Infomocracy Page 11
Even on foot, it shouldn’t have taken him that long, but he keeps stopping, stunned by the sight of another building toppled, a pile of wreckage from some landmark, and, once, an arm protruding from under a slab of concrete. His antennae twitch so many times that he turns them off. Twice, he stops for aftershocks, darting in a panic into the middle of the street along with everyone else as the buildings around them tilt vertiginously.
He notices the differences in the centenals he passes. Heritage has obviously thrown much of its considerable weight into Tokyo; a helicopter is hovering over their centenal in Shinjuku. In Liberty’s territory, government staff with manual loudspeakers are announcing the locations of shelters and food distributions. Emergency crews are running through Ken’s own centenal, and he feels a spike of pride in Policy1st. Boots on the ground are better than expensive giveaways or large machinery any day.
He’s dully surprised to find his own building still standing, and immediately starts calculating the possibility of a hot shower—not good, he decides, trying to keep his hopes low. When he gets closer, he can tell that something’s not right. Rounding the corner, he sees a long vertical crack running up the building next to the exterior staircase, which is blocked off by a string of tape (again, points to Policy1st for addressing structural instabilities so quickly!). Ken hesitates by the entrance, wondering whether there’s anything in there worth risking a quick run in. The ground vibrates, and he backs away.
He considers going back to the office to sleep, as any loyal worker should, but all day, as he sobered up, he’s been having flashbacks to the night before. Her hair against his face, her arms pulling him close. Before she let him off in the morning, Mishima told him that she was going to try to moor above the Information offices. It’s not far. Besides, given the option, he’d rather sleep off the unsteady ground tonight.
It takes him twice as long as he thought it would to walk there. He has to detour twice around pieces of skyscrapers that are now effective roadblocks, and the aftershocks continue almost regularly; Ken finds himself treading as if the ground were shaking even when it’s not. As the night deepens, the cold presses against him. His jacket has heating, but Ken forgot to recharge it last night, didn’t even think about it during the day, and now it’s running low. He turns the optimal temperature down a couple of degrees, hoping it will last longer, and hunches his shoulders, thinking of all the people who ran outdoors this morning—yesterday—with no coat and watched their belongings disappear into a dust-filled mound of crumbled concrete. When his stomach rumbles, it occurs to him that he has barely eaten all day. He can remember at least two raids on the Policy1st office cache of teatime snacks, but no actual meals. Now he can’t stop thinking about how hungry he is and, more disturbingly, whether he’ll be able to get any food.
Three arduous blocks and one terrifying highway overpass later, he sees the dancing blue animation of a Lawson sign. The convenience store is tucked into the ground-floor arcade of an office building, at least six stories, but after an uneasy glance up, Ken decides to risk it. The empty spaces on the convenience store shelves contradict the rules of daily life in Tokyo and shake him as much as the grander scenes of destruction. It is more believable that skyscrapers crumble than that he can’t get an onigiri at three in the morning. He stares at the few items left on the ramen shelf for a long moment, waiting for his Information to pop up with the ratings rundown, then remembers that they’re not going to appear. He grabs a couple of bags of senbei, a handful of chocolate bars, and five cans of coffee, but stops short halfway up the aisle when he realizes that without an Information connection, there is no way to pay. He cautiously approaches the autoclerk and finds a handwritten note—thank goodness his visual translator doesn’t require a live connection. The reader has been reconfigured to accept details via line-of-sight, and will bill him later. It is something of an honor system, since the antitheft had to be turned off, and Ken is grateful for it. He zaps in his details, adds a small “thank you!” to the others scrawled in various languages at the bottom of the note, and continues on his way.
By the time he sees the low Information building, it is long after midnight. The city is dire cold and nearly unlit, and Ken is equally exhausted and afraid to sleep. He thinks he can make out the grey blur of a crow or two hovering above the building but can’t be sure.
Amazingly, there is someone at reception, and when he asks for Mishima, she directs him to the roof without further questions. Through his fog, Ken wonders at the lax security but decides that they are trying to make it easy for friends and relatives. When he gets to the roof, he immediately sees the crow’s anchor, familiar now. The line extends up at an angle, trembling with another small aftershock. He freezes until the vibration stops, then tries to call Mishima. Only after listening to the silence for almost a minute does he remember that comms are out.
Ken stares up at the indistinct bulk of the crow. So close but so impossible to reach. He considers sleeping on the roof, but it’s far too cold, or trying to shimmy up the rope, but that is obviously impossible, especially in his current shaky condition. The best option seems to be going back inside and finding an unoccupied corner, but he finds himself reluctant to be under a roof, even if this building has survived so far.
Bending down, he finds some small stones and tosses them, almost hopelessly, at the crow. One of them pings off it, then another. Ken waits, then scrabbles on the ground to find more. He looks up to see the anchor line vibrate, not with the ground this time but as the ship retracts it, pulling its way down toward the roof.
