New York 2140
Kim Stanley Robinson
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Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Kim Stanley Robinson
Cover design by Kirk Benshoff
Cover illustration by Stephan Martiniere
Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Robinson, Kim Stanley, author.
Title: New York 2140 / Kim Stanley Robinson.
Description: First edition. | New York : Orbit, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016039922 | ISBN 9780316262347 (hardback) | ISBN 9781478941224 (audio book (downloadable)) | ISBN 9781478972686 (audio book (cd)) | ISBN 9780316262330 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Twenty-second century—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | New York (State)—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Science Fiction / Space Opera. | FICTION / Science Fiction / High Tech. | FICTION / Science Fiction / Adventure. | GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3568.O2893 N49 2017 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016039922
ISBNs: 978-0-316-26234-7 (hardcover), 978-0-316-26233-0 (ebook), 978-0-316-51009-7 (Barnes & Noble signed edition)
E3-20170124-JV-PC
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part One. The Tyranny of Sunk Costs
a) Mutt and Jeff
b) Inspector Gen
c) Franklin
d) Vlade
e) a citizen
f) Amelia
g) Charlotte
h) Stefan and Roberto
Part Two. Expert Overconfidence
a) Franklin
b) Mutt and Jeff
c) that citizen
d) Inspector Gen
e) Vlade
f) Amelia
g) Stefan and Roberto
h) Franklin
Part Three. Liquidity Trap
a) the citizen
b) Mutt and Jeff
c) Charlotte
d) Amelia
e) Inspector Gen
f) Mutt and Jeff
g) Stefan and Roberto
h) Vlade
i) that citizen
Part Four. Expensive or Priceless?
a) Franklin
b) Charlotte
c) Vlade
d) Amelia
e) a citizen
f) Inspector Gen
g) Franklin
h) Mutt and Jeff
Part Five. Escalation of Commitment
a) Stefan and Roberto
b) Vlade
c) that citizen
d) Inspector Gen
e) Charlotte
f) Franklin
g) Amelia
h) Inspector Gen
Part Six. Assisted Migration
a) the citizen
b) Stefan and Roberto
c) Mutt and Jeff
d) Vlade
e) Inspector Gen
f) Franklin
g) Charlotte
h) the citizen redux
i) Stefan and Roberto
Part Seven. The More the Merrier
a) Vlade
b) Inspector Gen
c) Franklin
d) the city smartass again
e) Charlotte
f) Inspector Gen
g) Amelia
h) the city
Part Eight. The Comedy of the Commons
a) Mutt and Jeff
b) Stefan and Roberto
c) Charlotte
d) Vlade
e) Franklin
f) Amelia
g) the citizen
h) Mutt and Jeff
Acknowledgments
By Kim Stanley Robinson
Orbit Newsletter
PART ONE
THE TYRANNY OF SUNK COSTS
a) Mutt and Jeff
Whoever writes the code creates the value.”
“That isn’t even close to true.”
“Yes it is. Value resides in life, and life is coded, like with DNA.”
“So bacteria have values?”
“Sure. All life wants things and goes after them. Viruses, bacteria, all the way up to us.”
“Which by the way it’s your turn to clean the toilet.”
“I know. Life means death.”
“So, today?”
“Some today. Back to my point. We write code. And without our code, there’s no computers, no finance, no banks, no money, no exchange value, no value.”
“All but that last, I see what you mean. But so what?”
“Did you read the news today?”
“Of course not.”
“You should. It’s bad. We’re getting eaten.”
“That’s always true. It’s like what you said, life means death.”
“But more than ever. It’s getting too much. They’re down to the bone.”
“This I know. It’s why we live in a tent on a roof.”
“Right, and now people are even worried about food.”
“As they should. That’s the real value, food in your belly. Because you can’t eat money.”
“That’s what I’m saying!”
“I thought you said the real value was code. Something a coder would say, may I point out.”
“Mutt, hang with me. Follow what I’m saying. We live in a world where people pretend money can buy you anything, so money becomes the point, so we all work for money. Money is thought of as value.”
“Okay, I get that. We’re broke and I get that.”
“So good, keep hanging with me. We live by buying things with money, in a market that sets all the prices.”
“The invisible hand.”
“Right. Sellers offer stuff, buyers buy it, and in the flux of supply and demand the price gets determined. It’s crowdsourced, it’s democratic, it’s capitalism, it’s the market.”
“It’s the way of the world.”
“Right. And it’s always, always wrong.”
“What do you mean wrong?”
