Shine (7 page)

"Then they re-trade the heavy credit, probably chemical waste, to some still underdeveloped or developing nation. All that under a confidential agreement. The said nation pays the heavy carbon with another large quantity of cheap carbon, which re-enters the cycle, but also with a lot of money.

"In the end, the buyer paid less for more credits, which legally lowers their footprint and enables them to do business with big traditional companies, wikindustries, and well-developed nations like us who are signatories of the Rio, Kyoto, Shenzhen and Tripoli protocols. On the other hand, the fraudulent company gets lots of money in the process. Much more than what was spent buying the first cheap credits. And yes, their old practices still prefer money."

Cloak spent most of the time silently staring at Inácio like a statue. When his voice came out it was smooth and determined. "You're wrong," he said.

"What?" Inacio stopped and pulled his client's illusory mantle. "Wrong how?"

"To begin with, they do have a real product."

He was a foreigner in this city-within-a-city.

The São José quarter, unlike the rest of Recife's downtown, was pretty much alive now at three in the morning. Street vendors, food carts and electric trucks, packing and delivering cargoes of recyclable materials, conferred on the place a cosmopolitan atmosphere. And there were people; too many people. Seven or eight young adults ran past him chasing a ball, blackened after years of use. They were having a break from the deep night school, a way to keep the area's high literacy rates. They dodged passersby running errands and almost ran over a tall man in a black suit turning the corner. The man stopped to let them pass, and calmly re-entered the crowd.

The neighborhood was one of the two surviving permanent autonomous zones created in the 'twenties after years of civil unrest. Reconstruction, urbanization, and ultimately a decent life began after the government accepted the fact that the people could administrate the bairro better than the white-collars ever would. But after some time, independence demanded the necessity to be carbon-free, which made São José a center of excellence for recycling and sustainable design, but also home to some of the fiercest Brazilian carbon smugglers.

So the streets were chaotic, yes, but cleaner than those in the outer city. There were fewer rich media oozing from the walls and the people, and only the dangling jury-rigged cables connecting new apartments in the upper floors hurt the landscape. There wasn't a single public recycler around, but Inácio knew that a great number of men and women made a living out of collecting, separating and selling garbage in online auctions, both for reuse in energetic processing and for manufacturing things the printers weren't able to make.

The leader of one of the biggest collectors' cooperatives was precisely the man the soldier-turned-analyst was looking for. His name, or the name he was known by, was Capitão. He had fought with Inácio in the war and was directly responsible for him joining the fight. Inácio soon became his superior in the militia, but the commander never dared to make a move without consulting the elder.

On the billboard spinning before his eyes, Inácio could see the name, municipal subscription number and other general information of the São José PAZ's Garbage Collectors Association. The building was an eighteenth century warehouse but its frontispiece was richly enhanced by augmented reality inputs, a fluid animation constantly displaying different stages of a recycling facility. Capitão stood by the old, big cedar door smoking a cigarette, observing the tide of human beings.

"If you won't quit this shit by yourself, lung cancer will do it for you," said Inácio. There was some passive-aggressiveness in his tone, but a half-smile belied his anger. It was good to meet the old man. "Last time we met you said you'd stopped."

"We all have our sins, don't we? And our secrets," the gray-haired man replied with a grin. "You could have moIPed me, you know. Instead of visiting me live."

They gave each other a tight hug. Perhaps three years had passed since the last time they met face to face. Capitão didn't attend Lúcio's funeral, of course, but not because he had anything against Inácio or his partner. On the contrary, he and Lúcio were great friends. Truth is that the old man, who had killed many men and as many more die in the field, couldn't stand the sight of his only child grieving for his dead lover. "Come in, son," said Capitão. "Tell me what brings you here."

"That's why I didn't moIP you. I was coming anyway." They were both leaning over the mezzanine's wood parapet. On the ground floor several tall garbage piles were negotiated, each one by a different associate wearing home-made Augmented Reality glasses. Many were young, some were well-dressed, but some looked little better than mendicants. The cooperative supplied the hardware and hosted the entire commercial infrastructure for a notional fee. In his contacts, Inácio could see the giant screen showing today's rates for aluminum, glass, rubber and other non-biodegradable materials. And the hot deal today was antimony.

