Chapter 4326

"Who is Jabo?"

"The boss of that area over there. Looks like you're not new here. How did you end up running over here?"

"I'm a reporter," Clark said truthfully.

"I'm not asking what your profession is; I'm asking how you got here."

"I'm an investigative reporter. I came here while I was investigating illegal immigrants looking for someone."

"But there are no illegal immigrants here," the old man said. "We are all Americans. You must have come to the wrong place."

Clark felt a bit strange; the old man spoke very coherently. He didn't use any foul language, and his wording and tone sounded quite comfortable; he didn't seem like a homeless person at all.

The old man saw his expression and seemed to understand a little, then said, "How about this: give me some money. I can tell you about it. Although it definitely won't get published, at least it can satisfy your kindness."

"However..." the old man looked at the baby's corpse in the pit and then said, "Don't bury this thing here; it won't take long before it gets dug up. If you really have a heart, take him further away, even if it's just to bury him on a barren mountain."

"Are there coyotes or anything around here?" Clark asked.

"This area belongs to the city, there are no wild beasts. Otherwise, there wouldn't be so many people setting up tents here." The old man waved his hand, signaling him to follow. Clark then picked up the corpse again and followed him to the yellow tent.

The tent was lit, showing a bit of warmth in the dark night. The old man spread a blanket at the entrance of the tent and took a bottle of wine out of his bag. Clark also sat down, never putting down the bag containing the corpse.

"Let's start with what you're most interested in. You must want to know what kind of person would dig up a corpse. I can only tell you that if you hadn't run into me today, but rather anyone else here, then the moment you left, they would go and dig up the corpse."

"Why would they..."

"Because it can be sold for money. Baby corpses of all ages can be sold for money. Five to six-month-olds sell for the most. Slightly older ones are fine too. On the contrary, full-term babies aren't worth as much."

"What do they buy the corpses back for?"

"Usually, pharmaceutical companies buy them back for pathological sections. Most of the babies born here have congenital diseases, which are excellent materials for them."

"This should be Daisy's third one," the old man recalled after a moment, "She was already pregnant when she came. That child seemed to be full-term, and Jabo was very angry about it. The one she was pregnant with later was born earlier and sold for the most. This should be the third one. Looking at it like this, it won't sell for much of a price. Jabo's eye for this is still so poor."

Clark didn't quite follow; he said, "What do you mean? What do you mean his eye is poor?"

"The women he picks don't give birth well," the old man shook his head and said, "None of them are as good as the old cripple to the west. Both of his women gave birth at five or six months, and they sold for a high price."

Clark's expression had already frozen. The old man knew something when he saw this expression, sighed, and said, "There's no help for it. Women are a vulnerable group here and must find a backer for themselves. But people here aren't picky; it doesn't have to be a woman, men are fine too. So they have to provide some extra value, like giving birth to children. Although the time is a bit long, the return rate is quite good."

Clark was stunned listening to this. The old man took a sip of wine and continued, "Pharmaceutical companies usually only want the ones that are sick, so the masters of these women will find some sick people to get them pregnant, and then feed them some drugs to get them addicted. When the month is about right, they find a way to induce labor for them..."

"How do you induce labor?" Clark couldn't understand; he vaguely remembered that in the knowledge he had learned, even in a hospital, inducing labor for a pregnant woman in late pregnancy was very troublesome, and if it went wrong, it would be two lives lost.

"Anyway, they don't need them alive, as long as they can get the child out. If that doesn't work, use some drugs. If they are young, they can handle it two or three times; at least in these few years, they can live quite well."

"Quite well?"

"You don't understand this. Just because children can be sold for money, women live quite well here. At least they can have a stable life for these few years. As for men, every Christmas is a hurdle."

Clark remembered the words he had overheard and said, "Does someone come to clean up the homeless every year before Christmas? Where do they take the homeless?"

"What do you mean where do they take them? Of course, they kill them and sell the corpses," the old man said. "It's not that cold here, people won't freeze to death in winter. If no one cleaned them up, within a few years, the streets wouldn't be able to hold them."

"Take our neighborhood for example, there are about fifty households living here. They go out to beg during the day and come back here to sleep at night. Three new ones came in the last week, young and strong, and they do good work. But the west side is almost full, so Pat and the others had to clean up four or five overnight to make room for the newcomers."

Clark was just about to ask, but the old man interrupted him and continued, "The cleanup I'm talking about means killing them and then transporting the corpses away to sell them."

