Founders
WORKING TITLE:
Founders
ACT ONE
Swallow scraped yet another plate of unfinished yi mein into the trash. A slimy toupee of long egg noodles with garlic chives plopped into the yawning black garbage bag.
“Such a stupid waste every night,” Shallow muttered as she raked away the food. “I hope your baby or whatever-the-fuck you’re celebrating is short-lived and ends in disaster.”
Outside the kitchen, big banquet dinners roared. A tidal wave of loud, drunken Cantonese buffeted against the swinging double-traffic doors. Large families who had found their wealth in New Dallas, but slummed it in Old Chinatown for their celebrations. Honouring their roots they’d say.
She didn’t want to be there that night.
Right before her shift, Uncle Huang had called to let her know Wren had taken a turn for the worse. Her sister had coughed up blood. It wasn’t a flu. It was what Swallow had suspected and feared: Nang Tago Disease.
She wanted to go home and be with her; Wren was all she had left now. In this strange and perpetually renewed country of glass skyscrapers, floating cities and electric cars, she was the only one Swallow could talk to about their self-exile from the jungle, about whether what happened to nanay and tatay had really happened, or if they were living in a recursive nightmare they both had yet to wake from.
She needed Wren.
But Uncle Huang had insisted she go work. They needed the money. There would be medical bills for Wren soon. Their monthly aid amounted to hand-to-mouth survival. So instead of rushing to their one-room apartment in Fugee Town, Swallow took the redline DART into Chinatown, under the all-encompassing shade of New Dallas and stormed into Golden Pavilion Teahouse to wash dishes angrily for under-the-table pay.
The stench of sloppy leftovers assaulted her. An endless train of deep plastic grey trays fed into the back kitchen: stacked plates of uneaten smoked duck, roast chicken, deep-fried crab with scallions and peppers, shiitake mushrooms, abalone, cloud ear and bok chop drowned in thick cornstarch sauce.
It filled up a bag, then another and it all stunk of bile, mixing with the chemical smell of dish detergent, greasy water and fried oil. Tendrils of noisome vapours swirled into her nostrils, dug its olfactory roots in and reached deep into her brain.
The headache grated against her skull. Swallow groaned and huffed and slammed things while she worked. The kitchen crew ignored her.
She couldn’t take it anymore. This wouldn’t last. They would need real money soon. The kind of money only extra-legal work in Old Dallas got you. The kind of work Tripped-Up Boy offered when they had first arrived six weeks ago. She’d declined then. Now it nagged at Swallow’s mind.
After the tenth tray, she needed a nicotine hit. She filled up her second industrial dishwasher, set it to heavy load, and marched down the backstairs out into the alley without telling anyone. There was a slight twinge of guilt, but she snuffed it out.
She’d been doing that a lot lately. Not giving a shit.
Here in this country, she was lower than the lowest rung on the ladder. She hated it. They were beggars and transients and not wanted. They were dirty Flips and pineapples. They were less than nothing. The other day, even a middle-aged Filipino woman told her to “get the hell out of her country.”
Did Tripped-Up Boy’s gang put up with this shit?
Out in the humid Texan evening, the smell was worse. The musk of day-old dumpster trash, urine and rainwater seized her nose, twisted and puked in it. She threw her arms up in resignation and cursed, “putang ina!”
Fishing deep into her houndstooth pants, she whipped up her pack of Camels. She stared hard at the man dying of mouth cancer on the package before she flipped it open and lipped a cigarette.
“Fuck you,” she mumbled at the dying man, death stick dangling from her mouth. She lit it and sucked hard, filling her lungs to the brim and held it. The tobacco swam into her bloodstream and dissolved her mind into a blurry haze. Oh sweet Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus, I needed that.
She exhaled slowly, letting only a narrow stream exhaust from the corner of her mouth. The smoke lingered in the summer heat. It was a quarter-past-eight and still light out and buildings in the distance glinted against the twilight sun, but nearly all of Chinatown fell under the shade of New Dallas, a hovering mass that eclipsed her sky. She drew in another lungful of tobacco. It was not as intense.
“Hey,” a voice called from the neon-filled alley opening. “Can I bum one off you?”
Swallow started and eyed the stranger bounding into her sanctuary, invading her break. He was young with steel ballbearing cheekbones, putty-hardened helmet hair. A faux-leather jacket draped over a clean white shirt not-hiding obvious pectoral muscles and stiff nipples. A pretty boy. Someone who would never chat up the likes of Swallow any other given day. She was out of his league by several tiers. He also looked like money.
To Swallow, there was only one way to address your social superior: she sized him up and gave him the stink eye, “What? You serious? Fuck off.”
“Oh c’mon. I forgot mine inside. I don’t want to go back and listen to my aunts and uncles swoon over my new baby nephew.”
Even his boyish whine was cute, which intensified Swallow’s narrowed-eye glare. She understood explicitly there was not a single ounce of flirting going on here.
Not one part of Swallow had any redeemable sense of beauty. She had wide-set milky eyes like an old lingcod fish. Her full lips flaked from constant dryness, topped with an ungainly mole abutting her philtrum. Suspended above, a flat upturned nose whuffed like an angry bull in heat. She was big-boned, but not fat. Her squash-shaped head lolled on a thick neck, and she stood no taller than 5’2.
This was a good-looking, self-entitled guy expecting a cigarette from an ugly girl, not requesting one.
“Just one, OK?” the pretty boy negotiated, placing one hand over his heart and holding up the other. “And I swear I’ll smoke in silence.”
She chewed on this bum deal for a good ten seconds, spat out “fine” with animosity, and jabbed her pack of Camels at him. The boy took one out, placed it on his thin pink lips and patted his pants pockets helplessly.
“Aw shit. You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you have a…”
Swallow sighed and hammered her lighter. “Here.”
“Thanks,” he mumbled with the cigarette sagging off his mouth.
He puffed girlishly, and held it with his pinkie sticking out. They smoked in silence, him playing with his phone, her monitoring him cautiously. Her break was ruined by his mere presence.
The boy slipped his phone back in his front pocket and glanced in her direction. “So you Indonesian, Filipino or Cambodian?”
“I thought you were going to shut up and leave me alone.”
“Just making conversation, that’s all,” he replied unfazed in the way all rich, pretty boys held their own. Venom slid off them. They could afford it.
“I’m not interested in any.”
“It’s just I don’t see many dark skinned Asians working at a Chinese restaurant, so I was just curious.”
“Nakakaburat na. You don’t shut up, do you?”
“Hey, I know that word! It’s Tagalog. So you’re Filipino! I dated one once. Super sexy when she swore.”
Swallow gave up.
“Break’s over,” she hissed, squinted and headed back in before the boy could get another word in. Unfortunately, he threw in a dumb “nice meeting you!” before the door shut. Stomping up the stairs, Swallow wished she’d elbowed him in the throat instead of sharing a cigarette with him. They were expensive here. Back home, a pack cost just 72 pesos. Here, after tax, a full Hamilton.
One revolutionary hero for a pack of Camels, please.
Returning to her station, she unloaded a dishwasher and stacked them for the crew. With each plate, she grew more vexed and enraged, ripped-off by her interrupted break, what little solace she was able to scrape up. The hatred inside her boiled and bubbled. She wanted to shatter the white porcelain on the ground, slam them on top of others, hurl them at the head-down chefs, all busily chopping, prepping and frying.
She resented being here. Being useless. Being held prisoner.
Wren was sick. Possibly dying. And there was nothing she could do but watch. Just like how she watched in sheer horror as her parents swung from the Molave tree. The AFP had stormed their apartment and… No, she already relived that nightmare whenever she slept. She shook out of it.
Back home, she at least had her M4. She could fight. She could sabotage. She could destroy. Here, with the great swathe of somnambulant po’ folk and working class? Nothing.
Canola oil crackled in woks. Butcher knives chattered against oak cutting boards. Rice wine ignited tossed stir fry. Swallow tuned it all into one frequency: The radio station of white static.
Why her and not me? I gave up on the world already. She hasn’t.
It wasn’t fair. Wren was the future, she was the ugly, bloody past.
She stopped stacking rice bowls and left a half-load neglected in the dishwasher. She had had enough. She untied the knot on her apron, shrugged off her double-breasted jacket, and threw both into the trash.
