But Matthew couldn’t shake the knowledge that this girl would be taking him back to prison. In prison, everyone had been an informant. If you informed on your fellow prisoners, you got more food, more sleep, lighter duty. The best informants were like little bosses, and the other prisoners courted their favor like they were on the outside, giving them the equivalent of the “3 Gs”—golf, girls and gambling—with what ever they could scrape up from the prison’s walls. Matthew had never informed and had never been informed upon. He always chose the games he played, and he never played a game he couldn’t win.
And so he was numb when he met Jie, who smelled wonderful and had fantastic manners and a twinkling smile. She had his new identity papers, with the right picture, but a different name and identity number, and a fingerprint that he was sure wasn’t his own on the back. She chatted amiably as they walked, about inconsequentialities, the weather and the food, football scores and gossip about celebrities, a too-perfect empty-head that made him even more suspicious of this girl and her impeccable acting.
She led them to a small, run-down handshake building in the crowded old Cantonese part of town where Matthew had grown up, the “city-within-a-city” that the Cantonese had been squeezed into as South China ceased to be merely a place and became a symbol of the New China, the world’s factory. Being back in these familiar streets made him even more prickly, giving him the creeping certainty that he would be recognized any second, that some poor boyhood friend of his would be marked by this secret police-woman and sent to prison with him. He steeled himself to keep walking, though with each step he wanted to turn and bolt.
The flat she led them to had once been half of a tiny apartment. Now it was reduced to a single cramped room with piles of girly clothes and shoes, several computers perched on cheap desks, a sink whose rim was covered in cosmetics, and a screened-off area that presumably hid the toilet. The shower was next to the stove and sink, a tiled square in the corner with a drain set into the floor, a showerhead anchored to the wall, a curtain rail bolted to the ceiling.
Once the door was closed, Lu’s girlfriend changed demeanor so abruptly, it was as though she had removed a mask. Her face was now animated with intelligence, her bearing aggressive and keen. “We need to get you new clothes,” she said. “A shave, a haircut, some money—”
One thing Matthew had learned in prison was the importance of not getting carried along by other people’s scripts. A forceful person could do that: write a script, spin it out for you, put you in a role, and before you knew it, you were smuggling sealed packages from one part of the prison to another. Once someone else was writing the script, you were all but helpless.
“Wait,” he said. “Just stop.” She looked at him mildly. Lu was less calm—Matthew could tell at a glance that he was completely in this woman’s power. “Madame, I don’t mean to be rude, but who the hell are you, and why should I trust you?”
She laughed. “You want to know if I’m zengfu,” she said. Lu looked scandalized, but she was taking it well. “Of course you do. I’ve got money, apartments, I know where to get good ID papers—”
“And you’re very bossy,” Matthew said.
“I certainly am!” she said. “Now, have you ever heard of Jiandi?”
He had heard that name. He thought about it for a moment, casting his mind back to the distant, dreamlike time before prison. “The radio lady?” he said, slowly. “The one who talks to the factory girls?”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s the one.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ve heard of her.”
Lu grinned. “And now you’ve met her!”
Matthew thought about this for a moment, staring into the girl’s carefully made-up eyes, fringed with long, dark lashes. Finally he said, “No offense, but anyone can claim to be someone who no one has ever seen.”
Lu started to speak, but she held her hand up and silenced him. “He’s right,” she said. “Tank, the only reason I’m walking around free, still broadcasting, is that I am a very paranoid lady. Your friend’s paranoia is just good sense. Have you ever considered that you’ve never listened to me broadcasting, Tank? You’ve been here plenty for the broadcasts, but you’ve never tuned in. For all you know, I am zengfu, infiltrating your ranks with a giant, elaborate counterfeit that has other cops calling in, pretending to be listeners to a show that never goes any farther than the room I’m sitting in.” Lu’s mouth opened and shut, opened and shut. She laughed at him. “Don’t worry, I’m no cop. I’m just pointing out that you’re a very trusting sort of boy. Maybe too trusting. Your friend here is a little more cautious, that’s all. I thoroughly approve.”
