How slowly this taxi crawls!

Almost nine in the evening, rush hour long past, yet we still get caught in traffic jams, stop at lights, constantly weaving from lane to lane on the wide six-lane streets. Dusty buildings, shops each glowing with its own light, advertising signs and small street food stalls. Coffee shops, pedestrians, cars. Dusty palms in squares, flowering bushes, buses. If I were alert and foolish enough to roll down the car window, I would smell the omnipresent exhaust fumes, the fiery-hot burnt coffee sold on every corner, hear the hum of crowds and the rumble of the subway.

But I'm not that foolish.

The taxi slowly wound its way through the evening of the SaBra megalopolis, swirling like debris on water. The sun was gradually setting, but in such a vast human-made place, it's never truly dark. The streetlights had long since lit up, and their glow—which engineers intended to mimic daylight but was actually just the product of the cheapest light panels—spilled like silvery milk. Mixing with smoke from coffee shops and taco ovens, with car exhaust, the light spread tangibly and writhed around the human throng.

SaBra. Home to probably thirty million Brazilians, those who came from neighboring countries, and those who wander around the globe searching for somewhere better. A megalopolis that looks from space like something stretching from the former São Paulo to Brasília, into the very heart of the continent, leaving aside the swampy, shallow Amazon. A discarded blueprint for an ecumenopolis, a defective part, one of the fruits of human wild imagination, as well as greed, stupidity, and shortsightedness. It seems no pandemics, wars, or financial crises can make humanity stop being savages, molding something grandiose from mud to satisfy their own self-importance while breaking everything around them. Just look around—those who designed and built all this probably never imagined they'd end up with a favela nearly a thousand kilometers long.

Can't we go any faster!

The street gradually became freer, small shops giving way to campuses and bus stops. This meant we'd soon arrive at our destination. On my ankle dozed the bracelet they put on those sentenced to probation. Right now it was deactivated. How did I get it? It's quite a foolish story. Without delving into philosophical discussions, I made my living pilfering small sums through cryptocurrency schemes. You know how it goes. Fake transactions, false exchange rates, trusting buyers in online stores. A couple thousand dollars here and there. It was enough for a good life. Oh, I sometimes had regular work too, to look inconspicuous and avoid attracting the attention of regulatory agencies and the artificial intelligences that assist them. I moved among bloggers, minor scientists, clerks, modest businessmen, attended parties and official events. Money flowed in and out. Sometimes I teamed up with others like me, people with nimble fingers and special thinking, and we'd make off with and split particularly large chunks. But not so large as to bring down vengeance from someone who'd grab us by our sensitive spots. The thrill, mild greed, and intoxicating sense of luck invigorate better than wine and boost one's self-esteem.

And in one such raid, our luck ran out. Having made off with a number of encrypted wallets, we grabbed a program to crack them elsewhere. Who knew that part of its algorithms would so trouble certain high-ranking institutions? Even before our pursuers closed in on us, we returned everything, apologized, and scattered in different directions like ground squirrels from a fox. I'd never been so terrified before. Waking up at night, jumping up at the feeling of approaching danger and losing strength, not knowing when this chase would end. Then I lost contact with my temporary colleagues. Having managed to change two countries and three cities, I was still caught. But Fortune hadn't completely abandoned me. After spending half my savings on a lawyer and enduring three nauseating court sessions, I received my punishment. Eighteen months of house arrest, a tracking device on my leg, and the requirement to check in personally with an inspector at the police station. Besides this, I was deprived of the ability to use any kind of computers, laptops, tablets, and other communication devices, except for a phone that a grim police technician checked once a week. As it turned out, I couldn't move away from home any farther than... Well, not at all. I would exit the apartment building, sit on the dusty sidewalk and smoke—this was the only kind of walk available to me. In my view, after the complete freedom I had maintained for myself all my life since leaving my parents and college, such sophisticated restriction of it was worse than torture and a prison cell. The elderly judge in his sweat-stained wig probably didn't assign it deliberately. He simply didn't dare dismiss the official papers from another country, but didn't pretend it concerned him in the slightest. Minimum punishment, formality fulfilled, the state wouldn't spend an extra dollar or whatever they have here. Pesos? Most likely, he stopped thinking about me before the bailiff had even led me out of the courtroom.

But the senior officer who dealt with small fry like me—wearing electronic trackers on their legs and sitting like chickens in coops in their apartments—took his work seriously. He supervised an entire department of such overseers. When I realized I wasn't facing terrible punishment, that they wouldn't chop off my hand or send me to Alcatraz, I was filled with dark humor and mentally dubbed him "Bear in a Suit." He truly was formidable, tall, very broad-shouldered, and had practically no neck. His intelligent, frozen dark eyes filled me with dread. Undoubtedly, besides being quite smart, he was very cruel. But he dispensed cruelty in measured doses, dripping it onto those under his power like water dripping on the head in that ancient torture. He knew how to make a person understand they were in his power while doing almost nothing to achieve this. He didn't raise his voice, didn't warn of possible punishments, was generally laconic. But through his well-fitted suit, enormous muscles showed through, and I was certain that Officer Bear knew exactly how to grab me, twist me, squeeze me to make it hurt. Hurt badly. And from this anticipation of pain, trickles of sweat ran down my back. His name was João Paulo Rodrigues Mendes.

I don't remember the first three days of my house arrest at all. I was probably in shock. I washed, sat, lay down, ate, drank, and... the rest is filled in memory by some gray fog. Then consciousness cleared, if only because every three days I had to visit the supervising officer, who downloaded readings from the ankle bracelet, made a note in the computer, and sent me on my way. But now saving oblivion no longer protected my brain. I paced back and forth around the apartment, not knowing what to occupy myself with. My entire conscious life had been connected with constant immersion in information flows of one kind or another. I was used to being online! News, messengers, constantly updating feeds, email, schedules, remote connections. This was my life, this was what I wanted to do! Deprived of all this, I was worse than a fish thrown onto shore, because I didn't die but continued dragging out a helpless existence. My brain literally beat against the walls of my skull, deprived of the familiar sensation of omniscience. For several days I fought the desire to scorn the prohibitions and secretly, through deception and the black market, obtain at least a smartphone to get back online. However, sound reason and self-preservation instinct overcame these nervous impulses, and I calmed down. If the punishment system, by depriving me of means of communication, wanted to make me think about my transgressions, repent, submit, then it was mistaken. The exact opposite happened. I was filled with cold, calculating fury. Five hundred forty-eight days—and I'm free. And I'll never get caught again. While under supervision, I'll use only legal means to ease my situation. There's no point counting on mitigation or reduction of the sentence. He who wants less will never be disappointed. Five hundred forty-two days left already. I'll endure.

Now I spent most of my free time sitting on the bench by the building entrance, on the sidewalk, on the curb. I read paper newspapers, paper books. I watched the weather, birds, passersby. To avoid getting hoarse and becoming tongue-tied from long silence, I read poetry and news from newspapers aloud. I fought against consciousness that spread like egg white, whose boundaries were lost from solitude and confinement. I wasn't afraid I'd forget my professional skills, but the lack of communication would definitely take its toll, I'm sure. I must hold on.

Taxi! Can't we go just a bit faster?!