Wei, the left-hand-man to Master Sook, looked up. “Swallow, what are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Mei called in sick. You’re our only dishwasher tonight.”
Swallow left. Behind her she could hear Wei calling her a “flip pineapple” and what a mistake it was to hire TNTs. She didn’t care. Not anymore. Not with Wren in her state. As long as Master Sook kept shorting her wages just because she was an illegal worker, she’d never be able to help Wren.
If she was going to break the law anyway, she might as well go for broke and work for Tripped-Up Boy.
She retrieved what few belongings she had from her locker when Master Sook stormed into the staff room. He was a big man and towered over her diminutive frame. If he had Mongol blood in him Swallow wouldn’t be surprised. He certainly had the goatee and long stringy hair for it.
She kept her back turned and made no eye contact with the giant troll filling up the room.
“Where do you think you’re going, Swallow? Get back to work.”
“Leaving this hell hole,” she muttered under her breath, just enough for him to hear but not understand.
“What did you say?”
She said nothing.
“You know, your uncle Huang begged me to give you a job,” he spat in a low tone. “Literally on his hands and knees kissing my feet, you ugly brown bitch. You going to fuck us now?”
Wordless, Swallow zipped up her backpack, strapped it on. She headed for the exit as if Genghis Khan wasn’t there. As they crossed paths, Master Sook put his outsized palm on her shoulder.
“Am I invisible to you? You’re one brave pineapple. Show me some fucking respect.”
In one swift motion, Swallow seized Sook’s hand, twisted, applied pressure and stomped down on his shin.
She let him go as he swayed back in pain. “Don’t you ever touch me.”
He winced. “You’re a crazy pineapple, you dumb flip! Get the fuck out of my kitchen.”
Swallow gave him the finger and scrambled down the stairs out into the empty alleyway.
Pretty boy was gone, thank the Virgin.
She would’ve elbowed him in the face and kneed his ribs repeatedly if she had found him still standing around the dumpster.
There were three things Swallow couldn’t abide by in this world: pretty boys, authority and people who didn’t know when to shut up. Tonight was three for three.
For a minuscule moment, regret nibbled a little, but she squashed it. Fuck this job. She had no intention of changing who she was. It had cost her her home, her nanay and tatay, her youth, and now, her first and only job in America… but she could still save Wren. Maybe.
She’ll take up Tripped-Up Boy’s offer to save Wren when they had first arrived in New Dallas. Somehow, he knew where you’d come from, why you left and what made you stay long before you set foot on American soil. He just knew. He had what the pale-faced Intsik called “guanxi”. Connections.
Old Dallas was his town and he kept tabs on the comings and goings of every Asian.
And knowing Swallow’s past, Tripped-Up Boy wanted her before anyone else got her. While she saw herself as a failed revolutionary soldier with two dead parents, he saw her as a hardened trained killer who was no stranger to violence.
But Swallow had demurred. She told herself she wasn’t a criminal. Someone who broke the law to fight for her country was not the same as breaking laws to protect a drug turf. Tripped-Up Boy was a crook. She wasn’t.
As Swallow boarded the red line back into the city, she justified what she was about to do. I’m doing this to make real money so I can take care of Wren. That is the only reason I’m going to him. I’m not a criminal.
Her logic cracked under pressure between LBJ Central and Forest Lane. Swallow thought about turning back. What if they deported her? Would they send Uncle Huang and Wren with her? Would Wren die on the way home?
She panicked at Lovers Lane station. She nearly got off the train at Mockingbird. At Cityplace in uptown, she found herself glued to the sticky light rail floor. But when her car rang the warning to close its doors, Swallow made a mad dash for it. There was no turning back now.
Tripped-Up Boy’s place on Cedar Springs and Throckmorton was a gay strip club. He’d called it Suck The D. There was not a single ounce of subtlety here. 70s disco music spilled out into the streets. Gauzy neon washed over old brick facades. Hardbodied sticky rice boys gathered, smoked, chortled loudly.
Their blatant queerness repulsed her. She imagined them burning in the depths of hell while Satan sodomized them with hot pokers. They deserved it. Bunch of bâkla faggots.
She marched up to the roped off entrance. A thickset goateed bouncer stood akimbo, arms-crossed.
“I have an appointment with Tripped-Up Boy,” she lied.
He glanced sidelong at her in disbelief and scoffed, “Yeah. O.K. I don’t think so.”
“Ask him on your com. Tell him it’s Swallow.”
“Get out of here.”
“Listen, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
He glared balefully at her. “And I’m telling you to get the fuck out of here. You fugly. My boss don’t see fugly girls.”
“Right.” With inhuman celerity, Swallow quick-jabbed her index knuckle into the guard’s windpipe, the Ryufu Willow Wind pressure point. Instantly, he collapsed to his knees clutching his throat and wheezed, sucking in a thin whine of oxygen.
Swallow wrenched his shirt collar and yanked his mass up towards her. “Call Tripped-Up Boy. Now.”
It was a pointless command though. The man could barely breathe. When she let go, he fell back onto the velvet carpet in a fetal position. Several rice boys gaped at her.
“The fuck you all looking at, you cocksuckers?”
They shifted uneasily and glanced away.
“Jesus Christ,” she hissed, and ripped the earpiece from the prone bouncer, and screamed into it. “Whoever’s listening to this, tell Tripped-Up Boy Swallow’s here to see him.”
She stepped over the heaving bulk at her feet and stormed into the club. A bone-white scrawny boy toy with a lisp met her at the entrance. He peered over her shoulders at the bouncer. Unperturbed, he grinned at Swallow. His translucent teeth glowed in the urgent dimness.
“That was quite the entrance. I’m Bobby. I’ll take you to the boss. Come with me.”
He led her through an anemone of tightly packed flesh. They waded through the thick musky scent of perspiring men. Crotches throbbed and pumped in perverse dance moves. Smoke, lasers and strobe lights flashed in rhythm to the pounding music. It was a broiling cauldron of disease, dirty animals acting unnaturally and against God’s will. There were steroid-pumped hardbodies, pale willowy boys, large hairy bears. She was disgusted by it all. Filthy bading.
Past the D.J. dais, a spiral staircase loomed. They climbed it, with Bobby’s butt in her face all the way up. Through two doors, they came upon Tripped-Up Boy’s office overlooking the dance floor.
Bobby let her in. Tripped-Up boy dismissed him. He was a gaunt man with deep-set beady eyes that moved ponderously, as if with great effort. He kept his hair combed-over neatly with a black sheen save for his greying sideburns. When he spoke, his turkey neck flapped.
They had met only twice before, but his was an unforgettable face. But then again, so was hers.
“Swallow dear. I’m so glad you came tonight. I was expecting you after I heard the news.”
Her brows knitted in confusion.
“I heard about Wren. I’m so sorry. She is a strong beautiful girl.”
Of course. Of course he knows.
He continued, “She is exactly the kind of girl America needs. Clean, smart, young. The kind of immigrant that brings fresh blood, new ideas and innovation to our country.”
Swallow subconsciously nodded at this. She had not expected to be treated this way by Tripped-Up Boy.
“Losing her would be a great loss to all of us,” he said with a deep sigh of gravitas, staring forlornly into the distance. “I would hate to see that.”
Swallow’s face softened. Her milky eyes welled up and her chest coiled around her. Tripped-Up Boy got out slowly from behind his desk, plucked up a box of Kleenex and handed it to her. He kept a certain distance, never getting closer than necessary. It was a subtle sign of respect. It surprised Swallow. There was tenderness there, but honor as well. He made her feel like a lady and a soldier at the same time. It was a fine balance achieved by very few men in her life. Her tatay was one, but he was gone now.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “I’m not crying.”
“Why don’t you hold on to it anyway?” He leaned back against his desk, hands clamped on the edges. There was a thoughtful silence between them. He broke it gently, “I can help, Swallow. You know that. I’m no Filipino, but I followed your revolution with great sympathy. When you arrived in this city, I knew deep in my heart immediately that I wanted to help you and your family settle.”
