committee appeared on her profile. “That should have been a Union job,” said Ethylene.
Freckles shrugged. “Steamrollers don’t care who fixes them. We were in town, we got offered the gig.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Ethylene.
“Of course it does,” I said. “What better way to piss off as many people as possible, than by offering a Union job to non-Union people, and then not paying? Ask around. You’ll find plenty of contracts like this.” I blinked money into Freckles’ account, noting that her actual name was Martha. “And I intend on paying as many of them as I can.”