How the Other Half Lives

Adam

It was only one lift journey down from the highest echelons of the Level One dwellings to the rife and impoverished cesspool of the Level Zeros. No matter when or where you were, a slum was still a slum, and easily identifiable. The dirt on the walls, the skeletal bodies of the inhabitants, the sadness in the air. The rich lived in the skyscraper-like structures, with large, tube walkways made of glass going between them like a spiderweb to avoid having to go below. There was nothing elevated where they were at present, however, just the very base of the Eutopia Bay, the gutter. It made Adam Mitchell even more motivated to help them, and not just them, everyone who possibly could be helped by the CyTech fortune he had at his fingertips; there he was, in his ivory tower made of stolen software, doing next to nothing. Was he as bad as the so-called Level Ones?

"Are you enjoying seeing how the other half lives?" Nios asked him quietly. The Ninth Doctor was looking around at the sight before them: disease, starvation, sorrow. It wasn't so easy to gentrify areas in outer space, to relocate people, so it seemed the people above merely tried to forget that the Zeros were there at all. It really shouldn't shock him too much, he thought; after all, were things not exactly the same in the Twenty-First Century? Maybe he thought that things would be better in the future, or at least hoped.

He didn't answer Nios, only looked at her for a moment, not knowing what she wanted him to say.

"Humans never really change," sighed the Doctor, probably jaded by scenes like this, containing his outrage until the opportunity to actually help presented itself. Adam didn't know what to make of that – was it really impossible for humans not to change? Were they really any worse than other species?

"The categorisations are peculiar," said Nios, who had been so engrossed in what was going on around them that she had only checked her texts a dozen times in the last five minutes, which was a downgrade from having her eyes permanently glued on its screen. As far as Adam could tell she hadn't even received any new messages because Dr Cohen was apparently at work cutting up corpses. Not that that knowledge was mitigating Nios's new obsession. "In the past, at least the class system is tacit. Not based on points."

"Credit ratings?" the Doctor suggested.

"Credit ratings are about how good you are with money, not how much you have," Adam pointed out, "And they don't necessarily designate where you can and can't live. You could be earning hardly anything but if you don't get into debt or take out loans then you'd still have a good credit score."

"Fascinating," said Nine flatly. Adam decided that speaking had been a bad move on his part, and he should have continued to avoid it at any opportunity. "What's this, do we think?" he nodded ahead at a huge crowd of people all gathering around a structure in the centre of a circular, town-square-like area. They had come straight off the lift into this open space and the monolith in the centre.

The structure had just one opening with a large, circular light set above it, glowing amber, bathing everything in the small region in yellow-coloured light; it made Adam's eyes hurt, bothered his colour-blind glasses. It made him want to take the glasses off to see if there was an improvement, but knew that if he did that the yellows and steely greys around them would be even more sickening and accentuated. Colour-blind sunglasses might be the next thing he should invest in. The people were lining up relatively orderly and talking to the light, this 'Max' they had seen earlier. The Doctor approached them with Nios and Adam (and a frightened Sprite on Nios's shoulder) in his wake.

As they got closer, Adam saw the unmistakable signs of sickness. It wasn't only the hacking coughs coming from the group, but they were all riddled with sores and pustules, weeping wounds and terrible infections; he felt guilty about being glad for his cryokinesis preventing him from contracting any infection (apart from the unusual barnacle growth on his left arm he had received from the Flood on Mars, but that was neither spreading nor getting worse.)

"That's impossible…" the Doctor said, staring at them, "These people are infected with all kinds of things." The people weren't listening to any of them, too distracted trying to talk to the computer in the middle, a great big monument to the artificial class divide. "It looks like the plague."

"What, the plague?" Adam asked, "In space? How did the plague get to space?"

"Same way it travelled along the Silk Road? In ships? Carts?" Nine suggested.

"Is that really, like, a thing?" Adam persisted, "Do they not check spaceships for rats? Can't they just do a scan and find any rats? That was always something I thought was strange about Alien – the cat in space that they only have to kill the rats in space."

"But you went to the Alien universe and adopted that exact cat, and now we live on a spaceship with six cats," Nios pointed out to him.

"Well… yeah, but… because they're cute. Not to hunt rats."