“Yes…”
“I’m good friends with Dr. Chaudhary at New Dallas General. He’s the best in the country for Wren’s condition. The best,” his fleshy wattle stretched to emphasize the word. “Believe me, it’s not a new disease. A good number of immigrants from Southeast Asia contract it soon after arriving here. It is curable. Many are now living rich full lives as American citizens. But you need to act on it quickly.”
This was not news to Swallow. What Wren had was a deadly combination of genetics, man-made science and America. It had something to do with the bio-engineered grains that were indigenous to their island home and those that came here. It didn’t affect everyone, but a small percentage got it, like Wren.
“I can help you, Swallow,” Tripped-Up Boy offered again. “Just give me the word. I’ll have Dr. Chaudhary’s staff working on Wren by tomorrow morning. I will pay for the treatment out of my own pocket.”
Swallow waited for him to name his price, but she knew he was too sophisticated for that. He would wait for her to broach the subject. She stared at the man before her dressed in an oak herringbone jacket and garish pink shirt. His slacks were too short, revealing brown socks and rectangles of pale flesh sitting on top of smart, tasseled leather shoes.
She swallowed and whispered, “I need your help, sir.”
“Very well. It will be done,” he said firmly, without hesitation, but not too eagerly either.
“What will I have to do in return to repay your kindness?” Swallow strained, hating the words the moment they floated out of her mouth.
Tripped-Up Boy grimaced, a restrained satisfaction at having finally caught the one catfish that got away last summer. “Swallow dear, let’s not talk about that tonight. You must have had a difficult night. I can’t imagine. Go home to your sister and uncle. Be with your family. That is most important.”
She nodded silently, then bowed deeply. She had never done that before, but it seemed appropriate.
As she wound her way out through the labyrinthine club, a warm peace fell over her. The ache in the small of her back that had bothered her since she heard about Wren floated away. She was safe. But at the same time, the joints in her elbows and kneecaps tingled. It was her body gearing her up for a fight with an unknown enemy. She had felt this way whenever she patrolled the jungle.
And now, she had signed a pact with the devil.
ACT TWO
Wren was asleep when she got home. She was pale and gaunt and breathed through her mouth with a sickly sound. Swallow kneeled beside her cot and held her hand.
“It’s going to be OK, little Wren. Tomorrow you’ll get the help you need.”
She placed her sister’s heated palm against her cheek and closed her eyes. Deep inside herself, through the whirlwind of clutter and jagged edges, she crawled carefully until she found the eye of the storm, a small sanctuary of silence. She embedded herself in that spot. That one small mote of peace. A pinprick in her soul that was pure and untouched.
There, she prayed. She asked God for forgiveness. For her impetuousness. For her violence. For her anger. She petitioned Him to give her the patience, caution and wisdom for the following days, as she would work with the devil, walking down a dark path in order to achieve a noble end. To save Wren.
She knew this was a dangerous path. Others have teetered on this exacting knife edge, fought wars in his name, but succumbed to avarice. Or wrath. Or blood thirst.
She begged for the courage to not fall into that temptation.
She begged forgiveness for the violence she knew she would dole out on this dark path, as her bound duty and honour to Tripped-Up Boy. This was the Earthly payment for Wren’s health. It would stain her already-soiled soul. Even now, a guilty glee tingled inside her in anticipation of hurting people. After all, bad people deserved it. But unfortunately, innocents get hurt as well. And because of this, she asked her Lord to give these unfortunate souls the resilience to not spiral into unending trauma, to heal and mend their psyche and grow stronger, to muster the required bravery to be vulnerable and ask for and receive help.
This was acceptable to her. She never wanted to hurt people who didn’t deserve it. But it happens.
But most important of all, she prayed for Wren. She spent what felt like hours appealing God to give her solicitude. To expedite her recovery. To ensure her doctor, surgeons and nurses are of sound mind and alert and careful at every second and minute they tend to her, at every juncture in the myriad of decisions they made for her. To give her body and soul fortitude so that she may serve Him in bigger and better ways. To become a messenger of God in her work.
Because she knew, chastising herself before God, Wren was the one in her family that can bring honor back to it. To avenge nanay and tatay, not in blood, but by living and achieving and soaring.
She asked all this solemnly and in her mind, mouthing a few choice words, uttering a few others.
When she had finished, she raised her head and opened her eyes. Wren’s snores echoed in the dim, cavernous one-room apartment.
“Swallow,” Uncle Huang whispered from behind her back. “You’re home. We need to talk. I got a call from Master Sook tonight.”
His shadow silhouetted against the kitchen light. Swallowed pursed her lips and got to her feet. “There’s nothing to talk about. I quit. I got a new job and it will pay for Wren’s treatment.”
Uncle Huang gaped. “What do you mean? What job?”
Swallow refused to answer, her back still turned against him. She let the silence sit, knowing he’d figure it out himself.
Finally, it dawned on him. He whisper shouted, “Come here, right now, out. NOW, young lady.”
He was losing it and Swallow didn’t care. She rolled her eyes and trampled out slowly into the light and followed him into their corner kitchen, with just three-panel wood partitions separating them and Wren.
With the fold-up mahjong table they used for eating between them, Huang laid it on her, “What are you thinking? How can you do this? You can’t work for him! You just can’t. What if you get caught? We would get deported. Is that what you want?”
“No. Of course not.” She looked away.
Uncle Huang gesticulated with wide arcs, pointing and crushing his temples between his fingers. “We barely escaped the Philippines. It is an outright civil war over there right now. If it wasn’t for my connections in the bureaucracy, we would be stuck there right now. Is this how you repay me, Swallow? Is it? You want us to go back? Do you have a death wish?”
Swallow glared at him defiantly. “I told you to leave me to fight. I told you to leave me with nanay and tatay. I’m better with a rifle in my arms. Here I do dishes and clean toilets! I hate it here.”
“So you’d rather be dead than do dishes? Is that it?”
“No, I…”
He whistled in disbelief. “And you would abandon Wren? Leave her all alone in this world without her family? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No,” she swallowed, caught in his trap. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Swallow, I know you mean well,” he put his hands on her shoulders. “But we left to get away from the violence. Away from corruption and crime. To leave the kind of life that got you and your nanay and tatay into so much trouble in the first place.”
He had her gripped tightly now, his eyes like prison guard searchlights, looking for the runaway Swallow. The one she buried every morning in layers and layers of hardened anger.
“Yes, I’ll be the first to admit our president destroyed our country. He murdered his own people. He sold us out. But a coup? A coup? Your tatay should’ve stayed away. And he dragged my sister into it. I’m sorry Swallow you’re so angry all the time. But I lost my sister too.”
She softened at this. There were times when she forgot the man standing before her was her nanay’s brother. That they had both lost her. That they both missed her.
Wren never saw what happened to nanay and tatay. She had stayed home like they asked her to. She had kept her head down and focused on her school books. She was the good girl.
Not me though, thought Swallow bitterly. I just had to stick my big mole into it.
She backed away, easing his hands off her, letting them fall away helplessly. Then another step. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have a choice, Uncle Huang. We don’t. I need to do this to save Wren. It’s the only way.”
“No, you don’t. We can do this the right way. We can do this together. We can figure it out.”
“Be real, uncle. We’re not going to pay Wren’s medical bills by washing dishes, doing laundry, and cleaning hotel rooms. That’s just not going to happen.”
Uncle Huang had no response to this. He stared dumbly at her, then crestfallen, he intoned. “How can you do this to our family?”
“I do it because I love my family,” she shot back.
The neomodern glass architecture of Chaudhary clinic shimmered in the southwest quadrant of the floating island known as New Dallas, a short walk from Deep Ellum mass-lift station.
The “Disc” as some have come to call New Dallas hovered a thousand feet above ground on the border outskirts. Up here above the old city, the wealthy and the power-elite luxuriated and ruled. Up here, looking down at the slums of immigrants, small-time crooks, and the teeming poor, great men sneered, or felt blessed, or feigned a spiritual connection. Up here, the rich lived differently.
Feed tubes, plumbing and wiring strung down from the hanging island like the tentacles of an alien jellyfish wobbling above Old Dallas. Mass-lift shafts fed up into the island at four different stations: Bryan, Deep Ellum, Reunion and Pryor.
