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

Ashok grinned at her. "You all right there, sister?"
She wanted to say something sharp and cutting in response, but nothing came. The words had been beaten out of her by the ride. Suddenly, she felt as though she could hardly breathe, and the fabric of her hijab seemed filled with road dust that it released into her nose and mouth with every inhalation. She carefully undid the pin and moved her hijab so that it no longer covered her face.
Ashok stared at her in horror. "You -- you're just a little girl!"
She bridled and the words came to her again. "I am 14 -- there were girls my age with husbands and babies in Dharavi! I'm a skilled fighter and commander. I'm no little girl!"
He blushed a purple color and clasped his hands at his chest apologetically. "Forgive me," he said. "But -- Well, I assumed you were 18 or 19. You're tall. I've brought you all this way and you're, well, you're a child! Your parents will be mad with worry!"
She gave him her best steely glare, the one she used to make the boys in the Army behave when they were getting too, well, boyish. "I left them a note. And I'll be back tonight. And I'm old enough to worry about this sort of thing on my own account, thank you very much. Now, you've dragged me halfway across India for some mysterious purpose, and I'm sure that it wasn't just to have me stand around here talking about my family life."
He recovered himself and grinned again. "Sorry, sorry. Right, we're here for a meeting. It's important. The Webblies have never had much contact with real unions, but now that Nor is in trouble, she's asked me to take up her cause with the unions here. There's meetings like this happening all over the world today -- in China and Indonesia, in Pakistan and Mexico and Guatemala. The people waiting for us inside -- they're labor leaders, representatives of the garment-workers' union, the steelworkers' union, even the Transport and Dock Workers' union -- the biggest unions in Mumbai. With their support, the Webblies can have access to money, warm bodies for picket lines, influence and power. But they don't know anything about what you do -- they've never played a game. They think that the Internet is for email and pornography. So you're here -- we're here -- to explain this to them."
She swallowed a few times. There was so much in all that she didn't understand -- and what she did understand, she wasn't very happy about. For example, this real union business -- the Webblies were a real union! But there was more pressing business than her irritation, for example: "What do you mean we're here to explain? Are you a gamer?"
He shook his head ruefully. "Haven't got the patience for it. I'm an economist. Labor economist. I've spent a lot of time with BSN, working out strategy with her."
She wasn't exactly certain what an economist was, but she also felt that admitting this might further undermine her credibility with this man who had called her a child. "I need my lathi," she said.
"You don't need a lathi in this meeting," he said. "No one will attack us."
"Someone will steal it," she said.
"This isn't Dharavi," he said. "No one will steal it."
That did it. She could talk about the problems in Dharavi. She was a Dharavi girl. But this stranger had no business saying bad things about her home. "I need my lathi in case I have to beat your brains out with it for rubbishing my home," she said, between gritted teeth.
"Sorry, sorry." He squatted down beside the bike and began to unravel the bungee cords from around the lathi. She also went down on one knee and began to worry at the zipstraps that tied up her trouser legs at the ankles, but they only went in one direction, and once they'd locked tight, they wouldn't loosen. Ashok looked up from the bungee cords.
"You need to cut them off," he said. "Here, one moment." He fished in his trouser-pocket and came up with a wicked flick-knife that he snapped open. He took gentle hold of the strap on her right ankle and slid the blade between it and her leg. She held her breath as he sliced through the strap, then flicked the knife closed, turned to her other leg, and, grasping her ankle, cut away the other strap. He looked up at her. Their eyes met, then she looked away.
"Be careful," she said, though he'd finished. He handed her the lathi. She gripped it with numb fingers, nearly dropped it, gripped it.
"OK," he said. "OK." He shook his head. "The people in there don't know anything about you or what you do. They are a little, you know, old fashioned." He smiled and seemed to be remembering something. "Very old fashioned, in some cases. And they're not very good with children. Young people, I mean." He held up his hands as she raised her lathi. "I only mean to warn you." He considered her. "Maybe you could cover your face again?"
Yasmin considered this for a moment. Of course, she didn't want to cover her face. She wanted to just go in as herself. Why shouldn't she be able to? But wearing the hijab had some advantages, and one was that no one would ask you why you were covering your face. Ashok had clearly believed she was much older until she'd undraped it.
Wordlessly, she unpinned the fabric, brought it across her face, and repinned it. He gave her a happy thumbs up and said, "All right! They're good people, you know. Very good people. They want to be on our side." He swallowed, thought some, rocked his chin from side to side. "But perhaps they don't know that yet."
