Back to Manila now. Back to the slow, polluted crawl that was, despite all its faults, home.
I dropped off the others before driving to southern Taguig, one of 16 cities comprising Metro Manila. Through the gridlock, I took in wafts of stalls selling street foods like balut, the boiled duck embryo, kwek-kwek, deep-fried quail eggs, and isaw, grilled chicken, or pig intestines. Temptation tugged at me, but I had to be stringent with my money. People depended on me.
I had programmed MULTO to run in reverse. The script inserted the hijacked van back into Manila’s fleet vehicle network as easily as it had removed it. Like a fish reintroduced to its school, the van sped onwards as if it were not an accomplice in tonight’s ordeal.
A fiction chute sat at the end of a street near the drop-off. It was about the size of a refrigerator, its steel case littered with graffiti that obscured the logos of Metamatics, Intervid, Distro Premiere, Sugoi Soiree, Seoul Crystal Studios, and ten more Giants, all of which I had stolen fiction from at some point.
The most prominent text on the chute belonged to a sticker marred by the elements, beginning to peel off.
**DEPOSIT FICTION HERE!**
**ALWAYS ACCEPTING!**
As I crossed the street toward the chute, a jeepney honked its bugle horn at me. A waft of sewage from a nearby creek clung to the humid air.
The hardcover felt heavier than a gold bar. Maybe that was wishful thinking. I opened the chute’s lid and placed it inside.
As soon as I did, messages appeared on the chute’s screen.
[Name: A Land of Mist and Misery]
“A Bowl of Mac and Cheese,” Papa always said. It was his joke for any unoriginal title that followed the convention “NOUN of NOUN and NOUN.” I could recite a hundred examples.
[Genre: Romantasy]
[Originality: 9.91%]
These two messages didn’t surprise me. Romantasy was one of the Giants’ most popular genres, and stories in that space were hyper-accessible, containing rehashed versions of the same characters, plot lines, and settings. The originality score here confirmed it.
[Word Count: 65, 323]
[Narrative Complexity: 65.53%]
[Character Depth: 21.60%]
[Plot Consistency: 99.95%]
[Market Appeal: 81.83%]
The book’s Market Appeal of 81.83% further drove home how accessible this story was. The only shows more accessible than Romantasy were those Hollywood superhero trash films, bordering on 100%. More stream sludge.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
A Land of Mist and Misery was nothing new, and as I scrolled through more metrics, I was already beginning to dread the payout.
[Estimated production time: 179 hours]
This number was conventional. The higher the originality of a show, the more unique assets it had to create from scratch. Characters, dialogue, sets, the scripts themselves, there were engines to make all these. Even with the AI automation and technology at the Giants’ disposal, they only had so many computers.
These metrics, therefore, only served to waver my surprise. It reached its lowest point when I saw the final total.
[Appraising…]
[500 PHP]
I shook my head at the number, sighing. It was more than I could make in one day answering calls at TelePerformix, though. I had to give it that. But it was still paltry, considering four people had to drive to Taal, shoot down a drone, dismantle it, burn it, and flee.
I added the paperbacks I received that night to the chute and scrolled through the messages containing metrics. The final value barely changed.
[Appraising…]
[Appraising…]
[Appraising…]
[647 PHP]
I frowned, staring at the screen. My fingers felt numb. My teeth clenched. Weeks before, the total would have been 1,000 PHP, but as the Giants saturated the markets with hourly releases, they lowered the originality of everything else.
Overall, I was pissed.
Yet, how much less would I have earned if I submitted it tomorrow? What about next week or a few months from now? What about in a few months?
A red light on the chute began flashing.
[Automatic re-appraisal in 98 seconds.]
[Automatic re-appraisal in 97 seconds.]
[Submit? Y/N]
I thought about the pros and cons of delivering to a different chute. Sometimes, the values differed between chutes even at the same time. You could earn 100 PHP or more by submitting elsewhere. But if you did that, you risked being discovered.
[Automatic re-appraisal in 61 seconds.]
[Automatic re-appraisal in 60 seconds.]
[Submit? Y/N]
Children I didn’t recognize filled a nearby basketball court, glued to their phones and lazing on trikes and mopeds that looked like they’d never leak carbon again.
None of them knew that the world would chew them up soon enough. They played like the world wasn’t waiting to swallow them whole. But soon enough, they'd learn, like I had. The grind never let anyone rest for long.
A capture drone presided over the court, an all-seeing eye hovering above. In a few weeks, you might see these same young men starring in an all-star basketball series, their girlfriends cheering in the stands. Or you could find them stuffed into airships, their wives and children waving them off.
Meanwhile, the Giants raked in billions, and these boys and girls got nothing.
A few noticed my indecision and began to leave the court. They lined up behind me, perhaps thinking I would leave the chute and my fiction unattended.
[Automatic re-appraisal in 29 seconds.]
[Automatic re-appraisal in 28 seconds.]
[Submit? Y/N]
A large green ‘Y’ button was on the fiction chute next to an equally sized ‘N’ button. I resigned to life and its hardships and pressed the ‘Y’ button.
[Deposit Fee (1%): 7 PHP]
[Final Value: 640 PHP]
[Checkout? Y/N]
I had hoped and prayed the chute was bugged and it would recalculate the initial total, doubling or tripling it. Instead, I had to stomach all the effort that went into earning this measly 640 PHP.
Fucking Giants. All of them.
I pressed the ‘Y’ button again with a bit more force.
The books bumped down the pipes underneath the chute, carried away on their mystical delivery network to the Giants. I opened the chute’s lid again to see if one of the books had been lodged at the top and if I could dupe the process.
But, as always, I was out of luck.