"He's got a point," said the Doctor, which sparked one of the most intense feelings of validation Adam Mitchell had ever experienced, "They do scan for rats on spaceships. And this is an epidemic, surely whoever's in charge would have done something? All it takes is a few antibiotics to kill the plague, and all these other diseases – cowpox, TB, they're meant to be eradicated in this century; why would they all have shown up here at once?"

"Maybe there were some hidden infected cows with the hidden infected rats?" Nios suggested somewhat dryly, "There could have even been some hidden infected badgers, too."

"There might even be a whole farm," Nine joined her sarcasm, "It's a bit like a farm here. For people with diseases."

"I think I heard Rose tell me a story about something like that before…" Adam mused.

"She told you a story?"

"Well, no, I just heard. She was talking to Martha. They didn't realise I was there, probably," he mumbled.

"Excuse me," a teenage boy interrupted them hoarsely; a member of the long line they were about to intrude upon, circling around the glowing monolith and back through the streets; it was so long Adam couldn't see the end of it, "You have to queue."

"Don't worry, we're just watching," said Nine, meandering closer to the only person who had actually noticed them, while people at the front of the queue were still speaking to the computer.

"Please, Max, we're starving," an elderly woman whose turn it was to address the machine was pleading.

"Your allocated credits allow for two portions of sustenance," said Max.

"I need these rations for my whole family, they're too sick to come here now. Don't you have any medicine?" she was begging.

"Your allocated credits allow for two portions of sustenance. In three days, you will have enough for one dose of antibiotics."

"Don't you have any compassion? Aren't you the most advanced creation of humanity? Can't you feel for us?" the woman persisted.

"Hurry up, we all need to eat," somebody behind her in the line complained.

"My grandson is going to die if he doesn't get any medicine," she said, "Why should my allocated credits matter? Why should he die because of that?"

"Your allocated credits allow for two portions of sustenance."

"Just take it and go," a man shouted, "We're all sick. Your grandson is no different." A door beneath the yellow light which resembled a dumbwaiter opened, and it spat out two plastic pots of paste no bigger than a petri dish each. Was that supposed to be a meal? The old woman began to weep as she picked up the pots and shuffled away, allowing somebody else to begin begging the machine, Max, for food.

"Your allocated credits only allow for one portion of sustenance," Max said this time, to the teenage boy who had told them to join the orderly queue, no less.

"I asked for medicine, I don't need any food," he said. It didn't look as though he had eaten for days.

"Your allocated credits allow for one portion of sustenance."

"That thing has all the intelligence of a dialogue tree in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey," Adam muttered.

"I told you," Nios began to reiterate, "It doesn't sound like an AI. It's just… got a voice. That's all."

"Then why is everyone so convinced of it?" Nine posed a new question to them, a real question – why indeed? Even without actually knowing real AIs (he looked at Nios when he thought this), he was sure he'd be able to realise the hollowness of this 'Max.' "They can't all be idiots like Tem upstairs."

Something stirred among the people in the line while the teenage boy continued to beg for medicine only to be rebuffed at every turn by the robotic voice of Future Cortana. The Doctor, Adam and Nios observed as the crowds seemed to part to make way for a figure, a woman, middle-aged, who didn't appear to be sick at all. Instead she came forwards, smiling, and when the teenage boy saw her he even told Max he would take his measly, singular 'portion of sustenance' and stepped out of the way. Apparently, this woman was not bound to the unspoken rules of queuing, she went right up to the dispensary to address the machine.

"Max, I'll spend all my allocated credits on enough food and medicine for all the citizens present."

"Your allocated credits allow for 700 portions of sustenance and 300 doses of antibiotics." What followed over the next few minutes might as well have been a miracle. As fast as Max could spit out tiny tubs of paste and bottles of individual pills, this mystery woman – whom Adam realised had a robotic arm much like Tem's – was handing them out to the poor and needy. She put only one portion of sustenance in her own pocket and no medicine at all, giving things away equally to anyone and everyone. Some returned to the line to also spend their own credits too, but many took what they were gifted by this stranger and left.

"She's like communist Jesus, or something," Adam said.

"From what I've read of human culture Jesus displays clear evidence of communist ideologies and traits," said Nios, then she continued, "Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. … After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, 'Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.'"

"What's that? Bible mode?" the Doctor questioned her as the people continued to take the food and medicine. Adam watched and listened.

"Human philosophical writings are impossible to comprehend without a grounded understanding of religious thought."

"And what do you 'think' of religion?"

"I think that people often twist it to fit their own narratives."