He marched to the door, which was made of heavy metal screen over glass, and opened it, then gestured inside with a grand sweep of his arm. Trying to look as dignified as possible, she stepped into the gloom of the trailer, where it was cool and smelled of betel and chai and bleach, and where a lazy ceiling fan beat the air, trailing long snot-trails of dust.
This was what she noticed first, and not the people sitting around the room on sofas and easy-chairs. Those people were sunk deep into their chairs and sitting silently, their eyes lost in shadow. But after a moment, they began to shift minutely, staring at her. Ashok entered behind her and said, "Hello! Hello! I'm glad you could all make it!"
And then they stood, and they were all much older than her, much older than Ashok. The youngest was her mother's age, and he was fat and sleek and had great jowls and short hair in a fringe around his ears. There were three others, another man in kurta pyjamas with a Muslim skull cap and two very old women in sarees that showed the wrinkled skin on their bellies.
Ashok introduced them around, Mr Phadkar of the steelworkers' union, Mr Honnenahalli of the transport and dock workers' union, and Mrs Rukmini and Mrs Muthappa, both from the garment workers' union. "These good people are interested in Big Sister Nor's work and so she asked me to bring you round to talk to them. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Yasmin, a trusted activist within the IWWWW organization. She is here to answer your questions."
They all greeted her politely, but their smiles never reached their eyes. Ashok busied himself in a corner where there was a chai pot and cups, pouring out masala chai for everyone and bringing it around on a tray. "I will be your chaiwallah," he said. "You just all talk."
Yasmin's throat was terribly dry, but she was veiled, and so she passed on the chai, but quickly regretted it as the talk began.
"I understand that your 'work' is just playing games, is that right?" said Mr Honnenahalli, the fat man who worked with the Transport and Dock Workers' union.
"We work in the games, yes," Yasmin said.
"And so you organize people who play games. How are they workers? They sound like players to me. In the transport trade, we work."
Yasmin rocked her chin from side to side and was glad of her veil. She remembered her talk with Sushant. "We work the way anyone works, I suppose. We have a boss who asks us to do work, and he gets rich from our work."
That made the two old aunties smile, and though it was dark in the room, she thought it was a genuine one.
"Sister," said Mr Phadkar, he in the skullcap, "tell us about these games. How are they played?"
So she told them, starting with Zombie Mecha, aided by the fact that Mr Phadkar had actually seen one of the many films based on the game. But as she delved into character classes, leveling up, unlocking achievements, and so on, she saw that she was losing them.
"It all sounds very complicated," Mr Honnenahalli said, after she had spoken for a good thirty minutes, and her throat was so dry it felt like she had eaten a mouthful of sand and salt. "Who plays these games? Who has time?"
This was something she often heard from her father, and so she told Mr Honnenahalli what she always told him. "Millions of people, rich and poor, men and women, boys and girls, all over the world. They spend crores and crores of rupees, and thousands of hours. It's a game, yes, but it's also as complicated as life in some ways."
Mr Honnenahalli twisted his face up into a sour lemon expression. "People in life make things that matter. They don't just --" He flapped a hand, miming some kind of pointless labor. "They don't just press buttons and play make believe."
She felt her cheeks coloring and was glad again of the veil. Ashok held up a hand. "If a humble chai-wallah may intervene here." Mr Honnenahalli gave him a hostile look, but he nodded. "'Pressing buttons and playing make believe' describes several important sectors of the economy, not least the entire financial industry. What is banking, if not pressing buttons and asking everyone to make believe that the outcomes have value?"
The old aunties smiled and Mr Honnenahalli grunted. "You're a clever bugger, Ashok. You can always be clever, but clever doesn't feed people or get them a fair deal from their employers."
Ashok nodded as though this point had never occurred to him, though Yasmin was pretty certain from his smile that he'd expected this, too. "Mr Honnenahalli, there are over 9,000,000 people working in this industry, and it turns over 500 crore rupees every year. It's averaging six percent quarterly growth. And eight of the 20 largest economies in the world are not countries, they're games, issuing their own currency, running their own fiscal policies, and setting their own labor laws."
Mr Honnenahalli scowled, making his jowls wobble, and raised his eyebrows. "They have labor policies in these games?"
"Oh yes," Ashok said. "Their policy is that no one may work in their worlds without their permission, that they have absolute power to set wages, hire and fire, that they can exile you if they don't like you or for any other reason, and that anyone caught violating the rules can be stripped of all virtual property and expelled without access to a trial, a judge, or elected officials."
That got their attention. Yasmin filed away that description.