He used the alcohol to fuel his speech, saying quickly, "Don't look at us living in tents; tents have tent rules. If new people come, old people have to leave. It's just that there's no way to move up here; some young and strong people come in, so some weak and old people have to leave. Because if this place were full of the old, weak, sick, and disabled, it would be cleared out by the police, and then no one would survive. Conversely, if it were all young and strong people, the police wouldn't be willing to risk their lives, and we could still manage to survive."

"Then you..."

"You don't understand this. I often advise young people that reading a few more books doesn't hurt. I'm the only one in the entire tent area who can calculate accounts clearly. So even if I'm old, I can still survive. Oh, the most important thing is not to touch drugs. I'm not interested in that stuff, so I've lived here for sixteen years."

"Then you..."

"You must be wanting to ask, since I look like a person with some culture, how did I end up here? Have you heard of the economic crisis?"

Clark opened his mouth; of course, he had heard of it, so he asked, "Did you lose money?"

"More than that, I lost my pants. But I was lucky; I knew some friends on the street before and found a place to stay. Many of my colleagues jumped off buildings."

"Then why didn't they come here?"

"I said, I have connections. I did a good deed and saved someone when I was young. Why else would they say good people get good rewards? That group of people had no way out; coming here would be worse than dying."

Clark couldn't quite understand; he looked at the old man, who seemed in good spirits and could even afford to buy wine. Even if he lived worse than him, he could still survive, so why couldn't they come?

The old man seemed to see what he was thinking and wiped his mouth, saying, "This place isn't what you think. I can avoid drugs because they need me to have a good brain to calculate accounts for them. Others who come here must buy their drugs, otherwise, don't even think about living here."

"Taking drugs is just the first step, destroying the brain you used to dominate in normal society. Immediately after, they let you get sick, with things like AIDS or syphilis. After getting sick, you can't go to the hospital, so you have to buy more drugs to relieve the pain. If you have no money, you have to sell your body, and then you get more diseases. It goes on in a cycle like this until one year at Christmas, the cleaners think you should be eliminated, and everything ends. This process can last for a few years. People know how painful this is, so it's better to just jump and be done with it."

"Does no one care?" Clark asked.

"What I'm talking about is the situation under management. If no one cared, you might have to go see those streets in Gotham."

Seeing that Clark still didn't quite understand, he explained more meticulously, "In order to sell more drugs, they will recruit newcomers. And in order to let newcomers move in, they will clear out some old people. This ensures that most people in the community are in their prime, the benefits of which I have already mentioned. And they will clean up the corpses very promptly, basically never overnight, which prevents large-scale epidemics. And in order to attract newcomers to move in, they will also keep this place relatively tidy. You see, our place is a bit messy, but at least it's not dirty. Defecating and urinating everywhere is prohibited here."

"Then you just now..."

"Didn't I go secretly? And I only went to relatively remote places, which wouldn't affect them. Some communities without management are almost submerged in feces. Our place is considered good."

Clark thought for a moment and found that what he said was true. When he arrived at the tent area, although he felt it was very messy, he really didn't smell any strange odors. Logically speaking, those who drink and take drugs would vomit, and those drug addicts who lost their minds didn't look like they would find a toilet, so this place should have been piled up with vomit and excrement long ago.

But in fact, except for things being placed in a mess, there really wasn't anything very dirty. This proves that this place is indeed managed by someone, and it's even managed quite well.

"You don't have to be surprised; there are people in this world who live like this, and there are quite a few of them. Our place is just one community; if you walk to the end of this street and turn left, there is another one, but they are not as good as us. The boss there is a muddle-headed person and has caused trouble several times."

The old man took another gulp of wine and then said, "You might also ask, why don't we find a way to save some money and get out of here, especially people like me. Since we can already live stably, why don't we find a way to move up?"

"I can only say, when you get to my age, you will understand. The speed at which you climb up is never faster than the speed at which they kick you down. You exhaust all your schemes and work hard to climb up, and it only takes one night to fall back to the bottom. Since that's the case, why should I still climb up? It's better to stay stably at the bottom."

"Many people here think this way; it's not that they don't have skills, nor is it that they can't turn things around at all. It's just that when they were kicked down, they understood that this wasn't a situation caused by a momentary mistake, but that society operates this way. Climbing up is meaningless; it's just going to live another kind of painful and fearful life, delaying today's life for a while, but in the end, all roads lead to the same destination, don't they?"