Dorothy From Kansas, Part 7
I'm on a roll! I'm thinking that maybe 2,500 words shouldn't be my goal, it should be my bare minimum, because I keep going way over it. This one was about 5,600 words. The last one was 7,000 something. This makes me pretty happy with myself. Anyway, here's part 7. Meet Deng Xiaoli!
NOTE : If I ever make any money off of this story, I owe royalties to Michael Burch for the character of Deng Xiaoli. The Durga subplot was eliminated because it was blatantly ripped off from something else, and the character's name was changed because I forgot it, but other than that, it's his character.
GARUDA : Hello, and welcome to Teralogos News Service. I am Garuda, and sitting down with me is Deng Xiaoli, a former crew member on the now famous USV Bebop-Maru. Mr. Deng, thank you for taking the time to sit down and talk with us.
DENG XIAOLI : Thank you for getting to the Deep Beyond so quickly.
GARUDA : Mr. Deng, what was your position on the Bebop-Maru?
DENG XIAOLI : (laughs) I was their Spike.
GARUDA : Excuse me?
DENG XIAOLI : There was this old TV show from Japan that... Never mind, it’ll take too long to explain. To put it another way, I was hired for my contacts and familiarity with the Martian Triads. Also, the fact that I have a black belt in Zhua.
GARUDA : I see. Were you a member of the Triads?
DENG XIAOLI : No. No, if I was a member, I’d have been killed right around when I decided to join up with the old man.
GARUDA : The old man?
DENG XIAOLI : Captain Tanaka Eto. It’s what we used to call him. Anyway, no I was not a formal member, I was never initiated. I came close, but the initiation never happened.
GARUDA : In that case, please explain for our audience your relationship with the Triads.
DENG XIAOLI : (sighs) Well, I grew up in Port Lowell. Most of your audience aren’t Martians, so allow me to enlighten them about my hometown. Port Lowell is shithole. I’m sure the Mars Development Corporation is gonna try and sue me for slander, but I would welcome it. I would love to see them try and prove in a court of law that Port Lowell is not a shithole. Port Lowell is not part of any government, it was an experiment by the MDC. The MDC figured that there were a lot of nations on Earth that wanted a presence on Mars, but couldn’t afford their own colony. So they figured what they should do is build a colony, and then sell or rent parts of it to all the Earth nations and corporations that wanted a piece of Mars but couldn’t afford to build their own. It sounded good, so my mother and I moved there when I was four, either eight or nine in Earth years, I’m not sure. My mom was deported to Mars by the Chinese Government for taking part in a protest, so she had been wanting to get out of Rust China since long before I was born. Having a son just made her want to get out of Chinese territory even more. We thought Port Lowell was our ticket to a better life.
GARUDA : But it didn’t turn out that way?
DENG XIAOLI : No. Not at all. You see, the problem with Port Lowell is that there are no police. Every nation or corporation was expected to police their own portion of the city based on their country’s laws. Trouble is, if you worked for the city itself, like my mom did, you ended up living in a section of the city that wasn’t covered by any nation or corporation, and the city of Port Lowell didn’t provide any kind of policing to those neighborhoods. Some of the more expensive apartment buildings provided a security service, but my mother was working as a lowly waste recycler, so she couldn’t afford that. So, we ended up living in a section of the city that was completely without law. Without law, but not without order. That’s where the Triads come in. They moved in from Chinese territory just shortly after we did.
GARUDA : The Triads were attracted by the lack of police?
DENG XIAOLI : It was more than that. Sure, they moved in and started all their normal operations. There were bioroid brothels everywhere, brainbugs and drugs being sold on the street corner, illegal weapons, smuggling, loansharking, all that was going on, but there was more to it in Port Lowell. In Port Lowell, at least in my neighborhood, the Employee Quarter, the Triads weren’t defying authority, they were the authority. They ran the Employee Quarter, and they didn’t run it all that badly. They were a force for order, because they wanted to keep my neighborhood orderly enough that they could do business in it. Every business in the Employee Quarter was paying them protection money, and they lived up to that promise. Those were their businesses to screw over, and they weren’t about to let anyone else rob what was making them good money. The same was true for the people. They had a sense that if they didn’t maintain a certain level of order they wouldn’t be able to sell us drugs and brainbugs and bioroid whores, so they felt a weird sort of duty to us. I remember when I was six, Mars years again, and a girl about my age who lived down the hall from me got raped. Her parents were friends of my mother, and they came over crying and asking what they should do. Mom knew who the local Triad boss was, so she cooked up a huge feast, brought it to the Triad boss along with the girl’s parents, and all three of them begged for justice. Three days later, the rapist was hanging by his feet from a street lamp in front of our building with his throat slit from ear to ear. It was disgusting, and it was crude, but it was at least some level of justice. It was at that point that I started considering working for the Triads.
GARUDA : How did organized crime get so powerful on Mars?
DENG XIAOLI : Well, you can thank the People’s Republic of China for that. Remember how I said my mom was deported to Mars for taking part in a protest? See, once upon a time, China had this fantastic idea for how to increase their numbers on Mars. Start sending criminals there! Chinese judges were authorized to give criminals the option of exile to Mars instead of a prison sentence. Now, Garuda, think about this. Think about it for just a few seconds. If you take a bunch of hardened career criminals and you send them off to another world, a frontier world, mind you, without that much in the way of police or infrastructure, what exactly do you think they’re gonna do?
GARUDA : I would imagine they would fall back on old habits.
DENG XIAOLI : Exactly. They started forming the exact same criminal organizations on Mars that they had on Earth, only much more powerful, since a large chuck of the population of Rust China were already criminals. The PRC realized their mistake and stopped sending criminals to Mars around the year 32, but by then, it was too late. The Triads had way too much power, and they were here to stay.
GARUDA : You were saying that at the Martian age of six, you started considering a career with the Triads?
