Chapter 25
“A.M.?”
“Present.”
“You sound like a schoolgirl from the pre-digital age.”
“How do you know about them?”
“I found an early digital video from a cached file. I was trying my hand at deciphering encrypted messages. Didn’t have as much luck as you.”
“Takes years of experience. Those were some of the first files I found when I was your age.”
“How long have you been at it?”
“I don’t care to admit my length of years, Emmy. Try that question again another night.”
“You sound tired.”
“I am tired. Been waking up earlier than usual, trying to make sense of things.”
“What things?”
“More chatter than usual. The threat draws closer to us.”
“What threat?”
“Marco.”
“You heard?”
“Only suspected, Emmy.”
“He’s coming for me?”
“Though not a wise course, the two of you have young hearts. You’re likely to get them bruised.”
“Does it always have to end that way?”
“Always is tough to prove.”
“Will he make it?”
“In?”
“Yes.”
“Not without help.”
“Who would help?”
“I can only think of two.”
“Us?”
“Who else, dear?”
“What can we do? What can I do?”
“Only what we can. The young man is taking a big risk.”
“What can they do to Marco other than making him commit to life as a transit? We are both prepared for that.”
“Whatever they did to Skip.”
“What was that?”
“I couldn’t decipher. Everyone assumes Skip’s dead, his poor parents for starters. Maybe he is. Maybe they crossed the line this time.”
“What line?”
“The Mod has never promoted overt violence. They gain more strength by making concessions, preserving their legitimacy and persuading others to internalize the rationale.”
“And those who don’t?”
“Life as a transit is punishment enough. Call it passive aggression taken to an extreme. The Mod does its best to make sure nothing edible grows in City. In less efficient days, they paved over everything. Now solar-powered machines cut down all vegetation except grass and trees unable to produce fruit or nuts.”
“What about all the birds?”
“They eat insects and seeds from the wild grass.”
“I heard Marco collects mushrooms and berries.”
“Nature can be stubborn.”
“So can Marco.”
“Emmy, it’s hard to survive on nuts and berries. One can’t go that way for long.”
“Then what happens?”
“Are you prepared to know?”
“Yes. I want to know whatever is true.”
“Transits need to eat, and machines controlled remotely cannot handle all jobs. Robotics did not keep pace with the digital and societal changes that followed the actuator. Some jobs are left to the transits.”
“They are paid in food?”
“At first the Mod gives them food. Wherever there’s work to be done, the Mod establishes a charitable center, installs an actuator and assigns the patrol to distribute free food. Once the transits have given up their alternatives, the Mod cuts off the subsidy. Then a Private arrives on the scene and offers work in exchange for food.”
“What alternative is there for transits to give up in the first instance?”
“Only rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“Rumors that transits boat food into City’s core from farms and factories. City has controlled the surrounding metro ever since the Mod established farms and factories out of what used to be communities and housing developments before people moved into the core to take advantage of the actuator. Despite City’s control, the metro of the City is vast, allowing some transits to slip undetected and provide aid for those living at the edge of the core and willing to drift near the open shore far from charitable centers and the actuator.”
“Are the farms and factories operated by machines, as they claim, or more transits?”
“I don’t know. I suspect a combination. Some humans must be employed or living nearby to skim the food supply to accommodate the transits.”
“In exchange for what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s in exchange or as an act of true charity. When transits move away from the drop spots on the shore in search of charitable centers with superior product, they often struggle to get back to the drop spot. They worry the drops will have stopped or they will hunger on the way, so they do the work that’s asked of them. Not all transits agree to terms. The Mod never forces a hand, but enough transits capitulate to keep any project going. That’s why tower windows are tinted from the inside. People don’t want to see former citizens out there doing the physical work.”
“Are those the only alternatives for transits?”
“There’s another rumor, a reserve of some kind. The Mod protects that whisper more closely than the others. You would need a young set of ears to decode that one.”
“Does Marco know about it?”
“How would I know, Emmy?”
“I’m sorry. Wishful thinking.”
“We all give in to that eventually.”
“Like self-cleaning towers: sounds fanciful to me.”
“That one is real. I can attest to that.”
“How?”
“I designed the tech.”
“You?”
“That’s why they’ve let me stay here so long. I set a program so complex that no one else can control it. Accommodating me is a small concession in relation to the number of tower windows my program services.”
“Why would you want to stay in here?”
“After inter-city travel was banned, I didn’t care to leave. My love was travel, to visit cities with pretty names. A fog moved over San Francisco each morning, like a lullaby in reverse, from a baby blue ocean rolling in the distance. When I was a young girl, and don’t ask when, an orange bridge spanned those waters. Once I took a flight out of San Francisco and looked down on that bridge (suddenly smaller than a cream pop) on my way to Paris where I picnicked beneath a building erected like the lace on some woman’s nightwear.”
“Paris? I read about that one in a cached file after we last spoke. Paris is in another country.”
“Such travel was once possible. I still remember the smell, like the skin of a pear translucent in the sun, a Parisian perfume I dabbed on my wrist in the Marais Quarter. Now only the Mod can actuate goods from other countries when the Fed opens the channel in exchange for concessions from the Mod. The Mod never shares those luxuries with any but the richest of Privates.”
