by John Scalzi
People milled around the sidewalks.
I would have said they were homeless, but they didn’t look like garden variety homeless. They were all clean-shaven, well-clothed. A variety of hairstyles: punk to stiff to end-overs. A lot of them wore gray suits, others a loose poncho.
They all sat along the street, watching traffic and life pass by. Some waved as we passed them. One of them sat next to a large plastic cube that was folding itself up, deflating from where it was hooked to the side of the street. Some sort of mobile tent.
Most of them bunched up near the disused skyscrapers of the outer ring. As we hit downtown they thinned out. But we passed one last pair, sitting on folding chairs, fruit drinks in hand with little umbrellas perched off to the side.
“Listen,” Maggie said. “You still hurting for cash?”
“Yeah.” Two men in blue pinstripes leaned against a corner, talking into earpieces. I’d done a tour. These guys were doing recon. I’d have bet the day’s tips on it.
What the hell was going on out in the Slumps? I needed to pay more attention to the news, because whatever it was, the Eddies would be on to it soon. If there was going to be any trouble anywhere downtown I wanted to know about it before it reached me.
“I wasn’t just trying to sleep out there last night for no reason. There’s a guy, paid me a week’s worth to try and shelter in the Slumps for a night,” Maggie said. “I’d run out, couldn’t afford the hotel I was in anymore.”
“Creepy?”
“Turk work. Anonymous. Some piece of software’s my second boss. I found the job on a list. Looking for people in Detroit to do stuff around the city. Random shit. Day One, I delivered a package lying out on a counter in a hotel to a bike courier ten blocks away. Then a couple days later I had to walk up to the top of some old carpark and toss some paperballs over the side. Weird stuff. Random. Paid well. Last night it was good pay to see how long I could stay in a Slump building. Some other guy, a lawyer, turking out himself probably, came and bailed me out from the Eddies. As promised, if I got caught.”
“Job listing still up?” I asked.
“Nah. But whoever’s running this is offering me a bonus to refer people verbally.” Maggie handed me a piece of paper with an email address of random numbers on it. One time encryption, no doubt.
“A week’s worth?” Pay like this, and with the money Maggie was saving me, I might be able to think about a place in the city. I could ditch the house in the Wilds after Maggie inevitably moved on.
“Week,” she confirmed.
“That’s worth a bruised eye,” I said.
“Damn straight.”
Plus, it sounded harmless enough.
I DON’T know why it’s called turking. Taking a complicated task and putting it up online, divvying up the parts of a task between multiple people and paying for the results, that had been going on a long time.
Say you needed someone to find a certain face in a crowd, if you were an Edgewater investigator. You could upload the photo of the perp you were hunting, and then upload pictures of crowds you suspected the person was in.
Then you put the task up online and paid whoever turned in a result. Saved you time, someone else did the idiot work, and you got to focus on higher level stuff.
But it went further than that. Suppose you had a package in Los Angeles that needed to get to New York. When I was a kid you’d go to a centralized post office, pay for stamps, and it would be taken on a special van at a certain time of day along a series of routes to an airplane, across the country with a bunch of other packages to a distribution center, and then onto more vans, to finally end up in New York. And most of all that was run by that one company.
Today you turked the package out. Left it at a street corner with a price embedded on the package’s tag. Someone going in the right direction would snag it and get the credit or partial credit for taking it as close to the goal as they could get it.
But other things were also turked out. Insidious things. And you’d never know. All you were being asked to do was walk a package a couple miles from one place to another. What was in the package? None of your business. And if you opened it, the tag could snag a picture of you or pass on the information you used to agree to grab the package with to the owner.
No sense doing that.
So there was also no sense in wondering what I was complicit in when I pinged the email on the piece of paper Maggie’d given me, and got back a set of simple instructions.
I was to stand on the corner not too far from an Edgewater depot, and when they left their compound, text a certain number.
Simple enough.
And with good pay. I’d make what I made in three or four night’s bouncing to do this.
Someone really wanted to know what Edgewater’s comings and goings were.
Not really harmless anymore. But still potentially lucrative.
I left work early for my street turk assignment, walking my way over to the location. I stood in the hot night, wind kicking faded pieces of litter past me. Dirt kicked up, grit stinging my eyes, and the nighttime rush of the city flowed by. I had staked out a spot on the street near an alley where part of a brick wall collapsed in. No one could walk up behind me, and I had the shadows to lurk in.
Trails of brake lights burned on the back of my retinas as cars whined past. Some even thundered past. Uncollected trash out on a sidewalk smelled rich, making the thermos of coffee I had clipped to my belt seem unappetizing.
The Edgewater compound broke into a flurry of activity as a large armored van full of men in riot gear rolled on out, a siren burping out a staccato series of wails and screeches.
I texted.
Over the next eight hours I texted three more times as the streets fell into their late night rhythm of random cars, distant sirens, and the occasional cat fight that broke out near any given garbage can.
Simple enough.
When dawn broke over the skyline I had an hour left. I was that much closer to leaving the Wilds. And it was then I heard the click of a safety catch being released in the alley behind me.
