Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
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.
So. I guess they’re no different from everyone else when it comes to coin.
A part of me always knew they were not any different than the other government officials that came before them, but it still burns. And it’s disappointing.
So I sigh and just shoulder my way through the crowd until I make it to the ground level. The staircase does keep going down, but you have to walk around the backside of the stairwell to find the opening for it.
There is a thick crowd of people coming up to see what’s going on, same way there was coming down, but after a single floor it thins out. Mostly because that’s where the stairwell ends.
I walk a little further into the small lobby so I can see down all eight of the hallways that fan out from the stairwell like spokes, then sigh. Because I don’t see any more stairs. Not out in the open, at least. So I guess I’ll have to start pulling open doors.
I choose a direction and walk, checking out doors. Upstairs there are open stairwells at the end of every hallway, plus several hidden somewhere in the middle, and they are mostly marked. But down here, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
An old woman is standing in a doorway smoking, her attention fully on the crowd at the bottom of the stairs. But when I stop in front of her, she turns her eyes up to meet mine. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for stairs going down. Do ya know of any?”
She points her chin in the direction I was heading. “End of the line that way.” Then points her chin the other way. “End of the line that way too.”
I’m not sure if this means there is a stairwell at the end of each hallway or not. But I don’t hang around to ask because I spot Anneeta staring at me just a few doors down.
“Thanks,” I tell the old woman, then walk over to Anneeta. “Are you spying on me?”
She shrugs up one shoulder, unimpressed by my intimidating question. “Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to watch you get yourself lost trying to find the basement.”
“How’d you know I was going to the basement?”
She taps her head. “Doors can’t stop me, Tyse. I hear everything.”
“That’s a creepy answer. You should probably not tell anyone you’ve got the god inside you.”