When he started to envy dead fish, he knew it was time for a drink.
Auden worked his knife methodically, mechanically, cutting out gills and guts, then flipping it over in his palm to scrape out blood vessels and bones with the scoop on the other end. He chucked the fish into the bin at his elbow, to be rinsed and iced by some other faceless worker on the docks, and started again. Sometimes, he'd catch a glimpse of the fish's eye, glazed and vacant, and wondered how much it resembled his own.
He thought about where these fish went, where they ended up. Goldwalk restaurants, Highrise homes, Sunset banquets—even in death, they climbed a ladder he couldn't even touch.
When at last the catch was processed, he laid down his knife, punched his card, and headed home to change. It did little good apart from appearance: even in fresh clothes, the smell of the sea clung to him, and it was the only part of this job he didn't mind. He'd grown up by the water, learned her moods and wiles, and knew that, if nothing else, she would keep him fed. She was a force to be reckoned with, to be respected, a refreshing expanse of constant change in his otherwise small and monotonous life.
Smoke hung thick in the bar that was beginning to fill with workers and revelers alike, gathering in patches of bright haze under the lamps over the pool tables and masking the smells of sweat and drink and desperation. Here, there were no distinctions between dock workers and shop owners, between janitors and secretaries—you wandered in for one reason only, and the bartenders were all too happy to oblige. This was a place to get hammered and forget your troubles for a while, not a place to meet people, unless you already knew them on the outside.
Auden shouldered his way through the crowd toward the bar, above which several screens were playing coverage of different sports. He sat on a stool at the far end and waved the bartender down, then glanced to his left and blinked.
A familiar face.
Not five stools over sat Mackey Orthon, grease monkey extraordinaire, shoulders hunched around his glass, absently staring up at the screens and thrumming his fingertips on the bar. He didn't notice Auden sitting down; in fact, he didn't seem to notice anything around him, his eyes glazed and vacant as the ones on the fish brought in to the docks, fixed on the screens but looking right through them, raising his glass to his lips with a stiff, mechanical motion.
This wasn't the Mackey Auden knew, not the guy with a motorcycle shop in Goldwalk, not the guy who once built a bike for Preston Moyle. That Mackey was expressive, loud, with a smile and a handshake for everyone. He didn't care where you were from, or even whether you could pay in full up front; if you had a bike, and you had a problem, he was your guy. Like any other native of Baysign, he never had the opportunity to make an official Selection, but if he had, "helping others" would have likely topped his list.
Auden placed his order with the bartender and moved to the stool next to Mackey. No reaction. He sat down heavily and cleared his throat, then gave an awkward chuckle.
"Hey, Mackey. Long time, no see, man."
Mackey flinched, sloshing liquor over his hand, and blinked as if he'd been pulled straight from a dream. It took a few seconds for him to recognize Auden, and a few more for a shaky smile to come to his face. "Auden! Good to see you. How've you been?"
"Same as always. You know Baysign, the one place in Cloudbank that never changes. And you?"
Mackey snorted. "Change is overrated. I'm—" He sighed. "I'm hanging in there…I guess."
"You don't sound too good." Auden took his drink from the bartender. "Everything okay?"
A noncommittal shrug. Mackey's eyes went back to the monitors above the bar. Each one was showing a different sports game, some recent, some pulled from a vault of "classics," none of them dating back more than a few years.
"What do you think it's like," he said quietly, "to be a big sports star? Everybody throwing themselves at you, every door open? You think they get tired of that, think they want a little challenge in life?"
Auden took a long sip. "I've never thought about it."
"Well, if they want challenge, they're welcome to mine." Mackey raised his glass toward the screens in a rueful salute. "See how long they'd last down here, with us 'little folk.'"
"Mackey, what's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing's wrong. Not with the system, anyway. Cloudbank's being Cloudbank. Flighty, restless, changing." He slammed his glass down with a loud curse. "They got me, Audie. They finally caught up. They're shutting me down."
"What?"
"You heard me. They're shutting down my shop. Popular vote, a couple days ago. Said it was too noisy."
"It's a garage. Of course it's going to be loud."
"Well, it was a little too loud for the good people of Goldwalk, evidently." He smirked. "They're replacing me with a boutique perfumery."
"That's quite a switch."
"Yeah, forgot to mention the other part: smell complaint. Too much grease and exhaust. Won't be hard for them to pull it off, though. Administrators work their little admin magic, and poof!, ol' Mackey's shop is gone, not even a grease stain left." He tossed his head back with a sharp, cynical laugh. "They could probably make me disappear just as easily. You, too. Make the whole lot of us disappear if they wanted to."
Auden sighed. Mackey was right. All it took was a bit of code-wrangling. Change a number here and there, change the landscape. Purge some data, purge a person. He wasn't aware of the specifics, and couldn't begin to understand them even if he were, but he knew how much power the Administrators wielded, how much weight the votes of citizens carried. He took another drink and looked at Mackey, who still had his head tilted back, smiling at the ceiling.
