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Corporation 81
The drowned city was empty again, and did not really have time to become a new home for immigrants from the Megapolis, which surrendered under the pressure of the Glacier. Until quite recently, life was in full swing here, shuttles took the last pax from the gravity well, heavy trucks delivered here and unfolded giant cubes of fabricators, but now everything was quiet, and only the quiet lapping of the waves of the Tethys Sea beat against the metal-polymer supports of the newly erected towers here.- Are you happy? she asked that day with what he thought was sincere curiosity.- Satisfied with what?“Because we leave this world alone.“Ah, that,” Romulus shrugged, “I will be pleased when they leave me alone. And Mother, she still does not hear us. She doesn't care what we think about her.- Stupid humanity tired even the all-powerful Romulus.- Don't bother with words. You have only lived with this for a quarter of a millennium, but I have been dealing with people for more than four h
Corporation 82
The roof breathed a thick smell of hot metal, the sun was so hot that even the familiar tropics of the lower levels seemed like a resort from the coast of the Northern Ocean. In such places, in the middle of the realm of dusty iron and a web of wires creaking in the barely perceptible wind, a normal person will not linger. And if you remember the composition of the local air, full of carbon monoxide rather than oxygen, you involuntarily catch yourself thinking - why did you get here, run away from here, run ...There was little use for these thoughts. The introduction says clearly - the "patient" will try to break through here, and you should not worry about his plans, sweat between your shoulder blades and dry concrete crumb under your tongue. Whatever he is looking for here - he should not pass by. Neither alive nor already dead. If you do your job, you will head north, or even south, across the sea - it is dry there, there is no eternal smell of rivers rotting in the concrete bowel
Corporation Epilogue
Deprived of the present - does not live, deprived of the past - was not even born. I don’t remember who said so, all these books merged into one mess for me during the flight. But, returning in my thoughts to my life on Earth, I cannot help but think about the Corporation, and I cannot help but think about the fate that brought me to the Corporation. The place where I grew up has long ceased to be a sleepy town far from the big and noisy world, the suburbs of the metropolis have moved in on it, comparing hills and raising faceless towers of cheap high-rise housing around. The black cubes of factory buildings, lined with light-absorbing tiles, seemed to be the focus of secrets in the dark and musty chaos of thousands of people who were not interested in anything; no one thought about it. I hardly remember when Corporations appeared in our lives. Sometimes I feel like they've always been there. The faceless masters of the world, at first they were somewhere far, far away. Not here. Per
Corporation 1
The congress to the ring stood dead, you can’t disperse it with any cracker, one headache and reciprocal swearing, breaking through bulletproof glass. And most importantly, why the hell did he drag himself here, to lock himself in the coolness and quiet of the office now, to resolve issues. By phone, fuck you, and then drop everything and drag yourself to God knows where in the official Gelendvagen, waste your time. And his time is precious!- Marat Zinyurovich, so maybe turn around through the region?Grimacing, Marat silently waved to the driver, do as you like.And most importantly, as much as I can remind you, he could not stand his patronymic. Dad was from the Soviet nomenklatura, the Union Deputy Minister, no bullshit. Everyone in the family hated him. For bitter alcoholism, for constant beatings. It was drunk that he got good, while on a sober bench he spoke with his mother and with his three brothers equally harshly, through his teeth. In the teeth, if it was impatient, he str
Corporation 2
Let the kid not think that he was so frightened by his announcement. You never know where he's going. We will discuss all this later, but for now we need to probe it and in more detail, as if it were really not the last time such an opportunity.I will leave you the last...Drrrrr!..Oh, what a day it is today, Marat hurried to find the damn vibrating alert in his pocket, but he had already died. Literally.Angrily twirling the lifeless Blackberry between his fingers, Marat limply dropped the device that had become useless, to be sure, crushing it from above until it crunched with his heel. He already knew how it was. The kid really did not like any electronics. Probably, he was afraid of wiretapping, but not only. She burned close to him only on the way.- Again?- I apologize. Hurry, completely out of my head.And why is he fawning over the boy? He decided to throw it anyway.“It doesn't matter, I'll leave you the final instructions, and this time everything must be as clear as poss
Corporation 3
From the outside, the city looked like a living being, a collective mind of tens of millions of minds merged into one common goal - to live, multiply, gather a supply of resources around itself, which later, or maybe here and now, can be spent on improving conditions for life, reproduction and further concentration resources. It is easy to guess that it was all just an illusion. There was no collective mind, most of the desires and needs of even a single individual in this city contradicted each other. Children interfered with a career, a career interfered with personal life, one cannot save and spend at the same time, and no expenses for an empty and formal in their temporality and chimera improvement of one's own life have ever paid off.People liked to mindlessly accumulate and spend money on nonsense. They could not even decide on who or what could make their life even a little happier. But the pleasure centers in their brains worked regardless of the wishes of the owner. Get drun
Corporation 4
Boulevard Saint-Germain in early May is especially good.The elms had already blossomed, sheltering in their transparent shade those who wanted to eat on the side table of the cafeteria, and the first spring rains beat down the annoying spring dust. Noisy Chinese tourists, of course, have not gone anywhere, but in the mornings it’s still too cool for the bulk of them, and what’s the point on Monday, after yesterday’s collective races on Cham de Mars, which is literally a kilometer away from here, to rise before eleven? Except in caring for the freshness of croissants, but it is unlikely that this public will be so worried about pastries.Another thing is if you are a doctoral student of Science Po, then such an early wake-up is quite reasonable for you, and this time there are quite reasons to change the usual scooter for the city for a leisurely walk three blocks from the campus to the native laboratory.It’s so quiet here except in winter during infrequent snowfalls, when there are
Corporation 5
Slowly, unhurriedly, imposingly, as in a rapid speed train, a flaming tire swept past him on a deserted pavement. The black soot rose behind her in a dense, suffocating wave, so that Gilbert automatically reached into his pocket for a life-saving handkerchief. A sweaty rag is not exactly a salvation from subsequent asthma attacks, but it's better than nothing.The first thought - to quickly return to the sterile recirculating atmosphere of the lab - was immediately discarded. The black failure of the silhouette is just waiting in the wings to return and swallow it headlong.What jokes, at such a pace he will not work - he will lose his last brains.The crowd, meanwhile, surrounded Gilbert on all sides.Motley groups in acid-colored driver's vests over civilian ones ran at him from clouds of smoke lined obliquely by the rays of the sun, ran up, shouting something about fair prices, and immediately rushed away, not paying any attention to the lost Gilbert.Their sonorous voices, to the