by Alex London
“The proxy owes his patron a debt accrued for theft, trespassing, destruction of property,” the Guardian said.
“What an idiot,” Sydney muttered.
“And homicide,” the Guardian added.
“Wait, what?” blurted Sydney.
“Wait, what?” Knox blurted with him. “Homicide . . .” He looked at his dad. Machines started beeping; holo projections of his vital signs appeared all over the room.
“Yes, Knox, and I hope this will teach you a lesson,” his father answered, peering over his glasses. “Marie died.”
“Who?” was all Knox could muster before the world went black again.
[8]
IT WAS SOME TIME later, Knox couldn’t tell how long, when that familiar drug rush of clarity and pain woke him. His father and the nurse were on either side of him and he was staring once more at Sydney, his proxy, on the holo at the end of his bed.
Knox hadn’t moved, but Sydney had. He was in a tiled room, brightly lit. The proxy’s skin looked almost gray under the harsh lights, and he didn’t look bored anymore.
He looked frightened.
The picture zoomed in close on his face, probably for dramatic effect now that Knox was awake. He hated those cheap tricks. The punishments should really speak for themselves. But some case agent in some office somewhere probably had his own ideas about cinematography.
The image widened to reveal that Sydney was tied up by the wrists and suspended by some sort of chain overhead. He’d been stripped down to his boxer shorts. He had a large scar on his upper arm, probably from the cheap biofeed install when he was a child. He had two more scars along one side of his rib cage and another along his collarbone that looked like it had been sewn shut with concertina wire. Knox wondered why he didn’t get the scars fixed. There were patches that could do the repair work and they weren’t even that expensive. Maybe the kid took pride in looking like a thug. Maybe that was fashionable in the Valve.
The Guardians were with the proxy, flanking him, maybe the same ones, maybe different ones. It was impossible to tell.
Sydney’s clothes were piled on a table in front of him, just a shirt and cargo pants. His plastic holo projector sat beside them on the table, smashed, useless. That seemed excessive to Knox, adding inconvenience to injury. What lesson could breaking the kid’s datastream access possibly teach Knox?
“Sound again, please,” Knox’s father commanded and the nurse brought up the volume. All they could hear was Syd’s deep breathing.
No one spoke.
Knox had seen his proxy punished in all sorts of ways over the years: zapped with the EMD sticks, forced to work under the blazing sun out on the dam construction above the river, even just held alone in the dark for days. That was how the system worked. Knox’s father purchased the boy’s debt and when Knox broke the rules, the boy was punished. It was a transaction, plain and simple, the cornerstone of civilization. The free market.
But this—tied up, nearly naked. It was too raw. Too physical. Knox wanted it to stop.
Calm down, Knox, he reminded himself. Think clearly. It’s not like anyone forced this Sydney kid to go into debt, right? Was it Knox’s fault the boy had bad luck? The proxies were randomly assigned by age group. Xelon purchased huge blocks of debt in bulk, sold and resold them automatically. Nothing personal at all.
Some other kid in the Valve was probably racking up debt with some patron kid who never broke the rules. Like that kiss-ass in his Intro to Financialization class, Duross Wen. He never did anything wrong. He’d probably never even seen his proxy and never would. His family paid and paid and the proxy got credit for nothing. It was a gamble. Duross’s proxy had won. Sydney had lost. It was that simple.
But this time a girl had died.
A girl named Marie.
She died because of him.
Knox still couldn’t exactly remember how or why, but he’d find out. That was the deal. When his proxy was punished, Knox was forced to watch it happen. Even now, even in his hospital bed. His father sat in judgment beside him.
Knox had known Sydney since they were both four years old, even though Sydney would never know him. The first time he saw Sydney Carton was because Knox had broken one of the ancient tablets his great-grandmother rescued from the ruined museums of the East Coast when the floodwaters rose, a stone slab with little dents and shapes in it, some contract from some long-forgotten civilization. Messoposomething. Knox had tried to ride it down the stairs. It shattered halfway to the landing.
Sydney was pulled right out of his bed in a part of the city Knox hadn’t known existed. He was skinny and brown and his hair was wild and kinky and he didn’t look anything like the other children Knox knew. Just seeing him made Knox frightened.
When he was brought into the room, Knox remembered Sydney laughing. He stopped laughing when he saw the EMD stick. Sydney got five low-power zaps and he obviously didn’t understand why, even when the matronly head of the orphanage explained it to him. He just cried and cried and screamed and cried some more. Knox cried right along with him.
Then Knox apologized to the holo and to his father and even to the little vacuum robot he’d tried to blame for breaking the tablet. He vowed to be better, promised he’d never be a disappointment again, but that lasted about six weeks, until he tried to see if the vacuubot could fly by throwing it off the roof.
It couldn’t.
For that, Syd got ten zaps.
Within a year, Sydney had stopped crying and Knox had stopped wincing when he watched. They varied the punishments as the boys aged, but it never affected Knox as it did the first time. And Sydney seemed to take it in stride. All part of the system.
But now Knox felt that old pang, that feeling he hadn’t really known since that old clay tablet. He was watching the screen and he was afraid. He felt like he was in the room with Sydney, like he was Sydney.
