PAY IN KIND

They said they would reward good deeds with money so everyone was trying to be kind and giving. No one knew when an act was considered good, the governments had made some sort of omnipresent AI to judge actions.

Three days after the declaration I was on a train and at a certain stop there were children sleeping in rags on the platform. Hair brown with dust and muck in their eyes. A woman sitting a few seats away from me got up and went out to the platform. She bought a chips pack and a biscuit packet and took it to a girl among the children, who looked older than the others, and was awake.

“Here, take it!”

“No, ma’am…”

“Take it! Take it!”

The beggar girl took the packets but didn’t open them. She looked at the woman, who was smiling. Snot was leaking out of the girl’s nose and shining in the sunlight. Already others were purchasing all sorts of eatables and targeting the girl. She looked sapped of energy.

Then one man in the train took a blanket and went out on the platform and gave her the blanket.

“Here, this will keep you warm…”

“Thank you, sir,” the girl said.

“You like it? You like the blanket? It’s good, no?”

“Yes, sir. It’s very fine and soft and we’ll use it,” she said looking around at the other children. Some of the children had woken up now and were looking at all these people around them.

Then the train started moving and everybody scrambled back inside. There was a lot of “You first,” “No, no, you first, please,” at the entrance, but everyone settled in.

 ***

And now there were the professional good people. They had no jobs – that part I envied – and they went about doing things they thought were good.

My life didn’t change, I did the usual, and kept to myself.

This new field worked out well for many. Shirokar came to my apartment one day – he lived next door. I call it apartment, but it was more like a small space to stretch out in. There was a bed and a kitchen sink. The residents shared the restroom. And I didn’t particularly like the man, but he used to buy alcohol which I was shamelessly in love with.

He brought a pack of bottles.

“Ho! You know, this new scheme is great! It benefits everyone, me, the damned we help, and ooh…I made a lot of money today, the deposit is almost instant, hehehe…” he said.

“Oh? I see…” I was enjoying the drinks.

“I saw a man with a broken kneecap, and he came to my car to ask for help. My help! I would have helped him even if he hadn’t asked, you understand? But, I mean, of course, it benefits him too.”

This blabber, blab, blab, what was he saying. I was light-headed by then.

“Yes, Shirokar, you’re doing great, this new arrangement seems to be helping everyone…life’s good…”

“Oh, Andrak! You look like shit! Are you okay?” he suddenly shouted.

I was feeling like shit, truth be told. Even though I wasn’t properly paying attention to his chatter, I was repulsed by him. I wanted to throw up. I thought, what if I break his kneecap, then offer some help? I would get a blooming hot deposit, too. But he didn’t seem like the type to see the humor in that.

“I think you should go,” I said.

“But we’ve just started,” he said.

“Take the bottles, bye.”

I pushed him out of the door. He puttered till the end about it being a weekend and what was wrong with me, but I’d had enough. They had it all wrong, the lot of them. If they absolutely had to introduce some change, it should have been a fine on being an asshole, not a reward on being good. And what was this AI? What have we come to…?

***

The next morning, I woke up to a loud banging on my door.

“Christ, who the hell.”

I got up and went to the door. It was the landlady.

“Hello, Andrak! I hope I didn’t wake you up. Oh, it looks like I did, haha,” she said.

“Hello, Mrs. Magora.”

“I just brought you this chicken soup, it’s very light, I made it last night. Mr. Shirokar told me you weren’t feeling well, so I brought it…it’ll do you good.”

Now this bitch had never given me anything except rental updates and problems. Why I was even paying to live in this rancid hole, I didn’t know, but a man needs shelter. She was smiling, but what malice, hell is real, and it is in the eyes of such people. You look closely, you’ll see it right there. I peeked into the rotten juice of her soul and saw dung beetles floating in there. What was going on in her brain? What goes on in all their minds?

I took the soup and threw it away when she’d gone.

Awhile later I was munching on a boiled egg and bread, and the landlady came again:

“Oh, I just thought I should check on you, how’d you like the soup? It was good? Oh, thank you, thank you. You look much better than you did in the morning, hehe…”

“Okay, Mrs. Magora. Thank you for the soup. Here’s your container, I’ve washed it. I enjoyed the soup, now I think I should sleep.”

“Yes, yes, sure! Just tell me if you need anything else.”

Okay, mommy.

I shut the door and went to sleep.

***

Then there was this news article that came out one day. A poor guy had saved a child from being hit by a truck and died himself. A week later his family had the funeral of a king. They had received a lot of money from the incident. The desperate and ravaged were risking their lives after that. A woman being raped was rescued by a man with one hand, it said in one article, and the man became so rich after that, that he quit his job and bought a villa in the country and married the rape victim.

Figures, that’s all the nations were looking at - figures and statistics. They hadn’t yet invented something which looked into the minds of people. Everything was glorious and sunny in their reports. The plan was to be continued.

There was a terrible sickness in my throat all the time. Every day I would watch these people go out of their way to do these things, and I couldn’t understand it, but there was something deeply upsetting about the whole thing.

I wanted to stay out of all this, but I couldn’t escape them. Their kindness always caught up to me. I was welding one day – I worked at a welding shop – and I burned my hand. My hand has been burnt many times. It’s charred, scarred, fucked already, and I knew how to take care of it.

But this guy came up:

“Oh god, put your hand in water! Here, here, take this, it’ll help.”

He gave me a cream. I had the same tube with me all the time, as a precautionary step given my occupation. I gave the tube back.

“Look I have it, no worries,” I said.

“No, no, mine is better! Take this!”

I just had it, I whacked him hard. He looked at me like I was a rabid dog, then smiled pitifully. He went away. That felt good. Did he offer purely out of the goodness of his heart? Shit, I don’t know, nobody does anymore. That was the problem. You encourage rightness through avarice, then ask us why the world looks uglier every day. These men, these women, these actions, what were they going to become? Would they become older men, older women, and good times? No, they would become hell sparrows and dystopian hearts and oblivious battlegrounds.

The essence of humanity had sprung out. Help being doled out to people who didn’t even need any, by people who couldn’t help themselves, who could barely wake up in the morning, who were scared of the mirror, who had oily faces and veins, but wanted to take part in the game.

All I do, nowadays, is I drink my alcohol, vomit, burn metal, and my hands sometimes, spoil my eyesight, and watch the world as it fades into a powder no one sees.