Past shimmering stars and an aurora of souls, Kaiba has fled. Pursued by Vanilla, the cruise liner’s bloodthirsty head of security, Kaiba has run through cities and slums, stowed away in luggage compartments, and fired off in an escape pod, seeking a reunion with the one he loves, or perhaps just an escape from this world’s injustices. But in a world like Kaiba’s, there is no true escape from violence or injustice; with capitalism having even claimed dominion over our bodily autonomy, violence and injustice are woven into the system itself. Even in our own world, homes can be stolen, families ripped apart, and lives destroyed, all with perfect legality and systemic support. In a world where even your body isn’t yours to keep, where can you possibly run to, and what can you consider home?

Shot into space in a tiny escape pod, Kaiba suffers through a dramatic crash landing, arriving on a new planet just ahead of Vanilla and his shining cruiser. But though the planet is different, the song remains the same – as in his last world, the economic stratification of this universe is built into the city’s very architecture, with slums rising, rising, rising up to the richer quarters above. It is there that Vanilla and his ship land, resting on a crown of spotlights, his passengers safely ensconced above the poorer quarters. Down below, the streets assume shapeless forms and shades of grey, the poverty of this world coming through clearly even in Kaiba’s hyper-deformed designs.

Pursued by Vanilla’s men through a wild urban jungle, Kaiba is eventually rescued by a local street vendor, who helps him sneak past the police. The vendor, who introduces herself as Cronico, is quick to admit that “there’s nothing here” – her planet is essentially one giant slum, or in the parlance of this world, a farm for harvesting the bodies of the poor. Cronico, too, is soon to be harvested – she states freely that “this is the last day I get to be in this body. So today, at least, I’d like to live the way I want to.” In a world where freedom is defined as narrowly as this, perhaps only the knowledge that your life is forfeit regardless might provide you true freedom of action.

Cronico’s situation is horrifying, but it is horrifying in a very familiar way. Even in our own world, our ability to sleep and eat and shelter from cold are conditional privileges, ones that most of us pay for in the form of rent and labor. These transactions naturally work to perpetuate the existing class order; wealth creates wealth through its own existence, in the form of property accumulating rent and value, while tenants are forced to pay a survival tax, rather than put their money towards investments of their own. The poor labor to live, while the rich enjoy freedom of movement as their investments accumulate value.

In Kaiba, the inherent class reinforcement of land ownership is simply taken one step further, where even the ability to walk around and express yourself is considered a privilege enjoyed by the rich, and only conditionally granted to the poor. And just as in our world, this too works to propagate the existing system – after all, if you’re only allowed part-time access to a working body, how can you hope to acquire enough wealth to escape this cycle, and gain actual freedom? It may seem like a flaw, but this is actually the intent – the maintenance of a perpetual underclass of workers with no ability to rise above their station, who are nonetheless considered legally “free,” because the actual freedom they seek doesn’t legally belong to them. A truly free society demands more than the freedom to choose who you sell yourself to – it demands the freedom to decide your own, unshackled destiny.

For Cronico, that kind of freedom is a distant dream. Visiting her private sanctuary, Kaiba watches as she blows bubbles towards the sky, and dreams of one day leaving this planet. She speaks proudly of how she’ll be selling her body for a lot of money, and states that “this body can’t be made artificially or with bio-engineering. That’s brag-worthy, right?” It’s a heartbreaking question – a statement that implies not just Cronico’s infinitesimal self-worth, but also her internalized assumption that all she can really take pride in is the monetary value of her base parts. Whoever’s buying her just wants her frame – they care nothing for this brave and selfless soul, courageously willing to sacrifice her autonomy to support her family.

In our own world, the idea of “selling your body for your family” is a little more abstract than this – but no less real. Parents “sell their bodies” by subjecting them to terrible work conditions, and growing old before their time, because it is frequently impossible to find work that both feeds your family and maintains your health. For people who love their family, in a system where capitalism offers no alternatives, the idea of working in a mine until your lungs give out, or working in a factory until your limbs are worn ragged, is a bargain they must strike anew every single day.

