Toledo walked the street level below the superskycraper. Being in the skyscraper district, when he looked up, he couldn’t even see the sky. Just infinite columns of commerce and residence, twisting together and extending into the stratosphere. Some of the new buildings were over 300 stories tall. You needed a hit of oxygen if you planned to visit the top floors.
Toledo had been invited to a penthouse party once up there. He’d stood out on the balcony and looked at the illuminated clouds about 50 stories below. Here, he could survey Neon City and visually see the logos of the corporations that poked through the clouds and touched the rarified air of super capitalism. There were a half dozen such companies. Conglomerates. Too big to fail. Legal monopolies across all industries who consolidated and leveraged themselves into omnipresence. The Big 6, they called them.
Down on the street level. This was the domain of the 99%. Pure consumers on the bottom rung. Being bounced around and forced to chase the latest shiny product or dream fulfillment service. Paying what little they had to allow these superscrapers to stretch higher. Most likely, the pretentious CEOs, who dabbled in space tourism, would one day dream of connecting their buildings all the way to the cosmos in the ultimate vanity play. Allowing them to take an elevator from the rat race, all the way to the surface of the moon or beyond.
Toledo needed to block out these visions of global domination. Tonight, he needed to take a wrecking ball to this oppression. He belonged with the rats. And he needed to find a shiny thing of his own to chase. Specifically, he needed an illuminated Happy Juice or something stronger to numb the pain and reset his senses. He was off the clock and needed to lay low and embrace his darkest shadows.
Just ahead, Toledo found just what he needed. He stepped over the panhandlers in the gutters, offering their metaverse tours to out of towners. Toledo flipped a young boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, a couple of social credits. It helped him tune out the dozens of others lining the alley.
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