The outer worlds cassandra o malley5/6/2023 ![]() ![]() The streets are less than minty fresh though, littered by the corpses of corporate cops. It’s starkly multi-coloured, like a strip of toothpaste, which incidentally is what they manufacture here. ![]() Roseway Gardens is beautiful, after a fashion-its green trees blending into a blue sky padded by pink clouds. It’s been thrown into chaos by anti-corp terrorism, and out of that question mark comes profit. ![]() Roseway Gardens, a big pharma R&D station run by the Auntie Cleo corporation. Fortunately we’ll be landing on the opposite side of the planet, far enough away not to hear their screams. It was good for their souls, and they’ll thank me eventually, but I don’t much fancy returning in the meantime. I’d switched all the electricity in Emerald Vale over to Edgewater, pushing a community of deserters back to town and their jobs with Spacer’s Choice. Last time I was here, everybody was shouting. If only there were a way to pay for the seal with something belonging to somebody else-like the trade secrets of rival corporations. Not likely, since parting with company cash is against my moral code. It’s an unforgivable lapse in professional judgement, and worse, it’s going to cost me money: 8,000 Bits, to be exact. But turning Welles in, and passage to Byzantium, will require Bedford’s official Board seal, which he’s pawned to fund a series of self-produced adventure serials. Welles is his white whale-or as he pronounces it, 'hwhite hwhale'. I offer Phineas Welles, wanted terrorist, in exchange for a navkey to the capital. Still, I can smell Byzantium on his suit. All the better to make room for a luxury stateroom in the back, reserved for Chairman Rockwell’s use should he ever visit, which he won’t.īedford himself is a complex figure-a sentimentalist whose proud moustache conceals a wobbly bottom lip. Bedford’s office scarcely fits his computer and three bodyguards. The embassy is, as one local suggested, a "glorified shoebox"-terribly grand yet awfully small. Or maybe it’s the gigantic Moon Man mask Vicar Max carries on his head, representing Spacer’s Choice wherever we go, like a football mascot. Perhaps it’s the air of business I carry with me. "I’m required by Board bylaws to use excessive force," a guard warns loiterers on the embassy steps, but doesn’t bother my entourage as we pass. The residents are boiling like lobsters in the pot. Without honest work though, the soul gets sick: that’s what my shift with Spacer’s Choice has taught me, and that sickness is made manifest on Groundbreaker. Ever since, the corps have tolerated Groundbreaker, allowing it to skim off the top of their interstellar shipments. But its crew decided it didn’t fancy putting in the hours and declared itself an independent port-even as it breathed artificial air courtesy of the Board. Back when Halcyon was colonised, Groundbreaker was the first ship to arrive. The embassy for the Halcyon Holdings Corporation Board sits in the back corner of Groundbreaker’s promenade, a shred of class among the scrap merchants and pirate boozers. ![]()
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