DENG XIAOLI : That’s right. You have to understand, I was young. The life of a gangster seemed exciting and fascinating. I didn’t fully understand what I was getting into, I thought it was going to be like something out of a Saturday morning InVid. That’s how it works, though. They get you when you’re young. They started me out selling brainbugs at my school. Mostly I sold Kujang and Nepenthe. I thought they were pretty harmless. Kujang makes you experience time as if everything has slowed down, and Nepenthe is the ultimate feel good drug. It makes it so you can’t feel any negative emotions. When I entered high school, I started to make damn good money. As I’m sure you can imagine, Nepenthe was really popular with high school kids. I started making much more money than my mother did. My mom didn’t approve of what I was doing, and when she found out, she forbid me from having any contact with the Triads, but that didn’t last long. I mentioned to my boss that I wouldn’t be able to work for them, and he told me he’d take care of it. The next day, a Triad boss came by the house and had a long talk with my mother. They didn’t beat her or hurt her or anything like that, they just had a long talk about how things were going to be. From that day on, mom and I just didn’t talk about where my money was coming from. I don’t know what they said to her, but they convinced her that it was just better left ignored. (pauses, appears distraught)
GARUDA : Do you need to stop for a moment?
DENG XIAOLI : No, it’s OK. I’m fine. Anyway, from then on, the Triads were my life. I had more money than I knew what to do with, I was a really popular kid in school, with the right crowd, of course, and anything I wanted, I could get. I never thought about where this money was coming from, I never questioned it. I never questioned any of it. It’s amazing how easy it is to get sucked into that kind of life. You start to think of the Triads as a family, and you stop questioning their activities. Right or wrong didn’t apply to the Triads. They were the Triads, they could do whatever they wanted. Why? Because they ran the neighborhood. It was a real might makes right kind of thing. Since I got involved with the Triads, I did things I never would have done otherwise. Things that if I had my mind straight, I would have known were wrong. I lost my virginity in a bioroid brothel, to one of those submissive sex slaves the Triads make. They told me that when I was old enough, I could have a sex slave of my own, and I didn’t see the problem. I was looking forward to it. We were the Triads, we were above right and wrong. I sold weapons and drugs to children, I helped shake down businesses for protection money, I smuggled all sorts of illegal merchandise in and out of Port Lowell. When they get you young enough, they can really stop you from developing a normal sense of right and wrong. And that was me. That was my life for a long time.
GARUDA : What changed? What made you want to pursue a career as a bounty hunter?
DENG XIAOLI : Well, the bounty hunter thing came a lot later, but what changed the way I thought about the Triads was the attack. I was scheduled to undergo my initiation into the Triads on the 23rd of Taurus, 36. That involved swearing a blood oath to the Triads, swearing on my life that if I would never betray them, or I would face death. Up until that point, I wasn’t technically a member, just a low level flunky. Until you undergo your initiation, you never meet anyone really important. It’s how they keep the top level guys safe. I was looking forward to it, I’d been looking forward to being initiated ever since I was a kid. Then, on the 11th of Taurus that same year, Negative Growth tried to blow up the Space Elevator. I was stunned. Like every Martian I know, I started watching the news constantly, trying to see if they would catch the bastards. After all, the Space Elevator is used by the Triads just as much as it is by any legitimate business. We needed it just as much as any other Martian. Well, eventually, the Martian People’s Armed Police released information on who they had caught, and as it turned out, I knew ‘em. I remembered those guys, because I had sold weapons to them. The moment I saw their faces, I kind of went into a shock. I never thought about the harm that our business caused, I guess I had just trained myself not to. But when I saw those guys on the news, I realized I had helped them. I had helped them come very, very close to taking out the Space Elevator. Worse yet, they were going to use a nuclear device to do it, which would have meant taking out most of New Shanghai. When my mom first came to Mars, she originally lived in New Shanghai. A simple twist of fate, and she could have ended up working on the Space Elevator instead of in Port Lowell. We knew people in New Shanghai, we had close family friends out there. Thankfully, they didn’t succeed, but if they had, I would have played a part in obliterating the city of New Shanghai. I then thought about what else I might have helped people get away with. I remembered that girl that got raped next door when I was a little boy. I remembered that she was threatened with a gun. I sold guns. I wondered if I had ever helped some rapist victimize someone. Then I started thinking about the bomb. Negative Growth had planned to take out the Space Elevator with a nuclear bomb. Where did they buy something like that? There’s no way they bought it legally, that’s for sure. Did they buy it from us? I was still a low level flunky, so I didn’t even know if we sold stuff like that, but I knew they must have bought it from some kind of organized crime syndicate. The attack shook me out of my complacency and made me really see all the damage that the Triads did. So, I called up my boss, and I told him that I was very sorry, but I didn’t think I could go through with my initiation. I told him that I wasn’t up to that kind of responsibility, and that I would rather just stay a lowly brainbug dealer. He was disappointed, but he said he admired my honestly, and no one is forced to go through the initiation unless they are absolutely sure of it. The truth is, I didn’t even want to be a brainbug dealer anymore, but going completely legit seemed impossible at that point. I started to become extremely depressed. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the lives I’d hurt, and I kept wishing for someway to make up for the damage I’d done. Fortunately, karma provided me with a way.
GARUDA : I take it you mean that this was when you met Deputy Withersby?
DENG XIAOLI : Yea, that’s right. Normally, I would have hated a guy like that. I had a thing against transhumanists. My mom could barely afford to get me genefixed, so I was baseline human all the way through. No special reflexes, no lungs to let me breathe outside the city, and certainly no fucking fur. I’d always felt like the people who could afford to alter their genetics in order to make their life easier were spoiled rich bastards who had no idea what it was like to be a real human. Miguel, though, he impressed me. He showed me that you didn’t have to be a baseline to have balls. (laughs) OK, so here’s what happened. I’m out at the marketplace, haggling over some fruit or something, I can’t remember, and across the street I see this big fucking bear man grab someone and start shoving handcuffs on him. Now, my whole life, there had never been any cops in my neighborhood, so naturally, I’m thinking, “Who the fuck is this guy?” I forget about the fucking fruit and I walk over to the commotion, and it turns out I know the guy. Not the bear man, but the guy being arrested. He was another low level Triad flunky, he smuggled guns in and out of the city. As I listened in, I heard the bear man reading him his rights. You know, “You have the right to remain silent,” and all that other shit that American cops say. The cop says he’s arresting him for smuggling weapons into Robinson City. And I’m thinking “Holy shit! This guy is American! This American cop just traveled hundreds of kilometers from his own territory to the most lawless place on Mars to arrest someone on nothing but a smuggling charge! Who the fuck is this guy?!” I decide, I gotta find out more about him, so I start getting all up in his face. I start cursing at him in Chinese, and sure enough, he curses right back at me in my native tongue. Then I start yelling about our rights. “You can’t treat us like this, you fucking Yankee, we’re not Americans! I’m gonna have your badge for this, asshole, gimme your badge number!” I think he actually smiled and laughed at me. “You want my badge number, kid,” he said, still laughing. “Fine. You go complain to my superiors and see if they give a damn.” Then he gave me his badge number, and he hauled that smuggler off to stand trial in an American court. I waited a few days before, thinking about whether or not I actually wanted to do this, and I decided to go through with it. I contacted the US Marshals Service and asked them to get a message to the cop with his badge number. I told them that if he wanted more guys like the one he arrested in Port Lowell, I could probably help.