Matthew found himself hoping that this girl wasn’t a cop for the simple reason that he was starting to like her. Not to mention that if she was a cop, he’d go straight back to jail; but now that his panic was receding, he was able to consider what she would be like as a comrade. He liked the idea.
“Okay,” he said. “So, if you’re Jiandi, then it should be easy for you to prove it. Just do a show, and I’ll tune in and listen to it.”
“How do you know Jiandi isn’t a cop?” She had a twinkle in her eye.
“Not even the cops are that devious,” he said. “They couldn’t stand to have all those Falun Gong ads and all that seditious talk about the party—it wouldn’t last a week, let alone years and years.”
She nodded. “I think so, too. Lu, do you agree?”
Lu, still miserable looking, nodded glumly.
“Cheer up,” she said. “You get to have a little solo time with your friend!”
They ended up at a new game cafe, far off on the metro line, by the Windows on the World theme park, where everyone ended up eventually. Matthew remembered that visit with his father long ago, when he’d gotten to dress up in ancient battle-armor and fire arrows at targets, while a man with a Cantonese accent who was dressed like an American Indian gave him pointers. It had been fun, but nothing so nice as the games that Matthew was already playing.
The metro let them off just around the corner from the park, in front of a giant run-down hotel that had been closed the last time Matthew came through here. The game cafe was in the former hotel restaurant, something pirate-themed with a huge fake pirate ship on the roof. Inside, it was choked with smoke, and the tables had been formed into the usual long stretches with a PC every meter or so. About half of them were occupied, and in one corner of the restaurant there were fifty or sixty gamers who were clearly gold farmers, working under the watchful eye of an older goon with a hard face and a cigarette in one corner of his mouth. It was incredibly hot inside the cafe, twenty degrees hotter than outside, and it was as dark and dank as a cave. Matthew felt instantly at home.
Lu shoved some folded bills at the old man behind the counter, an evil-looking, toothless grandfather with a pronounced hump and two missing fingers on one hand. Lu looked back at Matthew, then ordered a plate of dumplings as well. The man drew a styrofoam tray out of a chest freezer, punctured the film on top, and put in the micro wave beside him at the reception desk. “Go,” he croaked, “I’ll bring them to you.”
Matthew and Lu sat down at adjacent PCs far from the rest of the crowd, next to a picture window that had been covered over with newspapers. Matthew put his eye up to a rip in the paper and peeked out at the ruins of an elaborate, nautical-themed swimming pool outside, complete with twisting water-slides and fountains, now gone green and scummy. “Nice hotel,” he said.
Lu was mousing his way over to Jiandi’s web-page, weaving the connection through a series of proxies, looking up the latest addresses for her stream mirrors, finding one that worked. “I think we’ll have 45 minutes at least before anyone notices that this PC is doing something out-of-bounds. I trust that will be plenty of time for you to satisfy your suspicious mind.”
Matthew saw that Lu was really angry, and he swallowed his own anger—something else he’d had plenty of practice at in prison. “I just want to be safe, Lu. This isn’t a ga
me.” Then he heard his own words and grinned. “Okay, it is a game. But it’s also real life. It has consequences.” He plucked at the shirt that hung loose on his skinny body. “It wouldn’t hurt you to be more careful.”
Lu said nothing, but his lips were pursed and white. The old man brought them their dumplings and they ate them in silence. They were miserable dumplings, filled with something that tasted like shredded paper, but they were still better than prison chicken’s feet.
Matthew looked at the boy. He was always thoughtful—a strange thing for a tank to be—and considerate, and brave. He hadn’t been in Matthew’s original guild, but when Boss Wing had put him in charge of the whole elite squad, they’d come willingly, seeing in Matthew a strategist who could lead them to victory. And when Matthew had started whispering to them about the Webblies, Lu had been as excited as anyone. All that seemed so long ago, a different life and different time, before a policeman’s baton had knocked him down, before he had gone to prison, before he’d turned into the man he was now. But Matthew was back in the world now, and Lu had been living on his wits for months, and—
“I owe you an apology,” he said, setting down his chopsticks. “I still don’t know if I can trust your friend, but I could have been a little smarter about how I said it. It’s been a strange day—thirty-six hours ago, I was wearing a prison uniform.”
