Prologue: On a Requisitioned Nerve
"Emotion is not private property, but social fuel.
Every tear, every heartbeat, every laugh
must be properly managed under the System."
— E-Flux Manifesto, 2091 A.D.
People later on could no longer quite remember when it started: when crying had to be filed, laughter had to be scored, and even silence was billed by the second.
Just as they no longer remembered the original color of the sky, no longer remembered that stars had once been visible, no longer remembered what the word "privacy" had meant before it was lost.
Memory was washed layer by layer, covered sheet by sheet, until those "abnormal" days of the past became legend—became the slurred mutterings of old people, became, "That can't possibly be true."
They only remembered a rough timeline—clean, linear, bloodless, like all simplified histories.
First came the Emotional Revolution.
For the first time, humanity discovered that the vague, unspeakable things inside the chest could be quantified into bands of waves.
Feelings once praised by poets, debated by philosophers, whispered by lovers suddenly had frequency, amplitude, wavelength.
Joy was high-frequency, like birdsong, like clinking glassware, jumping between 400–600Hz.
Sadness was low-frequency, like a cello's C string, like deep-sea pressure, sinking between 80–150Hz.
Anger was as shrill as a siren, piercing the eardrum around 700Hz.
Desire was long and tidal, swelling between 200–300Hz, never fully ebbing.
Scientists named it E-Flux—Emotion Flux.
E-value, for short.
Headlines at the time were drenched in optimistic light:
"The mystery of human emotion finally decoded!"
"Nobel laureate: the greatest breakthrough since DNA!"
"At last, we understand our own hearts."
No one foresaw how quickly "understand" would become "manage."
How quickly "manage" would become "requisition."
Next came the energy crisis.
It didn't erupt overnight.
It crept in like a chronic disease, eating the world bit by bit.
Oil ran dry—the last well was sealed in 2093. Workers stood on the desiccated platform, staring at the empty pipes, not knowing what to say.
Solar winds went wild—massive storms on the sun destroyed a third of the satellites. Global communication was down for seventy-two hours. In those seventy-two hours, people realized for the first time that they no longer knew how to live without screens.
Sea levels rose—Shanghai, New York, London, Tokyo, those proud coastal cities slid under water one by one. Dozens of coastal megacities evacuated; hundreds of millions of refugees surged inland like a tide, drowning every remaining piece of land where one could stand.
Between camps and ruins, amidst endless meetings and increasingly hopeless reports, governments fixed on the only thing still generating power without interruption—
The human heart.
Those hearts beating in the dark.
Those souls still feeling in the midst of despair.
Those emotional surges produced every day and then wasted.
Someone did the math: the emotional energy generated over one human lifetime, if fully converted, could power a household for ten years.
If you could harvest the emotion of a whole city, the output would rival a mid-sized nuclear plant.
And humanity had eight billion hearts.
All beating.
All feeling.
All burning.
So the first emotion reactors were built.
2096, San Francisco. The "Hope Project" inauguration.
The sun was bright that day—a rare gift in the smogged post-energy-collapse era.
Volunteers in white filed into transparent pods. The pods were pretty, like art installations, some futuristic sculpture.
They lay down, heads wired with silver leads, soft sensors on their chests.
Gentle prompts appeared on the screen:
"Please relax."
"Please recall something that makes you happy."
"Please smile."
All their joy, anger, grief and delight was drawn into tubing and, through complex conversion systems, turned into current, into light, into part of the city's night.
When volunteers stepped out of the pods, their faces were a little pale, their steps unsteady, but their eyes shone—that light of "I did something great."
Reporters asked:
"How do you feel?"
"A little tired, but worth it." The volunteer smiled. "My happiness just lit an entire street. Do you know what that feels like? It's like… my heart finally has meaning."
Back then, it was still voluntary.
Still smelled of idealism.
There were concerts, fundraising drives, celebrity endorsements.
People told themselves: for humanity's future, I can smile more, love more—even sorrow is fine, it all becomes electricity, light, some form of eternity.
Artists produced endless works praising this "sacrifice of emotion."