GARUDA : You decided to become an informant?
DENG XIAOLI : (winces) You know, even though I think I did the right thing, that word still kind of stings. I spent most of my teenage years having “Don't be a rat” drilled into my brain. But yea, in the end, that’s what I became. I felt like it was the only way I was gonna be able to do some good, the only way I’d be able to undo the damage I’d done in my life. Still, I felt bad. I kept asking myself, “What right do you have to lock people up who you’re no better than?” I tried telling myself that by turning them in, I was making myself better than them, but it was still hard. It’s still something I have trouble with to this day. Anyway, Deputy Withersby eventually got back to me and told me he wanted to meet me in Nix Olympica. It was kind of a long trip, but he paid for my mag-lev ticket, so I accepted. He met me at the train, we shook hands, and he suggested we go out to a restaurant, you know, somewhere public so we’d both feel safe. “What kind of food do you like, snitch?” He kept calling me that, just trying to get under my skin. “Did you have a nice trip, snitch? Ever been to Nix Olympica, snitch? Who exactly are you gonna be snitching on, snitch?” I finally told him it was Xiaoli or Mr. Deng. He laughed at me again and asked if he could call me Lee for short. I told him that was fine, that’s what most of my friends called me anyway. “I’m not sure we’re gonna be friends, Lee,” he said. “If you don’t have anything useful for me, I might just decided to hall you in instead.” He was always saying that. Seriously, it never stopped. Even when we were on the Bebop. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if when I finished this interview, good ole Mike was standing on the other side of that door with his police armgun pointed at my head saying “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to take you in.” It’s his little game. He likes watching me squirm. Anyway, we sat down to talk, and I confessed that I hadn’t been initiated. I didn’t know any of the big fish, I couldn’t help him out with that. I mean, I knew the names of some higher ups, but I didn’t know anything that could actually prove that they were criminals. They were too smart for that. He sighed and told me that any information I could give him would still be helpful, and I would be well compensated. “Until your information runs dry,” he said. “Then we just give up and haul you in.” So that how it started. That’s how I became an (takes a deep breath) informant for the US Marshals Service. They never had me meet with anyone besides Miguel, and we actually started to get along. My information was more helpful to him than I thought it would be. For example, I knew the locations of some of the few bioroid factories that hadn’t been relocated to the asteroid belt. I was sure the Feds must have known that stuff, but it turned out that they didn’t. I also knew a few smugglers that turned out to be much bigger fish than I thought they were. Every time he would make a big bust based on my information, Miguel would ask me to come down to Nix Olympica and celebrate with him. That usually meant getting pretty fucking drunk at his old college bar. It was those drinking binges that really made me seem to like the guy. You see, we had something in common. We both thought people were basically scum. You’d be surprised how far that goes in building a friendship. That’s what let me see past the transhumanism to what we both had in common. A deep loathing for humanity. In him, it manifested in surrounding himself with robots. In me, it manifested in exploiting people all my life until that made me feel like scum, too. Then I just started exploiting my fellow exploiters. We really started to understand each other, and I started to look forward to my drinking binges with Miguel. At the same time, however, the longer this went on, the more I got worried. I kept thinking that the Triads would eventually connect the dots and kill me. I hadn’t taken an oath of loyalty, but I knew that wouldn’t stop them. As time went on, I kept telling Miguel that he had to get me into the American Witness Protection Program or something, ‘cause I was sure they would eventually find out. He told me I wasn’t valuable enough to the Marshals Service for that, but he would look for a way to get me out of Port Lowell. Sure enough, he found one.
GARUDA : That would be the job on the Bebop-Maru?
DENG XIAOLI : Yea. (laughs) Mikey scared the crap out of me with that message. I got a message from him, late at night on the 3rd of Sagittarius, year 39. I remember it exactly. It went like this. “Hey, Lee, I’m coming by your place tomorrow morning with someone who’s gonna offer you a job. Might just get you out of Port Lowell. Might also get you killed. I’m not sure when exactly we’ll be by, sometime in the morning, so don’t go anywhere. Just wait there for me. See you tomorrow.” I tried to call him back after he sent that message, but he refused to answer my calls. We had agreed that we would always meet in Nix Olympica, so I had no idea why he was coming to my place. I kept thinking, “Is he finally gonna do it? Is he finally gonna haul me in?” I told myself that we were friends and that that was nonsense, but it nagged at me. He meant it to. He later informed me that that was the whole reason he chose to have the meeting at my place. Just to get under my skin. Son of a bitch.
GARUDA : So this person offering you the job, this was Faye Valentine? This was the first time you’d met her?
DENG XIAOLI : Yea, it was Faye, and yes, this was the first time I had met her.
GARUDA : Were you attracted to her initially?
DENG XIAOLI : Um... what?
GARUDA : My sources indicate that there was a relationship of a sexual nature between yourself and Ms. Valentine.
DENG XIAOLI : (long pause) Your source was Milo, wasn’t it?
GARUDA : I can’t reveal that information.
DENG XIAOLI : Liou coe shway duh biao-tze huh hoe-tze duh ur-tze!
GARUDA : Excuse me?
DENG XIAOLI : That was directed at Milo, not you.
GARUDA : (long pause) You did say that no questions would be off limits in this interview.