Lu started at him, and then a little smile snuck into the corners of his mouth. “It’s all right,” he said. “Here, she’s starting.” He popped out his earwig, already paired with the computer’s sound-system, wiped it on his sleeve, and handed it to Matthew. Matthew screwed it into his ear.
“Hello, sisters,” came the familiar voice. “It’s a little early, I know, but this is a short and special broadcast for you lucky ladies who have the day off, are sick in the infirmary, or happen to have snuck headphones into the factory. Hello, hello, hello. Shall we take a phone call or two?”
Lu grinned at Matthew and stood and walked out of the cafe. Matthew touched the earwig, thought about going after him, decided not to. A moment later, Jiandi said, “There we go, hello, hello.”
“Hello Jiandi,” said Lu. Matthew put his eye back up to the gap in the newspaper-covered glass and found himself staring at a grinning Lu, standing behind the building, phone to his head.
“Tank!” she squealed. “How fantastic to hear from you again. It’s been ages since you came on my show! Tell me, Tank, what’s on your mind today?”
“Justice,” Lu/Tank said. Matthew found himself laughing quietly, and he ducked his head so as not to draw attention. “Justice for working people. We come to Guangdong province because they say that we will be rich. But when we get here, we have bad working conditions, bad pay, and everything is stacked against us. No one can get real papers to live here, so we all buy fakes, and the police know they can stop us at any time and put us in jail or send us away because we don’t have real documents. Our bosses know it, so they lock us in, or beat us, or steal our pay. I have been here for five years now, and I see how it works: the rich get richer, the poor get used up and sent back to the village, ruined. The corrupt government runs on bribes, not justice, and any attempt by working people to organize for a better deal is met with violence and war. The corrupt businessmen buy corrupt policemen who work for corrupt government.
“I’ve had enough! It’s time for working people to organize—one of us is nothing. Together, we can’t be stopped. China’s revolutions have come and gone, and still the few are rich and the many are poor. It’s time for a worldwide revolution: workers in China, India, America—all over—have to fight together. We will use the internet because we are better at the internet than our bosses are. The internet is shaped like a worker’s organization: chaotic, spread out, without a few leaders making all the decisions. We know how to interface with it. Our bosses only understand the internet when they can make it shaped like them, forcing all our clicks through a few bottlenecks that they can own and control. We can’t be controlled. We can’t be stopped. We will win!”
Jiandi laughed into the mic, a throaty, sexy sound. “Oh, Tank! So serious! You make us all feel like silly children with your talk!
“But he’s right, sisters, you know he is. We worry about our little problems, our bosses trying to screw us or cheat us, police chasing us, our networks infected and spied on, but we never ask why, what’s the system for?” She drew in a deep breath. “We never ask what we can do.”
A long silence. Matthew clicked on the computer, verified that he was indeed tuned into the Factory Girl Show. He felt an unnameable emotion inside his chest, in his belly. She was what she said she was. Not a cop. Not a spy.
Well, either that or the whole thing was a huge setup, and the police had been running this woman’s operation for years now, deceiving millions, just to have this insider. That was an incredibly weird idea. But sometimes the politburo was incredibly weird.
“We’ll know what to do. Soon enough, sisters, have no fear. Keep listening—tune in tonight for our regular show—and someday very soon we’ll tell you what you can do. Wait and wait.
“And you policemen and government bureaucrats and bosses listening now? Be afraid.”
Her voice clicked off, and a cheerful lunatic started saying crazy things about how great Falun Gong was, the traditional junk advertising he’d heard on Jiandi’s show before.