There was a mural in a New York subway station, famous at the time: a human figure with arms spread wide, heart blazing, illuminating the whole city.
Beneath it: "Your feelings light the world."
Five years later, the mural was painted over.
Branded "overly romanticized emotional consumption."
Soon "voluntary" became default, and default became obligation.
It's hard to say exactly when the shift occurred.
Maybe when companies started requiring "a minimum of two emotional donations per week" in job postings.
Maybe when schools began counting "emotion donation sessions" in student grades.
Maybe when welfare was cut for those who "failed to meet emotional contribution targets."
Bit by bit, the word "volunteer" vanished from documents.
Replaced by "obligation," "duty," "citizen contribution."
Parliaments passed the Emotion Tax Act.
No protests, no riots, no dramatic street scenes that day.
Just more hearings, more technical reports, more clauses wrapped in professional language.
The law's wording was, as always, gentle, rational, almost airtight:
"To ensure urban operation and public safety, all citizens are obligated to declare their personal emotional curves quarterly.
Sadness, anger, fear and other high-consumption negative emotions shall be taxed in proportion to their E-Flux.
Over-limit citizens shall receive professional retuning and counseling from the Emotional Management Agency.
This act aims to build a sustainable emotional energy system and safeguard citizens' quality of life and mental health."
No one said "control."
No one said "surveillance."
No one said "your heart no longer belongs to you."
They said "management," "optimization," "for the greater good."
On voting day, 87% of ballots were "yes."
Later, historians counted: at least 60% of those people had no idea what they were voting for.
They saw the promo reels—bright cities, happy families, green energy charts—and thought, sounds good.
Opponents were quickly drowned out.
Not crushed by force—that would have been too primitive, too uncivilized.
They were drowned by data, pushed to the margins by algorithms, tagged as "irrational emotional response."
Their voices on social networks were automatically down-ranked.
Their articles carried warnings: "May contain emotional content."
Under their posts a gentle prompt appeared: "We detect you may be experiencing anxiety. Need help?"
Eventually, dissent vanished.
Not because minds were changed, but because no one could hear them.
Then came Retuning and Counseling.
At first, those two words still sounded caring rather than punitive.
Just as "rehabilitation center" sounds softer than "prison."
Just as "optimization" is easier to accept than "deletion."
Early retuning centers were designed like resorts—gardens, music, soft couches.
Warm paintings on the walls, soothing music in the air.
Therapists in casual clothes, not uniforms, smiling as they asked:
"How have you been?"
"Anything bothering you lately?"
"Let's work on this together, all right?"
They did listen. They nodded, took notes, said "I understand."
Then they handed you some pills—small, colorful capsules that looked like candy.
"This will help you feel better."
"This will make you calmer."
"This will bring you back to normal."
What they didn't tell you:
The pills adjusted not only your emotions, but your perception of them.
They didn't just make you less sad; they made you forget why you were sad.
They didn't just calm you; they dulled your interest in ever being "uncalm" again.
Slowly, you stopped missing what had been taken.
You began to think: perhaps my old self really was "the problem."
You felt grateful the System had "cured" you.
But every system has inertia.
A gentle start doesn't guarantee a gentle continuation.
When the first emotion tax evaders were put on public trial, there was no turning back.
2104, winter.
The court was set up in Neo–New York's central square, proceedings broadcast live on colossal screens.
Twelve people sat in the dock.
They didn't wear prison garb—too aggressive, too ugly for the cameras.
They were dressed in ordinary clothes. They looked like anyone.
Maybe too much like anyone.
Watching at home, people thought: that could be me. My neighbor. Anyone.
Their charges were read out, line by line, projected larger-than-life on the big screen:
"Prolonged over-threshold sorrow waves; refusal to take standard joy capsules for eight consecutive months."
"Dissemination of 'unauthorized sorrow content' on social platforms, with over 100,000 views."
"Online sharing of 'excess nostalgia,' 'non-functional anger' and 'unproductive despair,' inducing emotional resonance in others."
"Refusal to cooperate with emotional audits; destruction of personal emotional records; obstruction of official duty."
