Itoh, Project - Harmony

The fact that Iraq had, during the Maelstrom, suffered from nuclear fallout meant that there was no shortage of disease here for medical researchers to study. But in those days, it would have been hard to find a place that hadn’t been hit by nukes. Nor were the tax breaks and morally lax laws enough to explain the bizarre medical oasis that had sprung into existence here. The only explanation you could give was teleological: the wealth had accumulated here because of an accumulation of wealth.

Military resource suppliers took care of the security.

The zone was completely reliant on military resource supplier security.

Though from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century nonstanding forces had still been the property of nations, as the nations weakened, the balance of military force shifted to MRSs and military information suppliers. On the surface, there was very little difference, though, seeing as how nearly all MRSs and military information suppliers were contracted by the Geneva Convention Organization, an international body formed by an accord between every admedistration. I stopped at a SecGate in the several kilometer–long wall surrounding the medical zone so a medical soldier in his pink uniform could check my identification. They also needed my acknowledgment that they could not guarantee my well-being outside the security zone, and that my WatchMe would go off-line.

I was free, once again in a world without WatchMe, medcare units, or AR. I looked around at scenery that time had forgotten: barracks after barracks after barracks, a tangle of crumbling buildings. The place had a feel to it that was completely missing from any admedistration city, and the air was filled with scents and smells.

A man sat on the street smoking tobacco out of a giant pipe that looked more like a strange musical instrument. There was the smell of fish cooking, meats, and all kinds of spices. This was a market. I went into a nearby restaurant and ordered a meal of uncertain composition, calories, and risk vectors. I noticed an ashtray on the table, so I motioned to the owner that I wanted to smoke. He produced some cigarettes and a lighter. I took the memo I had stuck in my pocket, held it over the ashtray, and set it on fire. Cool. I’d always wanted to do that.

This was life outside the admedistration. This was living.

It pleased me that even with the world medical headquarters looming over them, most people in lower Baghdad hadn’t installed WatchMe. They weren’t connected to any server. They just

I puffed on the cigarette, my first since Niger. Living here wouldn’t be so bad, though I had my doubts as to how long the admedistrations would leave these people to their own devices.

Pretty soon my fish came out. It looked like a carp that had been caught in the nearby Tigris, sliced open and grilled. It came with a ball of some kind of bread and uncooked dates.

My simple dish, with no AR readout floating over it, was beautiful in its simplicity.

“That looks great,” I said under my breath. Uncooked dates had been a rare delicacy for the desert people here, and maybe still were. Thus dates’ status as symbols of beauty and victory in the Bible. I had heard that the Tree of Life in the Christian tradition was sometimes thought to have been a date palm. When he came into Jerusalem, the people of the city had waved date fronds to bless Jesus. This fruit was life, and faith.

I knew this not because Miach had ever told me, but because of the date palm pictured in the symbol of the Helix Inspection Agency. Any Christian overtones in that were nullified by the fact that the date palm had appeared as a symbol of life in the Koran and even in the tale of Gilgamesh—another local favorite in its day.

There were lots of people out in the street, the polar opposite of the state of affairs in the post-declaration admedistrative society I’d just left. I doubted many of the folks here had even heard the news. Only the billions of people with WatchMe installed had reason to be scared shitless. The residents of the lifeist block, responsible for 80 percent of the global economy. For the Iraqis on this twilight street, WatchMe and medicules had nothing to do with their lives.

Life on the outside, life on the inside.

The difference between the two couldn’t be greater.

On one side, people cut up their bodies and entrusted the parts to different service providers in order to fulfill the functions demanded of them by society. On the other, these people weren’t letting anyone touch their bodies.

As I busied myself with the river fish—the dish was called masgouf , I learned—the proprietor brought a bowl of watery yogurt. This I decided was less a dessert and more another course in the meal. He set it down on the pitted surface of my wooden table and retreated into the back.

As he left, I noticed another piece of paper sticking out from beneath the yogurt bowl. I opened it. It said “To the river” in Japanese.

I motioned for the lighter again and burned the second piece of paper over my ashtray. Finished with the masgouf , I went out onto the street, weaving my way through the crowd in hopes of losing the tail my mystery correspondent doubtlessly feared.

This street had once been an entertainment district: Abū-Nuwās.

The name referred to this street, the one with the market. Abū-Nuwās had been a great Arab poet and a lover of wine and carnal pleasures in an Islamic society that forbade alcohol. His hedonistic poems took the list of things forbidden by Islam and threw it out the window—social shock poetry. In other words, two thousand years ago, a man had lived here who fought against the same kind of dogma that lifeist society espoused today. It was the perfect setting for a secret rendezvous between a spineless conformist to the system and someone who very likely had a hand in controlling the system.

I made a careful scan for tails, then left Abū-Nuwās for the banks of the river, glowing in the evening sun. The riverbank was open sand all the way down to the water. I wondered if it would be Gabrielle Étaín waiting for me, or even Miach Mihie herself. The light reflected off the Tigris, playing tricks with the eyes and hiding the face of the person I now saw standing a short distance away from me, closer to the river.

“You know why they call this place Mesopotamia?” the figure on the bank asked in a familiar voice. “ Mesopotamia means ‘between the rivers.’ You understand?”

“Because we’re between the Tigris and Euphrates?”

“Precisely.”

The man stepped closer. He was wearing a tattered suit. A hobo suit. Fitting for the man who had left my mother and me thirteen years ago to come to Baghdad.

05

“I’m surprised you came all this way.”

It was my father. The genuine article. Though his face bore the wear and tear of thirty years, it was still the same face as the man who had been defeated in that session by the caffeinehating woman, and the man who had left me and my mother after Miach died.

It hadn’t been easy getting here.

A lot of people died.

I told him that.

“I’ve heard. The whole world has it pretty bad right now.

It’s a shame.”

“A shame? But didn’t you tell Miach to kill them?”

“Not true,” my father said, his back to the setting Baghdad sun.

“Have you been here this whole time? Thirteen years?”

He shook his head slowly. “I left on occasion. With an ID from my current organization I can go most places in the world without revealing who I am.”

“Organization? Which organization might that be?”

“The only organization truly capable of controlling the world—the Next-Gen Human Behavior Monitoring Group. All the resources and medical planning take place here in the Dian Cécht complex.”