Shortly after Wren was admitted to Chaudhary Clinic, Swallow asked for a day-pass to New Dallas to visit her sister. Tripped-Up Boy got her one in less than 24 hours. This was the power of guanxi. Connections between the grounded, the underworld and the floaters. Connections that got you in. Connections that moved you up.
Connections that, she reluctantly admitted, kept your hands tied. She had no idea how much the medical bills for Wren were. She had no idea how long she was indebted to Tripped-Up Boy. She had no idea what favours he’d ask of her in the future.
When she asked him about her debt, he coyly deflected, and said “not to worry about it. What’s important is that Wren is getting better every day.”
It dawned on Swallow she might work for Tripped-Up Boy until her dying breath. She suspected this was his plan all along. To give Wren the best using his guanxi and get a soldier-for-life in return.
A part of her didn’t care. This was better than the nihilistic existence she led from before. There was a certain routine peace to indentureship. She worked. She got paid. Wren got better.
But another part of her suffocated as the walls caved in, burying her.
The mass-lift to Deep Ellum station was filled with cleaners, wait staff, cooks, construction workers, drivers, operators, couriers, bell-hops, valets, and warehousemen. They came from the slums, the ghettos, the makeshift camps and wooden shanties on cinder blocks. Through rigorous testing, background checks and security clearances, they became the lucky few. The ones deemed acceptable to be in the presence of New Dallas residents. They all wore their blue access badges, proudly or not.
Once in a while, you saw the rare visitor with the orange badge instead, bright glowing dots in a sea of blue. Estranged siblings and parents from a distant past. Eyewitnesses to testify in the absurd courts where the rich sue the rich. The rarified employee elevated to a temporary stay in New Dallas.
Today, Swallow, defined by the orange badge she was wearing, cadged from who-knows-where, experienced an uneasy electricity around her. As if she were an aberration; an unwelcome pimple you discovered in the morning. She had never felt as lonely amongst her own people as she did then.
At first, she had swivelled and craned her head to get a good look of her surroundings upon boarding the mass-lift, to see who she had crammed into the elevator with.
But she quickly averted her eyes and followed suit with what everyone else was doing. The great mass of people, a hundred or hundred and twenty of them all stood solemnly in the lift, eyes forward, not a single decibel of chitter-chatter. It unnerved Swallow. Eyeing them suspiciously, she sensed that they recognized each other, but made no effort to know one another. They each carried their own small pocket of worries, of desperation, of hope. Some drummed their fingers on their thighs. Some closed their eyes and mouthed wordlessly to an unknown God. Some chewed their cheeks. It was as if their souls had been shucked out of them.
And for what? It was this, Swallow knew:
Working in New Dallas, even if you’re but a grain of alluvial sediment in the invisible mass of workers who flowed through the city, you could make enough to save a sliver of your earnings. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. It was enough to send one of your own to college, or university. It was enough to buy books, or a computer. It was just enough to give your son or daughter one small step ahead, away from the malaise.
That’s what every one of these silent men and women prayed for.
Swallow kept her chin up like everyone else around her. She didn’t make eye contact with anyone. She made no conversation. Like them all, she had the same purpose, to silently work and take care of their family, banking on a better future for the next generation.
When Swallow found Wren’s room, her hair was tousled and unkempt. She held a heavy, paperweight size of a book in her open palms. Swallowed managed to take several steps into her room before Wren raised her head and beamed. “Ang Ate Ko!” Elder Sister.
“Mas Bata, you got fat,” Swallow teased. Wren’s cheeks had filled out, no longer the gaunt, darkened face. She looked well. Well fed. Cared for.
“I missed you! Come, come give me a hug,” she exclaimed with her arms outstretched.
They held each other tightly. When they broke apart, Swallow examined Wren’s face as if something had been misplaced, but found again.
“Stop looking at me funny,” Wren said, sticking out her tongue.
Swallow let go and paced the room. “So they’re treating you well, then?”
“Yes, very well. It’s amazing here. Uncle Huang told me you got a new fancy job as a translator for Pinoys. That’s how we’re paying for this.”
Swallow kept a cool, blank expression on her face. “He did, did he?”
“But we both know that’s a lie,” Wren quickly added. “I’m not stupid. I don’t know the details of what you did, or what you’re doing, or what you’re about to do… but I know it’s wrong and it’s dangerous. You need to stop.”
At moments like these, Swallow often thought Wren was her older sister. “You worry about getting better and your schoolwork, Wren. Let me worry about the bills.”
“Swallow,” she groaned impatiently. “You don’t have to do this. I’m already feeling much better. I can leave now. We pay back whatever we owe them. I’m sure it’s a lot, but it won’t be as much if I don’t stay here the full term. We can’t afford this,” she gestured widely towards the room before she broke down into a coughing fit.
Swallow found a pitcher of water beside her bed and poured her a glass.
Wren murmured as she sipped. “This is too much. We don’t belong here. This floating island is for rich kanôs and Intsiks.”
Swallow’s gut roiled with a searing heat. She stomped her foot. “No, Wren! You listen. You listen to me. You get better. You’re all I have left. You’re all this family has left. You’re our final hope of making anything of our family name.”
Wren reeled, surprised by her sister’s outburst. Swallow immediately regretted raising her voice. She sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s been a rough week. I kept wanting to visit you, but I couldn’t until now. Just… just stop worrying about me, OK? I just need you’re OK. If you’re OK, then I’ll be fine.”
“You do so much for us. Too much.”
“Shush. Besides. You belong here. You will. One day, Wren. You’ll make something of yourself and you’ll wake up in New Dallas.”
Wren pursed her lips. It was her way of masking her ambition. Swallow understood her hunger, but in that moment, she also saw their widening forked paths and a melancholy seeped through her.
They shared a moment of silence, giving each other tacit looks of futility, of commitments you can’t back out of, the desperate vise of the poor.
“So what are you reading there, mas bata? It looks like it could kill someone if you dropped it on them.”
“Oh, this?” Wren fluttered at the change of subject. “It’s a biography of Alexander Hamilton. One of the founders of America.”
“The guy on the ten dollar bill?”
Bug-eyed and open mouthed, Wren asked, “How’d you know that?”
“Your sister isn’t all shit-for-brains. I know some history.”
Wren hacked violently into the crook of her arm. It was dry. An improvement. “No, sorry,” she rasped, “I didn’t mean it that way. I just never figured you’d know that.”
Swallow smiled and pulled a chair next to her bed. “So, tell me about him. Was he another rich white puti who owned black slaves?”
“Well, actually no. He was this poor boy from the West Indies. But he was really smart, and his writing was so amazing, they sent him to America to study on something like a scholarship.”
Swallow quirked her lips. “So he was an immigrant from the islands?”
“Well, no, they were all British subjects at that point. It was before the revolution.”
“Huh,” Swallow nodded. “He sounds like you. Smart kid who got ahead with just his brains.”
Wren blushed.
“So what’s so special about him? How come he gets to be on the ten dollar bill?”
“Hamilton was the country’s first Secretary of Treasury. Without him, there would be no New York Stock Exchange, central bank, the US mint. He created this country’s entire financial system…”
Swallow sensed a “but” coming. “And…?”
“Everyone hated him. Jefferson, Madison, they both wanted this idealized version of America. A farmer’s paradise. They were suspicious of bankers, financiers, and the stock market.”
“I’d say they were right. Look at the mess America’s in.”
“Right, but without Hamilton, America wouldn’t be the economic juggernaut to start with. The point is, he did what was right for the country and his colleagues hated him for it. They accused him of getting rich off his job, and stealing from the country but he never took one cent. Eventually, he was pushed out of government while all the founders took turns becoming president.”
“So he was the fall guy. Did all the dirty work and got no thanks for it.”
“Yes, like tatay.”
They held a silent vigil for their father.
ACT THREE
As Swallow ambled out of the clinic into the glaring sun above the clouds, she observed a tall well-dressed Chinese man in his thirties by the entrance. He seemed sentineled and still, but she immediately sensed there was something else about him. An irksome niggle in the pit of her stomach agreed. It was as if he were laying in wait for her. She held back and returned to the glassed atrium.
Up here in New Dallas, her heightened anxiety kept her impulses at bay. She didn’t want trouble where the wealthy Puti carried on in their bubbled lives.
