Keira

Chapter 1

Chapter 1:

The graphited concrete, metal and glass shop wall was bathed in twilight, sunset orange from the street lamp. Green neon bled into the orange toward the flashing bright sign, black cables hung off it like life support cables off a patient in a hospital. She looked around here. If the Megacorps were so generous and rich, why didn't fix up this part of the city? It was dangerous to be outside at night, especially for attractive teenaged girls like Keira. She leant against the wall, her long brown hair fluttered in the breeze, her black leather jacket reflecting some light, underneath her jacket was her t-shirt, red and plain. Her blue jeans were about half way through their life, threadbare, but without holes. Her eyes were an olive green, she idly bit her lip, and removed the Unicom from her belt, Unicom was a portmanteau of "unified" and "communications" the next evolutionary step off the smart phones that had been all the rage in the early 21st century. She loaded the texting application on it, the Unicom sitting comfortably in her palm.

"Where are you at?" She asked the Unicom, the device, encoded onto her voice pattern and pronunciation of her words, wrote down exactly what she said, and sent it. The reply came back within the minute.

"Stuck at the office, I added ten credits to your account, go buy A pizza, I should be home around nine" the phone said, imitating the voice of her dad perfectly, it then notified her of the transaction, she decided to leave for a nicer part of town.

The street lights around this district weren't as orange, or harsh as the lights back in the arBit company's district, each Megacorp provided a district with accommodation, arBit was undergoing financial troubles, and was rumoured to be amalgamated into NanoLink consolidated. But the area felt a bit more alive, shinier, without graffiti, with plant pots, rectangular boxes, of clean white metal, with beautifully tended bushes and small trees, she'd once looked at each with detail, when they moved from the small village she'd grown up in to the city, each one was like a garden in a 2 meters by four meters box, neat, beauteous glass and steel spires and skyscrapers reached out, each architecturally perfect, people were wandering the streets, cars drove lazily along the road, holoboards between the plant pots at the side of the roads advertising some new product or some such, which is why their company was the absolute best. The tarmac was perfectly smooth, and perfectly black, the road markings perfectly aligned and straight, perfectly painted on. She stopped at the "arcade" as it had been once, she turned into it, and soft white strip lights lined the roof, with perfect cabling hidden by the carefully painted and tended steel girders. She stopped at a pizza shop, and went in, and ordered her favourite, Pepperoni; the perfect master race of pizza, in her ever so modest opinion. She ate, idly flicking through various 'Net pages, courtesy of NanoLink consolidated the front runner of Megacorps. she wondered if her father would keep his job when arBit got amalgamated, no doubt he would, despite the more impressive Artificial intelligence employed by NanoLink, she had confidence that her father would keep her job. Suddenly, the TV switched from a football game (a sport she abhorred) to the news.

"Breaking news tonight, as the CEO of arBit corp has in fact confirmed that the company is fusing with NanoLink consolidated, the CEO of NanoLink is confident all workers employed in arBit will continue as NanoLink employees, and here's our reporter

"So Quinton Rion" The reporter said "How do you take to your life's work being amalgamated"

"I'm, paradoxically, quite overjoyed, because It means arBit can provide to more people, and I can finally have that holiday my wife and I have been planning for..." He looks at his digital watch "the last 20 years?" They both laughed, and many of the people in the pizzeria chuckled, knowing the life or death situation of each company by being absorbed and dominated by the larger companies.