“The prices are always too low, and so the world is fucked. We’re in a mass extinction event, sea level rise, climate change, food panics, everything you’re not reading in the news.”
“All because of the market.”
“Exactly! It’s not just that there are market failures. It’s that the market is a failure.”
“How so?”
br /> “Things are sold for less than it costs to make them.”
“That sounds like the road to bankruptcy.”
“Yes, and lots of businesses do go bankrupt. But the ones that don’t haven’t actually sold their thing for more than it cost to make. They’ve just ignored some of their costs. They’re under huge pressure to sell as low as they can, because every buyer buys the cheapest version of whatever it is. So they shove some of their production costs off their books.”
“Can’t they just pay their labor less?”
“They already did that! That was easy. That’s why we’re all broke except the plutocrats.”
“I always see the Disney dog when you say that.”
“They’ve squeezed us till we’re bleeding from the eyes. I can’t stand it anymore.”
“Blood from a stone. Sir Plutocrat, chewing on a bone.”
“Chewing on my head! But now we’re chewed up. We’re squoze dry. We’ve been paying a fraction of what things really cost to make, but meanwhile the planet, and the workers who made the stuff, take the unpaid costs right in the teeth.”
“But they got a cheap TV out of it.”
“Right, so they can watch something interesting as they sit there broke.”
“Except there’s nothing interesting on.”
“Well, but this is the least of their problems! I mean actually you can usually find something interesting.”
“Please, I beg to differ. We’ve seen everything a million times.”
“Everyone has. I’m just saying the boredom of bad TV is not the biggest of our worries. Mass extinction, hunger, wrecking kids’ lives, these are bigger worries. And it just keeps getting worse. People are suffering more and more. My head is going to explode the way things are going, I swear to God.”
“You’re just upset because we got evicted and are living in a tent on a roof.”
“That’s just part of it! A little part of a big thing.”
“Okay, granted. So what?”
“So look, the problem is capitalism. We’ve got good tech, we’ve got a nice planet, we’re fucking it up by way of stupid laws. That’s what capitalism is, a set of stupid laws.”
“Say I grant that too, which maybe I do. So what can we do?”
“It’s a set of laws! And it’s global! It extends all over the Earth, there’s no escaping it, we’re all in it, and no matter what you do, the system rules!”
“I’m not seeing the what-we-can-do part.”
“Think about it! The laws are codes! And they exist in computers and in the cloud. There are sixteen laws running the whole world!”
“To me that seems too few. Too few or too many.”
“No. They’re articulated, of course, but it comes down to sixteen basic laws. I’ve done the analysis.”
“As always. But it’s still too many. You never hear about sixteen of anything. There are the eight noble truths, the two evil stepsisters. Maybe twelve at most, like recovery steps, or apostles, but usually it’s single digits.”
“Quit that. It’s sixteen laws, distributed between the World Trade Organization and the G20. Financial transactions, currency exchange, trade law, corporate law, tax law. Everywhere the same.”
“I’m still thinking that sixteen is either too few or too many.”
“Sixteen I’m telling you, and they’re encoded, and each can be changed by changing the codes. Look what I’m saying: you change those sixteen, you’re like turning a key in a big lock. The key turns, and the system goes from bad to good. It helps people, it requires the cleanest techs, it restores landscapes, the extinctions stop. It’s global, so defectors can’t get outside it. Bad money gets turned to dust, bad actions likewise. No one could cheat. It would make people be good.”
“Please Jeff? You’re sounding scary.”
“I’m just saying! Besides, what’s scarier than right now?”
“Change? I don’t know.”
“Why should change be scary? You can’t even read the news, right? Because it’s too fucking scary?”
“Well, and I don’t have the time.”
Jeff laughs till he puts his forehead on the table. Mutt laughs too, to see his friend so amused. But the mirth is very localized. They are partners, they amuse each other, they work long hours writing code for high-frequency trading computers uptown. Now some reversals have them on this night living in a hotello on the open-walled farm floor of the old Met Life tower, from which vantage point lower Manhattan lies flooded below them like a super-Venice, majestic, watery, superb. Their town.
Jeff says, “So look, we know how to get into these systems, we know how to write code, we are the best coders in the world.”
“Or at least in this building.”
“No come on, the world! And I’ve already gotten us in to where we need to go.”
“Say what?”
“Check it out. I built us some covert channels during that gig we did for my cousin. We’re in there, and I’ve got the replacement codes ready. Sixteen revisions to those financial laws, plus a kicker for my cousin’s ass. Let the SEC know what he’s up to, and also fund the SEC to investigate that shit. I’ve got a subliminal shunt set up that will tap some alpha and move it right to the SEC’s account.”