"They must be paying well," said Capitão.

"It's not about..."

"I remember you quit E-Missions because you had to do this exact same job in the US."

"Don't start."

"And then you joined that bastards at CrediCarb, got rich and then quit again to get even richer." Capitão stared at Inácio, but didn't seem to be angry either. Only bitter.

"I'm not rich. And I'm not with CrediCarb because they're fucking corrupt." Inácio was on the verge of yelling at his father, but lacked the energy for a fight. Two hours from now the sun would rise and he had absolutely no idea what Gear5 was about to release. His forehead felt hot, hotter than the air inside the warehouse.

"Of course they don't have any fixed address." He told Capitão. "They're a fucking wikindustry." And of course he could throw shit at the fan and watch it spread and stink so much Gear5 would be forced to postpone whatever plan they had, so he'd win some more time and could dig a little deeper. His eyelids closed against his will, his head leaned to one side. There was a buzz behind his ears. It sounded like chaos playing the enchanters' flute. "It doesn't matter. I need your help."

"Sure. What can I do for you?" Capitão turned and lit another cigarette.

Sweat was beginning to exude from his body. The sound was rising in pitch. "I need to know who their supplier is. And don't look at me like that. I'm sure you know." Inácio grabbed the wooden parapet as his hands began to shake.

"Even if I knew, it would be stupid to go there and actually talk to them. They don't talk. They're people from before the wall. They kill."

Inácio guessed he was right, but it was so hard to concentrate on anything. His skull was pounding. "Come on, you know everything that happens in São José. I know it's in the Market, but I have to know who the man is."

Capitão took a deep, smoky breath. "Sorry, son. I can't help you. I don't know who he is."

"You're lying." He didn't look up.

"Maybe. If so, it's for your own protection."

"But I'll go anyway. That's what I have to do." The icon of an incoming video message worsened his headache. It was from Bispo.

"And this is the part where you ask me for a gun."

"And this is the part where you give me one." Capitão was probably the last man in town, except for the military, to have a lethal weapon. Below them, the associates were in frenzy. Electronic waste suddenly became the top priority.

There was a man in a black suit standing at the center of the waste piles. He was looking up in Inácio's direction.

"And this is the part I change the script," Capitão told him. "Write your report anyway you can. But don't mess with the carbon smugglers. They'll kill you."

In a tiny window, Bispo looked nervous, but that could be the result of the video's low resolution or Inácio's own weariness. "Hey, Inácio! Tried to moIP you, but it seems you're offline," said Bispo in the recording. "Look, I found something that might be useful. I decided to nose into Gear4's deals record and there were some contracts with volunteers for research into a new direct control interface for their videogames. And Lúcio was in." Inácio felt the buzz rise to an almost unbearable volume. The man in the black suit waved him an invitation to follow and before Inácio thought about it, he was on the move, going down the stairs, leaving his father and their argument with no further ado.

The lights started to fail. Lúcio waited at the door.

"Am I hallucinating?" Inácio was feeling feverish and completely worn out. He was an arm's distance from a ghost wearing his lover's shell.

"Sort of." Lúcio's voice was most tired, yet his appearance couldn't be more jovial. "Come. There's no time. I can't keep the connection. Come to the market. No one will harm you. They'll bring you to my presence. You must help me die."

And for the third time since they met, he vanished.

A young soldier led Inácio down corridors through the boxes in the very heart of São José's Market. Inside the nineteenth century building, anything could be found. Electronics and herbs, software and food. Live animals, healthcare and personal data centers. But in its center there was a tent, like a circus, where the many types of carbon credits, from sulfates to oxides and dangerous wastes, were sold under the counter. Inácio walked fast, almost faster than his armed guide. The boy picked him up in the market's main entrance. Neither of them spoke. The boy knew, Inácio knew.