"Conducting illegal emotional retuning in restricted areas, endangering public emotional safety."
The presiding judge was an older woman with gray hair, voice gentle yet firm.
"Defendants, do you plead guilty?"
Some kept their heads down, silent.
Some cried—and the tears themselves became new evidence; their live emotional stats popped up on the screen: sorrow anomaly detected; retuning recommended.
Only one young woman raised her head, looking straight into the camera, and said clearly:
"I'm not guilty. Sadness is not a crime."
The court fell silent for a beat.
Then the judge sighed softly, like a parent at a stubborn child.
"Sadness of course is not a crime. But excessive sadness, uncontrolled sadness, sadness that affects others—that is a threat to society."
Sentencing was cool and precise, without a flicker of emotion:
"Defendants 1–3: compulsory retuning for six months, permanent emotional record flag, laughter rights restricted for two years."
"Defendants 4–9: compulsory retuning for one year, community monitoring for three years, emotional exemptions revoked."
"Defendants 10–12: in light of the serious circumstances and refusal to reform, sentence is emotional reset."
Emotional reset.
The harshest sentence.
It meant all emotional memory erased, the affective system reprogrammed, turned into a "healthier" person—
Or rather, an empty shell.
Still alive, but no longer you.
That night, every news channel covered the trial.
Anchors used calm, even tones:
"Today's proceedings once again demonstrate that emotional management is protection, not repression. These individuals are not criminals but patients. The System is healing them, helping them return to normal life."
Comment sections overflowed with support:
"About time!"
"Selfish people, only care about their own feelings, not society."
"Support BEE! Emotional stability is real freedom!"
Between those, a few comments slipped through, only to be swiftly deleted:
"What did we lose?"
"When did sorrow become a crime?"
"Who's next?"
After that day, a new compulsory subject appeared in schools.
Emotional management, from the cradle up.
Classes started in kindergarten.
A huge mirror stood in the classroom. Every morning, children lined up to practice a "healthy smile" before it—
Mouth-corner angle: 0.87 radians.
Visible teeth: eight upper, eight lower.
Eye-curve: outer corner lowered by 3mm.
Duration: not less than three seconds, not more than five.
The teacher softly corrected each imperfect smile:
"Ming, you're trying too hard, it looks unnatural."
"Hong, your eyes aren't smiling; only your mouth is. That won't do."
"Hua, perfect. This is the standard smile. Everyone, learn from Hua."
During recess, cheerful music played while screens showed emotional scenarios:
"What should you do when you feel sad?"
"A. Cry it out
B. Tell someone
C. Take a deep breath and think of something happy to return to a normal state"
"Correct answer: C! Remember, sadness that lasts more than ten minutes is abnormal!"
Older classes got more advanced.
They learned to spot "emotional contaminants"—content that might trigger negative states.
They learned to calm anger within thirty seconds—via breathing techniques, positive reframing, a training called "emotional conversion."
They learned to suck tears back in within a minute—yes, it can be trained, by controlling tear glands, adjusting breath, distracting attention.
The day's lesson goals on the board:
"1. Learn to translate genuine emotion into compliant expression.
2. Understand: emotional stability is a civic duty.
3. Remember: your feelings are not yours alone."
Under the last line, the teacher drew two red lines.
A student raised his hand. "Teacher, why aren't my feelings mine alone?"
The teacher smiled.
"Because your emotions affect people around you. They're converted into energy and become part of the city. Every heartbeat of yours is connected to society as a whole. You have a responsibility to manage your emotions and not burden others."
"But—"
"No 'but'." The smile stayed, but her tone hardened. "This is for your own good, and everyone else's."
The child fell silent.
Years later, grown up, he no longer remembered he'd asked that question.
He only remembered: emotional stability is a citizen's duty.
Then came the first emotional panic event.
No one had predicted it.
The System was thought to be flawless—tested, optimized, incapable of large-scale failure.
Yet on March 15th, 2109, at 20:23,
In a small, unremarkable town of two hundred thousand,
The monitoring system lagged.