"Isn't that what you're doing by quoting John right now?"

"Yes."

"A very human thing to do," he quipped.

"'I think, therefore I am,'" she quoted some more.

"And who was it said that?"

"Descartes. I do know how to read, you know." Adam thought Nine enjoyed questioning Nios like this but wasn't sure that she herself appreciated it. It didn't matter, because they were promptly interrupted by the philanthropic Jesus-figure, who inquired of them whether they wanted some food and medicine for themselves.

"No, we're just visiting," said the Doctor, "We'd hate to take supplies away from the people here who need them."

"Visiting?" the woman asked, "Visitors to Eutopia Bay? Nobody ever visits Eutopia Bay."

"That's not true, we are," Nine grinned, "Eager to learn about the Eutopia Bay way of life."

"It isn't much of a way of life at all," she said bitterly, "I'm Jaleah, and I'm sorry that you're here."

"You're a Level One citizen, aren't you?" Adam asked her, seeing her arm. She followed his gaze to her own arm, too, and sighed.

"A brutal practice. I don't know who devised the removal of limbs and body parts like this."

"Why go along with it?" Nios asked.

"I wish I could answer that."

"Aren't you afraid you'll run out of your 'allocated credits'?" Adam continued.

"Why?" Nine challenged him, "Would you be? You wouldn't share?"

"Of course I would share," he said, annoyed at the Doctor's constant implications that he was some kind of arsehole, "It's a question. Why are you allowed to ask questions and I'm not?"

"Just trying to get you out of your shell, pretty boy." Adam grimaced. He happened to like his shell.

"I'm not worried, Level Ones are allocated thousands of credits every week - 'social currency', it's called. The only thing they spend them on is more augmentations and other ridiculous things. The people down here get next to nothing, they've never even been vaccinated against anything – while we upstairs were all vaccinated as soon as we arrived."

"But if you were vaccinated earlier, surely that implies that somebody knew there were going to be plague outbreaks," Nios said quickly, "Which doesn't make sense."

"Who's in charge here?" the Doctor asked.

"Max," Jaleah answered, "No citizen, of any level, has seen any authority other than Max. AIs are supposed to be non-biased." Remarkably she too believed that Max possessed real intelligence. "He reports on the news down here, but nobody upstairs cares. I couldn't stand it, I came to help in whatever way I can." Maybe the human race wasn't quite as irredeemable as the Doctor had implied earlier on.

"You're just allocated credits depending on your level?" Nios asked, "Nobody works? Has jobs? There's no way to earn more?"

"Max does any job required. He keeps the station operational, assigns the rations. At the start, the Eutopia Bay program seemed to be a promise of a better life, but now, it's… it's…" Jaleah began to stutter. She scrunched up her face in a frown and staggered backwards, catching herself briefly on her backfoot.

"Are you alright?" Nios, who was afforded the quickest reflexes by her nature as a synthetic, stepped forwards to grab Jaleah's arm and keep her upright. She blinked very quickly, didn't say a word, moved her head backwards and forwards. Then, out of nowhere, she collapsed, Nios unable to support her whole weight like that. Jaleah had gone into a fit, right in front of them, and in an instant was writhing on the ground.

"It's a seizure," said the Doctor. The citizens collecting the food Jaleah had delivered them began to see what was happening, making their way over in horror, "Everyone stand back!" The Doctor took out his screwdriver in order to scan her and find out what was happening, crouching carefully down at her side.

"Her heart rate is through the roof, and her brain activity," said Nios, who had taken out her phone again – hopefully she was texting Cohen and asking her about seizures, since Cohen was a doctor to Adam's understanding. It was futile, though. In less than a minute from the sudden beginning of this strange reaction, Jaleah went completely limp.

"No, no, no," said the Doctor, still scanning with the screwdriver, but it was no use.

Nios announced, not needing to take a pulse, "She's dead. I'm sorry."

AN: I got a twitter (again, I got one like a good few years ago now and then deleted it) so you should go follow me on that, it's the same username as my FF username here (CaitlinJ1021) though it's mostly for networking purposes. But also you can see a) my cool tattoo and b) my actual face (shocker) which is really not particularly exciting but who knows. It is generally just gonna be me complaining about video games and posting whatever YouTube videos I've written, though. ALSO, reviews are SUPER COOL I would LOVE if people would review so it seems like people actually read this thing.