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

like they were on the outside, giving them the equivalent of the "3 Gs" -- golf, girls and gambling -- with whatever they could scrape up from the prison's walls. Matthew had never informed and had never been informed upon. He always chose the games he played, and he never played a game he couldn't win.
And so he was numb when he met Jie, who smelled wonderful and had fantastic manners and a twinkling smile. She had his new identity papers, with the right picture, but a different name and identity number, and a fingerprint that he was sure wasn't his own on the back. She chatted amiably as they walked, about inconsequentialities, the weather and the food, football scores and gossip about celebrities, a too-perfect empty-head that made him even more suspicious of this girl and her impeccable acting.
She led them to a small, run-down handshake building in the old Cantonese part of town, a place where the buildings grew so close together that you could stick your hand out your bedroom window and shake hands with a person in a bedroom across the street. This was where Matthew had grown up, the "city-within-a-city" that the Cantonese had been squeezed into as South China ceased to be merely a place and had become a symbol for the New China, the world's factory. Being back in these familiar streets made him even more prickly, giving him the creeping certainty that he would be recognized any second, that some poor boyhood friend of his would be marked by this secret policewoman and sent to prison with him. He steeled himself to keep walking, though with each step he wanted to turn and bolt.
The flat she led them to had once been half of a tiny apartment; now it was reduced to a single, tiny room with piles of girly clothes and shoes, several computers perched on cheap desks, a sink whose rim was covered in cosmetics, and a screened-off area that presumably hid the toilet. The shower was next to the stove and sink, a tiled square in the corner with a drain set into the floor, a shower-head anchored to the wall, a curtain rail bolted to the ceiling.
Once the door was closed, Lu's girlfriend changed demeanour so abruptly, it was as though she had removed a mask. Her face was now animated with keen intelligence, her bearing aggressive and keen. "We need to get you new clothes," she said. "A shave, a haircut, some money --"
One thing Matthew had learned in prison was the importance of not getting carried along by other people's scripts. A forceful person could do that: write a script, spin it out for you, put you in a role, and before you knew it, you were smuggling sealed packages from one part of the prison to another. Once someone else was writing the script, you were all but helpless.
"Wait," he said. "Just stop." She looked at him mildly. Lu was less calm -- Matthew could tell at a glance that he was completely in this woman's power. "Madame, I don't mean to be rude, but who the hell are you, and why should I trust you?"
She laughed. "You want to know if I'm zengfu," she said. Lu looked scandalized, but she was taking it well. "Of course you do. I've got money, apartments, I know where to get good ID papers --"
"And you're very bossy," Matthew said.
"I certainly am!" she said. "Now, have you ever heard of Jiandi?"
He had heard that name. He thought about it for a moment, casting his mind back to the distant, dreamlike time before prison. "The radio lady?" he said, slowly. "The one who talks to the factory girls?"
"Yes," she said. "That's the one."
"OK," he said. "I've heard of her."
Lu grinned. "And now you've met her!"
Matthew thought about this for a moment, staring into the girl's carefully made-up eyes, fringed with long, dark lashes. Finally he said, "No offense, but anyone can claim to be someone who no one has ever seen."
Lu started to speak, but she held her hand up and silenced him. "He's right," she said. "Tank, the only reason I'm walking around free, still broadcasting, is that I am a very paranoid lady. Your friend's paranoia is just good sense. Have you ever considered that you've never listened to me broadcasting, Tank? You've been here plenty for the broadcasts, but you've never tuned in. For all you know, I am zengfu, infiltrating your ranks with a giant, elaborate counterfeit that has other cops calling in, pretending to be listeners to a show that never goes any farther than the room I'm sitting in." Lu's mouth opened and shut, opened and shut. She laughed at him. "Don't worry, I'm no cop. I'm just pointing out that you're a very trusting sort of boy. Maybe too trusting. Your friend here is a little more cautious, that's all. I thoroughly approve."
Matthew found himself hoping that this girl wasn't a cop for the simple reason that he was starting to like her. Not to mention that if she was a cop, he'd go straight back to jail, but now that his panic was receding, he was able to consider what she would be like as a comrade. He liked the idea.
"OK," he said. "So, if you're Jiandi, then it should be easy for you to prove it. Just do a show, and I'll tune in and listen to it."
"How do you know Jiandi isn't a cop?" She had a twinkle in her eye.
"Not even the cops are that devious," he said. "They couldn't stand to have all those Falun Gong ads and all that seditious talk about the party -- it wouldn't last a week, let alone years and years."
She nodded. "I think so, too. Lu, do you agree?"