Didn't crash.
Just lagged.
Data upload slowed by 0.7 seconds.
That 0.7 seconds meant tens of thousands of sorrow readings were not reported and cut in time.
Normally, sorrow spikes were tracked in real time, damped out before crossing the threshold, dissolved by pushed "happy content" or self-regulation prompts.
But the System was late.
So the sorrow, briefly, went unmanaged.
It simply existed, moved, accumulated.
That night it rained, harder than they'd seen in years.
Not a planned artificial rain—that's carefully calculated, never too much or too little, never enough to destabilize the Emotional Index.
This was real rain—no notice, no schedule, suddenly there.
People stood in it. They should have felt inconvenienced, irritated, gone indoors.
But something was off.
They stood there; water ran down their cheeks, mingled with a different warmth.
Someone realized: I'm crying.
Didn't know why, or when it started, but they were.
And then, all at once, they remembered things they weren't supposed to—
A dying mother, fingers gripping yours, whispering "I'm so cold."
The dream you'd abandoned—becoming a musician, before the System called it an "unstable career path."
The song you and your first love shared, later banned for being "overly sentimental."
The love vetoed by the System—"emotional codependence," not fit for marriage.
All the memories suppressed, tagged "unhealthy," ordered forgotten,
came back,
all at once.
On the streets, people stood in the rain. Some crouched, some leaned on walls, some just stood, faces like they'd seen ghosts.
They cried and had no idea what exactly they were crying for.
Or rather, they were crying for everything they'd never been allowed to cry about.
The official report the next day was sober:
"Due to brief latency during system maintenance, a portion of residents experienced emotional fluctuations.
Following emergency retuning and psychological intervention, the city returned to normal at 23:42.
No casualties, no major property damage.
Relevant technical issues have been resolved; recurrence is unlikely."
The real consequences weren't in the report.
Seventeen people killed themselves that night.
Not because they wanted to die, but because they suddenly remembered what it meant to be alive.
The contrast was too brutal.
Hundreds more were rushed to retuning centers; their emotional data had all gone off the charts—sorrow, anger, fear, every suppressed wave breaking loose.
Some never came back.
Some did, but their eyes were empty, their smiles textbook, as if nothing had happened.
From that night on, "normal" was redefined.
No longer "the natural range of human emotion,"
No longer "the average of most people,"
but "the amplitude the System can tolerate."
Any emotion exceeding that amplitude, whether too much joy or too much grief, became "abnormal."
In need of "correction."
Finally, BEE was born.
Bureau of Emotional Equilibrium.
The name sounded neutral, scientific, "for your own good."
Like "Ministry of Health," "Ministry of Education," "Transport Authority"—just another agency.
Except this one managed hearts.
2115, a white tower rose.
One hundred and fifty stories of pure white, no ornament, no visible windows, like a needle thrust into the sky, like a tower to nowhere.
It stood in the center of Neo–New York, tall enough to be seen from anywhere in the city.
You could try to ignore it, but it was always there, reminding you:
You are watched.
You are heard.
You are managed.
Every floor was packed with screens, ports, sensors—
And people.
The taggers.
In crisp uniforms, sitting in neat rows of cubicles, each in front of a galaxy of screens.
Each screen a live feed of emotional data—
From streets, from homes, from offices, from bedrooms.
Their job was simple:
Slap labels on every emotion, every expression, every sentence, every tear.
Compliant.
Suspicious.
Abnormal.
High-risk.
At first, they were uneasy.
Watching a woman sob in her bedroom: should I be seeing this?
Hearing a man mutter to his mirror, "I've had enough": isn't this an invasion?
Supervisors explained gently:
"This isn't invasion. It's protection."
"You're not spying. You're helping."
"Think: if you don't flag this, if he deteriorates, if he hurts himself or someone—that would be the real tragedy."
In time, they got used to it.
Like doctors get used to blood.
Like butchers get used to killing.
Screen-people stopped being people; they became data, items to be filed.
Click. Flag. Next.
Click. Flag. Next.
They knew—or rather, they'd been taught—
The truly dangerous emotion was not anger.