“Now you really are scaring me.”
“Well sure, but look, check it out. See what you think.”
Mutt moves his lips when he reads. He’s not saying the words silently to himself, he’s doing a kind of Nero Wolfe stimulation of his brain. It’s his favorite neurobics exercise, of which he has many. Now he begins to massage his lips with his fingers as he reads, indicating deep worry.
“Well, yeah,” he says after about ten minutes of reading. “I see what you’ve got here. I like it, I guess. Most of it. That old Ken Thompson Trojan horse always works, doesn’t it. Like a law of logic. So, could be fun. Almost sure to be amusing.”
Jeff nods. He taps the return key. His new set of codes goes out into the world.
They leave their hotello and stand at the railing of their building’s farm, looking south over the drowned city, taking in the whitmanwonder of it. O Mannahatta! Lights squiggle off the black water everywhere below them. Downtown a few lit skyscrapers illuminate darker towers, giving them a geological sheen. It’s weird, beautiful, spooky.
There’s a ping from inside their hotello, and they push through the flap into the big square tent. Jeff reads his computer screen.
“Ah shit,” he says. “They spotted us.”
They regard the screen.
“Shit indeed,” Mutt says. “How could they have?”
“I don’t know, but it means I was right!”
“Is that good?”
“It might even have worked!”
“You think?”
“No.” Jeff frowns. “I don’t know.”
“They can always recode what you did, that’s the thing. Once they see it.”
“So do you think we should run for it?”
“To where?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s like you said before,” Mutt points out. “It’s a global system.”
“Yeah but this is a big city! Lots of nooks and crannies, lots of dark pools, the underwater economy and all. We could dive in and disappear.”
“Really?”
“I don’t know. We could try.”
Then the farm floor’s big service elevator door opens. Mutt and Jeff regard each other. Jeff thumbs toward the staircases. Mutt nods. They slip out under the tent wall.
To be brief about it—
proposed Henry James
b) Inspector Gen
Inspector Gen Octaviasdottir sat in her office, late again, slumped in her chair, trying to muster the energy to get up and go home. Light fingernail drumming on her door announced her assistant, Sergeant Olmstead. “Sean, quit it and come in.”
Her mild-mannered young bulldog ushered in a woman of about fifty. Vaguely familiar-looking. Five seven, a bit heavy,
thick black hair with some white strands. City business suit, big shoulder bag. Wide-set intelligent eyes, now observing Gen sharply; expressive mouth. No makeup. A serious person. Attractive. But she looked as tired as Gen felt. And a little uncertain about something, maybe this meeting.
“Hi, I’m Charlotte Armstrong,” the woman said. “We live in the same building, I think. The old Met Life tower, on Madison Square?”
“I thought you looked familiar,” Gen said. “What brings you here?”
“It has to do with our building, so I asked to see you. Two residents have gone missing. You know those two guys who were living on the farm floor?”
“No.”
“They might have been nervous to talk to you. Although they had permission to stay.”
The Met tower was a co-op, owned by its residents. Inspector Gen had recently inherited her apartment from her mother, and she paid little attention to how the building was run. Often it felt like she was only there to sleep. “So what happened?”
“No one knows. They were there one day, gone the next.”
“Someone’s checked the security cameras?”
“Yes. That’s why I came to see you. The cameras went out for two hours on the last night they were seen.”
“Went out?”
“We checked the data files, and they all have a two-hour gap.”
“Like a power outage?”
“But there wasn’t a power outage. And they have battery backup.”
“That’s weird.”
“That’s what we thought. That’s why I came to see you. Vlade, the building super, would have reported it, but I was coming here anyway to represent a client, so I filed the report and then asked to speak to you.”
“Are you going back to the Met now?” Gen asked.
“Yes, I was.”
“Why don’t we go together, then. I was just leaving.” Gen turned to Olmstead. “Sean, can you find the report on this and see what you can learn about these two men?”
The sergeant nodded, gazing at the floor, trying not to look like he’d just been given a bone. He would tear into it when they were gone.
Armstrong headed toward the elevators and looked surprised when Inspector Gen suggested they walk instead.
“I didn’t think there were skybridges between here and there.”
“Nothing direct,” Gen explained, “but you can take the one from here to Bellevue, and then go downstairs and cross diagonally and then head west on the Twenty-third Skyline. It takes about thirty-four minutes. The vapo would take twenty if we got lucky, thirty if we didn’t. So I walk it a lot. I can use the stretch, and it will give us a chance to talk.”
