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Corporation 30
The ship slept, as it had slept for the last five hundred watches.Immersed in the silence and twilight of the on-duty lighting, it looked more like a dead crypt of the ancient gods than a living and active artifact of an engineering genius.For the first time mankind took a step beyond its own world, it was to be a triumph, a heroic saga, about which legends will be composed among posterity. But in reality, the feat turned into a routine. This routine consisted of a painful succession of minutes, shifts, turns, years, monotonous and seemingly meaningless.And now, when Captain Shimizu left his post, finally bowing ceremoniously to his replacement, he was gnawed by a feeling of some kind of lost incompleteness. As if he, Captain Shimizu, had to do something, accomplish something, perform something. Not in this, so in the last watch. But he didn't. And this bothered him much more than the dead silence of the service corridors of the command sector.What could he, a mattaku, do? Why com
Corporation 31
If, from the side view, his opponent was simply deftly wielding a racket, not particularly straining and, in general, effortlessly deflecting any attempts to knock himself off the rhythm, now Captain Shimizu felt how these blows were directed by an experienced hand.It was as if it was not the racket that hit the ball, but the ball itself, in the most accurate way, ricocheted there, and there, as it was destined for it. No differences in gravity, microscopic surface irregularities or inaccuracies in the tension of the fishing line could affect the results - an economical movement of the brush, and the ball was already sent towards its fate.Captain Shimizu tried with all his might to intervene in the iron mechanism that he unwittingly had to face, to do at least something not according to the rules written by someone else's hand, but any of his attempts to bring his game into an attacking mode, to somehow violate the plans of a partner on the court , led to only one previously obvious
Corporation 32
Stanley tried not to raise his face. As soon as he forgot himself for a second and cast a glance into this gaping nothingness, something seemed to shrink in his head, and the picture before his eyes began to dance treacherous pretzels.What did he forget here?After the departure of Cyrus, Interweb did not immediately become like this. At one time, free songwriters continued to quietly frolic in the arenas, and Papa Doc broadcast his slanderous verses about “Lolita as a mirror of the cyberpunk revolution” from the pulpit for long nights. Those days are long gone, and only Stanley remembered how it was. Bright, passionate, bold. However, without the formidable power of the Corporation, its offspring was doomed to decline and neglect. As soon as Romulus and the Companions left the Sol system, something happened that should have happened. "Red-jackets" of all stripes began to coherently and methodically put pressure on everyone who dared to even allegorically mention the Interweb.This w
Corporation 33
Stanley had no idea what efforts and sacrifices it cost them, as they say, you know less, you sleep better, anyway, in response to any questions, neither the Companions nor the Guardians spoke plainly, habitually getting off with empty and streamlined speculations.And what, our business is small, write down what you see, and then throw it off to the Guardians.But even such meager knowledge was enough to draw their own conclusions.The time of life allotted to all of us has expired, no matter what the Companions do now, the noosphere of the Mother perished.And people died with it.No matter what the corporations and the corrupt authorities of the agglomerations that depend on them in everything, the situation over the next few years only got worse. Madmen with a bouquet of psychiatric diagnoses that were considered not coexisting in one head had nowhere to store. Only the heaviest and those who did not have relatives left at will were taken to the azilums. The rest, if possible, lay
Corporation 34
A motorcade of six heavy tiltwings with a guttural rumble cut through the night air over the ocean, covered from the sky by an orbital group, from the sea accompanied by two self-propelled strike platforms, ahead of time advanced along the course of the motorcade due south from Sri Lanka to the Commonwealth Sea and Prydz Bay.However, these efforts were also part of the ceremony.The route was carefully coordinated throughout the year, and the Big Dozen organized everything in advance so that no random barge, let alone stray tiltwing, turned up on the designated straight line. No one needs a conflict out of the blue.Even more carefully approached the selection of crews. Only proven people, devoted to the corporation, as well as, just in case, married, with children and grandchildren, so that no one would suddenly have the thought that they have nothing to lose.The Yangguang Zituan remembered the episode of 2156, when two general partners died at once during the mysterious crash of t
Corporation 35
However, time for such reading flew by and really imperceptibly.- Mr. general partner, landing soon, the cortege began to descend.It's clear.Dry gray hills were already floating in the porthole, more like the Krasnaya landscape, only, of course, the color scheme was not the same.Here, in the middle of the mainland, the ice sheet finally went down the slope half a century ago, since then there has been little reminiscent of the former snow-white plains. Now everything around was dug up with trenches for laying cables, concrete bases of high-speed overpasses, between which the snow-white domes of laboratories and residential buildings literally grew like mushrooms after rain.And here is the main purpose of his visit here.Cao ni zuzong shiba dai.It seems that Ma Shenbing remembered what interested him in all this construction.This.While descending, Ma Shenbing, not without a note of surprise in his voice, sent request after request through gotong, and the more he dug into his as
Corporation 36
I haven't been here for a long time. Probably as long ago as he became a slinker again. Or a persecutor, if you use corporate newspeak. Whatever you call it, a person of my profession is in no hurry to return to the places of former glory, because he firmly knows that only black shadows of the past are waiting for him there, from which there is a lot of pain and a little or even less money.A good client is a new client. A good place is one where no one knows you.Simple job - came, sniffed, left. But sometimes there are such circumstances that like it or not, you agree.Return. Breathe in the rancid air of the Megapolis again. Again raise your face to the sky and be surprised at what you see. You don't really see.Memory is a traitorous thing. How many revolutions have passed since you stood in this very place, looking at the silent four from under your brows. Romulus, Ulysses, Urban and Cora. Creatures whom the language did not dare to call people. On that day, they also returned to
Corporation 37
The towers were designed taking into account centuries of operation, under the standard size of the bot, which, in turn, repeated the human dimensions in that frequent case when even the most intelligent technology began to give in to beyond design anomalies. Simply put, the towers were built so that a Slinker like me could get into every corner of them. The question was only in sufficient skill and the presence of an exoskeleton.Under the strained buzz of the actuators, I methodically fingered with power gloves along the brackets of the fasteners inside the technical well in the very thickness of one of the towers of the two-headed complex. The scanners on the back of the neck successfully translated the structure of communications around me into the visual channel, successfully supplementing the scheme previously received through their persecutor channels with relevant information.The Guild, in addition to actually servicing orders, has long served as a kind of exchange of gray, a