Emilio Velasquez hated his job, like most people in his district he worked for the Holy Order of Banking, he'd been posted to their start-up insurance division two years ago and had been here ever since.
In his dreams he was a big star on the 'chain, either a City Dropper of one of the Mega Rush jocks, not just another worker drone sitting amongst the other drones in row upon row of sanitised eight by six cubicles. The truth though, was that Emilio was extremely risk adverse, he just didn't see why in a society where a person could quite comfortably expect to live for at least a couple of centuries, why you should risk your life for anything. For Emilio discretion was the better part of valour, which of course meant that he was stuck in jobs like this, his work profile read like a loss adjuster's wet dream, he didn't like risk and was very good at spotting potentially risky situations.
Most people liked to sit in their cubicles, some even had superfluous desks, Emilio liked to stand, his virtual screen a three foot cube hovering in front of him. Behind it the corporate prayer embossed on a small golden plaque with black letters;
The company is everything
Emilio stood there reviewing the smart contracts for a new mining start-up, Mazacorp. The company was owned by a minor corporation under the protection of Doge Mason of the Pangea Hab. The corporation was called Dotic and had recently gone into partnership with Vinkey Corp. Dotic had borrowed heavily to meet their end of the partnership agreement with Vinkey and so were already heavily in debt to The Order. Emilio saw that their subsidiary, Mazacorp wanted to borrow in order to fund a small fleet of helium mining ships, claiming they had a valuable new IP surrounding a particular solar mining technique. On the face of it the venture was a good one, there was no more helium left on Earth and the industry was one of the few where there was no monopolising force controlling everything.
The problem Emilio saw, was that Mazacorp were planning on building new ships rather than taking the more obvious route of leasing ships from the Offworld Mining Corporation. Mazacorp had said that none of the OMC's ships were compatible with their needs seeing as they had come up with an entirely new extraction technique. They claimed that their new Ramscoop ™ design would allow them to mine helium-three directly from the sun.
This was all well and good and on the surface seemed reasonable. However Emilio knew how this worked in reality, the truce between The Order and the OMC was predicated on the fact that the OMC would stay out of Earth's business and stick to Mars and at the same time The Order wouldn't allow the build up of any other space fleets and would protect the OMC's status as the solar system's number one extraterrestrial mining corporation. Of course none of this was out in the open, it was merely implied, but Emilio knew that the implication was enough for the OMC to react very badly to this situation. They would see it as a direct threat to their position, even though the realised profits from the venture would be a mere droplet in a planetary ocean compared to the OMC's fiscal might.
Emilio reasoned that the OMC were likely to squash Mazacorp, and may even declare a virtual war on Vinkey. This might be good for The Order as Vinkey would then need to increase their debt to The Order so as to fund the war. He realised though, that this in itself was a risky tactic, he couldn't guarantee the OMC's reaction. Emilio gave an involuntary shrug of the shoulders and a wiggle of his head, a nervous tic he'd developed anytime he was thinking of something that might upset the balance of his life.
He sent a thought command to his virtual terminal, he recommended the rate of insurance for the venture be set to five times the usual maximum. Emilio hesitated, the terminal had asked him to confirm the input, he deleted it and changed it to insurance denied. Better safe than sorry, best to avoid any messiness with the OMC and Vinkey had little leverage with The Order, so he wouldn't be pulled up to the Chief's office to explain why he'd decided to insult 'friends of the Bank'.
His virtual terminal shrunk to a small cube hovering six feet in the air before winking out entirely. It was time to go home, it was Friday and the usual cliques formed by his fellow drones gathered in the communal areas ready to go off to whatever latest-must-go-to bar or club the Mega City offered on that particular night. It had taken around six months of Emilio refusing after-work drinks before they finally stopped asking him. This suited his purposes perfectly, for Emilio was a FIM junkie.
As he walked past the faces he had never bothered remembering, he floated through the throng of excited chatter, flirting and posturing, like a ghost, nobody pinged his filament hardly anyone looked his way. He vaguely wondered what made them different from him and any of the other drones that were into FIM. Maybe they would say they controlled it whilst he wanted to spend all his life in it. They would never know though, because he didn't fit the stereotype of a FIM junkie. A true memhead spent most of their lives lost in the memories of others. Some of them even died whilst plugged in, usually heavily in debt. Their souls being sequestered to become DIs, forever paying off the huge debts they had wracked up whilst in FIM. Not for him though, Emilio intended to keep his safe job with the Holy Order and therefore there was less likelihood he would wrack up enough debt to be indentured. Especially if he was careful with his FIM purchases, which he was of course.
Emilio made his way to the Western Skyway on floor seventy-five. The Skyway was enveloped by a phased ionic field which provided both warmth and extra oxygen, this one would take him right over his district, there he would take the drop down to his apartment. He hadn't earned quite enough to gain the extra points to live on the top level, but another five years or so in his position and he would be able to afford a small topside apartment.
The Skyway was a wide winding throng of people, small stems connected the various corporate skyscrapers to the main walkway. Emilio joined and walked towards his apartment, as he walked past one of the Skydistrict malls an augmented reality advert popped up around him, an annoying jingle played in his head as a colourful troop of beautiful acrobats cavorted round him repeating their banal advertising slogan for some pleasure den or something, he tried not to pay attention to what they were saying. Emilio found these ads the most distressing, you couldn't turn them off with a thought command through your filament, rather you had to move your hand to press a virtual off button. The button moved erratically if you carried on walking, so you either had to stop, or flail your arms around like an idiot.
The thought of doing either of these things distressed Emilio more than the ad itself so rather than attracting anymore attention to himself than absolutely necessary, he shuffled meekly on for three hundred metres or so before the ad finally reached its nauseating conclusion. He reached his drop off point, a small fifty metre wide platform leading to the vactube entrance. Emilio found a carriage with as few people as possible and entered, he found a solo seat and strapped himself in.
The train took off, it was level for around thirty seconds and then plunged into a near vertical drop. Emilio tried using the new upgrades on his filament, they were supposed to give him control of his inner ear, however it was a cheap upgrade and the effect was less than perfect. He closed his eyes for the rest of the short journey down to his level.
Finally he was inside, he tossed his clothes off piece by piece as he made his way to the bedroom vaguely wondering if his cheap cleaner-robot would even register the items as something it should perhaps clean.
His bedroom was barely bigger than his cubicle at work, something that would depress him a lot more if he didn't have his FIMs. His rig sat right next to his bed, a long oval womb, filled with the thick transition gel. He climbed in, his stomach rumbled, pausing him momentarily as he wondered if he should have a snack first. No, that might interfere with the experience, an empty stomach was better.
He lay down, the gel covered about half his body, it's familiar warm embrace hugging him womb-like. He felt the spider connecters extend from the base of the rig and gently wrap themselves around the base of his skull, he closed his eyes and lost his connection with the real. Emilio was in a virtual environment now, he stood in a featureless room with dark black tiles. Each one of the tiles represented a FIM recording he'd acquired. The one he wanted was to his left, he extended his arm and pressed the tile gently, it glowed yellow.
CITY DROP BANZO 707
He had paid way more than he should have on his salary, but he was quite happy to delay the topside apartment to pay for his addiction.
The FIM activated, he was no longer Emilio Valasquez, he was Kevin Wade Banzo 707 and he stood on top of a platform on the highest suborbital SkyVac, three kilometres below was his target. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and ran off the platform.
Cryptogee
Previously in Mega City Tales