Kaiba’s uniquely invasive form of capitalism is particularly good at illustrating the cruelty of this bargain, and the ways poverty can rob us of our sense of self. With a mixture of pride and sorrow, Cronico says “my mother sold her memories of music and literature for us.” In Kaiba, even your former moments of happiness, or personal passions, are not sacred, not truly “yours.” But of course, this too reflects real-world conditions – for those who live in poverty rarely get the chance to explore fields like music or literature, lacking the financial access or leisure time to do so. And how can art uplift those who have no opportunities to consume it?

Cronico’s mother sold more than her memories of music, though. Showing off her beloved pair of boots, Cronico idly reveals that her mother seems to have no memories at all from before their purchase. A mother selling her memories for her daughter, and that daughter selling her body in turn, brings to mind a warped rendition of The Gift of the Magi. The charity and mutual love of family has in this world been turned into an engine of exploitation, as the rich force the poor to bargain away their bodies and minds one piece at a time. In the end, even the feelings of love that prompt such acts of charity are a salable commodity; and there is nothing we can possess that they will not try to take.

For as we learn on the day of Cronico’s operation, even this cruel bargain is somehow more than she has earned. As Cronico fades under sedation, her doctor asks her to “please forgive me for modifying your memories slightly, so that you wouldn’t change your mind during the process. Your memories will never be returned to your family.” That charitable soul, the one thing that Cronico could consider truly hers, is also the one thing these harvesters see as utterly without value. Having sold her body on the promise of an eventual reunion with her family, Cronico’s consciousness exits the world knowing only one final betrayal, and that even if you play by their rules, they will still take everything from you.

Cronico’s body is left on a trash heap by her purchaser’s agents, offering Kaiba a chance to hop aboard. Steering her body back towards her home, we learn that her “mother” was actually her aunt Negi, and furthermore that she wasn’t actually loved at home. But stepping into Negi’s memories paints a much fuller picture, as we see visions of a happy childhood, and a loving bond between the two of them. It was actually through working too hard to earn those boots for Cronico that Negi lost her arms – and then her husband died as well, leaving her family even more impoverished. Charity and empathy are not unchanging aspects of our personalities; they are resources we must apply when possible, and resources can always be drained by adverse circumstances. Negi truly did love Cronico, but hard lives build hard people, and as she sold her past memories to protect her children’s future, she lost touch with her love for her child.

The true cruelty of this terrible bargain, this capitalist perversion of The Gift of the Magi’s honest sacrifice, only becomes clear when Negi dusts off her old piano. Having at last earned the money to buy back her love of music, Negi begins to play – but of course, few things are more closely tied to memory than music. Through playing familiar songs, happy memories of time spent with Cronico return, reminding her of the family that once was. Memories rise like vibrant, colorful bubbles from the mist of her subconscious, the cobwebs of time parting like a shimmering veil. Music wasn’t just a passion shared by Negi and Cronico – it was also something they shared with Cronico’s own mother, meaning that playing with Cronico was a way for Negi to keep in touch with her lost sister.

It’s a heartbreaking sequence, and one that lays bare the cold calculation and utter inhumanity of the sale of memories. Through selling our memories, we lose our kindness, our charity, our soul – we lose the reasons we found to care about each other, and the joy we discovered as a result. Selling our memories insidiously makes us more amenable to this world’s horrible bargain, wherein everything is a transaction, and nothing is truly sacred. It is only through the love that we feel for each other, and the communal obligation that compassion brings, that we might hope to overcome such injustice – and so of course, our very capacity to feel such things is now defined as a privilege, and stolen from our hearts.

There is no happy resolution to the story of Negi and Cronico. Negi is left only with a terrible truth – that bringing back her memories of music won’t make her happy, because her memories of music were so joyous precisely because they reminded her of the sister she lost, and the daughter she betrayed. There is no solace either for Cronico, whose vibrant soul was discarded without a second thought, and whose sale only brought Negi more sorrow. When the machine pits us against each other, it is only the machine that wins. Perhaps the only possession we can truly lay claim to is grief, which no one wants to buy off us anyway.

This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.