Herself Anodyne by Emma Burnett

She is herself anodyne. 

       Off the train and into the queue, she offends no one shuffling forwards with her papers in hand.

       Here, the guard says, bored in his booth. Pick one. She holds her breath, points at one of the cards he is holding up, their identical backs pressed against the glass. A facedown choice, nothing but luck and a repayment schedule for life. He flicks it over, and she sees the image of a woman holding a card. Best of luck. He passes her documents back, along with the chosen card. She tucks it into a plastic wallet, and into her bag.

       But I can’t do that! she hears someone yell, mephitic in the murmuring crowd. She turns back to see them led back out the front door. They are not dragged, but they are not welcomed.

       She holds the bag close as she is pushed forward into the city.

       She is anodyne, innocuous in a city of chaos. It swells with extras, people who make up the background, who are themselves the extending city, urban sprawl built on fear and the commodification of lives and land. Her room, high up in a tower built of twigs and hope, paid for by the work she has been assigned. The agreement for entrance to the city: everyone expected to contribute, everyone expected to pay for the privilege.

       Sell you a card? someone calls out from an alleyway. Change your life. She shakes her head, scurries past, innocuous.

       She follows her assignment, keeps safe her relic, the card that assigns her to the Officiate of Administration. It is secure in its plastic wallet inside another plastic bag, in the inner pocket of the bag always on her shoulder. She nods meekly when the High Dignitary of HR equips her with a pencil, instructs her to collect names and working hours, and to check on the wellbeing of the relics forced upon the masses at the checkpoints. Not everyone keeps them safe in a pouch in a pouch in a bag.

       She pursues her neighbours, who call her asinine, who avoid her on narrow bridges above the rivers and in the markets tucked between quickly-built houses, who refuse to come to the door or curtain when she knocks. She strokes her card tucked in the bags, a talisman of belonging.

She is herself saturnine. 

       The change comes slowly, creeping up like the fog she walks through in the narrow alleyways, like the angry whispers of residents when she is spotted approaching a tower block. Always she is collecting from people who allow harm to come to their relics, who fail to complete the roles assigned, who don’t pay homage and fines to the Faiths.

       Why should we? they ask, and What the fuck? when she demands to inspect the card relics and collect payment. 

       Her own card is still pristine in the wallet in the bag in her bag. It needs no inspection. She makes regular tithes to the Faith of Superintendence; she receives new pencils from the Deacon of Immigration. She stands sombre in a too-hot office, delivering reports and payments. Nice one, her supervisor says, accounting. This’ll cover upgrades to the aircon.

       She collects details, delivers reports. She overhears someone in a side office begging for a replacement card. My house burnt down, he wails. I couldn’t save it.

       Alone in the city, she walks the streets collecting and reporting information on neighbours, people she travelled alongside, residents recently arrived. She sees the edges of relics rough or torn. She notes attempted returns, requested exchanges, sees residents who don’t realise the penalties given to those who refuse cards or ruin them. They are surprised by the fines given, the harsher work assignments. I thought it would be better here, people say. She turns, taciturn, away from Traitor and You’ll see one day.

She is herself crystalline. 

       She cannot explain the change. It happens over time, not in a single moment. A father losing a child as repayment to the Church of Commerce. A couple divided over a lost relic, one person sent away, the other bound to an assignment. Pets unfed. Death not commemorated. Pensioners, the infirm, the quirky all required to work to pay debts against destroyed relics. Prayers at the altars of faiths assigned, unanswered. 

       Her pencils, scratching these truths into being. Her own relic, safe in its bags.

       Nothing specific happens to change her. And yet she is no longer anodyne, because she is far from neutral. She is not saturnine, her melancholy has turned to fits of joy and rage in equal measures.

       She is crystalline, a diamond, dangerous and unpalatable. 

       The city has not dissolved her.

       She is authority of the Authority, unknown to the authorities. She carries the pencils and delivers the cards. She alters the altars. She submits reports that say nothing at all, except Well done and Perfect citizen. She floods the Faiths with paperwork, reams of goodwill and compliments, their staff unable to keep up with the perfect reports and the hard-nosed excellence. They have no one to fine. She is impoverishing the Faiths. She is leading the charge. 

       She becomes a collector of cards, a skimmer off the top. The packets she delivers to the guards are always lighter by one or two, and if they count the deck, if they ask Where is… she stares, hard as rock, and they shrug and move on with their assigned jobs. 

       Pick a card, they instruct the person in the queue. Best of luck.

       She is herself crystalline, and this city of cards will be rebuilt with unyielding choice. 

       Pick any card, she says, inspecting a ruined card, a ruined life. She pulls out a deck compiled in ones and twos, lays out the cards face-up on a table or a desk or a dirty old chair. Choose your life. She hands over the card, safe in a plastic envelope, in another envelope, and she writes a solidly glowing report.