They were pumping what water there was, mainly from the old power station run by the Adulterates, into Capital Investment. Not into the tenement slums the New People inhabited, they got their water from fouled standpipes and that sluice had to be filtered by any number of filter sharks operating around the city. Under the collective water agreement, the Corporation had primary use of the resource for whatever needs it deemed fit, and those needs were always its own. It never rained, although the ash storms that blew in all too regularly passed as a precipitation substitute, and as the Corporation began to store its water in huge underground vats, more and more desperate New People made a play for it. Tunnelling, the Corporation said, was undermining the whole infrastructure and if people did not desist from such subversive activities, the whole city might well collapse. Even mandating a death penalty for those discovered burrowing, hadn’t stemmed the number of those attempting such. Anarchy, such as it was in a state that was already anarchistic by design, was becoming a major problem – dissidents were regularly made examples of, hung by the neck at Traitors Corner, but even this, was proving to be little deterrent. Why did the Corporation itself need so much water? Few had been within the inner sanctum, the giant biosphere that passed as Corporation HQ, and almost all dictates were delivered by Brigade, humans willing to do the Corporation’s bidding at street level, and below. But it hadn’t always been so, long ago, the one known as The Recluse, the one now in sole charge of Urban Jungle, had once been a key figure in the inaugural charter of Capital Investment. He, along with the one known as Evangelista, had set up the recycling and reclamation systems, the ones now defunct in Capital Investment – their original aim having been to at least provide drinkable water to an ever-swelling populous. Then, as the story goes, the one called Argonaut had walked from the still ocean one day and had assumed control. The Recluse and Evangelista had left almost immediately, striking out for the then mythical Urban Jungle, and since that time relationships between the Corporation and the Recluse had been precariously balanced on a knife edge. The Corporation continually broadcast propaganda about the Recluse and his intentions toward Capital Investment and its citizenry claiming the Recluse had an Old People’s jet plane and was training a metal man to pilot it, and that this jet would tear into the Wall of the Sun and kill hundreds of innocent New People. At the same time the Corporation had embraced metal technology, determined to create its own alloy assassins to counter the threat, only, the jet plane never came and instead, the Corporation’s metal progeny had become the terrorists. Despite the annual promises and purges, renegade Machine Girls and metal killers, continued to proliferate, and people began to fear the Corporation more than the Recluse. That was when they began leaving, striking out over, or above ground, for a safer existence and the Corporation’s answer had been to unleash the ultimate murder machine, the Tool Man. Those who dared to estimate in private reckoned the Tool Man had already killed several hundred New People, perhaps even several thousand, and while the Corporation maintained that the Tool Man wasn’t of their making, and, that they were actively hunting him, he continued about his gruesome business seemingly unmolested. This quid pro quo propaganda disabled every stab at rational discourse and democratic liaison with the Corporation, leading ultimately, to a state of siege. Already the Corporation locos were continually hijacked by renegades, and with the accord with Chico Ink breaking down, the Corporation had begun to prepare itself for the final conflict. This was how they’d lived in Capital Investment, under the shadow of fear and the cosh of subjugation, all the time dreaming of fresh water and escape, all the time wondering, both secretly and aloud, whether it were true that the Corporation was a giant thinking plant that required all the water in Cultivation to maintain itself – and, its offspring. And if, if that were proven true, what would the New People do? Would they rise up, destroy the Corporation? Would they welcome the Recluse and his jet plane back into their bosom? This perilous stalemate needed to be solved before they all perished at the hands of men or entities with everything to gain and nothing to lose. Things whose choices were as simple as their own, yet their outcomes offered considerably more scope for privilege than their own choices proffered. Where there was an end there was a beginning and all one had to ensure was that the beginning was not the beginning of the end, and that likewise the end was not the end of the beginning.