CHAPTER 11
Yoriko isn’t sure whether she’s at the Liberty “mutual assistance drive” as part of her spy work or because she wants to help, and Liberty’s adverts have been the first, fastest, and most frequent. Hell, she’s not even sure this assignment is still a priority, or running at all, or even if Suzuki is … In any case, she felt she had to be here. There is roughly the same assortment of products that they were giving away at the debate party, with a few sensible extras like blankets and bottles of water (mostly Coca-Cola’s Dasani brand, with a sprinkling of Nestlé). Yoriko is welcomed by a wide-smiling greeter and joins other volunteers packing the goods into boxes and taping them shut. In the middle of the room—the “citizens’ center” of the Liberty centenal—they are running a projection with photos and vids from the disaster. It shifts occasionally to show a map displaying the route the boxes will take to Tokyo, by sea since the lack of Information connections is making air travel around the affected area very dangerous. There have already been reports of one collision. There are also maps of the Tokyo area indicating in red where the goods will be going—all Liberty centenals, of course. But that’s normal, right? Governments help their own people. And at some point, one of the cute young female welcomers comes around and offers to take Yoriko’s contact information. The boxes are being tracked, she says proudly, so Yoriko can get a thank-you vid from the people who receive the goods she packed.
At that, Yoriko panics and stutters no thanks, she would rather, she’s not doing it for the thanks, that is, she doesn’t need a thank-you from those poor people who are already going through so much. After the taken-aback young woman moves on, Yoriko worries that maybe it looks suspicious not to put her name in. She is so unsettled that she leaves shortly after, and the more she thinks about the whole exercise, the dirtier she feels, especially listening to all the news reports about the disaster and how cold it is in Tokyo and how many people are crowded together in the shelters. Finally, even though she should get home to see her kids, she finds another volunteer station, this one run by the Red Cross. Their maps show not centenals but evacuation centers, and when Yoriko timidly asks, they tell her that they target by most vulnerable.
It is then that the surveillance starts.
* * *
Ken is disappointed when a washed-out blond woman in her forties opens the door of the crow, her shell-shocked expression a distorted reflection of his own,
but Mishima is right behind her, and she takes his arm.
“Come on in,” she says in a whisper. “But careful where you step.” The limited floor space in the working area is covered with sleeping forms, barely visible in the low lighting. Ken follows the two women into the cabin, where Mishima makes another cup of green tea to accompany the two half-drunk ones already sitting on the floor. Pleased to have something to offer, Ken tosses down the remaining bag of rice crackers and the chocolate bars, and settles himself on the floor next to the blonde, who introduces herself as Yelinka.
Ken had nothing more in mind than falling asleep next to a warm-smelling body, but he finds that sitting and sharing intel in low voices with these two sharp-eyed women fulfills another need that he hadn’t noticed. They have a lot to say.
“At least we have power.”
“Yeah, the networked grid worked well.”
They exchange a muted high five and Ken wonders what role these two women played in setting up Tokyo’s power grid. He always imagined working for Information as long hours in a cubicle cataloguing the world’s most boring videos, but it sounds like there’s a lot more to it than that.
“Still, though, the public transport…”
“I know; that’s a major problem.”
A pause.
“The Iimashita building went down.”
“What? Those bastards, they must not have built to code.”
“I don’t know … nothing is completely earthquake-proof; the energy could have hit it at the wrong angle…”
“The Tokyo Eye is down,” Ken puts in, glad to be able to add something.
“Oh, really?”
“What did it look like?”
“Pieces.”
“Big pieces?”
“Pretty big.”
A pause.
“Does anyone know about the … the Imperial Palace?”
Silence.
Ken catches the flashing along Yelinka’s eye that tells him her projection is updating. “Confirmed that all the bridges are down,” she says. “I mean the small ones, along the river.”
“Who can we get to put barges in place?”
“Some of the governments are already working on that…” Ken crossed one, in a Sony-Mitsubishi centenal, he thinks, although his walks through the city are already starting to blur.
“Food deliveries?”
“The Kansai coalition has said they’ll make a major shipment, and I guess that other governments will do the same. Still, logistically…”
“How long do you think it will take to fix the Information connections?” That from Mishima.
Nobody answers.
* * *
The plane to Istanbul also blocked Information access, but Domaine gets on as soon as they touch down and lets himself read everything disaster-related he can find—still not very much—on the public transport into the city. Casualty figures vary drastically from one feed to another, but there are more photos and video now, and already a bit of analysis. He dives into the latter thirstily, multitasking only a little as he tries to decide where to stay. There’s a hotel he likes in a Turkish nationalist centenal not far from Istiklal, where he can reliably overhear old men in tea shops complaining about elections, but he wonders if a centenal with a large Tokyo presence might offer additional sources of intel. And, possibly, be cheaper.
Indeed, he finds that 平和亜紀, a superficially pan-Asian, peace-loving government with a semi-covert Japanese expansionist agenda, has managed to claw out a single centenal. It’s on the outskirts of the city, but Domaine decides it’s worth it; he’s only going into town for the one rally later that night, and he’s starting to wonder whether it will be canceled because of the earthquake.