DENG XIAOLI : I know, I know. (sighs) OK, that’s actually a complicated question. I wasn’t physically attracted to her, but that’s because she was in a standard Cyberdoll. I mean, sure they look perfectly human, and they look attractive, but she was in a standard model, so she looked like all the other standard models. I see fifteen or twenty Cyberdolls walk down the street everyday, and they all look identical. It’s kind of hard to be attracted to someone like that. However, I will say that she was cute, personality wise. I remember the first time I saw her. I could see Miguel, dressed in civilian clothes, thankfully, and her from my apartment window as they approached. She kept starring at the buildings with this wide eyed look of wonder. Her neck was constantly looking up. More than once, Miguel actually had to grab her hand to keep her from walking into something. I could tell right away that she was from Earth. That’s how Earth people react to our buildings. Someone who’s spent all their life in Earth gravity looks at a Martian building and they have an almost instinctive reaction that it’s not right. To them, it looks too tall and thin to be able to stand, like it should collapse under it’s own weight. That’s one of the benefits of Mars. It’s easier to build up. Sorry, I’m getting off track. Anyway, Miguel and Faye came up to my apartment, and Miguel introduced us. He told her my name was Xiaoli, and she apparently misheard him, because she extended a hand and said “Nice to meet you, Charlie.” Miguel and I exchanged a look where we silently agreed not to correct her for the fun of it. We sat down in my kitchen, had some tea and some small talk before we started the meeting. She looked around my house, saw my various martial arts belts decorating the walls, and that seemed to get her excited. “You’re a martial artist?” she said. Her eyes looked like they were ready to pop out of her skull. I told her that I was a black belt in Zhua, and when she didn’t understand that, I told her that Zhua was a low gravity martial art developed on Mars. She said something about how that would work in my favor. Then, she saw my wearable interface laying on the kitchen counter, and she got weirdly excited and asked if she could put it on. I asked why, and she said she was curious, so I let her try it on. Again, she looked cute, the way she was just amazed by my simple wearable. I then asked her where she was from and she took my wearable off, hesitated a bit and then said “Japan”. So I started speaking to her in Japanese, but she was totally lost. “You’re from Japan, but you don’t speak Japanese?” I asked. She nodded. “Wow,” I said. “That must be inconvenient.” She looked down a little shy, and Miguel looked at her and asked if she minded if he explained. She said no, and Miguel started to tell me about how Faye was a Ghost from the year 2019 who had only been awake for a couple of months. He explained that she was originally from America, but she was Ghosted in Japan, so that’s her country now, technically, as she has been adopted by Tanaka Eto. I asked who Tanaka Eto was and Miguel just kind of rolled his eyes at me. Then he went on to tell me who Tanaka was, and then he said, “That brings us to the job offer, Chuck.”
GARUDA : This was when they offered you a job on the Bebop-Maru?
DENG XIAOLI : Yup. Faye cut Miguel off and started telling me about her crazy ass benefactor who wanted to leave everything behind and become a bounty hunter. She then told me that they were looking to hire someone who knew the world of organized crime, someone like me. Of course, it sounded completely insane, but I didn’t care. My current life as a snitch against the Triads seemed far more dangerous than the life of a bounty hunter. Plus, this would get me out of the shithole that was Port Lowell. Beyond that, it would get me off of Mars. I’d always had a sort of childlike desire to travel and see the solar system. I was about to jump at the offer, but then Miguel told me that we would probably be going after Triad targets. Faye turned, glared at him and said “You had to bring that up now?” Miguel just shrugged and said he wanted to be upfront with me. I’ll admit, that did sour the deal a bit. I’d wanted to get as far away from the Triads as possible. So I thought about it for a bit. At the time, it seemed to me that I was going after the Triads with Miguel anyway, and I’d probably be safer on a spaceship than I would be in a neighborhood run by the Triads. Yea, I know, my logic was faulty, but you have to cut me some slack, I’d never been in space before. Plus, Miguel told me that he talked to his friends in the Marshals Service, and they said that if we made a really big bust, something that would put a price on my head, he would be able to get me into Witness Protection. It all sounded pretty good.
GARUDA : So you agreed right then and there?
DENG XIAOLI : (laughs) Yea, I guess I did. I probably should have considered it longer, but it seemed like my ticket out, and I jumped at the chance, probably way too quickly. I told her that I would take the job, and she said “Welcome aboard, Charlie!” At that point, Miguel and I both started laughing. She asked what was so funny, and I finally corrected her. “My name is Xiaoli, not Charlie.” She shyly apologized, looked really embarrassed, and looked down at her feet in a way that was, yet again, kind of cute. I’d felt bad for making her feel foolish, and like I keep saying, I thought she was cute, so I figured I’d flirt with her a bit, maybe make her feel better. (laughs, smiles) This was so stupid. I can’t believe I did this. I want it noted for the record that I usually have better lines for picking up women.
GARUDA : (laughs) So noted.
DENG XIAOLI : (still laughing) This is so stupid. I can’t believe I’m admitting to this. OK, so I walked up to her, I lifted up her chin with my finger so I could look her in the eye, and I said (laughs) I said, “You can call me Charlie if you want to. I don’t mind, coming from you.” Oh, man, that’s embarrassing.
GARUDA : (smiles) It sounds cute.
DENG XIAOLI : Yea, she seemed to think so, too. She returned my flirtatious gaze and said “Why thank you, Charlie.” We sort of gazed at each other for a while before an apparently annoyed Miguel grunted and said he wanted to talk about the crew. He asked Faye who the crew consisted of so far, and she said it consisted of the two of us, her, Captain Eto, and an AI our captain was currently in the process of hiring. That would be Milo, the AI that told you about Faye and I.
GARUDA : I can’t reveal-
DENG XIAOLI : It’s OK, you don’t have to. I know. Fucking Milo. Anyway, Miguel seemed worried that there was no one on the crew who was experienced in space, and once he brought it up, it started to bother me, too. Faye said she was supposed to hire a spacer, preferably someone who’d already worked as bounty hunter, but there were so many space settlements, she didn’t know where to go after Mars. It was Miguel who suggested that she post an add in the Teralogos News Service looking for an experience Duncanite Contract Enforcer. You know the Duncanites, those anarchist loons who live in the asteroid belt?
GARUDA : I wouldn’t call them that, but yes, I am familiar with the Duncanites.
DENG XIAOLI : Right. Well, Faye said she would place the add, but in the meantime she was gonna travel around Mars and do some sightseeing. She said that she looked forward to meeting me again in Earth Orbit, and I told her I looked forward to seeing her in her own body. She looked a little shy again, but then she said “It’s not done yet, but when it is, I think you’ll like it.” At that point, I bid them both goodbye. The next day, Miguel and I had one of our usual drinking binges at Nix Olympica to celebrate. I suggested he invite Faye along, but he pointed out that A: this was our time, B: she couldn’t drink, and C : she was already having a lot of fun seeing the sights. (sighs) She didn’t have that much time for sightseeing, though. It was about three days after she placed the add that she got a response.