"Mack," he said quietly, "I'm sorry."
"Why?" Mackey kept staring up. "You didn't do nothing."
"I'm sorry for what they did to you. You don't deserve it."
"I didn't even have a choice. Didn't even get a single vote to try to save my own ass." Mackey's voice grew thick and his words slurred. "Everybody else gets to decide what I can and can't do, who I get to be. I don't have one fucking say in the matter. 'The city of Cloudbank, only for you.' Bullshit. Only for them."
Before Auden could react, Mackey faced forward, drew his arm back and flung his glass at the monitors. It fell just short and shattered against the shelves below.
"Hey!" The bartender was in front of them in an instant. "What the hell are you doing? Go on, you've had enough. Get outta here!"
Mackey snickered. "Ah, that's rich! I'm being got rid of here, too. See this, Audie? Nobody wants an old grease monkey like me."
Auden grasped his arm and helped him off the stool, watching the bouncer approach. "It's not that, Mack, it's not that. It's just…maybe this isn't the best place to be right now."
"And where is? The bottom of the bay? You got no use for me, either, do ya, Audie?"
"Mackey, let's just go. C'mon, I'll get you home."
Mackey looked at him, the wild light of drunkenness in his eyes giving way to something quieter, darker. He pursed his lips tightly as tears began to flow from the corners of his eyes. "Yeah, home." He leaned against Auden and staggered toward the door, but he couldn't resist turning around in the doorway and shouting, "They'll come for you, too, someday! They'll come for all us sorry fuckers someday!"
The cool salt air seemed to mellow him a bit, and he shuffled along beside Auden, cursing and sniffling. Auden said nothing along the way, careful not to provoke him into any more outbursts. Halfway to his apartment, however, Mackey straightened, alert as a cat, and turned around.
"My bike," he muttered. "Left it at the bar."
"You're in no condition to ride it," Auden reminded him gently. "C'mon, let's get you home. I'll bring it by later."
"But my bike—"
"I'll bring it by later."
"You'd do that?" Mackey grinned. "You're a pal, Audie, a real gem. But don't you go takin' her for a joyride on your own. I'll know. A man always knows when someone's been messin' with his girl."
"Or his bike?"
"Yeah, that too." Despite his more genial mood, Mackey was nowhere close to sobering up. He didn't object as Auden helped him up the stairs to his apartment, or even as he settled him on the couch and covered him with a blanket, promising to return with his motorcycle.
"You do that, Audie," he murmured, eyes already closed. "Be careful with her. Just be careful."
Mackey's keys jingling in his pocket, Auden returned to the bar. He paid for the drinks he and Mackey had—Mackey had been there for hours, it turned out, and run up quite a tab—then surveyed the small parking lot for Mackey's motorcycle. It was easy to spot, the only one with a custom paint job, bright blue with a pair of flaming golden wings below the seat. Freedom. Mackey said that's what his bikes meant to him, and for an all-too-brief window of time, he'd tasted it himself. Freedom to have his own shop, to be his own man. Freedom to escape this wretched part of the city, at least during the day. Freedom to feel like his life had meaning beyond what the numbers in the system dictated.
And now that was all gone. Erased in an instant, just like his shop, not a grease stain left behind.
Auden turned the key and the motorcycle rumbled to life beneath him. Some days, he felt the same yearning that had driven Mackey to Goldwalk, but unlike Mackey, he had no skill to peddle. Gutting fish by day, chasing paying rings by night, he was a native Baysigner through and through.
He guided the motorcycle onto the road, then accelerated toward Mackey's apartment building. They could probably make me disappear just as easily. Mackey's words played through his mind. Make the whole lot of us disappear if they wanted to.
They could, but would they, really? The whole city ran on the sweat and blood of the people in this district, nameless, faceless workers who provided all the labor to keep everyone else comfortable. Who did all of the "invisible" jobs no one else thought about. They were valuable, in a twisted way. Mackey had just reached too high, and the Administrators knew that the entire time. They let him climb, let him hope and dream, so they could push him back down, make him an example, remind him that the city of Cloudbank was for "you," but not you.
Mackey's ragged snoring filled the apartment when Auden returned to leave the keys, the single light on in the adjacent kitchen casting eerie shadows over his face. He was fine now, and would be, as long as he was sleeping, but—with a sigh, Auden locked the door behind him and walked into the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of whiskey from Mackey's cupboard and took a seat at the table. Tonight, of all nights, Mackey shouldn't be alone. Tonight, of all nights, neither should he.
Below Mackey's open kitchen window, cars and motorcycles zoomed along the street, and people talked and argued among themselves. The lights of Goldwalk glittered on the water from across the bay, the buildings of other districts rising behind them. Auden watched as some shifted and changed with the results of the latest vote, and kept watching, dully, absently, like a fish waiting to be gutted.