Lu, still miserable looking, nodded glumly.
"Cheer up," she said. "You get to have a little solo time with your friend!"
They ended up at a new game cafe, far off on the metro line, by the Windows on the World theme-park. Matthew's father had taken him there once, and he'd gotten to dress up in ancient battle-armor, fire arrows at targets while a man with a Cantonese accent dressed like an American Indian gave him pointers. It had been fun, but nothing so nice as the games that Matthew was already playing.
The metro let them off just around the corner from it, in front of a giant, run-down hotel that had been closed the last time Matthew came through here. The game cafe was in the former restaurant, something pirate themed with a huge fake pirate ship on the roof. Inside, it was choked with smoke and the tables had been formed into the usual long stretches with a PC every meter or so. About half of them were occupied, and in one corner of the restaurant there were fifty or sixty gamers who were clearly gold-farmers, working under the watchful eye of an older goon with a hard face and a cigarette in one corner of his mouth. It was incredibly hot inside the cafe, twenty degrees hotter than outside, and it was as dark and dank as a cave. Matthew felt instantly at home.
Lu shoved some folded up bills at the old man behind the counter, an evil-looking, toothless grandfather with a pronounced hump and two missing fingers on one hand. Lu looked back at Matthew, then ordered a plate of dumplings as well. The man drew a styrofoam tray out of a chest freezer, punctured the film on top, and put it in the microwave beside him at the reception desk. "Go," he croaked, "I'll bring them to you."
Matthew and Lu sat down at adjacent PCs far from the rest of the crowd, next to a picture window that had been covered over with newspapers. Matthew put his eye up to a rip in the paper and peeked out at the ruins of an elaborate, nautical-themed swimming pool outside, complete with twisting water-slides and fountains, now gone green and scummy. "Nice hotel," he said.
Lu was mousing his way over to Jiandi's web-page, weaving the connection through a series of proxies, looking up the latest addresses for her stream mirrors, finding one that worked. "I think we'll have 45 minutes at least before anyone notices that this PC is doing something out-of-bounds. I trust that will be plenty of time for you to satisfy your suspicious mind."
Matthew saw that Lu was really angry, and he swallowed his own anger -- something else he'd had plenty of practice at in prison. "I just want to be safe, Lu. This isn't a game." Then he heard his own words and grinned. "OK, it is a game. But it's also real life. It has consequences." He plucked at the shirt that hung loose on his skinny body. "It wouldn't hurt you to be more careful."
Lu said nothing, but his lips were pursed and white. The old man brought them their dumplings and they ate them in silence. They were miserable dumplings, filled with something that tasted like shredded paper, but they were still better than prison chicken's feet.
Matthew looked at the boy. He was always thoughtful -- a strange thing for a tank to be -- and considerate, and brave. He hadn't been in Matthew's original guild, but when Boss Wing had put him in charge of the whole elite squad, they'd come willingly, seeing in Matthew a strategist who could lead them to victory. And when Matthrew had started whispering to them about the Webblies, Lu had been as excited as anyone. All that seemed so long ago, a different life and different time, before a policeman's baton had knocked him down, before he had gone to prison, before he'd turned into the man he was now. But Matthew was back in the world now, and Lu had been living on his wits for months, and --
"I owe you an apology," he said, setting down hs chopsticks. "I still don't know if I can trust your friend, but I could have been a little smarter about how I said it. It's been a strange day -- 36 hours ago, I was wearing a prison uniform."
Lu started at him, and then a little smile snuck into the corners of his mouth. "It's all right," he said. "Here, she's starting." He popped out his earwig, already paired with the computer's sound-system, wiped it on his sleeve, and handed it to Matthew. Matthew screwed it into his ear.
"Hello, sisters," came the familiar voice. "It's a little early, I know, but this is a short and special broadcast for you lucky ladies who have the day off, are sick in the infirmary, or happen to have snuck headphones into the factory. Hello, hello, hello. Shall we take a phone call or two?"
Lu grinned at Matthew and stood and walked out of the cafe. Matthew touched the earwig, thought about going after him, decided not to. A moment later, Jiandi said, "There we go, hello, hello."
"Hello Jiandi," said Lu. Matthew put his eye back up to the gap in the newspaper-covered glass and found himself staring at a grinning Lu, standing behind the building, phone to his head.
"Tank!" she squealed. "How fantastic to hear from you again. It's been ages since you came on my show! Tell me, Tank, what's on your mind today?"
"Justice," Lu/Tank said. Matthew found himself laughing quietly, and he ducked his head so as not to draw attention. "Justice for working people. We come to Guanddong Province because they say that