GARUDA : That would be from Georgia Monroe?
DENG XIAOLI : Yes, that would be from Georgia. (grunts) That’s where all the trouble started.
NOTE : If I ever make any money off of this story, I owe royalties to Michael Burch for the character of Deng Xiaoli. The Durga subplot was eliminated because it was blatantly ripped off from something else, and the character's name was changed because I forgot it, but other than that, it's his character.
GARUDA : Hello, and welcome to Teralogos News Service. I am Garuda, and sitting down with me is Deng Xiaoli, a former crew member on the now famous USV Bebop-Maru. Mr. Deng, thank you for taking the time to sit down and talk with us.
DENG XIAOLI : Thank you for getting to the Deep Beyond so quickly.
GARUDA : Mr. Deng, what was your position on the Bebop-Maru?
DENG XIAOLI : (laughs) I was their Spike.
GARUDA : Excuse me?
DENG XIAOLI : There was this old TV show from Japan that... Never mind, it’ll take too long to explain. To put it another way, I was hired for my contacts and familiarity with the Martian Triads. Also, the fact that I have a black belt in Zhua.
GARUDA : I see. Were you a member of the Triads?
DENG XIAOLI : No. No, if I was a member, I’d have been killed right around when I decided to join up with the old man.
GARUDA : The old man?
DENG XIAOLI : Captain Tanaka Eto. It’s what we used to call him. Anyway, no I was not a formal member, I was never initiated. I came close, but the initiation never happened.
GARUDA : In that case, please explain for our audience your relationship with the Triads.
DENG XIAOLI : (sighs) Well, I grew up in Port Lowell. Most of your audience aren’t Martians, so allow me to enlighten them about my hometown. Port Lowell is shithole. I’m sure the Mars Development Corporation is gonna try and sue me for slander, but I would welcome it. I would love to see them try and prove in a court of law that Port Lowell is not a shithole. Port Lowell is not part of any government, it was an experiment by the MDC. The MDC figured that there were a lot of nations on Earth that wanted a presence on Mars, but couldn’t afford their own colony. So they figured what they should do is build a colony, and then sell or rent parts of it to all the Earth nations and corporations that wanted a piece of Mars but couldn’t afford to build their own. It sounded good, so my mother and I moved there when I was four, either eight or nine in Earth years, I’m not sure. My mom was deported to Mars by the Chinese Government for taking part in a protest, so she had been wanting to get out of Rust China since long before I was born. Having a son just made her want to get out of Chinese territory even more. We thought Port Lowell was our ticket to a better life.
GARUDA : But it didn’t turn out that way?
DENG XIAOLI : No. Not at all. You see, the problem with Port Lowell is that there are no police. Every nation or corporation was expected to police their own portion of the city based on their country’s laws. Trouble is, if you worked for the city itself, like my mom did, you ended up living in a section of the city that wasn’t covered by any nation or corporation, and the city of Port Lowell didn’t provide any kind of policing to those neighborhoods. Some of the more expensive apartment buildings provided a security service, but my mother was working as a lowly waste recycler, so she couldn’t afford that. So, we ended up living in a section of the city that was completely without law. Without law, but not without order. That’s where the Triads come in. They moved in from Chinese territory just shortly after we did.
GARUDA : The Triads were attracted by the lack of police?
DENG XIAOLI : It was more than that. Sure, they moved in and started all their normal operations. There were bioroid brothels everywhere, brainbugs and drugs being sold on the street corner, illegal weapons, smuggling, loansharking, all that was going on, but there was more to it in Port Lowell. In Port Lowell, at least in my neighborhood, the Employee Quarter, the Triads weren’t defying authority, they were the authority. They ran the Employee Quarter, and they didn’t run it all that badly. They were a force for order, because they wanted to keep my neighborhood orderly enough that they could do business in it. Every business in the Employee Quarter was paying them protection money, and they lived up to that promise. Those were their businesses to screw over, and they weren’t about to let anyone else rob what was making them good money. The same was true for the people. They had a sense that if they didn’t maintain a certain level of order they wouldn’t be able to sell us drugs and brainbugs and bioroid whores, so they felt a weird sort of duty to us. I remember when I was six, Mars years again, and a girl about my age who lived down the hall from me got raped. Her parents were friends of my mother, and they came over crying and asking what they should do. Mom knew who the local Triad boss was, so she cooked up a huge feast, brought it to the Triad boss along with the girl’s parents, and all three of them begged for justice. Three days later, the rapist was hanging by his feet from a street lamp in front of our building with his throat slit from ear to ear. It was disgusting, and it was crude, but it was at least some level of justice. It was at that point that I started considering working for the Triads.
GARUDA : How did organized crime get so powerful on Mars?
DENG XIAOLI : Well, you can thank the People’s Republic of China for that. Remember how I said my mom was deported to Mars for taking part in a protest? See, once upon a time, China had this fantastic idea for how to increase their numbers on Mars. Start sending criminals there! Chinese judges were authorized to give criminals the option of exile to Mars instead of a prison sentence. Now, Garuda, think about this. Think about it for just a few seconds. If you take a bunch of hardened career criminals and you send them off to another world, a frontier world, mind you, without that much in the way of police or infrastructure, what exactly do you think they’re gonna do?
GARUDA : I would imagine they would fall back on old habits.
DENG XIAOLI : Exactly. They started forming the exact same criminal organizations on Mars that they had on Earth, only much more powerful, since a large chuck of the population of Rust China were already criminals. The PRC realized their mistake and stopped sending criminals to Mars around the year 32, but by then, it was too late. The Triads had way too much power, and they were here to stay.
GARUDA : You were saying that at the Martian age of six, you started considering a career with the Triads?
DENG XIAOLI : That’s right. You have to understand, I was young. The life of a gangster seemed exciting and fascinating. I didn’t fully understand what I was getting into, I thought it was going to be like something out of a Saturday morning InVid. That’s how it works, though. They get you when you’re young. They started me out selling brainbugs at my school. Mostly I sold Kujang and Nepenthe. I thought they were pretty harmless. Kujang makes you experience time as if everything has slowed down, and Nepenthe is the ultimate feel good drug. It makes it so you can’t feel any negative emotions. When I entered high school, I started to make damn good money. As I’m sure you can imagine, Nepenthe was really popular with high school kids. I started making much more money than my mother did. My mom didn’t approve of what I was doing, and when she found out, she forbid me from having any contact with the Triads, but that didn’t last long. I mentioned to my boss that I wouldn’t be able to work for them, and he told me he’d take care of it. The next day, a Triad boss came by the house and had a long talk with my mother. They didn’t beat her or hurt her or anything like that, they just had a long talk about how things were going to be. From that day on, mom and I just didn’t talk about where my money was coming from. I don’t know what they said to her, but they convinced her that it was just better left ignored. (pauses, appears distraught)
GARUDA : Do you need to stop for a moment?
