Harmony (15 page)

There’ve never been so many people governed by Good.

There’ve never been so many people giving themselves up to Good.

There have been many versions of Good throughout the ages.

When the Bastille fell in France, when the sons of freedom threw crates of tea into the harbor in Boston
—
every age has had its heroes who try to do Good. That was the whole idea behind America, with its freedom and democracy for all.

But never has Good held so many people’s lives in thrall at any one time.

Back when kings ruled, the king would threaten to sentence anyone who turned against him to death, so people listened.
They made people obey through violence. That’s why the French Revolution was a success. All they had to do was take out the king. Once you have enough people come out and claim a mandate, saying “This is the people’s will,” all you needed next was violence to finish the job. But with the birth of democracy, rule ceased to come from the top. Now it came from the people. Eventually it got to the point we’re at now, where everybody governs themselves.

What do we do if the enemy we’re fighting against is inside each of us?

Our lifeism is the ultimate expression of rule by all, and its final destination.

Ever hear of
The Three Musketeers
? It’s a story
—
a novel written by Alexandre Dumas
—
about these three soldiers living in seventeenth century France. In it, there’s a saying: “One for all, and all for one.”

That worked fine for them, seeing as how they were only saying it to a couple other people.

In the world of resource awareness, we’re making that same oath, except we’re swearing it to everyone in our admedistration
—
no, everyone in the world
—
and we are expected to surrender our lives to ensure we follow through.

You were supposed to come with me, Cian. You and Tuan.

But you didn’t.

You said you would fight with me. That we’d fight together.

You hurt me. You made me very sad.

But I think if you can show me your courage now, that will be enough. Show the world there’s nothing permanent. Show the world your body belongs to you alone. Show everyone right now, and it will be just like it was back in the day.

Back when we were us.

Please, Cian. I need you to be brave.

Show it to me. Show it to the world.

My mouth moved, forming Cian’s final words along with her.

I’m sorry, Miach.

01

One thing the declaration achieved was to make everyone in the world shut up for a moment. What were you doing when you heard it?

It was cloudy in this city that day. This city being the capital of Japan.

The clouds hung heavy, gray lumps in the sky over the city, waiting to crush the people who braved the streets. Or maybe I was seeing symbolism in everything due to shock.

Reports said some people got sick just hearing it. Many more reported for immediate therapy. When I heard it, I was in my car driving toward the airport with a passenger—the man with the business cards.

“Ever heard of a business card?”

We were sitting in the classroom during recess time when Miach showed us a small piece of paper.

It was rectangular, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, and there were words on it: our school name, our class number, and in larger text below that, Miach Mihie.

“Check it out. People used to use these to introduce themselves.”

Cian grunted with interest and leaned forward to look at the paper where it lay atop Miach’s desk.

“Can’t write much of a profile on that little thing, can you?”

Miach nodded. “That’s right. And there’s no link to your SA score or medical info either. The main social unit back in the day used to be your company or school, so you wrote that address here on the card. In fact, most people didn’t even use business cards outside of company interactions. There was no need or means to display personal information at other times.”

“Why not?”

“Because privacy was so important back then.”

“
Privacy
?” Cian giggled. “Miach, you dog!”

“They didn’t have AR like we do, y’know. There were physical limitations to how much information you could get out there.”

“That’s true,” I said, adding so that Cian could understand, “You would’ve had to walk around with a big sign around your neck if you wanted to do what we do today.”

Cian frowned. “But don’t people kind of roll their eyes at you if you don’t display your creds? Was everyone just shadier back then? And, like, suspicious of each other?”

“No, it’s just that you didn’t share your personal information with people like you do now. If you were out in public and someone sat down next to you, you didn’t pay them any attention. Business cards were for when you were obliged to exchange some limited amount of information, and you had to give them to someone else by hand, so it was more targeted than the indiscriminate spray of information we have now.”

“It’s kind of cute,” I said, picking up the little scrap of paper.

Miach grinned. “Isn’t it? I think it’s way more cute
and
classy than some AR profile hanging over your head. I knew you’d like it, Tuan.”

“Neat, it’s even got a picture!” Cian said, pointing at the colorful illustration on the card. “Did you draw that, Miach? What is it, some kind of symbol?”

“Yeah. It’s our symbol.”

“
Our
symbol?”

“Yeah. For our trio of comrades. You, me, and Tuan.”

I still had the handmade business card Miach had given me that day in my desk at home. In fact, knowing what a business card was had come in handy once or twice in my work as a Helix agent. I realized that this ancient form of information transfer, completely lost from lifeist society, was still highly valued in negotiations between old-style governments and nations. The Helix agent charged with negotiating cease-fires between the many armed groups in Chechnya and the government in Russia told me that once when he’d produced a business card during a sit-down with one armed group, they’d immediately warmed to him. In places where AR wasn’t yet a part of daily life, the culture of business cards still thrived.

I was remembering all this because of the man who ran up to me in the university parking lot as I was getting into my car and handed me his card.

“Agent Elijah Vashlov, Interpol.”