He thoughtfully chewed another newspaper dumpling and waited for Lu to make his way back into the cafe. He’d been out of prison for less than two days and his life was a million times more interesting than it had been just a few hours before. And he had dumplings. Things were happening—big things.
Lu shook his hand again, and the two of them left quickly, heading for the metro entrance. As they ran down the stairs, Lu leaned over and said, quietly, “Wait until you hear what we’ve got planned.” His voice was tight, excited. Almost gleeful.
“I can’t wait,” Matthew said. There was a hopeful feeling bubbling up inside him now. When was the last time he’d felt hopeful? Oh yes. It was when he quit Boss Wing’s gold-farm, taking his guildies with him, and set up his own business. That hadn’t ended well, of course. But the hope had been delicious. It was delicious now.
Justbob had her whole network online. These were the best fighters in the IWWWW, passionate and committed. They’d been fighting off Pinkertons and dodging game security for a year, and it had made them hard. Some of them had been beaten in real life, just like Justbob and Krang and BSN, and it was a badge of honor to replace your user-icon with a picture of your injuries—an x-ray full of shattered bones, a close-up of a grisly row of stitches.
She loved her fighters. And they loved her.
“Hello, pretties,” she cooed into her earwig, adjusting the icepack she’d wedged between her tailbone and the chair. They were operating out of a new cafe now, still in the Geylang, which was still the best place to be in Singapore if you wanted to be a little out of bounds without attracting too much police attention. “Ready for the latest word?”
There was a chorus of cheers from around the world. Justbob spoke Malay, Indonesian, English, Tamil, and a little Mandarin and Hindi, but they tended to operate in English, which everyone spoke a little of. There was a back-channel, of course, a text chat where people helped out with translations. They had to speak slowly, but it worked.
“We are going to take on four worlds, all at the same time: Mushroom Kingdom, Zombie Mecha, Svartalfheim Warriors, and Magic of Hogwarts.” She watched the backchannel, waited until the translations were all sorted out. “What do I mean by ‘take on’? I mean take over. We’re going to seize control of the economies of all four worlds: the majority of the gold, prestige items, and power. We’re going to do it fast. We’re going to be unstoppable: whenever an operation is disrupted, we will have three more standing by. We’re going to control the destiny of every boss whose workers toil in those worlds. We’re going to rock their corporate masters. We’re going to fight off every Pinker
ton, either converting them to our cause or beating them so badly that they change careers.
“To do this, we’re going to need many thousands of players working in coordination. Mostly that means doing what they do best: making gold. But we also expect heavy resistance once word gets out about what we’re up to. We’ll need fighters to defend our lines from Pinkertons, of course, but we also need a lot of distraction and interference, all over, including—no, especially—in worlds where we’re not going for it. We want game management thoroughly confused until it’s too late. You will need proxies, lots of them, and as many avs as you can level up. That’s your number-one task right now—level up as many avs as you can, so you can switch accounts and jump into a new fighter the second an old one gets disconnected.” She watched the backchatter for a second, then added, “Yes, of course, we’re working on that now. In a day or so, we’ll have prepaid account cards for all of you. They’ll need US proxies to run, so make sure you’ve got a good list of them.”
She watched the chatter for another moment. “Of course, yes, they will try to shut down the proxies, but if they do, there will be howls from their American players. Do you know how many Americans sneak out of their work networks to play during the day using those proxies? If they start blocking proxies, they’ll be blocking some of their best customers. And of course, many Mechanical Turks are on school networks, using proxies to log in to their jobs. They can’t afford to block all those proxies—not for long!”
The back channel erupted. They liked that. It was good strategy, like when you aggroed a boss and then found a shelter that put some low-level baddies between you and it, and provoked a fight where they all fought each other instead of you. Justbob wished she could say more about this, because the deviousness of it all had given her an all-day, all-week, all-month smile when they’d worked it out in one of the high-level cell meetings. But she understood the need for secrecy. It was a sure bet that some of the fighters on this conference were working for the other side; after all, some of their spies were inside the companies, weren’t they?
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