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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
Corporation 38
The choice of car was a mistake.A heavy but well-traveled Toyota can come in handy at long distances, but here, in the labyrinth of an abandoned place in the middle of century-old industrial zones, agility and secrecy were more important. If only they could guess how far this flight would take them.A short look behind.The client continued, biting her lips, scratching her knuckles with her nails, tearing them literally into blood. At the same time, her face remained stony and pale to blue. Not a good sign, not a good one at all.She was ordered to be taken away from the safe house on the lower tiers of the residential Bauhaus near the very borders of the Megapolis. It’s not unusual how many times it was necessary to rescue endangered witnesses and fugitive agents into remote refugio like this, almost always they twitched, cried, rejoiced, joked nervously, but just did not remain silent.And the rescued in the bulk did not give the impression of a puppet, pushed under the hands of an
Corporation 39
Patience. Even if he didn't have the patience. The defendant is armed to the teeth, the augmentation is heated to the fullest, but everything that he now sees around him does not give rise to the slightest degree of suspicion in him, only notes of displeasure that they make him wait. Well, really, there are no traces of external surveillance or parasitic traffic around, she - and what is she, no serious augmentation, the lowest link in the corporate food chain, just a person who had the luck to cut down the dough in an easy way. To expect some kind of trick from her is how paranoid you have to be.And here is her colleague.Mekk appeared in the door noiselessly, like a shadow, but the defendant, on her orders, heard, as it were, real steps along the corridor, a real squeak of a castle, a real breath noise. This is a very simple trick if you live in a crystal world. The ringing of razor-sharp edges sounded like music in her ears.What happened?They got there before me.Who? "Seiko"? P