DENG XIAOLI : No, it’s OK. I’m fine. Anyway, from then on, the Triads were my life. I had more money than I knew what to do with, I was a really popular kid in school, with the right crowd, of course, and anything I wanted, I could get. I never thought about where this money was coming from, I never questioned it. I never questioned any of it. It’s amazing how easy it is to get sucked into that kind of life. You start to think of the Triads as a family, and you stop questioning their activities. Right or wrong didn’t apply to the Triads. They were the Triads, they could do whatever they wanted. Why? Because they ran the neighborhood. It was a real might makes right kind of thing. Since I got involved with the Triads, I did things I never would have done otherwise. Things that if I had my mind straight, I would have known were wrong. I lost my virginity in a bioroid brothel, to one of those submissive sex slaves the Triads make. They told me that when I was old enough, I could have a sex slave of my own, and I didn’t see the problem. I was looking forward to it. We were the Triads, we were above right and wrong. I sold weapons and drugs to children, I helped shake down businesses for protection money, I smuggled all sorts of illegal merchandise in and out of Port Lowell. When they get you young enough, they can really stop you from developing a normal sense of right and wrong. And that was me. That was my life for a long time.
GARUDA : What changed? What made you want to pursue a career as a bounty hunter?
DENG XIAOLI : Well, the bounty hunter thing came a lot later, but what changed the way I thought about the Triads was the attack. I was scheduled to undergo my initiation into the Triads on the 23rd of Taurus, 36. That involved swearing a blood oath to the Triads, swearing on my life that if I would never betray them, or I would face death. Up until that point, I wasn’t technically a member, just a low level flunky. Until you undergo your initiation, you never meet anyone really important. It’s how they keep the top level guys safe. I was looking forward to it, I’d been looking forward to being initiated ever since I was a kid. Then, on the 11th of Taurus that same year, Negative Growth tried to blow up the Space Elevator. I was stunned. Like every Martian I know, I started watching the news constantly, trying to see if they would catch the bastards. After all, the Space Elevator is used by the Triads just as much as it is by any legitimate business. We needed it just as much as any other Martian. Well, eventually, the Martian People’s Armed Police released information on who they had caught, and as it turned out, I knew ‘em. I remembered those guys, because I had sold weapons to them. The moment I saw their faces, I kind of went into a shock. I never thought about the harm that our business caused, I guess I had just trained myself not to. But when I saw those guys on the news, I realized I had helped them. I had helped them come very, very close to taking out the Space Elevator. Worse yet, they were going to use a nuclear device to do it, which would have meant taking out most of New Shanghai. When my mom first came to Mars, she originally lived in New Shanghai. A simple twist of fate, and she could have ended up working on the Space Elevator instead of in Port Lowell. We knew people in New Shanghai, we had close family friends out there. Thankfully, they didn’t succeed, but if they had, I would have played a part in obliterating the city of New Shanghai. I then thought about what else I might have helped people get away with. I remembered that girl that got raped next door when I was a little boy. I remembered that she was threatened with a gun. I sold guns. I wondered if I had ever helped some rapist victimize someone. Then I started thinking about the bomb. Negative Growth had planned to take out the Space Elevator with a nuclear bomb. Where did they buy something like that? There’s no way they bought it legally, that’s for sure. Did they buy it from us? I was still a low level flunky, so I didn’t even know if we sold stuff like that, but I knew they must have bought it from some kind of organized crime syndicate. The attack shook me out of my complacency and made me really see all the damage that the Triads did. So, I called up my boss, and I told him that I was very sorry, but I didn’t think I could go through with my initiation. I told him that I wasn’t up to that kind of responsibility, and that I would rather just stay a lowly brainbug dealer. He was disappointed, but he said he admired my honestly, and no one is forced to go through the initiation unless they are absolutely sure of it. The truth is, I didn’t even want to be a brainbug dealer anymore, but going completely legit seemed impossible at that point. I started to become extremely depressed. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the lives I’d hurt, and I kept wishing for someway to make up for the damage I’d done. Fortunately, karma provided me with a way.
GARUDA : I take it you mean that this was when you met Deputy Withersby?
DENG XIAOLI : Yea, that’s right. Normally, I would have hated a guy like that. I had a thing against transhumanists. My mom could barely afford to get me genefixed, so I was baseline human all the way through. No special reflexes, no lungs to let me breathe outside the city, and certainly no fucking fur. I’d always felt like the people who could afford to alter their genetics in order to make their life easier were spoiled rich bastards who had no idea what it was like to be a real human. Miguel, though, he impressed me. He showed me that you didn’t have to be a baseline to have balls. (laughs) OK, so here’s what happened. I’m out at the marketplace, haggling over some fruit or something, I can’t remember, and across the street I see this big fucking bear man grab someone and start shoving handcuffs on him. Now, my whole life, there had never been any cops in my neighborhood, so naturally, I’m thinking, “Who the fuck is this guy?” I forget about the fucking fruit and I walk over to the commotion, and it turns out I know the guy. Not the bear man, but the guy being arrested. He was another low level Triad flunky, he smuggled guns in and out of the city. As I listened in, I heard the bear man reading him his rights. You know, “You have the right to remain silent,” and all that other shit that American cops say. The cop says he’s arresting him for smuggling weapons into Robinson City. And I’m thinking “Holy shit! This guy is American! This American cop just traveled hundreds of kilometers from his own territory to the most lawless place on Mars to arrest someone on nothing but a smuggling charge! Who the fuck is this guy?!” I decide, I gotta find out more about him, so I start getting all up in his face. I start cursing at him in Chinese, and sure enough, he curses right back at me in my native tongue. Then I start yelling about our rights. “You can’t treat us like this, you fucking Yankee, we’re not Americans! I’m gonna have your badge for this, asshole, gimme your badge number!” I think he actually smiled and laughed at me. “You want my badge number, kid,” he said, still laughing. “Fine. You go complain to my superiors and see if they give a damn.” Then he gave me his badge number, and he hauled that smuggler off to stand trial in an American court. I waited a few days before, thinking about whether or not I actually wanted to do this, and I decided to go through with it. I contacted the US Marshals Service and asked them to get a message to the cop with his badge number. I told them that if he wanted more guys like the one he arrested in Port Lowell, I could probably help.
