Change Agent Page 18

  The curving windows of the Shrimp didn’t give Durand much privacy. He suspected this was by design. Malaysian society was fairly conservative, and providing roving rental rooms for sexual trysts wasn’t going to happen. Thus, the budget comcars were wide open to public view. Durand lowered the bush hat over his face as if nodding off, though he couldn’t help gazing through his fingers at the world passing by.

  A huge building boom in Johor had been sparked by the rocketing fortunes of Singapore across the Strait—doubling Johor’s population in the past two decades. What the real estate agents called “Singapore-adjacent.”

  As Durand gazed through the windshield, the malls, condos, and chain restaurants went on for kilometers—many of them named in English. Though he recognized few of the brands, the signage looked similar to almost everywhere, as did the sleek retail fronts. It occurred to Durand that perhaps this sort of consumer culture was just a natural consequence of modernity—that perhaps it had nothing to do with American culture. Modern civilization created convenience and comfort, and this is what that looked like.

  What was once dense, malarial jungle was now condos, malls, office towers, and golf courses. The burgeoning cities of Africa were much the same.

  The inevitable poor walked past robotic construction equipment, selling fruit or begging for alms. The modern world no longer needed manual labor—at least not labor anyone was willing to pay for.

  Durand wondered where it would all lead. It was the main reason he and Miyuki had striven to get Mia into the best schools. Specialized knowledge, after all, was what had saved him from his fate as the North American middle class shriveled away. Specialized knowledge was the way you became an expat instead of a refugee.

  After thirty minutes or so, the Shrimp cleared the outskirts of Johor Bahru. Here, the road narrowed to just two lanes and traffic thinned out considerably. The landscape was relatively flat. Telecommunication towers, the occasional jungle-choked hill, and broad mud-brown rivers separated defunct palm oil plantations with fading signage and tattered fence lines.

  The sound of the Adhan—the Muslim call to prayer—could be heard over loudspeakers in the distance. The tiny car rolled through small towns of mildewed buildings with peeling paint. It looked as though there were hard economic times hereabouts.

  Rain clouds loomed ahead. Monsoons were unreliable lately, but when they came, they came with a vengeance. Judging by the blackness of the clouds and occasional flashes of lightning ahead, they were going to be torrential today.

  The first fat raindrops began to pound down on the bulbous windshield. Disquietingly, the comcar did not have windshield wipers. That would have required another maintenance item—wiper blades—and economy cars didn’t bother with such niceties. He was quickly blind to the road ahead.

  With one last glance at the blurry, expressionistic view of cascading water, Durand tried to doze off despite an annoying parade of ads on the dashboard screen. He concentrated on the sound of heavy rain—amazed at how exhausted his body still was even after twelve hours’ sleep. His traumatic physical transformation had no doubt taken its toll. Perhaps he had not yet fully healed.

  • • •

  Durand awoke some time later to the sound of clicking on his side window. He jerked up to see a mix of Burmese and Bangladeshi men—with their hands cupped, faces pressed against the window glass. They each wore a colorful lungi—a simple kilt-like cloth tied at the waist by a twist knot—and clicked bitrings against the windshield for his attention. Some were shirtless, but others wore T-shirts bearing the logos of sport brands or cartoon characters with Chinese text. The moment they noticed Durand was awake, they started calling out in beseeching voices.

  “Forty ringgit, sir!”

  “Ringgit to travel, sir!”

  Why the car wasn’t moving was a mystery. The rain had stopped. It was partly sunny out. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard screen. He was two hours out of Johor, apparently in the countryside on a rural stretch of the AH18 lined with palm oil plantations.

  In the middle of the roadway in front of the Shrimp stood half a dozen young men with bare feet and cheap phablets; a couple even had low-end LFP glasses. They blocked the way. The comcar’s horn beeped lightly several times but was ignored.

  A truck horn howled from behind as it crossed the middle line and passed by Durand’s stopped vehicle—causing it to shudder. The refugees ignored the truck—apparently knowing full well that trying to stop a human-driven truck would get them killed.

