The Expectation of a World

On the other side of Earth, there was a city called Bangkok.

The Chao Phraya River cut through the city center, dividing it in two. On the west bank was an old residential district, the houses packed tightly together.

Power lines crisscrossed overhead like a spiderweb.

"Oh my God, is it really possible?" A woman named Asong lived on the ground floor of one of the four-story apartment buildings.

Her room was only a little over ten square meters, and the furniture was pitifully sparse: one bed, one table, one plastic stool, and yellowed newspapers pasted on the walls.

This was the picture of life for most of the poor. Asong was a cleaner. Every day, she got up at four in the morning and rode her motorcycle for thirty minutes to an office building in the city center to clean.

Her monthly wage converted to less than three hundred US dollars. Her mother was seventy-two, diabetic, and could not afford medicine. She could only keep going on herbal remedies sent from the countryside. Her daughter was twelve and would start middle school next year, but Asong was not sure she could afford the tuition.

"This is way too wonderful."

Asong crouched on the floor, clutching an old phone with two cracks across its screen.

Her eyes stayed fixed on Ian's photo on the screen, on the headline that read "free energy, free healthcare," and on the excited and skeptical comments in the comment section.

She was illiterate—she had only gone to elementary school for three years. She could write her own name and read simple road signs, but she could not understand those long, elaborate posts. Still, she could understand the headline, understand the numbers, and understand the tone of the people in the comments. Some were saying it