“Your patron has committed serious crimes,” the female Guardian said. “Per the terms of your contract, you will be administered the full punishment unless he files a waiver to appear in your place, is that understood?”
Sydney didn’t answer. He just looked around the room.
“Where is he?” Sydney asked, eyes darting. No way he’d even see the cameras, but still, his glances made Knox wrap his hospital gown tighter. He hugged himself.
“His whereabouts are not your concern,” the Guardian said. “Do you understand why you are being punished?”
“Because my patron is a waste of meat,” Sydney said.
The female Guardian smiled in an imitation of sympathy. She nodded and the male Guardian stepped forward with an EMD stick and put it against Sydney’s side.
The proxy squirmed and writhed; his feet left the floor and his toes curled. When the stick was pulled away his head slumped forward and he gasped. He looked up again. The view zoomed in on his face. Knox wanted to close his eyes, but he wouldn’t give his father the satisfaction. He wasn’t in that room. He wasn’t Sydney. Nothing like someone else’s pain to put you back in your own body. He was here, in this room with his own pain and he wouldn’t blink.
“Do you understand?” the female Guardian asked again. Sydney nodded.
“Good. You currently have two remaining years of debt to repay. We are required to give you the option to repay in full now. The current rate of exchange is four thousand eight hundred and sixty-two credits per month outstanding, for a total of one hundred sixteen thousand six hundred eighty-eight, plus processing fees. Would you prefer to repay in full now and defer punishment?”
This was the standard script. The rates changed based on a formula only the top executives could see, but the choice was the same every time. It’s either you or me. Someone’s got to pay.
It was pretty absurd when they were little kids. Knox didn’t know what any of those words meant, and it didn’t look like Sydney did either. But it was like the old religions: Repeat the prayers over and over for years and years and only later come to understand the
m.
Knox got worried as they got older that Sydney would say yes one of these days, and buy his way out of the system. Would this be the time? He held his breath, not sure what he was hoping.
“Repay with what?” Sydney sneered.
The Guardian nodded and a holo appeared in front of her. She tapped it a few times to enter the response, then vanished it with a wave of her hand. She met Sydney’s eyes.
“We will administer the punishment as follows—” Knox held his breath. He was going to hear the full list of what he’d done. “For your patron’s crime of larceny of corporate property you will receive twenty pulses at level eight-point-seven. For the crime of trespassing and destruction of property, you will receive forty pulses at level twelve-point-five”—Sydney slumped where he was hanging—“and for the crime of negligent homicide, your flesh be branded with the name of the deceased, one Marie Louise Alvarez, and you will be sent to Old Sterling Work Colony for the period of sixteen years, eighteen days and nine hours.”
Sydney’s head snapped up. His face showed a new expression, the lips turned down, the eyebrows collapsing toward each other. “You can’t . . . I only have two years left . . .”
“Per the terms of the agreement, all policies are based on penal recommendations as defined in the current actuarial tables available through the Xelon Corporation Information System at the time of contract. The compensation for the life of a patron is the equal number of years from the offender’s proxy as replacement for lost productivity, as your contract clearly states.”
“But, I never . . . I was a baby when the contract was made.”
“The Benevolent Society enrolled you in loco parentis to repay your debts. You should have filed a formal objection at the time.”
“I was a baby!”
“Unless your patron would care to waive his exemption, we will begin immediately.”
“You can’t do this . . . Sterling . . . sixteen years . . .”
The silence hung heavy around the hospital room. The nurse looked at her feet. Knox could feel his father’s attention shift from his datastream to his son, even without seeing his eyes.
He frowned. Whatever he saw on Knox’s face was more disgusting to him than the torture Sydney was enduring.
“We will begin.” The Guardian nodded at her colleague, who stepped forward with the EMD stick emitting a low hum that seemed to shake the image in the air. Knox winced as it got near his proxy.
“Why shock me if you’re just going to send me to Sterling?” Sydney squirmed where he hung, pulling his waist away from the tip of the EMD stick.
“The punishments are not for you,” the Guardian said without the slightest hint of emotion in her voice. “They are for your patron.”
“Who is he? What’s his name?” Sydney yelled. “Coward! I know you’re watching! You knockoff patron coward!”
The first shock sent Sydney’s whole body rigid. Every muscle tensed. Knox could see the veins in Sydney’s forehead and arms pop up. The stick was removed from his side and he slumped again where he hung. The holos from the proxy’s biofeed that hovered around the tiled room flickered. The EMD pulse disrupted his signal. It fried every nerve in his body.
“One,” said the female Guardian.
Sydney gasped. The stick touched his side again. He flailed. His legs danced freely in the air; his neck thrashed from side to side. The holos around him flickered again.
“Two,” she said.
More flickers.
“Three.”
Knox closed his eyes. He had to. He couldn’t witness this. In the oblivion, Knox saw an image of the girl. Her purple wink, her dark hair, her nervous laugh. He’d taken a car. He’d convinced her to come. Her name was Marie. Marie Alvarez.
“Open your eyes, Knox,” his father barked at him. A rush passed through his limbs and his eyes shot open on their own.
