No, the primary mystery of New Ionia is simply this: How did we, safely ensconced in our own comparatively civilized and progressive worldview, allow such things to happen less than three hundred miles away? And what exactly do we owe the sleeping children of New Ionia should they wake up?
“Sleeping children of New Ionia,” Zada read aloud.
“I think they’re talking about us,” Daphne said.
“What does this mean? Why would someone say that about us?” Zada pinched the bridge of her nose as her head swam, the words blurring in front of her. Daphne gently pried the book out of her hands.
“Focus, Zada,” Daphne said, echoing her earlier words. “We’re here to look for information about Heartsong. Not whatever this is.”
Daphne slid the volume back onto the shelf.
“How about this one?” said Daphne, holding up a slim hardback titledNew Ionia: People and Product. “Sounds promising.” The book had a crease in the spine, and it opened naturally to somewhere in the middle.
Together, the two of them skimmed through the middle section.
“Wait, go back,” Zada said, her eye catching on a mention of the Core. Finally, they were getting somewhere.
The sheer amount of consumer data gathered and stored by their primary processing hub, known by its citizens as the Core, is astonishing. As children, citizens of this city surrender not only the kind of data scraped and stolen by corporations at the turn of the millennium, but also their innermost thoughts, feelings, and preferences. This incredibly proprietary and personal intel is collected on the false promise of matching citizens with their soulmate, or their “Heartsong match.”
Advertisers with access to these insights are guaranteed a unique and uniquely complete look into the mind of the consumer. Despite the enforced isolation of the city, this data is not restricted to within city limits, but is sold to the highest bidder. A number of corporations operating within the remaining United States utilize this data to guide their own consumer models. (Whether this is a particularly intelligent strategy, given the behavioral differences between the average person and a New Ionian citizen, can be seen by the dismal financial performance of a conglomerate that has recently dominated the news. Still, corporations persist in finding new and innovative ways to exploit the people they purport to serve—a tale as old as time.)
New Ionians may insist on living in a sort of permanent historical cosplay, elevating their strict social restrictions into a carefully choreographed, almost fetishized display of bygone fashions and customs, but the lifeblood, the currency of the city, represents a very modern voluntary sacrifice of privacy and self-determination, on a scale that can be difficult to imagine.
Zada felt her legs fold under her before she made the conscious decision to collapse, and then she was on the floor, where nothing made any more sense than it had on her feet. The traitorous book was still in her hand. She very carefully placed it back on the shelf.
“Zada?” said Daphne, kneeling. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said faintly.
What did any of this mean? Why would anyone call the very foundation of the New Ionian marriage system a “false promise”? Was her own data—her own thoughts and feelings—really being sold to the highest bidder outside of New Ionia?
No, it simply wasn’t possible. It was a privilege to live in the city. New Ionia gave its citizens the perfect life partner, assigned its citizens a job perfectly suited to them, and provided them everything they would ever need. All thanks to the Core.
She wanted to argue with this smug unseen writer, whoever they were. How could this stranger begin to understand the blessings of a city they’d never set foot in? The Core was built upon the wisdom of the Founders and driven by the data of the citizens it served. It knew better than any individual person what they wanted, needed, and deserved.
In New Ionia, you were given your place in society and you lived the best version of your life possible. What was a littledata compared to all of the many benefits? She wasn’t a sleeping child, or whatever that first writer had called them. She was a grown adult who understood the way her city worked—or at least, the way it worked most of the time, a treacherous voice whispered in her head.
“Do you think the city’s truly selling our data?” Daphne said. She was paging through the blasphemous book. “I don’t want to believe it, but . . .”
“You shouldn’t,” Zada said. It was her turn to take the thin volume out of Daphne’s hands. “Believe it, I mean. These books are here for a reason. They aren’t to be trusted.”
“But they might have a point,” Daphne began. “Never mind. I’m sorry. You’re right. This isn’t what we came for. Let’s keep looking.”
Zada put a hand on the wall and felt something strangely familiar as she pulled herself up. She turned to examine it. Her palm had landed on a small, almost perfectly round disk. She took a step back and for the first time, really examined the surface of the wall.
It was made of trash.
From floor to ceiling, the back wall was made up of densely compacted detritus—she couldn’t identify most of it in the low light, but she caught a corner of a bottle and what appeared to be several screw-top lids. The patchwork of color was the result of different hues of glass and plastic, melded together.
“What are you looking at?” Daphne said in her ear. Zada jumped.
“I think this is all trash,” Zada said slowly, her gaze traveling the span of the library wall. “But why would there be a wall of trash here?”
“Maybe it’s public art,” Daphne speculated.
“Down here?”
“Private art,” Daphne corrected herself. She tilted her head, considering the striations of bright artificial color, all mashed up together. “Actually, hang on. I saw something earlier—”
