For the Win, Cory Doctorow [free reads .TXT] 📗

loyal lieutenant, sturdy and dependable. She had to enforce discipline in the ranks, which meant keeping the boys from fighting too much and keeping the girls from ganging up on one another with hissing, whispered rumors. To them, she was a stern, formidable fighter, someone to obey unconditionally in battle. She couldn't approach them to say, "Have you ever thought about fighting for workers instead of fighting against them?"
No matter how much Big Sister Nor wanted her to.
"Yasmin, they listen to you, la, they love you and look up to you. You say it yourself." Her Hindi was strangely accented and peppered with English and Chinese words. But there were lots of funny accents in Dharavi, dialects and languages from across Mother India.
Finally, she agreed to do it. Not to talk to the soldiers, but to talk to Mala, who had been her friend since Yasmin had found her carrying a huge sack of rice home from Mr Bhatt's shop with her little brother, looking lost and scared in the alleys of Dharavi. She and Mala had been inseparable since then, and Yasmin had always been able to tell her anything.
"Good morning, General," she said, falling into step beside Mala as she trekked to the community tap with a water-can in each hand. She took one can from Mala and took her now free hand and gave it a sisterly squeeze.
Mala grinned at her and squeezed back, and the smile was like the old Mala, the Mala from before General Robotwallah had come into being. "Good morning, Lieutenant." Mala was pretty when she smiled, her serious eyes filled with mischief, her square small teeth all on display. When she smiled like this, Yasmin felt like she had a sister.
They talked in low voices as they waited for the tap, passing gupshup about their families. Mala's mother had met a man at Mr Bhatt's factory, a man whose parents had come to Mumbai a generation before, but from the same village. He'd grown up on stories about life in the village, and he could listen to Mala's mamaji tell stories of that promised land all day long. He was gentle and had a big laugh, and Mala approved. Yasmin's Nani, her grandmother, had been in touch with a matchmaker in London, and she was threatening to find Yasmin a husband there, though her parents were having none of it.
Once they had the water, Yasmin helped Mala carry it back to her building, but stopped her before they got there, in the lee of an overhanging chute that workers used to dump bundled cardboard from a second-story factory down to carriers on the ground. The factory hadn't started up yet, so it was quiet now.
"Big Sister Nor asked me to talk to you, Mala."
Mala stiffened and her smile faded. They weren't talking as sisters anymore. The hard look, the General Robotwallah look, was in her eyes. "What did she say to you?"
"The same she said to you, I imagine. That the people we fight against are also workers, like us. Children, like us. That we can live without hurting others. That we can work with them, with workers everywhere --"
Mala held up her hand, the General's command for silence in the war-room. "I've heard it, I've heard it. And what, you think she's right? You want to give it all up and go back to how we were before? Back to school, back to work, back to no money and no food and being afraid all the time?"
Yasmin didn't remember being afraid all the time, and school hadn't been that bad, had it? "Mala," she said, placatingly. "I just wanted to talk about this with you. You've saved us, all of us in the Army, brought us out of misery and into riches and work. But we work and work for Mr Banerjee, for his bosses, and our parents work for bosses, and the children we fight in the game work for bosses, and I just think --" She drew in a breath. "I think I have more in common with the workers than I do with the bosses. That maybe, if we all come together, we can demand a better deal from all of them --"
Mala's eyes blazed. "You want to lead the Army, is that it? You want to take us on this mission of yours to make friends with everyone, to join with them to fight Mr Banerjee and the bosses, Mr Bhatt who owns the factory and the people who own the game? And how will you fight, little Yasmin? Are you going to upset the entire world so that it's finally fair and kind to everyone?"
Yasmin shrank back, but she took a deep breath and looked into the General's terrible eyes. "What's so wrong with kindness, Mala? What's so terrible about surviving without harming other people?"
Mala's lip curled up in a snarl of pure disgust. "Don't you know by now, Yasmin? Haven't you figured it out yet? Look around us!" She waved her water can wildly, nearly clubbing an old woman who was inching past, bearing her own water cans. "Look around! You know that there are people all over the world who have fine cars and fine meals, servants and maids? There are people all over the world who have toilets, Yasmin, and running water, and who get to each have their own bedroom with a fine bed to sleep in! Do you think those people are going to give up their fine beds and their fine houses and cars for you? And if they don't give it up, where will it come from? How many beds and cars are there? Are there enough for all of us? In this world, Yasmin, there just isn't enough. That means that there are going to be losers and winners, just like in any game, and you get to decide if you want to be a winner or a loser."