Impossible, but there it was.
I had the lid cup of the thermos filled with coffee. I slowly raised both hands, the thermos cup lid hanging off my pinkie.
The Eddies must have spotted me.
“On the ground,” spat the voice behind me. I followed the order.
Once I kissed the sidewalk he zip-tied my hands behind me. I heard an engine gun up loudly as a vehicle whipped around the street corner. I was wrenched up to standing and tossed into the back of the armored personnel carrier that I had watched roar out of their compound all night.
In the dim light inside they shoved me up against a metal bench. Five men in full urban combat garb stared at me. With gray fatigues and night vision goggles, they were also fully kitted out to climb buildings, blow out doors, and rush in with a shoot-first-ask-questions-later sort of look to them.
“Good morning,” said the nearest Eddie. “What have we here?”
“He was staking us out,” said the one who’d snuck up on me.
After Sudan I’d been offered a job as an Eddie in Cleveland.
By then, I’d put in enough time kicking down doors and trying to figure out if the gray-green blob inside my night vision goggles was going to shoot me or run screaming.
“You staking us out, you little concrete bunny?” The nearest Eddie, a pale-looking thin dude with a sour smell, leaned in. “You related to those fuckers that’ve been setting off little bombs and running for it, just to get us to run around all night? You getting off on wasting our time?”
Nothing I said would be helpful, but if I remained quiet, that was a problem too. They had me here in the armored carrier because they could rough me up some before getting back to the compound. They were having a long night, and now they had a target.
Straight truth was the easiest course. No running around. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” I said. “But maybe
. I got paid a good bit. Street turking. Just to stand there and text a number if you guys ran out in a hurry. I’m the bouncer at ZaZa’s, usually, but I’m out in the Wilds. They offered me good money to stand here. Bus fares are tight: you know the drill.”
The nearby Eddie still looked keyed up to cause me some pain, but the Eddie standing in silhouette at the entrance to the carrier nodded. “Makes sense. Turk out the stake out, just like the guy last night. We’ll bust you, they’ll have a turked out lawyer ready and waiting. They have other turks watching this scene, if last night was any indication.”
“Fuckers,” the sour-smelling Eddie said.
“Take this joker to a cell and wait for bail, charge the max for loitering,” the Eddie outside said. He sounded in charge and on top. “Might as well see some good green for our trouble.”
“Shit.” Sour-smelling Eddie spat something nasty and brown at my feet. “Sure about that?”
“Dee and me will take patrol, see if we can flush out the other turks.” This Eddie looked young, and tired. He rubbed his face. Maybe he’d commanded a squad overseas, enough savvy to get noticed and promoted to running things when he got back.
Now he probably sensed something was in the air, something that didn’t bode well for the Eddies.
OUTSIDE Eddie shut the doors and slapped them, and the carrier lurched into gear. Sour-smelling Eddie smiled at me.
I didn’t like him.
Some people enjoyed their jobs way too much.
This punk was probably some kid from the Midwest, one of those who seemed to think that everyone non-white was to blame for everything that was wrong with the country since any of the various crises had hit. He took some relish in policing the city, putting certain people in their place.
Probably had a no-immigration bumper sticker on his electric pickup cart. Even though it was mostly Canada and the Europeans trying to keep us contained in our own borders these days.
He volunteered to steer me to my cell, and followed me in.
I turned to face him. “Can I help…”
He hit me hard in the stomach, but I’d already tensed and let my torso move with the blow.
Still hurt. All this bus riding and gardening didn’t exactly keep me in peak shape. I needed to remember to work a bit harder on that.
I was a bouncer, after all.
Back a few steps, and I was ready for the next, but someone smacked the windows with the palm of their hand. “Hey! Gary. Knock that shit out.”
The Community Management Officer of the station stood outside. CMO S. Whatten, the patch on his chest indicated. Unlike all the other head-shaved urban commandos I’d run into tonight, Whatten had a business cut going. Middle-management kind of look. A suit.
But you could see in his posture he was command through and through. Probably served in the same fields as me. Been given a pat on the back, a gas bonus, and taken private work on his return.
S. Whatten shook his head. “Gary, you lose your cut.”
“What?” Gary looked genuinely shocked. “I helped pull this one in.”
“He’s got a lawyer outside. If you kept going they wouldn’t be paying us permanent bail, idiot, they’d be getting a force-and-violence payout from us.” Whatten shoved Gary back. “Keep it up, Gary, keep it up and I’ll happily toss your ass out of the dorm and let you walk to work every day. See how long you last on your own two feet.” A known Edgewater walking out and around. He’d get knifed in the back before long unless he was very quick on his toes. Gary didn’t strike me as quick on his toes.
Gary swallowed, and with a glance back at me, left the room.
But this wasn’t over. CMO S. Whatten stood in the middle of the door, looking me over. “You don’t have any property to post a lien against. Got a lawyer outside. Got no money our computer can find. But no record.”
They couldn’t find my money because I took it out and buried it deep in the Wilds, in the backyards woods. “You going to knock me around and tell me to keep more pocket change on me so that next time you won’t feel like you wasted your effort?”
