The sound of the night train echoed in the distance as a man walked slowly along the sidewalk, deftly avoiding broken paving stones. “Night Train”. It seemed like it was always night in this city. Every train a night train, every passenger tired and avoidant. Just like the tired and dirty old sidewalks and the cracked and disused roads. The man couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a car, or anything else on the road other than busses or maybe a delivery truck. Then again, only people with proper licensing were allowed to use the roads proper, and licensing was an annual fee almost as expensive as a car. And if the Protective Squads found you on a road you were screwed unless you were on a crosswalk. And the markings for those were old and faded. Like most cities, the man supposed. It was just how this world worked.
Unless you worked for the Company, like he did. Honestly more than a third of the city worked for the Company directly, and pretty much all of the rest indirectly. Ensuring that holding companies maintained a guise of decentralization was key. Not for the government; the Company owned the government and most people generally even knew it. Yet on other worlds, the Company had found that owning everything and everyone was a sure way for the systems it was developing to grind to a halt after various social explosions. This was not in anyone’s best interests, but especially not the Company, so it had adjusted its strategies across remaining holdings and eventually sent another colony to replace… ahem “rescue” the survivors of these particularly doomed projects. And things were different; corporate stagnancy had been deemed unacceptable by the largest shareholders who each controlled their own branches of the Company. But the differences were carefully managed and controlled. No need for revolutionary rethinking of Company structure, or reconsideration Core Values, like bringing the most benefit to those most fully vested, and everyone receiving precisely how much personal capital they invested.
The man sighed. He hated most of them. Not the average workers. Many of them were pretty fun and entertaining people! Not their fault for picking the winning team and knuckling-under to boring-ass generic systems and controls. “Nah,” he thought “It’s me an the other fuckers at the top who need… who need to…” he stopped that train of thought. Wouldn’t do to trigger the excitation detector-field. “Keep it togetha. An barrin that, leastways keep it low-key, Baph-baby.” He smiled at himself and did his best to enjoy the scenery, while sinking his undying anger at all the bullshit somewhere down below his waist. He figured this was part of why he was always light on his feet, and certainly didn’t hurt in the sack any either.
He picked up his pace a bit, occasionally hopping across a street, and at one point when the road was interrupted by a long two to three story commercial district along a more important thoroughfare, he simply lept up and proceeded across the rooftops. He was returning from a work-cation down by the waterfront for the past few days. That was part of the key to his operational success as one of the Big 13 Principles of the Company’s Board. Technically he didn’t have to go. Any body could work the ‘Met angle. Even occasionally a King, if the project caught its interest and it had local system-access. But they rarely deigned to stoop so low. For that matter Board-level Princes like himself, rarely saw to things in person. Maybe Lily. “Mmmm… Lilllly…” he purred to himself. Now there was a Peer who lived up to the word. But she only worked the ‘Met-angle for the queerer jobs. Nah he was the main one who worked this angle. For that matter, least as far as Princes went, he probably liked to work the front lines more than most.
He had a good excuse at least; his division was probably more involved with official “customer service” and support-requests than anyone. Engaging directly with the front line being part of his official duties meant he only got the side-eye from half or a third of the Board, which wasn’t much more than anyone else. And he had the favor, and what’s more the respect of more of the Kings than any of the other Princes on the board probably. Aside from Lily, maybe. Mmmm…..
He liked thinking about Lily. Sure, it was unprofessional to really do anything about it, but outside of the Triumvirate of Kings, Lily was probably the only other competition for influence at his level of Peerage currently. And the City truly reflected it. He loved how they worked together, but if he was honest, their competition for influence and their various related business-scuffles that influenced the mood and aesthetics of the City’s ruling class were one of the only things that made this business feel like it was worth his time. That and the frontline work.
It really was scandalous how much he liked working the clerk’s desk and answering the main line, so to speak. Borderline hedonistic from a Council and Worker-Resourcing perspective. If he hadn’t quietly and intentionally managed his division into “requiring” a certain amount of direct engagement and finesse on his part to properly fill the roll, he knew he’d have been an outcast. And honestly it delighted him to be known as the most down-to-earth of the Company’s Board when it came to the average city-dweller. People knew he’d sometimes show up, personally, when a problem or opportunity presented itself. It was good for his division’s morale too: sometimes the Big ‘Met would show up and show em a master’s touch, and see what they could manage. If they were good they might get noticed, and if not you might learn a few things, as long as they weren’t too full of themselves. Might get taken down a few pegs too (he grinned to himself) but that was good too since he generally had a soft-touch that nurtured ego-drives.
At least when he wasn’t bored. Everyone knew that it was one thing to screw up in front of this particular man, but Kings and Princes help you if you bored him! But that was the problem with this new Company town huh? He was bored but it wasn’t anybody in particular’s fault for him to take it out on. He’d been seriously involved in the planning of this new colony. He’d studied the world, and helped design the transport craft. The Kings mostly hadn’t liked his external design, and had gone with one of the Kings’ go-to designers for that, but aside from the HQ, his psycho-sexual curves of neo-art-deco, pseudo-gothic hybrid stylings (all those deliciously long-lines and suggestive curves) had been used for most of the external architecture of the rest of the City and even the front-facing designs in HQ-Tower. Just… not up in the great Dark Rock they’d come in. And which now served as the Board’s HQ, perched atop the City’s central tower like a vulture, only more… looming.
It was ok. He ‘sposed. “I mean I’ma Prince, right? Can’t bitch too awful much, amiright?” he said to himself, but didn’t really feel it. Couldn’t quite swallow his own lie. He couldn’t help but realize he was getting moody at this point. He lept over the final few buildings and crossed into the Tower’s shadow, landing in the Shadow Plaza proper, with its statuary monuments of the Board of Principles members (commissions from a famed artist he had sponsored himself) he was confronted yet again with his great dilemma. Aside from Lily, and maybe one and a half members of the Triumvirate Kings, he was bored by his peers and at least half of his superiors. And so far, he had managed to conceal it from everyone. Hell it wasn’t surprising that nobody had realized but him since he’d only had this realization a handful of times in the past few centuries, and he’d dutifully suppressed it and its consequences each time.
But it was there. And with the gnawing boredom came arrogant resentment. How could a Company as successful as this one he’d so intimately involved himself in for most of his professional life be filled with such absolutely pretentious wankers? And that was it wasn’t it? He’d set his division up to alleviate that as much as he could. Other Principles of the Board might view his “idiot-syncretic” approach as both innovative and annoying, but for him the long slog of having to deal with all but a couple of them made him feel stifled. Again.
It was good no one knew this yet; his status would immediately be at risk if any of them every suspected. It would be seen as weakness by some, decadence by others, and universally seen as a sign of capital-T, Trouble. Because everyone knew the sorts of things his boredom could do. Including himself. It was why he’d tried so admirably to suppress it, and rediscover himself with even more frontline work than usual. Seemed like time, of one form or another, was up.
Maybe it was time for Change.