The man waited. He did not check his watch nor play with his phone, or even turn his head. In the New Dallas heat, he never shifted uncomfortably in his black suit either. Perhaps he was an android. Or his clothes were equipped with self-cooling tech. There must a be a backdoor or a separate entrance, Swallow thought.
She stole a glance at the reception, scanning for security. She caught one. A heavy-set black man with a five-o’-clock shadow. He sat on a stool peering languidly at the coming and goings of the clinic. There was a film of boredom clouding his eyes.
When Swallow approached him, he shifted languidly in his seat and eyed her with half-lidded disinterest. With his mouth was slightly ajar, he breathed uncomfortably.
“Hi, there’s this man that’s been standing outside for the last fifteen minutes,” Swallow feigned distress. “I’m not sure what he’s up to. It seems suspicious.”
He sighed. “It’s a free country, miss.”
“Yeah, I know, but… I dunno. It’s just odd.”
“Yeah, OK. What do you want me to do about it?”
“Can you go talk to him?”
He raised his right eyebrow. “Listen, miss. I’m busy, and he’s not bothering anyone. If you want me to get one of the ladies up front to call you a cab, I can do that.”
“No. No, that’s fine,” Swallow couldn’t afford a cab. She had walked from the mass-lift to the clinic. “Listen, is there another way out of here?”
“Sorry?” he chuffed.
“As in, is there a back entrance or anything like that?”
“No, miss. Visitors use the front entrance.”
“Right.”
Swallow contemplated her options. If she went through the front door and she got into fight, it could mean they would revoke her right to come to New Dallas for good. How long can this man in black wait?
For another five minutes, Swallow sat at the front entrance flipping a magazine while eyeing the man in black. He maintained his statuesque composure. Not a single movement. Not one twitch nor tic. She began to believe the man didn’t blink.
It was useless. She had no choice. She stood up to leave.
Outside again, she walked without rushing past the man in black with careful deliberation. She shot random sidelong glances his way, hyper-alert to any sudden movements. She reached the sidewalk and crossed the street. She threw one last eyeful over her left shoulder. The man had disappeared.
Just then, someone tapped her right shoulder. “Swallow Bonifacio?”
Swallow swung one-eighty, her elbow aimed at the man’s neck, his height calculated out of pure marital instinct. It didn’t connect. The man had anticipated her movement.
“You probably don’t want to do that in the middle of the streets in New Dallas, Ms. Bonifacio,” the Tall Chinese Man said. “They don’t like that kind of public violence, in fact, any sort of violence in their city.”
“Who are you?” Swallow seethed. “What do you want?”
“Tripped-Up Boy sent for you. I’m here to pick you up,” he answered cooly. “We have a shuttlecraft waiting.”
Suspicion creeped down Swallow’s spine. “How do I know…” she stopped herself. It was useless. She had no choice. “Let’s go then. Where’s your pod?”
The Tall Chinese Man tilted his head and raised his eyebrows to his left. Swallow followed him.
They shared no words on the ride from New Dallas back down to the old city streets. The Chinese Man piloted the craft wordlessly and fluid effortless movements. He smelt clean. No odour of alcohol nor cigarette, crisp and ironed white shirt, stern piercing eyes. It put Swallow at ease.
If he was from a rival gang, she’d be hooded or strung up. They would’ve sent more than one. Plus, knowing she was Tripped-Up Boy’s soldier, they wouldn’t have dared to send someone up to New Dallas to get her.
She relaxed. Strapped in safely on the passenger side, she watched the miniature buildings below rise up towards them, blooming, growing gigantic.
They landed just outside the city limits where a black limousine waited. Tripped-Up Boy stood outside in the dry flatlands amongst the ocotillos smoking his Marlboros quietly. When Swallow got out of the shuttlecraft, he grinned at her. Swallow flashed her teeth quickly, not used to congeniality with any man except her tatay.
“Swallow,” he asked warmly. “How is Wren?”
“Doing very well. Thank you. She looks much better already…” Swallow hesitated. She hated not knowing and right now, she had no idea why she was here. Why were they out in the desert and not in his office? What’s with the limousine?
Perhaps sensing her unease, Tripped-Up Boy shifted. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
He opened the door to the limousine like a gentleman and Swallow got in. They sat across from each other in the back of the limousine.
“Are you thirsty?” Tripped-Up Boy said as he handed her a bottle of water.
She was. “No thank you, I’m good.”
“Very well,” he uncapped it and took a swig.
“What’s this about?”
“Relax. It’s a bit of a ride into the city. Whenever I come back from business in New Dallas, I like to land out here in the middle of nowhere and drive back in and see the old city like a visitor would for the first time. Landing directly into it feels like…” he hesitated. “New Dallas and the old city are close by, the same town but separated by a shuttlecraft or helicopter ride away. But it’s not though. Not really. They’re really two separate countries in a way, aren’t they?”
“I suppose,” Swallow murmured.
She looked out into the city as they bathed in the night lights of Old Dallas. Bank skyscrapers, Fountain Place, and Reunion Tower loomed over them, rising, swelling, receiving them, sucking them into their baleen hairs.
There was a majesty that lingered outside. An empire that had fallen and now fed off its former glory. The “middles” still lived and worked here, on the flat earth of land. The mid-level managers, the middle-class, the men who had reached up high and pulled themselves out of the mass, but were still ways from becoming the citizen-elite of New Dallas. They were the engines of the New Economy.
Swallow imagined Wren scaling these buildings. Rising, soaring up their elevators to her corner office, and in another decade, achieving a promotion to New Dallas. She smiled at the thought, but tears stung her too. It was a future in which they would be apart. Wren up in the sky. Her, down in the alleys, backstreets and underground. Would she remember her? Would she think of her? Would they be estranged and lonely?
Swallow pulled away from the window and her daydream. Tripped-Up Boy was gazing at her intently. “It’s a beautiful city, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s been my home for over thirty years. I was here before the New Dallas floating city launched and went online. I was here before they erected that skyscraper,” he pointed. “I was here long before the Big Six made this city their home, bringing in the incredible wealth, the elite and the celebrities. When you look at this city, what do you see Swallow?”
“I see a ladder I’ll never climb. But one Wren could.”
“That’s good. I believe in ambition and self-made men. I believe in pulling yourself up by your boot straps. All those American myths, I bought into them. But when I look outside at the city, I see something else.”
“What do you see?”
“I see death.”
“Death?”
“Yes. The country is changing before our eyes. The lights are on, but no one’s home. The Big Six are quickly developing VR technology that’s so powerful and immersive, more and more people are plugging in and not leaving. They wake up to eat, sleep, shit, piss and work. Some of them don’t even get out to work now. There are entire economies built inside these VR-sims. Soon, they’ll strap tubes onto their mouths and crotch. They’ll just live inside this fake world.
“This, to them is progress. This is the apex of humanity. That’s sad to me. What would their grandparents think? What would America’s founding fathers think? They’ve forgotten about what this country’s ancestors fought for,” he spat. “It’s so much easier to just plug in and escape.”
He stared over Swallow’s head into the past. “My parents brought me here from Vietnam when I was ten. This country used to mean something. It meant freedom. Land of opportunity. The American Dream. That’s what my parents sold me on. Now look at it,” he sneered. “It’s a shit hole.”
Swallow blinked, and contemplated on what Tripped-Up Boy had just said. America starved for fresh blood every generation because everyone grew complacent. Especially the ones who already had it good. They didn’t know what it’s like in the jungle fighting for your life every waking moment. And that’s why Wren will win. She believed in that. She believed in her.
“It’s about to get worse too,” Tripped-Up Boy interrupted her train of thought. “Word on the street is a keen start-up is developing a disruptive VR-OS that will change the game.”
Swallow had never plugged in. Didn’t care to. The real world was good enough for her. She couldn’t afford VR gear anyway. You had to be a middle at least to blow that kind of money on a glorified video game. Pah.
“Right now, maybe your little nephew or dumb cousin plugs in and plays seriously. Maybe one or two out of every ten chumps in Old Dallas. They play their video games, chat with their friends, watch a little porn, whatever. But with this new VR-OS, this guy who they say calls himself ‘The Composer’ - what kind of pretentious asshole gives himself such a dumbass nickname - he’s figured out what nobody else could. Get this. His I/O interface can actually reproduce all nine senses: smell, taste, heat, pressure, pain, everything. Early beta users are already suffering from clinical withdrawal. Rumours have it one of them committed suicide because he couldn’t deal with real life anymore. It wasn’t good enough. Think about that. It’s more real than reality.”