“No,” Whatten sighed. “Not going to waste the effort. Not going to drill through a thick grunt’s skull like yours.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, plus, I don’t take orders anymore.”
“Fair enough.” But Whatten still hadn’t moved. “You don’t know what the hell you were doing out there…”
“You know how it works,” I said. This was leading to something else, though.
“I’ve seen enough turked out armies in my time,” Whatten said. “I look young, but I paid out hard. I’ve seen the ghosts merging in on you, kids with fireworks, others with guns, others with cameras waiting for you to make the inevitable mistake.”
Whatten said ghosts. And he looked haunted, his wide eyes flicked back to memories of battles past in other lands.
The warlords would hand out cellphones like candy to the kids. Promise them gas or food to carry out errands. And individually, not much was going on.
But as a whole, a vast and complicated and decentralized attack, they could bring armies down to their knees before anyone knew what had happened.
I could see Whatten opening fire on some starving teenager with a toy gun, while the cameras relayed the horrible results live to some hungry, waiting news service. Then after the cameras shut off, the kids with the real guns, who looked just like the others, moved in to attack.
“You know something big is moving,” Whatten said. “People staking us out, street turkers all over the place, setting up things. Waiting. Out there. You know what the revised articles of engagement are, Reginald?”
“Yeah, I know them.” It’s why I wouldn’t ever become a damned Eddie. Or any domestic boot-stomping yahoo.
All you did for a turked army was to put a brick down by the side of a road. And maybe all it took was a few hundred other bricks placed to create a roadblock. Individually, you could claim you were just making a buck.
But that still made you an enemy combatant. Which meant you were no longer a citizen.
You didn’t belong to another country, either.
There were no rules about what they could do to you then. You simply didn’t exist as far as the rule of law was concerned.
“At some point,” Whatten told me. “Us Eddies’ll get attacked here. And we don’t stay Eddies when it turns into a war. When the Nationals get mobilized, we’re a subdivision of the army. Then people like Gary, and the real commandos, they’ll come in shooting, kicking in your teeth, and really showing you some pain.”
I shrugged. “You know of another way I can cover my transportation? Some place to stay here in town?”
Whatten crossed his arms over his chest. “So for that you’re dumb enough to work for some turker you don’t even know? The people you’re turking for don’t even have reputation points. You have no idea what the big scheme is? I’ve seen you around, down at ZaZa’s. You’re no tool.”
“Heirarchy of needs, CMO. Give the indigenous infrastructure, they don’t have to depend on desperate moves.” That was a barb that dug deep. Whatten had commanded. No doubt he’d heard that phrase often enough. He’d have taught it, too.
Get dropped into some third world situation where they had nothing. No matter the reason, you soon found out that whoever hated your ass could drum up eager waves of hungry soldiers throwing themselves against you.
There was always some rhetoric. But when you dug deep, it always came down to the simple fact that the ready-to-die simply had nothing to lose. They’d sign up and trust the math. If enough of them attacked, maybe they’d live. Maybe they’d get something out of it. Save their family, get something to eat, live, whatever.
Now give them something to lose, then those waves thinned out.
Infrastructure. Running water. Food. Medical assistance. Homes. Roads and travel. The most devastating tools of war.
But in a world where even the first world nations struggled to provide transportation, water, and saf
ety, well, domestic shitstorms started to look like foreign ones. What you never thought you’d see anywhere but abroad, that came home with you.
Whether the starving and displaced were in Africa, or sitting around a dike that had burst somewhere on a coast here, the pressures were the same. Particularly once the domestic dike had been broken over and over again, where citizens realized that it wasn’t just a one-off, weather had changed, and the government didn’t have much to help them with.
That’s when your thin line of civilization faded.
Welcome home, Whatten, and by the way you never left the front line, I thought to myself.
He got it. He stepped aside to let me walk past and down the corridor. At the other end a gray-suited man with a briefcase waited for me.
My mysterious lawyer, and fellow turker.
I was pushing up a good defense for Whatten. The truth was…I was getting nervous.
I didn’t know what the hell I was getting myself into. And maybe it was time to get myself out.
THE lawyer asked me to keep my mouth shut until well clear of the compound: sign this, initial here, don’t worry about that. Quick, assured, and efficient. I was buzzed through the thick bomb-proof doors in no time.
He had a bike outside, an old and well-traveled carbon fiber Schwinn with a GPS in the handle and a heavy saddle on the back. He wheeled it alongside me. “Your fine has been covered. Your night’s work is done,” he said. “Thank you.”
I’d checked my account on my phone, but didn’t see the rest of my night’s pay. I mentioned it.
The lawyer looked over at me and sighed. “It’s in the fine print. The cost of springing you is far more than your payoff, so you get nothing as a result of getting arrested by this Edgewater franchise. You’re getting a good deal, trust me.”
I never took too well to getting pissed on and being told to like it. “I’m not a fine print kind of man.”
Had they paid me after a successful mission, where the Eddies wouldn’t have had anything to take from me, I would have been up for the night.
Now all I had to show for the night’s efforts was the down payment on this little affair and some very sore ribs.