  But they knew algorithms. Algorithms could be counted upon to stop if human beings stood in the middle of the roadway.

  “Forty ringgit, sir!” A Bangladeshi man in his early forties sporting a graying beard clicked his bitring against the window.

  Durand realized to his dismay that this group wasn’t going to move unless he paid them. And looking up ahead at the empty road, he could see dozens more refugee groups moving in the tree line. The smoke of cook fires was visible in the distance as well.

  This was going to be a long damn ride.

  The refugees clicked their bitrings again on the window.

  “Sir. Fifty ringgit, sir! Please, fifty ringgit to travel!”

  The price was rising the more he waited. They knew their business.

  Durand nodded and held up one hand. He pulled out the phablet Desai had given him and accessed his digital wallet. He wished he had a set of LFP glasses so he could do this in AR, but after clicking clumsily around, he transferred several fifty-ringgit-sized chunks of ChiCoin to one of his bitrings. Each bump should transfer fifty ringgit—with a delay between for safety.

  He found a window slot and pulled its handle back to create a small opening—apparently panhandling had been anticipated. Either that or it was meant to pass ID to police.

  The fortyish bearded man was the first in line. He was sinewy, with chocolate-brown skin—and what looked to be a nasty machete scar on his forearm. His jet-black hair was streaked with gray. He bumped bitrings with Durand, then checked his phablet device. He nodded and caused the phablet to speak for him in a synthetic English translation: “Bless you, sir. Long life to you.”

  Several more young men pushed in to bump rings with Durand, but after a certain point, the fortyish man pushed them away, shouting. He then motioned with his hand, whistling. He was clearly their leader.

  Looking ahead, Durand could see the men on the road had not moved aside.

  “Hey! I paid you.”

  The group leader spoke quickly as young men around him rushed to a ditch by the side of the road.

  Durand waved his arms. “Get out of the way. I paid you!” He picked up the phablet and repeated the command, translating it into Bengali. And then into Burmese.

  Three or four young men ran up to the Shrimp on all sides.

  Suddenly a loud BANG startled Durand. It was followed by squeaking. The car rocked, and Durand looked up at the glass ceiling to see two makeshift benches linked with cord straps had been tossed like a saddle over the bulbous car’s body.

  “You have got to be kidding me . . .” Durand pounded on the side window himself. “Get that off my car!” He was about to unbuckle and go out to muscle them off when he heard a shout.

  The sinewy older man leaned up to the window and spoke into his own device. It repeated in English, “If not us, there will be others.” He gestured down the road.

  Durand’s gaze followed, and he realized the man was right. Hundreds of migrants lined the road ahead.

  Young men started piling onto the bench ledges, clambering onto Durand’s car, rocking it severely. One boy wearing a tattered e-sports T-shirt still stood in front of the comcar to keep it from driving on while the others piled on top.

  Durand stared at the kid, who couldn’t have been more than twelve. The kid stared back, then smiled. Finally, a shout went up, and the kid moved aside. The comca
r began to move, and the boy ran for the outstretched hands of his comrades as they pulled him up and onto the top of the little car.

  An alarm went off on the Shrimp, and a synthetic voice warned, “Car overloaded. Car overloaded.” A pause. “At the current payload, energy surcharges will apply. Recharge stops being recalculated . . .”

  “Of course . . .” Durand leaned back in his seat as the comcar slowly—and laboriously—accelerated with its new passengers. He had to hand it to the refugees; they were resourceful. Preying on autonomous vehicles like ticks would never have been tolerated in Singapore, but Malaysia had a long coastline, and millions of people were on the move. The law was stretched thin here.

  Dirt-covered bare feet now dangled over the windshield. The men and boys outside the car were involved in a raucous discussion in several languages, pointing at distant objects, sharing food. Poring over their phablet devices. They were a networked tribe, and now that they’d scored a ride, they all but ignored Durand.

  Well. It was good cover, wasn’t it? Durand realized he now looked more like a harried tourist than a wanted cartel leader.