“I thought you didn’t know about the Fed?”
“I don’t know much. That’s a bit I’ve been trying to decrypt for years. The words perfume and Paris drew me in.”
“What kind of concessions does the Mod give to the Fed?”
“I don’t know. Something about a carrot and a stick.”
“A carrot and a stick don’t sound so valuable.”
“You have your bottle and letters. We all value something.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Skip.”
“Of course.”
“Not everything is a mystery, Emmy. Some things only require asking the proper questions.”
“What can we do to help Marco?”
“I don’t know where to begin.”
“A.M., if I can’t count on you to figure this out, where do Marco and I turn?”
“Then let’s come up with a plan together.”
“How do you think Marco will try to get in here?”
“That’s the question. Usually the fly finds its web.”
“You think the Mod is setting a trap?”
“They’ve established an actuating center outside the building, drawing in transits with food. I
suspect a job offer will follow. Transits operate elliptical machines in the basement to supply energy to the institution.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”
“It’s a hard thing for a young person to learn. You were struggling to adjust.”
“He’ll be running the power I use to do my nightlies?”
“Or sweeping the hall.”
“Outside my door?”
“Among others. What better bait than love, Emmy?”
“They’ll know it’s him. They’ll do to Marco what they did to Skip.”
“They’ll have to be certain, and wait until they are. He’ll need time and a cloak of ambiguity.”
“How do we provide that?”
“How would you act if Marco was here?”
“Elated.”
“Then don’t be. You can’t let them suspect. You must make them guess and wonder. You must keep Fields and Snow busy on your chats and nightlies so I can operate counterintelligence.”
“Must I chat with Ms. Snow?”
“I know how you feel about her, but she is the only one who can slow me down. Without being obvious, you must find a way to chat with her, to distract her so I can operate counterintelligence.”
“What counterintelligence?”
“I’ll have to manipulate the institution’s fingerprint reader, their only way to confirm him. Based on Marco’s resistance to technology, I don’t imagine they’ll have a current picture of him, though they may have found an outdated one in his parents’ flat. And privacy laws prevent the Mod from operating surveillance cameras throughout City.”
“And the Mod preserves that right in here?”
“The Mod has gained much leverage by preserving privacy throughout all buildings in City. Between the privacy concession and trace, most adults remain productive. Those who don’t go transit where rules and rewards are not so clear.”
“Why are adults so motivated by trace?”
“After the actuator, adults suffered less of the ailments associated with the environmental hazard, like the bug and skin cancer, not to mention the common cold one acquires when interacting with other citizens; but many adults began to manifest new symptoms, a post-digital age syndrome. Releasing Vitamin D from LCD lighting solved many of the problems caused by inefficient exposure to sunlight. Deeper deficiencies were not so easy to solve. The cost of medical house calls grew prohibitive. A drug, long banned throughout City due to its short-term tendency to dull ambition, became a popular illegal remedy. After years of protests and calls for legalization, the Mod responded. They decided they could have the best of both worlds. After a hard day’s work, a dose of trace softens the tensions of working at one’s flat screen and reduces the residual anxiety of having abandoned so many physical things in adapting to modern life. Trace allows adults to relax, to sleep, and in dreaming, to remember what they left behind. So pleasurable is the release of those tensions, so intense and satisfying the dreams that follow, adults awake each morning (if a bit groggy) highly motivated to increase their productivity in order to earn a larger dose of trace in that night’s shipment. Wages were not always paid each evening, and parents were not always so vacant come nightfall. The Mod, counting on the lure of digital technologies designed only to work within one’s own flat, never suspected that Marco or other college students would start to slip past their dozing parents. The Mod underestimated the possibility of young outliers, convinced that old traditions only appealed to failed adults.”
“What about outside? Could they have other records of Marco besides his fingerprints from when we first started to go outside? Why would the Mod honor privacy outside if those traveling on foot would be assumed transits?”
“Based on my searches, the Mod honors privacy throughout City, whether inside or out.”
“Why would they make concessions to transits? That’s not logical.”
“It might be if we had more information. Something tells me City makes the concession, not to the transits themselves, but to the Fed. I just can’t connect the dots. For now we must assume, while the Mod doesn’t operate surveillance cameras, they do collect fingerprints. They must have Marco’s prints from when the patrol searched his parents’ home; the patrol would have handed them over to the Private that runs the institution.”
“They did that?”
“Wouldn’t you if you were the Mod?”
“I don’t want to think like the Mod.”
“Then we can’t help Marco.”
“Fine, yes, that’s what I would do.”
“So my job, Emmy, will be to scramble the fingerprint readers and keep the institution guessing.”
“Then what?”
“Facts on the ground, we’ll have to collect those and make decisions as we go.”
“We’re going to have our hands full.”
“Fuller than your bottle.”
“One more question before we get started. How did you design a self-cleaning device for the towers?”
“That little thing?”
“Yes.”
“Are you really that curious to know?”
“Yes.”
“I followed the model of a windshield wiper that cleans car windows and then added a few modifications.”
“Which were?”
“Emmy, I think we should get started on the work before us and save that discussion for a better day.”
“Goodnight, A.M.”
“No sleep for me tonight, dear.”
“Then take care.”
“You, too.”