GARUDA : You decided to become an informant?
DENG XIAOLI : (winces) You know, even though I think I did the right thing, that word still kind of stings. I spent most of my teenage years having “Don't be a rat” drilled into my brain. But yea, in the end, that’s what I became. I felt like it was the only way I was gonna be able to do some good, the only way I’d be able to undo the damage I’d done in my life. Still, I felt bad. I kept asking myself, “What right do you have to lock people up who you’re no better than?” I tried telling myself that by turning them in, I was making myself better than them, but it was still hard. It’s still something I have trouble with to this day. Anyway, Deputy Withersby eventually got back to me and told me he wanted to meet me in Nix Olympica. It was kind of a long trip, but he paid for my mag-lev ticket, so I accepted. He met me at the train, we shook hands, and he suggested we go out to a restaurant, you know, somewhere public so we’d both feel safe. “What kind of food do you like, snitch?” He kept calling me that, just trying to get under my skin. “Did you have a nice trip, snitch? Ever been to Nix Olympica, snitch? Who exactly are you gonna be snitching on, snitch?” I finally told him it was Xiaoli or Mr. Deng. He laughed at me again and asked if he could call me Lee for short. I told him that was fine, that’s what most of my friends called me anyway. “I’m not sure we’re gonna be friends, Lee,” he said. “If you don’t have anything useful for me, I might just decided to hall you in instead.” He was always saying that. Seriously, it never stopped. Even when we were on the Bebop. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if when I finished this interview, good ole Mike was standing on the other side of that door with his police armgun pointed at my head saying “I’m afraid I’m gonna have to take you in.” It’s his little game. He likes watching me squirm. Anyway, we sat down to talk, and I confessed that I hadn’t been initiated. I didn’t know any of the big fish, I couldn’t help him out with that. I mean, I knew the names of some higher ups, but I didn’t know anything that could actually prove that they were criminals. They were too smart for that. He sighed and told me that any information I could give him would still be helpful, and I would be well compensated. “Until your information runs dry,” he said. “Then we just give up and haul you in.” So that how it started. That’s how I became an (takes a deep breath) informant for the US Marshals Service. They never had me meet with anyone besides Miguel, and we actually started to get along. My information was more helpful to him than I thought it would be. For example, I knew the locations of some of the few bioroid factories that hadn’t been relocated to the asteroid belt. I was sure the Feds must have known that stuff, but it turned out that they didn’t. I also knew a few smugglers that turned out to be much bigger fish than I thought they were. Every time he would make a big bust based on my information, Miguel would ask me to come down to Nix Olympica and celebrate with him. That usually meant getting pretty fucking drunk at his old college bar. It was those drinking binges that really made me seem to like the guy. You see, we had something in common. We both thought people were basically scum. You’d be surprised how far that goes in building a friendship. That’s what let me see past the transhumanism to what we both had in common. A deep loathing for humanity. In him, it manifested in surrounding himself with robots. In me, it manifested in exploiting people all my life until that made me feel like scum, too. Then I just started exploiting my fellow exploiters. We really started to understand each other, and I started to look forward to my drinking binges with Miguel. At the same time, however, the longer this went on, the more I got worried. I kept thinking that the Triads would eventually connect the dots and kill me. I hadn’t taken an oath of loyalty, but I knew that wouldn’t stop them. As time went on, I kept telling Miguel that he had to get me into the American Witness Protection Program or something, ‘cause I was sure they would eventually find out. He told me I wasn’t valuable enough to the Marshals Service for that, but he would look for a way to get me out of Port Lowell. Sure enough, he found one.
GARUDA : That would be the job on the Bebop-Maru?
DENG XIAOLI : Yea. (laughs) Mikey scared the crap out of me with that message. I got a message from him, late at night on the 3rd of Sagittarius, year 39. I remember it exactly. It went like this. “Hey, Lee, I’m coming by your place tomorrow morning with someone who’s gonna offer you a job. Might just get you out of Port Lowell. Might also get you killed. I’m not sure when exactly we’ll be by, sometime in the morning, so don’t go anywhere. Just wait there for me. See you tomorrow.” I tried to call him back after he sent that message, but he refused to answer my calls. We had agreed that we would always meet in Nix Olympica, so I had no idea why he was coming to my place. I kept thinking, “Is he finally gonna do it? Is he finally gonna haul me in?” I told myself that we were friends and that that was nonsense, but it nagged at me. He meant it to. He later informed me that that was the whole reason he chose to have the meeting at my place. Just to get under my skin. Son of a bitch.
GARUDA : So this person offering you the job, this was Faye Valentine? This was the first time you’d met her?
DENG XIAOLI : Yea, it was Faye, and yes, this was the first time I had met her.
GARUDA : Were you attracted to her initially?
DENG XIAOLI : Um... what?
GARUDA : My sources indicate that there was a relationship of a sexual nature between yourself and Ms. Valentine.
DENG XIAOLI : (long pause) Your source was Milo, wasn’t it?
GARUDA : I can’t reveal that information.
DENG XIAOLI : Liou coe shway duh biao-tze huh hoe-tze duh ur-tze!
GARUDA : Excuse me?
DENG XIAOLI : That was directed at Milo, not you.
GARUDA : (long pause) You did say that no questions would be off limits in this interview.