  More refugees loomed out of the bush on the road ahead, but as they tried to step into the roadway and cause the car to stop to beg for money, Durand’s passengers shouted at them, and the newcomers beat a retreat back into the tree line. The car continued down the highway, still gaining speed.

  So his ticks were useful at least. A symbiotic relationship, then. Durand settled in for a long journey.

  Chapter 19

  After traveling for another half hour, Durand grew concerned about his vehicle. The Shrimp was driving slower and slower with its extra passengers—apparently to conserve charge. They hadn’t passed any liquid metal battery stations in a while.

  The Shrimp’s video screen didn’t give him access to a charge indicator, either. The roads in Singapore had chargers built into the surface and the distances were short. But this budget comcar company apparently considered passengers freight, and freight had no need to know the status of its vehicle.

  Suddenly two young men on the roof hung down from the benches, waving their feet before the car’s bumper.

  The lidar sensors triggered, bringing the car to a sudden, lurching halt. The two men leaped off and stood in front of the car as others hurled bundles and packs down to them. The rest of the men jumped down, and they began unharnessing their makeshift benches.

  Durand was apparently losing his ticks. He watched with curiosity as they disembarked. Beyond them was actual jungle—not palm oil plantations but wild trees and undergrowth. A glance at the map indicated they had just entered the Gunung Arong national coastal forest. He could see many more cooking fires in the distance.

  The forty-something leader of the ticks approached the side window, leaning down. He tapped his fingers to his forehead and bowed greeting—then held up his phablet device. As he spoke, the device translated his words: “It may not matter to you, but there is a police checkpoint ahead. Not immigration. Serious national police.”

  Durand sat up straight and looked ahead. There was a curve in the road not far on. He could see only trees.

  The man pointed. “Three kilometers north. Our people have eyes on the coastal highway.”

  This explained why his ticks were bailing on him. Durand decided to pay more attention to the behavior of these refugees. They seemed to have a solid information network. A digital diaspora of mobile intelligence.

  The man slapped the side of the Shrimp affectionately, nodded again to Durand. Then he and his people crossed a drainage ditch, heading into the jungle.

  As the last refugee moved aside, Durand’s car began to move once more.

  He spoke immediately: “Unscheduled stop.”

  The car replied, “Unscheduled stop requested. Pulling over at the next safe location . . .”

  But the car did not stop—instead it kept moving forward slowly, its lidar scanning the narrow shoulder for someplace to get clear of the traffic lane, its hazard lights blinking.

  “Screw it . . .” Durand opened the Shrimp’s door. Alarms went off. Durand jumped clear, running to a stop. He then looked back at the group of refugees heading into the jungle.

  The forty-something leader of the Bangladeshis noticed Durand and motioned for him to follow.

  Durand gazed back at the autonomous Shrimp, which was locked in some sort of ethical dilemma—it had lost its passenger, but without an obstruction in front, its algorithms were escalating the priority to pull clear of traffic lanes . . . which wasn’t possible on the narrow road. He left the AI to its shuddering confusion and instead leaped over the dry drainage ditch.

  He approached the jungle edge, and the older refugee placed a hand on his chest and spoke into his device. The phablet’s dry artificial voice said, “My name is Mahfuz.” He gestured to two younger Bangladeshi men in their early twenties standing next to him—one was wiry and in good health, the other smaller with facial scars. “My nephews, Abul and Azam.”

  Durand nodded to them. He produced his own phablet and fumbled for the translation app. It was already open. He spoke into it: “Call me”—he hesitated—“Jim.”

  Mahfuz nodded to him, repeating, “Mr. Jim.”

  “Thank you for the warning. I don’t have papers.” The computer voice translated. He gazed down the path. “Where does this lead?”

  Mahfuz motioned for Durand to follow, and they all moved under the cover of the jungle, following a path worn by many others.

  Mahfuz spoke into his device. “There is a migrant camp. Eight kilometers away. You can obtain food. Medical care. Lots of people from many places there.”