The hotel itself is nice enough, and it has a Japanese-style bathtub in the room, which Domaine appreciates, as well as a hamam off the lobby. Definitely the makings for a pleasant stay. But the mood is somber. There are projections in the lobby tuned to nonstop coverage, and a pair of elderly Japanese men in winter-grade suits sitting there watching. They have resisted universal outlets, and when Domaine asks at the desk for a converter to the old Japanese style, the clerk shrugs and tells him they only have converters going the other way, from Japanese plugs to standard outlets. Let them go out to the world, Domaine thinks grimly as he walks out to find a hardware store. No need for anyone else to come in.
He had expected to find the centenal full of the Japanese who must have moved there in droves to tip the voting, but perhaps they’re all holed up in front of their projections or trying to get through on nonexistent comms, because he sees very few. The hardware store he finds is manned by a guy who looks Turkish. On the other hand, all the products are Japanese and the prices commensurately high. They have to do something to subsidize their world domination, he guesses; nationalist governments tend to have trade difficulties.
* * *
They started out sitting, but they all end up sprawled on the floor, still sputtering odd phrases as they try to keep their eyes open. When the blond woman, Yelinka, falls asleep curled on her side on the floor, Mishima takes Ken’s hand and tugs his willing body into her futon. Ken isn’t sure he wants or can manage sex at that point of exhaustion, but she wraps herself around him and seems to fall asleep. He does the same. At some point, he wakes and finds that he’s shaking, and then he realizes it’s not him but her, and he runs his hands up and down her back, strokes her hair, shushes soothingly in her ear until her crying trails off.
* * *
Once appropriately kitted, Domaine jerry-rigs a moderately secure connection, banking on the hope that at this particular moment in history, no one is going to be interested enough in him to break his weak firewall, and calls his people. He uses voice only since, thanks to enterprising scammers, some governments require both audio and visual for positive identification of digital communications.
“Shamus.”
“Domaine! Oh, man, glad to hear you’re okay. What a thing to happen.”
Domaine can hear it immediately, the self-importance of being alive and aware at the time of an international tragedy. “We need to put out an ad,” he says.
“Uh, what d’you mean? They’re all out and running.”
“A new one,” Domaine says. “But you’ve got to get it out fast—I’ll pay extra.”
Silence. Domaine knows what’s coming and waits for it.
“Uh … do you think now is the right time? I mean, no one will be paying any attention to the election.”
“No?”
“Domaine, there’s just been a huge disaster. The second debate is canceled. They’re talking about postponing the election!”
“So?”
“So? All anyone wants to hear about is the earthquake. It would be in bad taste to advertise.”
“Tell me, Shamus, where are all the major party representatives now?”
Shamus pauses before saying, “In or on their way to Tokyo.”
“Or as far away as they can be while still claiming Tokyo as their location,” Domaine corrects him.
“Okay, okay, it is a political event. But still. Everyone’s focused on fundraising. I’m just telling you, as an advertising expert, that now is not the most effective time.”
Domaine sighs, runs his hand through his fro. “Shamus, it’s great that they’re raising all this money for those poor rich people in Japan. I mean that. Those people need help, and they should get it. But they’re getting help, probably more than they need, because of the election. Because it looks good. Because these damn governments are competing with each other to help the most. Meanwhile, is anyone raising money for … I don’t know, the two million people in Central Asia who will die of starvation or exposure this winter? The millions of homeless kids in centenals all over the world? The children and women being trafficked across continents? No. The world ignores those problems. Governments don’t want to talk about it, and the international community can hide behind these shitty elections as though so-c
alled micro-democracy makes everything okay.”
Silence.
“It’s all part of the system,” Domaine says. “You don’t have to agree with me personally, but I do hope I can count on your professionalism.”
“Okay,” Shamus says. “What do you want to say?”
CHAPTER 12
It takes fifty-eight hours for communications to come back online for the greater Tokyo area. When signal is reestablished in the Information hub, a couple of hours earlier, Mishima hears the soft whoosh of air that is hundreds of staff letting out their breath at once. Mishima would have expected a whoop, but she herself makes no more noise than that whisper of relief. She then immediately wonders how soon she can remove herself from this mass of people, working almost silently together for the common good, and shut herself away again in her crow. She casts sideways glances around the room, waiting for the collectivity to dissipate. Knowing that her desire for isolation is unusual has made her sensitive to the social acceptability of acting on it.
* * *
Over at Policy1st, they start kicking people out pretty much as soon as comms come up and they can once again do the same job anywhere in the world. Tokyo has become dangerous, grubby, and most of all expensive, given how much of the real estate has suddenly evaporated. Ken lasts a day or two longer than most, since he’s based in Tokyo anyway and isn’t racking up huge hotel bills or crowding the office floor (he’s not sure whether Suzuki knows that his apartment isn’t habitable or where he has been spending his nights). But as crisis experts flood in from all over the world, Ken is told to get back to campaigning. He’s not displeased; it feels like ages since he’s seen the polls. When he finally squeezes some time away from relief work to look at them (feeling shallow for doing so), they’ve shifted in thrilling ways. Heritage has fallen significantly, although they’re still in the lead; governments with no centenals in the Kantō area have also dropped, from lack of press coverage; Policy1st has moved up a rank in most predictions and hovers around eleventh. He hopes the election doesn’t get delayed long enough for the bump to evaporate—or, worse, canceled.