I took the card from his hand with practiced ease. Agent Vashlov’s eyes widened. “You know what that is?”

“It’s not a business card?”

I glanced at the paper. There was nothing cute about a business card received from a strange man who ran up to you in a parking lot. Nothing cute at all. Besides, with a clear AR display showing me who the guy was anyway, there was no need for business cards, which made this all just a parlor trick.

“I’m familiar with the old custom.”

“Oh, well that’s no fun.”

“I hope you don’t do that to everyone you meet.”

“Actually,” he replied, “I do. Most of them rather like it.”

Vashlov scratched his head sheepishly. He was clearly fond of performance. I asked him what his business was. I’m not made of time, you know.

“How about we talk in your car. We can just drive around.”

“Sorry, but I’m on my way to the airport.” I indicated my car with a jab of my jaw.

“Off to Baghdad, right?”

I stared into the man’s eyes, taking care to hide my surprise. His face betrayed no emotion, though it was clear he’d been trying to catch me off my guard, which meant I was irritating him. That made me glad.

“That’s just what I want to talk to you about,” Vashlov said, his words cool and measured. “Just let me go with you and talk to you on the way to the airport. That’s all I ask. I won’t slow you down.”

After a moment’s hesitation I nodded, and Vashlov told his own car to go home on its own. I got in and set the route, which brought up a display of the predicted time it would take to get to the airport.

“You’ve got one hour,” I told him.

“More than enough,” Vashlov said, getting in next to me.

Something didn’t feel right as we drove through the city streets. Maybe it was the heavy clouds overhead, but something seemed to have added a generous dollop of loneliness to the flat landscape of the city. I stared out the window, trying to dig the source of that loneliness out of the passing scenery with my eyes. I was no more enlightened by the time the car reached the entrance to the expressway and we left the streets behind.

Even the expressway seemed unusually vacant that day.
What
is it?
I wondered.

It’s you. You’re lonely,
the loneliness answered me.

“With this little traffic, we might get there early,” Vashlov said. Then more quietly he added, “They’re all afraid, you know.”

“Of what?”

“Of someone dying right in front of their eyes. Afraid it might be them.”

That made sense.

I’d heard the therapists were overwhelmed.

How could someone just die, right in front of you?

Forced belief in others was what kept our society running. That was what it meant to take a little bit of everyone around you hostage. In exchange for lives that, save for rare accidents, would never end before their time, we were expected to always keep personal information on display, to participate in admedistration discussions and morality sessions, and to make decisions only after receiving advice from the appropriate expert.

But the gears in the clockwork had warped a little bit after the suicides. Though it had happened in a strange way, the “incident” as people were calling it had reminded them of an old familiar feeling—that others were
strangers
. That they were unpredictable and often distasteful.

True enough. If normally stable people were capable of committing suicide at the drop of a hat, it was impossible to know whom you could trust. What would happen if they took their own lives the very moment you did decide to trust them? What would that do to you?

I knew what it had done to me. Eternity had crumbled.

We all knew that people were supposed to live for a hundred some-odd years, without ever getting sick or seeing anything troubling. The world was supposed to be a gentle place. A safe place.

The illusion had just been smashed to pieces.

What would happen next?

Perhaps imprudently, I was wondering that too. Surely, the suicides hadn’t been the end of it. This had to be part of somebody’s plan—maybe even a still-alive Miach Mihie’s plan. The ones who had committed suicide were simply the first sacrifices that had to be made so that the plan could be put into action.

“Aren’t you scared?” I asked the Interpol agent.

“Of course I am,” he answered calmly.

“What did you want to talk to me about?”

Vashlov shrugged and began. “It was, I think, about a year ago when my section of Interpol began investigating a certain group. The group consists of powerful elders in various admedistrations and the heads of certain medical industrial collectives, as well as a few scholars and scientists. They were researching ways to improperly access people’s WatchMe and medcare units in order to activate a certain technology during crises.”

“What kind of technology?”

“We’re not entirely sure yet. All we know is that they are able to use the admedistration WatchMe servers to access people’s bodies directly. That, and their ideology reflects strong memories of the Maelstrom.”

The Maelstrom—the years of chaos and mushroom clouds that had opened mankind’s eyes to its true nature and inspired our current lifeist society.

“They—these old people—are afraid that humanity will once again fall into the chaos of those years. There are plenty of theories as to why the Maelstrom happened, but one thing it did prove was that our brains are capable of reverting to barbarism with shocking alacrity. And it only took tens of millions of people to die to prove it. Which is why they moved to put all of humanity under observation—through WatchMe. They call themselves the Next-Gen Human Behavior Monitoring Group.”

I had to collect my thoughts for a moment to process this story of megalomaniacal conspiracy. The man had Interpol ID, and he didn’t seem delusional—it was just that the scale of his conspiracy theory was so grand. He was asking me to believe that all human life was basically under the watchful eye of a select group of people.

“There’s no need to give me that look. I’ll show you my Interpol psych evaluation, if you like.”