Anger can be spent, diverted into exercise, games, controlled venting.
Anger can be harnessed, turned into productivity, steered toward "appropriate targets."
Nor was it sadness.
Sadness can be smoothed with pills, diluted by entertainment, crushed under "positive thinking."
Sadness is soft, manageable.
The real danger was joy that didn't need them.
Joy that didn't depend on the System.
The kind that couldn't be predicted, steered, quantified.
Any joy unplanned, unforeseen, self-generated was a potential catastrophe—
Because it proved people could be happy without the System.
And if people didn't need the System, the System lost its reason to exist.
So they began to manage joy.
And soon there was the Laughter Exchange.
Fifteen minutes of smile-time per hour.
The 0.87-radian "standard smile."
A whole industry around "smiling for the sake of smiling"—
Smile training courses, to teach you how to look "natural."
Smile insurance, to protect your laugh credits from accidental depletion.
Smile loans, letting you borrow future happiness to pay current emotion taxes.
The Laughter Exchange, where people traded smiles—those who smiled more sold surplus credits; those who couldn't smile bought others' laughter to fill their quotas.
Professional brokers worked there, dressed sharply, wearing perfect smiles, running the numbers:
"Based on your emotional profile, you should purchase three hours of standard smile credits, or one hour of premium smiles—premium smiles read more naturally and are less likely to be flagged as 'forced'."
"You can pay in installments—monthly rate only 3.5%."
"Remember, a smile is an investment. Investing in emotional stability is investing in your future."
People adapted.
As they had once adapted to masks, airport security, cameras everywhere.
They grew up being watched—
As infants, smart monitors logged their cries, laughs, sleep patterns.
From kindergarten, their emotional data entered permanent records.
From school to workplace, every exam, interview, promotion came with an emotional stability check.
They aged by being counted—
Every day, the System recorded: how many times did you laugh? Cry? Get angry?
Every week, you received a report: your joy index this week is 6.8, below recommendation; please adjust.
Every month, you filed an emotion tax return: sorrow overshoot 12%, emotion tax due: 450 E-units.
They died by being corrected—
When you grew old, when your emotional control frayed, when you became "excessively nostalgic" or "chronically pessimistic,"
The System suggested:
"In light of your age and emotional status, we recommend admission to a dedicated emotional care facility. We will help you through your final stage in peace and happiness."
Those care homes were spotless, bright, nurses gentle.
The elderly sat there with placid smiles, eyes blank, like wiped whiteboards.
They no longer remembered their names, their children, their lives.
But they were "stable."
Their emotional curves were perfectly flat, like a horizon without hills.
Until that curve turned into a straight line.
And they were declared "peacefully departed."
Over the long, numbing decades, most people chose to adapt.
Not because they were stupid or cowardly.
But because survival mattered more than feeling.
They had families to feed.
Bills to pay.
Dreams—even if those dreams had been pre-planned by the System.
They wanted safety, stability, predictability.
And the System promised all of that, if they cooperated.
They filed emotion taxes on time, swallowed their joy capsules, adjusted their facial graphs when told.
They dialed their own hearts into "safe mode."
They learned to erect a wall deep inside—
Outside the wall was the self the System wanted: stable, cheerful, compliant.
Inside was the real self: exhausted, numb, unsure who they were.
They told themselves:
This is adulthood.
This is responsibility.
This is normal life.
Besides, the System kept saying—
It's for your own good.
Those four words came again and again, from every channel, in every tone:
Gentle, authoritative, scientific, caring.
Until they became a spell, an unquestionable truth.
Until one day, the System made its one great mistake:
It allowed a few people to keep the ability to "feel too much."
An accident of genes.
A leftover of evolution.
A variable it couldn't quite scrub out.
They were called Resonants.
Empathy coefficient above 7.0—able to sense others' emotions, hear their "sound," see their "color."
Before the emotion tax, they'd been hailed as prodigies, artists, healers.
After the tax, they became double-edged blades—
The most useful tools, the most dangerous threats.