Swallow couldn’t. To throw everything away to live inside a fake bubble, that made no sense to her. She admitted, her life was miserable, but it was her misery. It was a misery that kept her going. It woke her up in the morning and drove her to do what she did. She had Wren and Uncle Huang to protect and provide for. She had her parents to avenge. She had her anger to burn.
“And get this,” Tripped-Up Boy cried, “The Composer, that little prick, he’s going to make his platform accessible to everyone… for free. He wants everyone inside. He wants to play god. He’s in on it with the government. It was an easy sell. People are easier to control and tax inside a VR-world. There’s also no more crime. No more tax evasion. No more drugs. No more wanton sex. Basically, no more freedom. If everyone’s plugged in, your entire digital identity is tracked down to each and every bit, byte, one and zero. It’s everything The Patriot Act wanted and more.”
Swallow shuddered at the thought.
“Think about that. Practically everyone plugged into the New Economy. Every cent you make, spend, borrow, invest… you do it inside his sim-vironment. This Composer, he’s going to rake it in. He gets a cut of everything. Every app, avatar and item uploaded, traded or sold. Every transaction. He’ll be smart about it, of course. Just a fraction of a cent here and there. Nothing you’d notice. But it adds up. Do you know what that means, Swallow?”
It means you’d be out of business inside two, three years at most. She gazed directly into Tripped-Up Boy’s brown eyes, an unknowable abyss. “Why are you telling me this?”
“We’re going to do something about it,” he sneered. “That’s what. We’re going to take the Composer down.”
Swallow blinked in surprise at first. But then, an unquestionable respect for Tripped-Up Boy swelled inside of her. Here was a man on a mission. A leader. Not just another petty crime boss putting out small fires on street corners and fighting stupid turf wars. This was a David going up against a Goliath.
And something stirred inside of her. It was immediately familiar and felt like the sweltering warmth of home. A faint waft of iron, the metallic flavour of it filled her nostrils. It was the sweet taste of blood. It was an fervent thirst Swallow had known her entire life. It was the insatiable need to fuck shit up.
“I’m in. What do you need me to do?”
Tripped-Up Boy grinned from one ear to the other. “You’re going to do a little B&E for me, Swallow. You see, everyone keeps coming at the Composer through the front door. They send spies to his offices. They plant fake employees. They headhunt his executives. They hack his systems. They tie him up in patent lawsuits. All the boring usual stuff. The Big Six. They’re big and dumb and set in their ways. You know what I’m saying?”
“Sure. They have rules. You don’t.”
“Exactly. So get this. I got an in with the Vory. You know who the Vory are?”
“Yeah, Russian mafia.”
“Right, some of their Romanian hackers who work for them were digging around the other day. And they found an old credit card attached to a R.G. Buckley. Now, that’s not that unusual. These guys steal fifty, sixty thousand identities a day. Most of them are junk. Some are good for a few dollars. But R.G. Buckley got flagged because they couldn’t attach it to anyone. It was taken out as a business account for an Austin corporation. Company cards are usually useless to them. Guy should’ve tossed it and moved on. But the company name caught his eye. It was an anonymous numbered company 17711-28657.”
Wren would know what that meant probably. Swallow had no idea.
“Now, I’m sure you’re thinking why is that important. I’m no genius either. But that guy realized it was part of the Fibonacci Series, some famous math pattern. So he looked into it. It was a shell corporation. And the owner of that company was another shell, and another shell. Just layers and layers of it. Down the rabbit hole he went… until it came back to, as you can guess by now, The Composer.” Tripped-Up Boy’s eyes popped out, fingers splayed jazz-hands in wry amusement. He looked like a funny little old ‘Namer.
“Now, that’s not the most important thing. What you need to know is what the credit card was paying for. It’s a rundown one bedroom apartment in Pleasant Grove! Strange right?”
A lot of Old Dallas had fell into ruin. The rich and powerful moved up into the floating city of New Dallas. The Middles snuck into their fortified buildings every morning via private subways. The poor, the illegals, and immigrants stayed everywhere else in between the cracks of the city. Pleasant Grove was one of the worst crime-ridden suburbs.
“I think there’s something there. I don’t know what yet, but there’s something. Why hide it with so many layers? Why put it in one of the worst neighbourhoods in the world?”
Swallow couldn’t fathom what the wealthy did.
“I want you to take a look for me, Swallow. Tell me what you find.”
ACT FOUR
Tripped-Up Boy’s guanxi had gotten Swallow an access card to the The Composer’s building in Pleasant Grove. She stood outside now and drew shallow breaths.
Above her, the bruised pallor of the charcoal sky grew heavy. It draped over Swallow’s head like cheap unfurled calico, stifling her. A squadron of pregnant rainclouds threatened to break water. She would welcome that. Any cool liquid sluicing her cracked husk of a body was better than this thick, dry heat.
She chanted under-her-breath, a mantra her punong guro taught her during combat training. “I am quick as shadow, quiet as jade vine, quiescent as cloud mice.”
She repeated it, over and over again.
A stray dog scrounged for dinner from the trashcans behind her. She snarled at it and scared it away. Tonight, she wore tight-fitting graphene, emphasized by pangolin-shelled pads, a leather jacket and data-shades. At a quick glance, she would be mistaken for a night-clubber or the girlfriend you didn’t bring home to meet mom.
Swallow made a fish mouth and her groin prickled uneasily. A storm was brewing overhead, she knew it. It hadn’t rained in Dallas proper for months. She could sense it coming though.
She played with the data-card in her pocket. In the top-right corner of her peripheral GUI, she read 21:16. She’d waited long enough. She sighed, then cracked her shoulders, neck and wrists. Time to go.
Tripped-Up Boy had told her that as luck would have it, The Composer was at a conference. SXSW or AustinTech. One or the other, it didn’t matter.
She chewed her lower lip, moistening some flakes, while chewing others off. She stared at the building’s front door, willing it to open so she could just walk through. But angels didn’t deliver miracles to thieves. She strode across the street and up the stoop. Scanning the data-card on the reader outside the door, a pleasant tone beeped and the door unlocked. She sighed with relief.
Inside, she hurried down the hallway and turned right at the end. Her boots bounced softly on the worn floral-patterned carpet. Dim sconce lights lit the way. The place smelled like a dormitory. Unwashed laundry, pizza boxes and used condoms. The carefree youth Swallow would never experience, nor did she envy.
Past a common room, and into another hallway, a door on her left flew open. A bald young man, wearing a grey U.T. hoodie, distracted by a newsfeed on his tablet, almost crashed into Swallow. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Swallow muttered, and kept speed-walking past him and towards the Composer’s shadow office.
She had gotten several paces between them when he called out, “Wait! Have I seen you before? You’re new here right? Just moved into 2B?”
Swallow tensed and contemplated ignoring him, but that was too much of a risk. She turned to face him. “No, I think you got the wrong person. I’m just visiting a friend.”
“Oh, yeah? You need any help finding the room? I’ve been here a coupla years now. I know how to get ‘round here.”
“Oh, no, I’m good. It’s just down this way…”
“Oh yeah? You visiting J.D. then?” J.D. was the Composer.
Did he know more than he let on? Was he in on it? Should she lie? “Yeah, no, I’m looking for 1D,” she replied haltingly.
“You know Beth Jorodorsky?”
“Yes…” It was too late now. Run with it.
“Huh. I thought she had went down to San Antonio for Spring Break…”
Fuck. Who was this kid? Security? Wait. Shit…
Swallow scanned the hallway for cameras. They were in every corner. She blinked slowly in resignation, pursed her lips to the side. The eyes on the kid before her glistened widely. It would take less than a hundred milliseconds for him to trigger the alarm. Just a tap on his tablet most likely.
And in that moment, time slowed down as Swallow sprinted, cartwheeled, flipped and dropkicked the glass device out of his hands, shattering it. With an uncanny speed, she stabbed the spear of her open palm into his throat, choking him. Bug-eyed and confused, the boy gurgled, and began to fall to his knees, but before his knees touched the ground, Swallow’s other hand swung in like a Kamikaze pilot on his neck, knocking him out.
