Dissolution

Chapter 14 - Bodies

I was in a dream. I blinked, but my UConn didn't respond. I didn't need it though. My brain kicked up images of John Whittaker Charles Anron at me. His face plastered over the screens. His smiles in the ads. The glint of the Shareholder pin on his suit at the speech before the Auctioning. I hadn't known that there was another John Whittaker Charles Anron. That his great, great, great, great grandfather had been the First Shareholder. Whatever that meant. 

But how could I not have known? Why wouldn't they just tell us? Surely that would have been a good story for them, reminding us of their wisdom and mystique. But all we knew was that the Shareholders lived in their magical bubble in Unilox like a different species, gently steering the Corporations, while we...

We sold ourselves.

My mind turned a corner and stopped.

"Tell me, Madeline," the professor said. Her eyes were lost in the shifting lines of the DNA sequence. Their colors caught in her irises, reflected back onto her face. "Do you prefer PERCO or MERCE?"

"MERCE," I said, before I even realized my mouth had moved.

"HARLIN or DRAYTH?"

"HARLIN."

"Unilox, or something else?"

My throat worked. I had the sense that something great and terrible was coming, creeping through the shadows cast by all those lines running along the wall, mapping out the code of a man who had died centuries ago. "I . . . what?"

The professor tapped the plaque again and the light pulled back reluctantly, leaving the walls and her skin dull and grey. "I don't know what they were running from," she said. "Perhaps from whatever lies beyond the desert. But the original John Whittaker Charles Anron was a smart man. And a desperate one. He knew that he needed to create a single entity to keep the hundreds who had followed him safe. But he also knew that he couldn't afford to give them a single body to focus on, because a single body can be blamed, hated, scorned, torn down. So he created the Auctioning." She touched a delicate hand to the collar around her throat. "He created Unilox. And Unilox gave birth to children. ANRON. HARLIN. MERCE. PERCO. DRAYTH. All the Corporations required to build a self-sustaining city. And in turn, his daughter, who lived on beyond him and saw what could happen, created us."

I sat down abruptly. The world didn't stop spinning after that, but it did make me feel better. Too much. It was too much. Thoughts fought for dominance in my brain, scrabbled over each other like rats. I found myself staring straight ahead. Even with the light gone, I saw the patterns of lines on the wall. I couldn't un-see the illusion now. I couldn't. I thought back to Unilox Hall, where my life had changed forever, and I thought of the different suits in their different areas calling out their numbers, and I thought of the endless faces crying, laughing, happy, devastated. I thought of the countless arguments I'd had with my parents, and I felt suddenly like a hollow bell, all sound and no substance.

But over that, something else kicked in. Something I hadn't even realized existed. My mouth opened and I spoke.

"But it works, doesn't it?" I asked. My voice was small, pleading. "Without the Auctioning . . . without the Corporations we'd be . . . we'd be just like the corpless." I tried to find the words, feeling like I was slipping through sand. "Don't get me wrong. I hate this. But I also don't want to worry about being eaten alive every day because the gang over there doesn't like me."

The professor grinned. Her teeth, surprisingly white, were a slash in the shadows. "One of the benefits of working in the Library," she said, "is that you get access to a lot of information people have forgotten about. Now, it just so happens I have a passing interest in genetics." She gestured negligently at the stacks behind her. "And you know what's funny? Most of the literature agrees that at some point we ate each other a lot. There are genes swimming around in our code specifically protecting against brain diseases that can only be contracted by eating human meat. And those wouldn't be there if our ancestors hadn't decided at one point that they didn't like the look of the other tribe over the hill. So you might say it's natural, really. All these thousands of years of evolving, of stone knives turning into bronze spears and then guns and taser disks."

I couldn't process what I'd just heard. Horror forced it out of my mouth. "That doesn't mean cannibalism is right."

"I never said it was," she shot back. "But neither is revoking your license, is it?"

I had nothing to say to that.

"We've always eaten each other," she said grimly. "We've always sold ourselves, for the right price. Nothing's changed. But if some of us remember that, then maybe we can do something about it."

I shook my head mutely. It was too big. Too huge. Too awful. "How?" I demanded.

Her eyes focused again. I wondered what she'd been looking at, what far away world she had been in. "I'm sorry," she said, not really sounding sorry at all. "It's a lot to take in, isn't it?"

I tried not to let the river drip into my voice. "Not at all."

She smirked, and suddenly she was the same old lady who'd looked me up and down and asked if I'd been setting fires. "Well then, all you need to know is that I think we can help. For a little while."

"We?"

She nodded. "I believe Claudia was the one who decided, centuries ago, that we shouldn't have a name. Otherwise, we might forget what we're doing." She made a sour face. "I think someone did forget somewhere along the way, and that's why we're here now. But we make sure there's a few of us in every generation who know that this room exists, and why. And we keep the old laws alive. The ones that can help us fight back when something like this happens."

I shook my head. "I still don't get it," I said. "What can two or three people do against a Corporation?"

Her face was grim, but alight. "File a case. Drag this into the open. Even if we can't change the law, we can change people's minds."

Hope blossomed at the back of my throat. I scrambled to my feet. "You mean . . . you think you could get my license back?

For a moment, the world was brilliant again. I could still have a future. Still get sold to MERCE. Still live. But the silence drew out long enough that I knew the answer before she spoke.

"I wish I could say yes," she said steadily. "But I'm not going to make any promises that I know I can't keep." She saw my face. "We can keep you safe in the meantime, though. Somehow."

"Somehow," I echoed emptily.

She looked at me, and I turned away. Without my implants, the taste of sympathy was bitter. "I'll go file the writ," she said gently. "Stay here."

I watched her go, watched her walk to the edge of the room, to the edge of the illusion and back to the real world. She paused just before she vanished. "I don't know if this helps, at all," she said. "But remember what I told you. Corporations are a piece of legal fiction. A body, if you like. From the Latin corpus. Bodies can live. They can have children. They can rule, for a little while. And in time, with enough change, with something like this to start the spark that might become a fire . . . they can die."

A/N: Only one more chapter of exposition. Promise. Hope you're all still enjoying it.