1. What the Hell Is This?

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Brendan took the fire escape steps two at a time. The elevators were all occupied, and anyway, he needed all the exercise he could get.

The train had spent five minutes stopped at a signal on the approach to Boxelder Park, and he was probably going to be late, although that was the least of his worries.

He pushed the door for the tenth floor and exited the claustrophobic concrete confines of the fire escape, into a marble-floored corridor lined with floor-to-ceiling windows, allowing for brief glimpses into wood-paneled offices that populated the sides. 

His destination was at the end. The Corviston Intelligent Neighbourhood Co-Operative occupied a prime corner of the top floor of the Department of Transport building, with commanding views of the roof garden and the city beyond. Floriana had used her connections to leverage it from the outgoing director a decade ago when she had decided to wind up her consultancy. The city council had nearly taken the matter to court, but on the strength of the retiring director's resolve, the decision had stood. 

It had not been Brendan's first choice of internship. But then one of the classmates in his Structural Analysis class had let slip, during a tutorial where they were grouped together, that they were known for having a relatively open hiring policy. He had sent in his resume half-jokingly and was accepted. 

Brendan slipped through the door into the meeting room in the nick of time, just as the presentation was going to begin, as seemed to be the norm these days. Once upon a time he had always been unreasonably early to everything. Then there was a short period where he was always late. Now it was always down to the wire. 

The motley crew of struggling students, trust fund kids who needed an internship job for resume-padding purposes, cast-offs from the education sector reskilling for a new career path, exchange students from abroad, all handpicked by Floriana, barely stirred at Brendan's arrival. Floriana, sitting as usual near the front, acknowledged him with a smile and gestured for him to sit down. Brendan nodded, grateful.

Way back in the late '70s, Floriana van der Hoven had been the lead vocalist for the Corviston Transport band, the B-59s. They had been promptly renamed the B-10s when Corviston Transport replaced its bus fleet in the 1980s. Not long after, the band had been disbanded as part of systemwide budget cuts, and she was temporarily without a job. The transport bug had bit, though, and after retraining as a bus driver she rose through the ranks of the busworkers' union over the next decade and a half to become its first ever chairwoman. When she resigned under a cloud following a graft scandal, she'd used her connections to spin a new career as a consultant, which had eventually led to this. 

 Brendan slipped into the last available seat, near the back. The guy on the podium was getting ready, going through the slides on his laptop, testing out the laser pointer. 

Brendan had seen dozens of such guys on the podium, usually with the same gym-toned vitality, the same brilliantly shining skin, as if they'd spent a good amount of time standing in front of the mirror polishing their face with olive oil. The type who had never took a pill on full moon because they thought it lowered their testosterone. 

He read the logo on the guy's blindingly white polo shirt. Lytrans Group. He'd heard of them before. They had done the refurbishment of the PCC fleet in the early 2000s. 

"Are we ready to begin?" He said, his hand on the projector remote. Floriana nodded in the affirmative. Not a hair in this place without her approval. 

He flipped to the first slide. A photo of a main road passing the front gates of a school. Bumper to bumper traffic. Kids spilling out of cars, some of which were double and even triple parked. The picture had been taken in winter, so streams of white exhaust filled the air, accentuating the effect. 

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