Page 65 of Sparktopia
The phone buzzes in my hand, signaling a message. It’s Stayn.You had better not go back to sleep! I’ll come into that tower and kick your fucking balls in if you’re not already on your way.
My smile is wide when I text back,Who is this? And when I get a mad rash of messages in reply, I ignore them and toss the phone into the trash. He’s just really easy to wind up. Being chief of patrol does that to a guy, I guess. But I don’t feel sorry for him. If he didn’t want the stress, he shouldn’t have taken the job.
I do get my ass in gear, though, pulling on a black tank and the same boots I’ve been wearing since I was discharged from the Sweep Army seven years ago. Then I fasten my battle belt to my hip and leave, shrugging on a canvas jacket as I make my way towards the central stairwell.
I’m on the tenth floor of the ruined God’s Tower. It’s only marginally safe as far as structure goes, but it’s quiet. Most of us prefer to live down below, closer to the ground. There are maybeseveral dozen people living above me—the tower goes up fifteen more floors from here—but there are no stairs, only ladders, and the plumbing is iffy on the best of days.
Tenth floor is private enough for my standards. Anything higher is just a nuisance, and I’m nothing if not a practical man. It’s the only reason I live in Tau City in the first place. I wasn’t ready to give up the spark after I was discharged from Sweep. There’s no ruin in Delta, where I grew up. There’s a god living in that fuckin’ tower. Nasty one, too. Lots of rules and traditions. Which makes for a nice city, I guess, but there’s always a tradeoff.
My god came with a lot of expectations, which—after seven years of war—I was no longer interested in accommodating. Tau City not only had a still-functioning ruin, it was close to the base where I was stationed at the end of my service, so I applied for War College and got accepted. That’s how I met Stayn and Basil.
Having both grown up here, and coming from respectable families, neither Stayn nor Basil ever got addicted to the spark. But no one in Tau City cares much if ya are. As long as you can still function outside the ruin, it’s just another way to unwind. Like a fifth of whiskey at the taverns or a whore on Friday night.
I’m still in control. I do get out of the tower, but not nearly as much as I used to. I’ve just lost interest in climbing my way up the political ladder the way Stayn and Basil are.
I don’t want to lead. I don’t want to follow, either. I just want to be left alone.
Living in the tower is free, the spark is free, and it suits me. So why the fuck not?
I do work. Sometimes. Both inside and out.
It’s the perfect tradeoff if you ask me.
I nod at some people working on a mural in the wide hallway as I pass by and enter the main stairwell. It’s entirely probable that this ‘quick job’ turns into an all-day thing because I don’teven know how to get that far below ground. But if there is a way down there, my best guess is that the main stairwell is where that route starts.
On any given day there are between three and four thousand people calling the tower home. It’s a lot when you see them all in the same place, but still a very tiny percentage compared to the nearly two million living outside.
Of course, you almost never get all the tower people in the same place at the same time, but as I descend and the noise becomes increasingly louder, I wonder if they’re not all down in the main lobby right now.
When I come around the curve between the second and first floors, I can’t believe my eyes. Because it really does look like everyone in the tower is here.
I pause on the steps and lean in towards a man about my age. “What the hell is goin’ on?”
“ID’s.” He doesn’t look at me. Just stares intently down at the crowd.
Now that I know this is government business, I can pick out the social workers standing behind a table near the entrance. “They’re giving out ID’s?” I cross my arms and frown. “Well, that’s not suspicious.”
“Yeah,” the guy says, turning to look at me now. “How stupid do these people have to be to start rattlin’ off all their information to the fuckin’ government?” He scoffs. “There’s no way I’m getting trapped in their tracking system. I just barely got myself out.”
I nod, agreeing. Not that I’m out of the system—I’m not. I would have to leave Tau City and start over somewhere else if I wanted to be invisible. Too many friends in high places here.
Everyone in the tower is addicted to spark, that’s true. It’s an unavoidable side effect. But they’re not all here for that reason alone. Some of them just don’t want to participate in society.Like me. And ditching your official ID is the only way to do that. That’s why no one in here has a phone. It’s how they track.
Only disposable phones are ‘technically’ allowed inside the tower, temporary things that are susceptible to the spark and run out of battery after three or four interactions. But all phones are temporary in here, even if they’re not disposable. The city just figured why waste perfectly good phones on the tower people when they can make an inferior product that costs less to produce, charge the same amount for it, and make a tidy little profit off the degenerates who don’t want to be good little citizens and participate in the general welfare of society? By which I mean be taxpayers.
No phone, no ID. No ID, no job. No job, no taxes.
No government likes shit they can’t tax, including people.
That’s why I didn’t much care that I shattered my phone against the wall. That’s why I threw the one Anneeta gave me in the trash. All phones sold in Tau City have an official tracker on them that allows them to function, including the disposable ones. But they die in less than a day, even if you don’t use them for the maximum number of interactions.
There are just as many people in the tower on the run from the patrol as there are true addicts. To them, the offer of an ID and a phone to keep it on is nothin’ but a trap, just like this guy said.
The crowd on the stairwell is growing thicker by the second with onlookers trying to decide how bad off they are. Do they need the ID to get a city aid package? Or can they hold out?
There’s at least a thousand people down in the lobby below who can’t hold out, I guess. Because they are clamoring for a chance to get tracked.
I’ve only ever seen this done once in the last seven years and it was before Stayn and Basil took over.
