Crash Flux 1: Welcome To The Machine Read Free Page B

bending the light around it to form an artificial matrix of semi-intelligent thought.  Atop the spire, ascending with it as it continued its reckless climb towards the stars, the spiked, hex ring elevator rotated in a circle.  It was the all seeing eye of the Primus, the undisputed ruler of Datcora.  
    All around the arcology’s massive framework, the skyways expanded east, north, and south, into and across the badlands, into the major sub cities of the North American Trade Alliance and bridging the gap between the other four nation-cities of the world.  The sky blazed, the electromagnetic radiation reacting with the pollutants in the air and creating a fractured kaleidoscope of color.  Every once in a great while, the streams of sky would turn blue and shift like liquid helium, rippling across the surface of the stratosphere, away from the sun. 
    Raydin’s point of view switched back and forth between the tower terrace and reality, his vision sputtering with the garbled input his brain was sending his C-MAX.  They made their way through endless series of fences and institutional buildings, navigating the narrow pedestrian walkways.  
    Raydin eased back into the simulation.  He could not see Data Core’s foundations from the Terrace.  Somehow, that made sense.  There were people who lived in the underworld, out of sight, and out of mind.  
    The Hub was his home.  It housed one point eight billion people.  The lighting never changed, the people worked ten tocks a day, every day.  Personal property was outlawed, with three exceptions: furniture, electronics, and clothing.  Those who did not come to work on time were forced to live in the under-works as property of the state.  
    The only hope lay in winning, breaking through that magical barrier that made you a G-8 citizen living in the Hub into a C-1 employee working in the Wheel.  There was always a chance you could win the lotto, or keep working once you hit the ceiling, hoping for a rare promotion.  For those who ran the cracks, G-4 was as high as you go.  It was every code-monkey’s dream to find the brass ring, the ticket out of the Hub and into the Wheel.
    Raydin began coughing, and Adon stopped for a moment by a drinking fountain.  He took the chit card and inserted it into the slot, and the timer on the fountain began counting down from sixty seconds.  “Lousy bastards, cost me two credits for a drink of water.  Take a drink ray.”  Raydin stumbled over to the water fountain, washing the taste of nutrient feed out of his mouth.  He tried to stand up, then doubled over coughing and fell to the floor.  Adon said, “They really did a number on him.”
    The occasional a glossy ebony ‘scraper touched the ceiling, but the only way to the next tier was through the passenger lifts and the skyways.   The lighting embedded in the roof cast no shadow, emanating from no single source and yet blanketing the Hub in a dull glow.
    Adon and Irule shoved people out of the way, into the harsh grind of the Red Light district.  People gawked and people stared, “sneers and jeers,” as their friend Burk put it.  Wearing the only clothing they could afford, the impoverished minority wore flats, colored t’s with no decoration whatsoever.   Bought out of a vending machine, it cost less to buy disposable clothes than to buy new ones.  The rest wore black and white attire, mass produced button-less white and black business shirts and v-cut blouses.  They wore ill-fitting slacks with plastic zippers, thin business skirts cut as short as the women dared.  And every single one of them wore a neural uplink around their forehead, connecting them to Virtual Reality, severing their connection to this world.  He hated them.  To Raydin, the majority was the enemy.  Their uniform, sneering caricatures burned him.  He spit at their feet, the prejudiced, their conformist disdain being the last thing he wanted to see after spending three days in utter