She dragged the collapsed boy into his apartment. Or rather his office, a veritable wall of surveillance screens.
I can still salvage this.
She examined the console table. An impossible array of jog-wheels, knobs, buttons, faders and switches all designed to confuse the untrained. Unfortunately for them, she had had experience with altering security footage. Problem was, she had no idea if they streamed all content to a headquarters or not. If that were the case, she was fucked nine ways to Sunday.
She needed to text Tripped-Up Boy, let him know she might be compromised. Maybe they had a counter-intelligence team who could access this room. Cover up her digital trail. That was the right and proper thing to do.
But instead, she reached out to White Rabbit, someone she hadn’t spoken to since their failed revolution. At a deep, root level, Swallow knew this was one of those situations where one mistake led to bigger ones. But her fingers worked with a mind of their own.
“W.R. Need help. Know any NetSec wranglers?
“Wut u do?”
“I need a few vid-data streams deleted.”
“Fuck. That bad. Is it connected?”
“Don’t know.”
After the last message, an uncomfortable silence ensued with the plangent hum of server fans filling the room. Swallow breathed shallowly, blood sloshing through her entire body. Panic. She stared at her phone, the soft glow lambent against her face. She willed White Rabbit to come through. C’mon Rabbit. C’mon.
“Got someone.”
“Great! Who?”
“You won’t like it. He’ll be expensive.”
“OK. Who?”
“He says he won’t help you unless you go on a date with him.”
Swallowed smashed the heel of her hand against her forehead. Goddamit.
“Rabbit, did you ask Damian?”
Her screen showed White Rabbit typing, deleting and retyping until the message sent through. “yes”
“Tell him where I am. Tell him the security console is an Avaya 1787-B model. Tell him I’ve already installed a trojan-wurm on my side here. And tell him I’m not going on a fucking date with him. I’ll pay him double his rate. Somehow.”
“OK”
Swallow picked herself up and returned to the hallway, trusting Damian to erase all this. She half-jogged towards the room now, annoyed by the tangent with the kid. Two doors down, he found 1E. The Composers’s apartment. Swallow flashed the data-card against the sensor, it chirped and unlocked.
Swallow slipped into the room and nearly crashed into a tall column of old newspapers. Several more uneven pillars of yellowed, faded print fell haphazardly next to it.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she toured the room. Skyscrapers of books swayed precariously. Some leaned Pisa-like against the walls. Another six towers clustered together on a coffee table. And yet more jutted out on top of an old upright Yamaha piano like the outcropped buildings on Hong Kong mountainsides.
The room filled Swallow’s nostrils with dust. She choked, sputtered and her throat spasmed. A great sneeze crested. She squeezed her ribcage to stifle it. The urge passed after a minute or so. Her eyes watered furiously. She squeezed them shut and wet tears streamed down to her upper lip.
What remaining space left in the room stood three to four storey tall stacks of cardboard boxes. Some listed and faltered. The highest boxes crumpled unevenly, sinking into the box beneath, unable to support the weight above.
The dense metropolis of papers, book and boxes sprawled and nearly eclipsed the small fourth floor window. What little street fluorescence and neon signage snuck through gave the room an eerie glow.
The stifling air tickled Swallow’s respiratory system again. Her chest convulsed violently and she was unable to hold it in a second time. She exploded.
It was a full body experience from the tips of her toes and fingers, all nerves tingling like highway traffic hurtling towards the lungs, faster and faster, and when the gridlock had reached critical mass, it expelled loudly out her mouth.
Several front page headlines fluttered, hovered and settled once more.
“Fuck,” she muttered. She breathed deeply. The pungent musk of broken down cellulose and lignin and brittle newsprint flooded her. This triggered yet another tidal wave inside her that was about to break against her nostrils. But she stopped and willed her sneeze away when out of the corner of her eye, a lamp flickered on in the den next room over. This surprised her. The place was supposed to be empty. The Composer was away at a conference. Was it a friend? A squatter? A trap?
A large jowly man in his forties with combed-over, yet unkempt brown hair carrying a small paunch wandered out. He yawned. Gold wire rims hung over a bulbous nose. He dressed conservatively, as if his mother had picked out his clothes: a blue dress shirt, beige khakis and brown leather shoes.
“Hello,” he said, a goofy grin curving on his wide face. His teeth were yellowed and crooked. “It’s an unintentional security system, I guess,” tilting his forehead at the paper city. His voice was gentle, soft without a trace of malice in it. Friendly. He spoke ponderously, jaggedly, as if he were calculating great sums between phrases.
“I was taking a nap. Helps reset the old noggin (drumming his head)… when the ideas don’t flow. It’s like executing… a defrag.”
She didn’t know how to react. She would’ve never expected such insouciance at being burgled. So, cluelessly, Swallow simply asked, “Are you the Composer?”
“What? Oh me? Is that what they call me these days? It’s nice,” he pouted. “I like it I guess. But… I’m just Topher. Chris really, but… I prefer Topher. And you are?”
She squinted uneasily, legs akimbo, shoulders hunched. Her body readied to pounce at the slightest shift. “Yeah. I’m Ada. Ada Wong.”
“Oh, we’re playing that game?” His eyebrows knitted. “OK. My real name is… George Washington. Sure. Why not?”
She stared hard at the Composer (or Topher or the Father of the United States), not sure what to make of him. And in that momentary silence, she felt the two of them studying each other. Did he grin out of nervousness or was he bemused at her presence? He seemed relaxed, unfrightened, but she couldn’t be sure.
“O.K., Ada… Wong. We’ve looked at each other long enough. I’m assuming you’re here because (a deep sigh) someone hired you to steal something. Right?”
“Right.”
“Right. O.K. Hold on.”
Swallow was losing control of the situation. This was not in the game plan. She didn’t like the feeling. She unholstered and whipped out her pistol and aimed it at the Composer’s back.
Just as she was about to shout, “wait!” and threaten him, he replied nonchalantly with his slight drawl, without looking back, “You can put down the gun. Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”
She didn’t put the gun away. The strange circumstance she found herself in disoriented her. In the next room, filing cabinet drawers opened and closed, wooden drawers shushed, contents rattled.
Finally, the Composer returned to the living room head down, playing with a few things that clattered in a shoebox lid. Swallow couldn’t make out what they were in the dimness. The dull blue and purple light from outside painted Topher’s face with a haunted menace. She imagined she looked the same, though.
“I should organize these one day,” he murmured to himself, then looked up. “Oh, you still have your gun out. Really, put it away.” He waved his left hand absent-mindedly, willing the gun to vanish.
An intense anger roiled inside Swallow. She hated she was being told what to do. Worse, the Composer was a pudgy, privileged white man. She gripped the gun tighter and jabbed it his way. “Shut up! You don’t tell me what to do. I tell you what to do.”
The composer rolled his eyes. “Well, O.K., but aren’t you here for a data cube?” He plucked a blue one out from the shoebox lid. “One of these?”
Swallow frowned, her grasp loosening on the pistol’s grip.
“It’s fine. Look here,” he canted the shoebox lid towards her. There were six data cubes, each a different color. “I’ve got blue for ARC energy, red for Fennelsoft, yellow for Omnificient, green for Zweig & Cheever… just tell me who your client is. I got them all.”
“What is this?” she asked confused, cautiously dropping her gun to her side.
“Well, your client hired you to steal ‘company secrets’ from me, right? Break into his offices, see if you can get anything useful. That sort of thing right?”
“Yeah…”
“And your client… they work for one of the Big Six, right?”
“Sure…”
“So, here’s how it works. I give you one of these data cubes, you take it back to your client, your client gives it to the company in question and everybody gets paid.”
The blood pounding in Swallow’s temples slowed. A cool breeze from godknowswhere eased her fears somewhat.
“I don’t understand. You’re just handing these out?”
“Oh sure. Frankly, mmm… I got sick of them sending spies and sticking plants in my business. So a few years ago, I reached out to a few of my uncles, Russian immigrants with ties to the Motherland… and we started a side biz of fencing stolen I.P. I don’t make any money off of it… but I control what ends up with my competitors.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
He ignored her, or didn’t hear her. “You see, what the Big Six don’t get is, they’ve forgotten their roots. They’re filled with zombies, paper-pushers and janitors. They’re like this big dumb beast who demands to be fed, but for what?
