TWENTY-ONE
The fence was beaten to hell by weather, neglect, and mistreatment. Made of steel mesh, it stood about twenty feet high, and stretched off in either direction, cordoning off the street. Someone had stuck a large, plastic sheet on the fence, and graffiti announced:
DISSYTOWN
HOME OF THE DISENFRANCHIZED DISINTERESTED DISILLUSIONED DISMISSED DISSERTED DISTROYED
“Abandon all hope, youse who enter here,” McGlade said.
We’d taken McGlade’s biofuel bike, me riding bitch, and he’d chained it to the fence. Every major metropolitan area had a dissytown. These were the people who didn’t pay taxes, and were kicked out. The abolition of welfare was one of the reasons, though welfare was replaced with workfare programs that allowed those of lesser means and with disabilities to continue being taxpaying utopeons and upstanding members of society.
Bleeding hearts and human rights crusaders bemoaned the slum-like conditions in many dissytowns. They made frequent trips inside, trying to persuade folks to join regular society, trying to show the children born there that an alternative to poverty and crime existed. And crime did exist. In the absence of police, timecasting, and ID chips, crime not only existed, but it flourished in dissytown. But no taxes meant no votes, no representation, no acknowledgment, so the crimes didn’t actually exist in the eyes of the government.
My personal feelings were a bit right-wing, but years of experience hunting for runaways in Chicago’s dissytown had forged me into a cynic. These weren’t people whom society had given up on. These were people who had given up on society. If you want a nice place to live, be willing to work for it and follow the rules. If you don’t want to work, or follow rules, a place like this was where you ended up.
McGlade and I were dressed for the part. He lent me a ratty old T-shirt and some stained camouflage khakis. His disguise was a holey sweatshirt that reeked of body odor, and some jeans with rips from the crotch to the cuffs.
But then, that might have been McGlade’s normal ensemble.
“I don’t get it,” I said. We hadn’t even crossed the border yet and already the garbage smell had gotten to me. “Who would choose to live here?”
He shrugged. “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”
That was too much insight for McGlade. “Who said that?”
“Some dead singer. Janis somebody. Got a nude poster of her.”
We stood at the entrance. Not a door or a gate. Just a rusty, jagged hole in the fence. I heard rancid music coming from beyond it. Someone yelling. Someone crying.
“They should close all the dissytowns and force these people to get jobs,” I said, fingering some rust off the fence and rubbing it onto my chin.
McGlade spit a loogie into his hand and messed up one side of his wavy brown hair. “The authority of any governing institution must stop at its citizens’ skin.”
“Who said that?”
“Some dead feminist. Gloria somebody. She had a nice rack. I have a poster of her in a Playboy Bunny outfit. Feminists are hot.”
And after imparting that nugget of wisdom, we strolled into dissytown.
It wasn’t exactly like stepping through the looking glass, but it was close. We left the clean, green, orderly world behind, and traded it for ugly chaos and anarchy. This used to be the south part of town, part residential, part business, now 100 percent awful.
There was a shocking lack of plants, and an even more shocking pileup of trash littering the streets. No recycling, no garbage pickup, so people left refuse everywhere.
The apartment buildings looked like they’d been bombed, not a single window intact. Storefronts had been converted into hovels. The sidewalks and streets were ripped up to shit, but no one had vehicles because there was no fuel.
There were a few people wandering about when we walked in. The stares were either suspicious or hostile. They wore dirty, ripped clothes. The bleeding hearts insisted water mains remain open, so stinky shirts and greasy hair were by choice. Other utilities—phone, electric, gas—were shut off, but like many bigger dissytowns, this one somehow provided electricity for itself. Probably a combination of solar and hydroelectric, as Tesla was beyond their technology and traditional power plants required fuel sources they didn’t have.
“Untuck your shirt,” McGlade said. “Your belt is like a badge, announcing you’re a cop.”
I complied. “Will we need duckets?”
“I brought some. I’ll add it to your bill.”
“What’s the exchange rate?”
“Whatever I decide.”
Because dissys had no ID chips or bank accounts, currency in towns like this was still paper-based. That meant a lot of predators, trolling for cash. Luckily, Tasers and firearms were either useless here or sold off decades ago, so the only weapons available were of the cutting and bludgeoning type. While this kept me on my toes, at least I would see it coming, unlike a projectile.