“Do you realize how much this is costing me?” His father leaned forward. “My rates are going to go sky high because of this. I’ll have to pay for a new proxy for you on top of this one while he’s at Sterling. And you can be sure that Xiao and Grace Alvarez will not let my board of directors forget about this. They are very important clients and they lost their daughter because of you. Do you understand me? This reflects on me. You reflect on me. You need to start thinking about consequences, about other people. You aren’t some piece of Valve trash who can act without affecting others. You are supposed to be a leader! How will the shareholders react when they hear what my son has done, huh? You hear me? You are hurting your legacy with your foolishness. Our share price is going to plummet and it will be blamed on my reckless son, so you will watch every second of this and think about what you’ve done. You will not waste my time and money closing your eyes. This is your wake-up call, Knox. It is time to grow up. I will not humor you any longer.”
Knox clenched his jaw. He wanted to scream out. He wanted to shut his father up. He wanted to stop the Guardians and set Sydney free. But he stayed silent. He stared forward, watching the holo and breathing loudly through his nose.
Knox watched as the Guardians fried his proxy’s nerves over and over and over again. By number nine Sydney had thrown up; by eleven he was glassy eyed, his head lolling about like a zombie in a classic movie; by the last zap he was hanging limp. His wrists were red and raw from where they rubbed against the chain that held him. A tear ran down Knox’s cheek, even as he held his head stone still. For the first time since he was four years old and he had been told that this boy was named Sydney and that this boy would be his proxy, and that this boy would be punished because of the old piece of clay he’d broken, Knox cried.
“You are responsible for him,” his father had told him after that first punishment, so many years ago. “Whatever happens to him, that is your responsibility. Do you understand?” At the time he had nodded through his tears. He had broken the tablet. He was responsible.
When it was done, his father let him fall asleep. As he drifted off, the holo zoomed in on Sydney’s head, hanging limp against his chest.
“Hold that image,” Knox’s father said, suddenly standing. He stepped forward and poked his finger right into the image.
What was he doing?
Knox tried to focus. His father used his fingers to zoom in on Sydney’s head. He put his finger up to some weird birthmark behind the proxy’s ear. He leaned in close.
“Get me the proxy’s blood test results immediately,” he ordered the nurse. She began working in her own projection.
“I have it right here,” she said, studying the data she’d brought up. “What is it you’re looking for?”
“Dad, what’s wrong?” Knox asked, although it came out slurred and hazy. His father turned around, looking surprised to see him there. As if Knox could be anywhere else. “Is something wrong with the blood?”
His father ignored the question. Asked his own. “Have you noticed that birthmark before? Has it always looked like that?”
“I . . . uh . . .” Knox couldn’t remember. He never paid that much attention. Who looks at some other guy’s birthmarks, especially some proxy’s?
Knox was so tired, but he was suddenly scared. What if he’d gotten some weird disease from that proxy’s blood, loaded with parasites and pollutants? Rat flu, dengue fever, brain worms . . . who knew what kind of diseases lived down in the Valve? They ate wild animals down there, didn’t they?
“Is something wrong with—” Knox tried again, but his father brought up a holo, tapped around and suddenly, the patch on Knox’s arm lit up again. His pain vanished and he felt a glowing, cloudy peace blossom inside him.
“Don’t you worry about a thing,” his father said. “It will be taken care of.”
“But I—” Knox started, but he couldn’t hold his eyes open, couldn’t even remember what he’d wanted to ask. Even with his eyes closed, he saw Sydney’s face. He saw Marie’s face. Their faces hung there in the void and then the void engulfed him and he slept.
This time, he did not dream.
[9]
SYD SHIVERED HIMSELF AWAKE, every nerve raw and prickling. The echo of a nightmare shot adrenaline up his spine. He reached back to the mark behind his ear. He could never be a gambler. His finger always went right to that spot when he was nervous.
It hurt to open his eyes, but it hurt to keep them closed. Slowly, his vision came into focus. A steel table leg. White tiles. Bright light. A vague electric hum. The pain and the cold told him he was alive.
He was still in his boxer shorts, lying on the floor of the room where they had shocked him. His pants and his shirt were bunched under his head, as if someone had wanted him to be comfortable but didn’t want to spare a pillow. He felt his heart racing in his chest. He tried to slow his breathing, to calm down. He lowered his hands and pressed his palms against the cold tile.
He could hear shouts and screams through the walls. He guessed these were the sounds of other proxies in other rooms enduring other punishments for other patrons.
He’d never been in a prison like this before. Usually, the punishments were given wherever the bounty hunters happened to find the proxy. If hard labor had been ordered, some local security goons would just issue the summons. Failure to show up at the appointed time was a breach of contract, punishable by additional months and years of debt, and, of course, a few hits with an EMD pulse.
The security firms were always liberal with those. They made the whole thing much more vengeful than these Guardians had, taunting and turning the settings higher than required. Competition was fierce to get more patron business, so firms would often interrupt one another to serve the same punishment. Fights broke out. Sometimes, they’d reach a settlement and the punishment got issued twice for the same debt. Double payday. And if the proxy complained . . . well, proxies were replaceable.