“Us new guys, the immigrants, the start-ups, the entrepreneurs… we hustle. We skirt corners. We bend the laws to get ahead. We tell little white lies. But what choice do we have? The Big Six are in bed with politicians. They make laws to hold on to their waning power and keep us out. So we fight dirty too. And we remember our roots.
“Every family fortune today was built on the seed of a criminal enterprise. Think about it. Joe Kennedy manipulated the stock market. Devil Bill Rockefeller sold snake-oil. And don’t get me started on the Waltons.
“So here’s the deal,” the Composer continued, picking a data cube up, dropping it, picking up another, dropping it. “Each one of these data cubes has the something they want on it, but it’s filled with malicious code. That’s what the Big Six have engineers for. They spend months cleaning up this elaborate mess I’ve created. It wastes a lot of time and money. It’s great.”
Swallow shifted her weight, processing everything the Composer told her.
“But before the engineers can even get to it, the cryptographers have to break the 40-96 encryption, the five-by-five passphrase, and a host of security I personally designed and purposefully kept off-market! That drains their resources even more.”
Swallow opened her mouth to speak, but found no words.
“So you see, it’s literally a riddle wrapped up in a mystery inside an enigma!” He tittered. It was an unpleasant combination of snorting and honking. “But here’s the best part! Once they crack it open, they find out it’s just a piece in a puzzle. They need five other data cubes to make sense of it!”
Swallow starred blankly at the Composer. He was no longer talking to her or anyone but himself. The sly grin on his face unsettled her as he continued to rearrange the data cubes like chess pieces on the underside of the shoebox lid.
She interrupted him. “What happens when they put all six together? Do you get Voltron?”
“Ha! That’s good. You have a sense of humour. No, they get the beta code to Labirint’s VROS. The one thing they’re all so afraid of. The OS that will steal all their market share. I had to put parts of the actual OS on there of course. They’d see through it if there wasn’t some semblance to the real thing on these data cubes. It’s what makes them work so hard trying to crack them. It’s what will keep them busy while I go to market. It’s the greatest con of all time. Just like how they stick ladders and prejudices and red tape in front of us. Oh the sweet irony!” He self-congratulated himself.
“Wouldn’t you be fucked if anyone ever got their hands on all six, then?”
“That’d never happen. By the time they get all six and crack them all, Labirint VROS will be running on every capsule and sim-vironment already. Hell, I have distribution contracts with four of the Big Six already. All their top brass have already surrendered. All this thieving is some renegade executive looking to make a name for themselves. I’m happy to play along.”
Swallow blinked. She couldn’t understand why the Composer had told her all this, nor did she care at this point.
“Hey Einstein,” Swallow said. She placed the barrel of her gun against his forehead. “Give me all six.”
The Composer’s eyeballs rotated to meet her muzzle. “This again?” He asked, bored. “Listen, I’m making this easy for you. I’m going to give you one cube. You make some easy money. In two, three months, you steal another cube. It’s good money. Think of it like a school play. You’re playing your part in this grand charade, Ada Wong. Who’s your boss, anyway? I’ll tell uncle Volya to put in a good word, send more work your way.”
Swallow grimaced and kept mum.
The Composer frowned. “O.K., Ada Wong. Let’s say you get all six. Who are you going to fence it to? My uncles know every fence in the network. What are you going to do? Skip the middleman? You think the Big Six will take care of you? They’ll fuck you in the ass the moment you blink. Be reasonable. There’s a way we do business in this city. Don’t rock the boat.”
Undaunted, Swallow flicked the safety off.
“Ah. So you do know how to use that thing. I thought you were going to wave it around all night. Fine.”
Six data cubes launched into Swallow’s face, blinding her. Her gun went off as it was slapped out of her wrist and the Composer shoved her like a wrecking ball into the newspaper stacks. A great storm cloud of dust enveloped her. She coughed violently, uncontrollably as old headlines buried her. Her vision blurred as she caught one final glimpse of the Composer, a black shadow, fleeing the room.
She fought through the hacking fit and got up. Both the Composer and his data cubes were gone. She roared in frustration and gave chase. Outside the apartment, she spied the distant Composer turning a corner at the end of the hallway. Swallow sprinted, the fastest she’d ever ran in her life, legs pumping.
At the corner, a fire exit door crept shut. She rushed to it and swung it wide open. It blasted against the stairwell doorstop. Over the railing, the blue pot-bellied man hurried down the stairs, brown hair flopping in the air. She whipped out her gun and fired twice. Missed. Her target startled, but tottered onwards, flabby flesh swinging ugly. Swallow flew down the stairs, two, three steps at a time. She was faster than him, more athletic than him, his capture was inevitable.
They spiralled down the stairwell, Swallow closing in.
At the second floor landing, Swallow loomed over the Composer. She was so close, and yet, he was about to leave the building, into the blanket safety of CCTVs and the outside. There was nothing else she could do. So she leapt, throwing herself at him, tackling the man. She rear-ended him in mid flight and wrapped her arms over his shoulders. The Composer stumbled and fell. A giant timbering down.
He fell forward headfirst while Swallow laid awkwardly on top of her human-sled. Down the stairs they went. And in that moment, time was both fast and slow. Every shocking bump vibrated individually. She felt each one through the Composer’s body as it took the brunt of the damage. She found she could put a distinct thought together, a coherent sentence of “this can’t be happening” even as she felt beneath her bones breaking, skin rending and blood flowing.
At the very end of it, the Composer’s face smashed into the concrete landing of the ground floor, bones crunched loudly, flesh pulped. Teeth spattered out. The great beast groaned, sucked in air, then gasp, flailing his right arm, reaching for purchase, anywhere, somewhere, something to grasp on to, one last time… then dropped. His body jerked ferociously like a bull, throwing Swallow off, then stopped.
“Fuck,” Swallow whisper shouted at herself. “Fuck, fuck fuck fuck. FUCK!”
She paced around the body with a chill that stung her to her bones. She had not meant to kill the guy. He shouldn’t have been here. It’s his fault, the idiot. Why would he tell me about the data cubes? What’s wrong with him? Fuck.
This was not part of the plan. It was not part of the plan at all. She surveyed the claustrophobic stairwell. In the corner, a camera. It better be still jammed, Damien. The corpse at her feet was a complete mess. The face, disfigured and swollen and bruised. Herself, scraped and scratched, a vibrating string of adrenaline. The data cubes. Where were the data cubes?
The night would not be a complete waste if she could still get the data cubes. She could find a way to skip the middlemen and sell them herself. She had to. She could hide the money and run. Leave it all for Wren. It would pay for Wren’s treatment and get her into a good school.
Every great immigrant family started off with a criminal enterprise. The Composer’s words rang in her ears.
“Shut up,” she muttered.“Shut up. I didn’t kill you. You were stupid for being here. You’re a dumb fuck.”
Hesitantly, Swallow approached the Composer’s prostrated body. She stooped and pulled his left arm out from under him. His hand was balled up in a bloody first. Unclenching each finger, slicked with viscous red, she found nothing inside. She crouched and slipped her hand gingerly between the floor and his fleshy breast, rubbed up against his nipple and discovered nothing in his shirt pocket either. Finally, she dug into his pants pockets: A wallet, carkey fob, his phone, glass screen cracked and dead.
“Fuck,” she retrieved her hands, examined them, shook out the blood and wrung them against a clean area of the Composer’s pants. “Fuck.”
She sat and leaned against the wall, dejected and exhausted.
Turning her head, she scanned the bloody stairs and spotted her prize. One, two, three, four, five. Five data cubes. Red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. She picked herself up and clambered up the stairs to retrieve them. Up another flight, she located the sixth and last one. Orange. Six.
A thrilling euphoria suffused her entire being and she momentarily forgot about the aches, the pain, the fatigue and the dead body a few feet down. It wasn’t relief. It was the anxious uncertainty of optimism. This could be it. This could be the one golden ticket. This is Wren’s way out.
The Composer was right. She had no idea how she would fence these data-cubes to the Big Six. But that didn’t matter. She’d find a way.