DENG XIAOLI : I know, I know. (sighs) OK, that’s actually a complicated question. I wasn’t physically attracted to her, but that’s because she was in a standard Cyberdoll. I mean, sure they look perfectly human, and they look attractive, but she was in a standard model, so she looked like all the other standard models. I see fifteen or twenty Cyberdolls walk down the street everyday, and they all look identical. It’s kind of hard to be attracted to someone like that. However, I will say that she was cute, personality wise. I remember the first time I saw her. I could see Miguel, dressed in civilian clothes, thankfully, and her from my apartment window as they approached. She kept starring at the buildings with this wide eyed look of wonder. Her neck was constantly looking up. More than once, Miguel actually had to grab her hand to keep her from walking into something. I could tell right away that she was from Earth. That’s how Earth people react to our buildings. Someone who’s spent all their life in Earth gravity looks at a Martian building and they have an almost instinctive reaction that it’s not right. To them, it looks too tall and thin to be able to stand, like it should collapse under it’s own weight. That’s one of the benefits of Mars. It’s easier to build up. Sorry, I’m getting off track. Anyway, Miguel and Faye came up to my apartment, and Miguel introduced us. He told her my name was Xiaoli, and she apparently misheard him, because she extended a hand and said “Nice to meet you, Charlie.” Miguel and I exchanged a look where we silently agreed not to correct her for the fun of it. We sat down in my kitchen, had some tea and some small talk before we started the meeting. She looked around my house, saw my various martial arts belts decorating the walls, and that seemed to get her excited. “You’re a martial artist?” she said. Her eyes looked like they were ready to pop out of her skull. I told her that I was a black belt in Zhua, and when she didn’t understand that, I told her that Zhua was a low gravity martial art developed on Mars. She said something about how that would work in my favor. Then, she saw my wearable interface laying on the kitchen counter, and she got weirdly excited and asked if she could put it on. I asked why, and she said she was curious, so I let her try it on. Again, she looked cute, the way she was just amazed by my simple wearable. I then asked her where she was from and she took my wearable off, hesitated a bit and then said “Japan”. So I started speaking to her in Japanese, but she was totally lost. “You’re from Japan, but you don’t speak Japanese?” I asked. She nodded. “Wow,” I said. “That must be inconvenient.” She looked down a little shy, and Miguel looked at her and asked if she minded if he explained. She said no, and Miguel started to tell me about how Faye was a Ghost from the year 2019 who had only been awake for a couple of months. He explained that she was originally from America, but she was Ghosted in Japan, so that’s her country now, technically, as she has been adopted by Tanaka Eto. I asked who Tanaka Eto was and Miguel just kind of rolled his eyes at me. Then he went on to tell me who Tanaka was, and then he said, “That brings us to the job offer, Chuck.”
GARUDA : This was when they offered you a job on the Bebop-Maru?
DENG XIAOLI : Yup. Faye cut Miguel off and started telling me about her crazy ass benefactor who wanted to leave everything behind and become a bounty hunter. She then told me that they were looking to hire someone who knew the world of organized crime, someone like me. Of course, it sounded completely insane, but I didn’t care. My current life as a snitch against the Triads seemed far more dangerous than the life of a bounty hunter. Plus, this would get me out of the shithole that was Port Lowell. Beyond that, it would get me off of Mars. I’d always had a sort of childlike desire to travel and see the solar system. I was about to jump at the offer, but then Miguel told me that we would probably be going after Triad targets. Faye turned, glared at him and said “You had to bring that up now?” Miguel just shrugged and said he wanted to be upfront with me. I’ll admit, that did sour the deal a bit. I’d wanted to get as far away from the Triads as possible. So I thought about it for a bit. At the time, it seemed to me that I was going after the Triads with Miguel anyway, and I’d probably be safer on a spaceship than I would be in a neighborhood run by the Triads. Yea, I know, my logic was faulty, but you have to cut me some slack, I’d never been in space before. Plus, Miguel told me that he talked to his friends in the Marshals Service, and they said that if we made a really big bust, something that would put a price on my head, he would be able to get me into Witness Protection. It all sounded pretty good.
GARUDA : So you agreed right then and there?
DENG XIAOLI : (laughs) Yea, I guess I did. I probably should have considered it longer, but it seemed like my ticket out, and I jumped at the chance, probably way too quickly. I told her that I would take the job, and she said “Welcome aboard, Charlie!” At that point, Miguel and I both started laughing. She asked what was so funny, and I finally corrected her. “My name is Xiaoli, not Charlie.” She shyly apologized, looked really embarrassed, and looked down at her feet in a way that was, yet again, kind of cute. I’d felt bad for making her feel foolish, and like I keep saying, I thought she was cute, so I figured I’d flirt with her a bit, maybe make her feel better. (laughs, smiles) This was so stupid. I can’t believe I did this. I want it noted for the record that I usually have better lines for picking up women.
GARUDA : (laughs) So noted.
DENG XIAOLI : (still laughing) This is so stupid. I can’t believe I’m admitting to this. OK, so I walked up to her, I lifted up her chin with my finger so I could look her in the eye, and I said (laughs) I said, “You can call me Charlie if you want to. I don’t mind, coming from you.” Oh, man, that’s embarrassing.
GARUDA : (smiles) It sounds cute.
DENG XIAOLI : Yea, she seemed to think so, too. She returned my flirtatious gaze and said “Why thank you, Charlie.” We sort of gazed at each other for a while before an apparently annoyed Miguel grunted and said he wanted to talk about the crew. He asked Faye who the crew consisted of so far, and she said it consisted of the two of us, her, Captain Eto, and an AI our captain was currently in the process of hiring. That would be Milo, the AI that told you about Faye and I.
GARUDA : I can’t reveal-
DENG XIAOLI : It’s OK, you don’t have to. I know. Fucking Milo. Anyway, Miguel seemed worried that there was no one on the crew who was experienced in space, and once he brought it up, it started to bother me, too. Faye said she was supposed to hire a spacer, preferably someone who’d already worked as bounty hunter, but there were so many space settlements, she didn’t know where to go after Mars. It was Miguel who suggested that she post an add in the Teralogos News Service looking for an experience Duncanite Contract Enforcer. You know the Duncanites, those anarchist loons who live in the asteroid belt?
GARUDA : I wouldn’t call them that, but yes, I am familiar with the Duncanites.
DENG XIAOLI : Right. Well, Faye said she would place the add, but in the meantime she was gonna travel around Mars and do some sightseeing. She said that she looked forward to meeting me again in Earth Orbit, and I told her I looked forward to seeing her in her own body. She looked a little shy again, but then she said “It’s not done yet, but when it is, I think you’ll like it.” At that point, I bid them both goodbye. The next day, Miguel and I had one of our usual drinking binges at Nix Olympica to celebrate. I suggested he invite Faye along, but he pointed out that A: this was our time, B: she couldn’t drink, and C : she was already having a lot of fun seeing the sights. (sighs) She didn’t have that much time for sightseeing, though. It was about three days after she placed the add that she got a response.
GARUDA : That would be from Georgia Monroe?
DENG XIAOLI : Yes, that would be from Georgia. (grunts) That’s where all the trouble started.