Fabric walls divided the space inside the tent, a business center made of cotton and organic polymers. Inácio could see through half-opened curtains some of the businessmen gesticulating over invisible, encrypted AR screens, buying and selling hacked or forged credits. When deals were set, one would slide a hard drive, a physical, wireless cube where data was locked.

The scene repeated itself until the guide stopped in front of a nondescript door-curtain and told Inácio to go in.

"I thought you wouldn't come." Lúcio stood alone in the room, wearing the same suit and the same worn out features. But he smiled, and that made Inácio's heart thump. He felt tears rolling from his eyes. He was confused and tired and probably mad, but hell, was he happy.

"I don't understand," said Inácio still at a safe distance, but willing to ignore his survival instincts and grab Lúcio in his arms. "Are you alive? How?"

"No, I'm not. Yet, I'm dying again." It was Lúcio who ended up making the first move. His feet didn't touch the ground and he stopped just a few inches from Inácio's mouth. "And I need your help to figure out if I should let go."

"What am I supposed to do? What happened?" Inácio went forward, looking for a much longed kiss, but the man he desired dodged his caress.

"Physics engines. Sorry I didn't tell you." They both looked sad and tired. "I'm not here. I'm nowhere near. I'm not anywhere. Not at all. It happened by accident, but now I'm without a single physical form. My body is a wall, your shirts, the space within circuits. And I think I can bring you here soon. But I don't think it is the right thing to do."

Inácio looked around the room, its inner walls blinking with embedded systems. A large personal data center was in a corner and next to it a black hard drive. "Why not?"

"Because I think you wouldn't like the broader consequences. But since I'm not sure about your opinion, I can't decide it by myself. See the drive? It contains detailed information about all the carbon footprint I generated since I joined Gear5. Read it and decide if this is the path we should follow before my code goes public in the morning. When that happens, I won't be
me
anymore."

Lúcio turned his engines off and got closer to Inácio, his black skin reflected in green semi-transparent eyes. The greenman watched his partner kneel down, his face turned upwards, smiling, too close to his groin. "But before you do it," Lúcio began, "turn your haptics on."

The surf close to the wall was brief, but beautiful nevertheless in Recife's waking hours. The sun had fully risen and Inácio sat on the stone parapet, his shoeless feet swinging free, getting wet in the salty drizzle. He kept the black hard drive next to him and away from the fatal fall. His vision was filled with diagrams, schematics and other greenmen's projections for the next several years.

He didn't wait long for the call.

"Good morning, Mr. Lima," said Cloak-and-globe.

"Yeah. Good." His eyes were sunk inside his skull, his body ached, his eardrums were blown. But it was a good day. Except that, in his mind, the decision Lúcio demanded wasn't clear.

"Is the report ready?"

"Yes, it is. I'm uploading it to you." Inácio dragged the icon to a virtual table close to his client. "Done. You have my account, so I'm sure you'll transfer my money." Inácio jumped back to the sidewalk, barefooted, and headed to the escalator.

"Mr. Lima! Wait," said the globe, the storm in his glassy head less visible under daylight. "I'd like to know your personal opinion on the matter. This document will surely give me and the group I represent all the details, numbers and other minutiae necessary to decide. But time's short and if you could provide me a quick analysis, that'd be much appreciated."

Inácio stopped just before the escalator's steps, rolling down to the avenue. "My opinion? You want my opinion?" He assumed the most professional tone he could. "Gear5's new technology is highly disruptive. It puts an end to our time and begins another one, potentially radically different from any other in human history." He moved closer to the boy-investor.

"But it needs so much energy, so much bandwidth, that three or four Earths would be necessary to feed it. Think about a datacenter for a whole mind. The computational power needed to calculate the simplest of human decisions. The raw materials needed to build all that infrastructure.

"Yesterday's blackouts were the result of their iteration prototype running. They're consuming the city's whole energy and communications. That's why they were buying so much carbon. They thought it'd make the technology pass the trade regulations. They didn't think about the impact. Not to mention that only those rich enough to pay the stratospheric price Gear5's asking would be able to buy the uploading code and hardware. It will generate a kind of inequality never seen before.