Yasmin mumbled something under her breath.
"What?" Mala shouted at her. "What are you saying, girl? Speak up so I can hear you!"
"I don't think it's like that. I think we can be kind to other people and that they will be kind to us. I think that we can stick together, like a team, like the army, and we can all work together to make the world a better place."
Mala laughed, but it sounded forced, and Yasmin thought she saw tears starting in her friend's eyes. "You know what happens when you act like that, Yasmin? They find a way to destroy you. To force you to become an animal. Because they're animals. They want to win, and if you offer them your hand, they'll slice off your fingers. You have to be an animal to survive."
Yasmin shook her head, negating everything. "It's not true, Mala! Our neighbors here, they're not animals. They're people. They're good people. We have nothing and yet we all cooperate. We help each other --"
"Oh fine, maybe you can make a little group of friends here, people who would have to look you in the eye if they did you a dirty trick. But it's a big world. Do you think that Big Sister Nor's friends in Singapore, in China, in America, in Russia -- do you think they'll think twice before they destroy you? In Africa, in --" She waved her arm, taking in all the countries she didn't know the names of, filled with teeming masses of predatory workers, ready to take their jobs from them. "Listen: do you really care so much for Chinese and Russians and all those other people? Will you take bread out of your mouth to give it to them? For a bunch of foreigners who wouldn't spit on you if you were on fire?"
Yasmin thought she knew her friend, but this was like nothing she'd ever heard from Mala before. Where had all this Indian patriotism come from? "Mala, it's foreigners who own all the games we're playing. Who cares if they're foreigners? Isn't the fact that they're people enough? Didn't you used to rage about the stupid caste system and say that everyone deserved equality?"
"Deserved!" Mala spat the word out like a curse. "Who cares what you deserve, if you don't get it. Fill your belly with deserve. Sleep on a bed of deserve. See what you get from deserve!"
"So your army is about taking whatever they can get, even if it hurts someone else?"
Mala stood up very straight. "That's right, it's my army, Yasmin. My army! And you're not a part of it anymore. Don't bother coming around again, because, because --"
"Because I'm not your friend or your lieutenant anymore," Yasmin said. "I understand, General Mala Robotwallah. But your army won't last forever and our sisterhood might have, if you'd only valued it more. I'm sorry you are making this decision, General Robotwallah, but it's yours to make. Your karma." She set down the water-can and turned on her heel and started away, back stiff, waiting for Mala to jump on her back and wrestle her into the mud, waiting for her to run up and hug her and beg her for forgiveness. She got to the next corner, a narrow laneway between more plastic recycling factories, and contrived to look back over her shoulder as she turned, pretending to be dodging to avoid a pair of goats being led by an old Tamil man.
Mala was standing tall as a soldier, eyes burning into her, and they transfixed her for a moment, froze her in her tracks, so that she really did have to dodge around the goats. When she looked back again, the General had departed, her skinny arms straining with her water-cans.
Big Sister Nor told her to be understanding.
"She's still your friend," the woman said, her voice emanating from the gigantic robot that stood guard over a group of Webbly gold-farmers who were methodically raiding an old armory, clearing out the zombies and picking up the cash and weapon-drops that appeared every time they ran the dungeon. "She may not know it, but she's on the side of workers. The other side -- the boss's side -- they'll use her services, but they'll never let her into their camp. The best she can hope for is to be a cherished pet, a valuable bit of hired muscle. I don't think she'll stay put for that, do you?"
But it wasn't much comfort. In one morning, Yasmin had lost her best friend and her occupation. She started going to school again, but she'd fallen behind in the work in the six months she'd been away and now the master wanted her to stay back a year and sit with the grade four students, which was embarrassing. She'd always been a good student and it galled her to sit with the younger kids -- and to make things worse, she was tall for her age and towered over them. Gradually, she stopped attending the school.
Her parents were outraged, of course. But they'd been outraged when Yasmin had joined the army, too, and her father had beaten her for ten days running, while she refused to cry, refused to have her will broken. In the end, they'd been won over by her stubbornness. And, of course, by the money she brought home.
Yasmin could handle her parents.
Mrs Dibyendu's Internet Cafe was a sad place now that the Army had moved on. Mala had forced that on Mr Banerjee, and had counted it as a great show of her strength when she prevailed. But Yasmin thought she never would have won the argument