  Durand fell in behind the men.

  They walked in stifling heat and humidity. Mahfuz and his nephews insisted on sharing their water bottles with Durand. He became increasingly grateful, especially as the path began to climb a steep jungle hillside—the only hill he’d seen in a while.

  Sometime near sunset they reached the crest of a ridge, and there was a break between young dipterocarp trees. Mahfuz waited on the trail for Durand, and then pointed down on the lowland plain and the highway. He offered a Ping-Pong-ball-sized thumbcam to Durand. Durand lifted its viewfinder level with his eye and scrolled the zoom wheel. Molecular lenses with no moving parts were dirt cheap now, available all over. It still amazed him how broadly technology had diffused.

  He zoomed in on a police checkpoint several kilometers below. Dozens of vehicles blocked the highway. Military tents stood nearby. Satellite dishes. Generators. The vehicles bore the insignia of the Royal Malaysian Police. Anti-terror units stood by out of sight from the road. It was a major op.

  Durand removed his eye from the lens.

  Mahfuz studied him closely.

  The man knew more about what was really going on in this region than either Durand or Radheya Desai—that much was clear. Durand held up his hands, as if clueless.

  Mahfuz collected his thumbcam, and they walked on.

  They hiked down into a shallow jungle valley, and Durand saw the dark shadow of the South China Sea over the next rise. Lights of resort islands off the Malaysian coast twinkled as the sun set at their backs. Closer at hand, in the jungle below them, white LED lights glowed beneath the tree canopy.

  The voice of a muezzin announced the Maghrib, the evening call to prayer, on a loudspeaker somewhere. Abul and Azam glanced to their uncle. He spoke softly to them, and they continued down the path.

  It wasn’t until darkness fell that they reached the edge of a large migrant camp. Here, hundreds of refugees were bedding down beneath plastic tarps. As Durand passed through, he saw faces and heard languages from all over the world: Yemenis, Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Cambodians, Laotians, Vietnamese, Filipinos, New Guineans. It was an incredibly diverse group. Here was Inspector Marcotte’s briefing come to life.

  Observing the weary, dejecte
d faces, Durand knew these people had no choice but to take their chances and hope that something broke their way. Perhaps they had family beyond a border somewhere. Someone who could sponsor them. But he suspected that too often even the cousin or uncle in Africa or China couldn’t help. There were fewer jobs all over these days, and refugee camps grew on the borders of everywhere.

  And yet nearly all of the refugees huddled with their devices in the darkness. Their sole link to scattered families, scouting the world for a place to call home.

  As Durand, Mahfuz, and his nephews neared the center of the camp, they saw a Red Crescent flag on the side of a large white kitchen tent. People there queued up for food. A medical clinic stood nearby in a separate tent. Work lights starkly illuminated the area, with swarms of bugs circling beneath.

  A multiethnic crowd of migrants stood near the tents debating something—each of them holding up devices to translate a dozen languages as they shouted simultaneously. Pointing and gesturing passionately, while dispassionate robot voices on their handhelds tried to make sense of this modern Tower of Babel.

  Mahfuz gestured to the group and spoke to Durand through his own phablet. The device repeated in English, “There is no path to Johor or Kuala Lumpur. Immigration police. Some will try for Jakarta. But without money, they will not get far.”

  Durand spoke into his device. “Where are you and your nephews headed?” A delay as the device translated.

  “That is a question we are asking ourselves.”

  Durand studied the grim, mostly male faces of the migrants. The journey was no doubt unsafe. Robberies and extortion common. He guessed they would send for their families only when they’d secured a place somewhere—anywhere—and set aside enough money to bring family by safer means.

  He realized his own personal crisis was just another in an ocean of calamities. Every person here faced a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. And this was just one camp.

  The only difference was that he had money. Desai said he’d loaded a ChiCoin account for emergency use. Its transactions were tracked by the People’s Bank of China, but that was hardly a problem short-term, and the account holder was presumably fictitious.