Some chose to be BEE's ears, learning to translate human suffering into charts and reports.
In white offices, they wore headsets, listening to waves from every corner of the city, then calmly analyzing, judging, flagging.
"Baseline sorrow, within range."
"Abnormal joy, monitor."
"High-risk resonance, dispatch a team."
They told themselves they were helping, preserving order, preventing tragedy.
Others slipped into the city's cracks and kept books a different way—
With soup, letting people taste their own suppressed emotions.
With songs, letting them hear deleted melodies.
With stories, letting them remember inconvenient truths.
With untimely tears, proving that crying was still possible.
They didn't openly fight the System—resistance was suicidal.
They preserved.
Preserved what the System wanted gone.
Preserved proof that "human" still meant something.
Waiting for the day when those stored fragments might matter again.
Some walked in both worlds, half tool, half traitor, teetering between System and humanity.
Daytime in uniform, executing orders, flagging anomalies.
Night at the window, listening to their own heartbeat, asking:
What am I doing?
What have I become?
Am I still human?
This book is about people wedged in those cracks:
A broker raised on laughter credits—Joey Feng. His job is to get the best price for people's smiles. His own is rated 99 out of 100. He's been "emotionally stable" for 731 days straight, yet he can't remember the last time he truly laughed.
An investigator trained into the perfect instrument—Lynn Sayre. She can hear emotions as sound and uses that gift to hunt anomalies. Her emotional curve is a straight, steady line. But one night, she drinks a soup she shouldn't, and her world shatters.
A Resonant who cooks feelings in an illegal kitchen—Li Ze. Once he had a small underground restaurant where he fed people dishes that healed what the System couldn't. They shut him down, interrogated him, put him under watch. He still cooks, because he believes that as long as someone can taste real emotion, humanity isn't dead.
And a city that burns human hearts as fuel—Neo–New York Ω. Bright, efficient, orderly; every lamp powered by emotion, every street under surveillance. It looks like a utopia, but those who live in it know: it's a vast prison whose walls are transparent, and thus invisible.
The story takes place in June, three days before emotion-tax filing closes.
It's an ordinary summer. The weather is perfectly tuned—not too hot, not too cold, carefully kept from provoking any mood swings.
At 3:30 in the morning, the floating cubes above the city quietly have their brightness nudged up three percent—
Not a glitch.
By design.
More light means less sleep.
Less sleep means fewer dreams.
Fewer dreams mean fewer uncontrollable emotions.
The broadcast cycle speeds up, from once every three minutes to once every two forty-five—
Reminding everyone:
Remember to turn in your sorrow.
Please pay your anger on time.
Make sure your desires are fully declared.
Otherwise, we'll come find you.
No one notices that, in some forgotten underground corner, in a sagging old building on 49th E-Street, in a room barely ten square meters—
An old pot is slowly bringing a soup to boil.
It isn't on any ration list. It won't show up in any emotional ledger. It doesn't answer to any safety threshold.
It's just a bowl of soup.
But in this city, one uncontrolled bowl of soup is more dangerous than any weapon.
Because—
Someone will taste their own feelings in it, for the first time.
Someone will be flagged "abnormal" because of it.
Someone will be hunted, interrogated, retuned because of it.
And someone, in that moment, will briefly understand:
So this is what "person" means—
Not the perfectly managed parts,
But everything that escapes management, spills over,
and gets labeled "contamination."
All the unquantifiable tenderness.
All the smiles that refuse standardization.
All the ill-timed tears.
All the "useless" memories.
All the dreams that "shouldn't exist."
Put together, that is a whole human being.
Here is where the story begins.
Not at the top of the tower, where rules are written.
Not in the statute books, where the clauses are cold.
But in a steaming bowl of "illegal" soup.
In the kitchen of someone who still remembers how to cry.
In a city that has forgotten how to be human.
In an era that insists "emotional stability is freedom."
Someone starts to ask:
If freedom means having no feelings,
are we living freely—
or dying freely?
And the moment that question is asked—
Even in a whisper, even if it's drowned out at once—
Change
has already begun.
(Prologue ends)