Withmore Globe

My usual Gold routine consists of coffee and long, brisk walks, watching out for whatever fresh lunacy the Dome vomits on my shoes. It was supposed to be a pleasant day, until I noticed the unmistakable ruckus of a mixer who claimed that New Light Media's garage was "Sarz turf". I laughed hard at the magnificence of watching a nobody with nothing announce ownership of someone else's private property, then I realized, this might be my story.

Once on the scene, my suspicions were confirmed. A woman who looked like she was dragged out of a dumpster, beaten up, then thrown back inside was tagging the walls and issuing threats with her heavy bolo machete. Yes, very dramatic. Yes, very Red. Very terrifying if you've never seen a huge knife before. Then NSEC arrived, and I realized the threats were as funny as they were empty.

This pledge, who goes by "G", appeared to be yet another victim of an industry as old as the Dome itself: turning the weak, fresh-faced, and easily impressionable into disposable meat. Find somebody desperate enough to make a name for themselves. Promise them respect. Give them a weapon they can barely hold. Point towards something expensive.

Congratulations! You manufactured your own little revolution.

The attack went from "mild disturbance" to "BALLS-TO-THE-WALL CHAOS" when Vexx, a member of the Sinners street gang, joined Ksenia "Oxiana" Orlova, a criminal associated with their rival gang, the Snakes, and together attacked Junior Agent Frank Murdoch.

Then everything went to hell.

I saw Agent Murdoch fight back with tooth and bone. The defense did not come without sacrifice. Murdoch and two other members of NSEC lost their lives in the fighting, a grim reminder that sometimes, the line of duty stops being a line and becomes a meat grinder.

The Judges arrived and helped secure the perimeter, driving away the surviving terrorists, who fled aboard a HondaMitsu Koi and a Sandfly Aerodyne. So you might be wondering, dear readers, what did this glorious revolutionary offensive accomplish?

The answer is a big, fat, and reassuring "NOTHING". No equipment stolen, no prizes, no triumphant narratives... only a hunger for glory they couldn't sate, leaving empty-handed, licking their wounds, and abandoning two of their own behind. One dead... another alive.

The unfortunate soul left in New Light Media's was Drazen "m0th" Kos, unemployed and unoccupied. I thought that perhaps her alias was just a witty reference to the tasteless biomodifications that left them looking half moth and half human, without quite managing to successfully commit to either. I'll call it: a rough draft from nature that someone approved for production.

When Kos was taken for interrogation, they revealed a shocking truth to us: they had no idea what they were getting into. According to them, they had simply been asked to perform a small task and were assured there would be no consequences.

I repeat: NO CONSEQUENCES!

Somebody apparently convinced a Red-sector moth-person that participating in an armed attack against a megacorporation was roughly as consequential as picking up groceries. This is where this stops being merely another story about mixers making catastrophic life decisions and starts becoming interesting.

It is easy to point fingers at the disposable foot soldiers: Vexx, Orlova, Kos. The harder question is what put these people in the same place, at the same time, and pointed them in the same direction.

How do people who caught the short end of every stick the Dome ever handed out suddenly get access to a Koi and a Sandfly Aerodyne? Who provided transportation? Who coordinated the escape? Who set up a distraction bomb moments before the attack? Who provided cover fire while the others bled?

There may be an answer.

In the aftermath of the attack, a group calling itself "RYE", short for "Remember Your Enemy," claimed responsibility. Little is publicly known about the organization or who, if anyone, leads it. What is known is that RYE has been actively spreading anti-corporate propaganda across the Grid, and now appears eager to attach its name to the bloodshed outside New Light Media.

A claim of responsibility is not proof of orchestration. Any idiot with Grid access can take credit after the bodies hit the pavement. But if RYE truly organized this attack, then the questions become considerably more interesting.

Who recruited the attackers? Who provided transportation? Who coordinated the escape? And who convinced people like Kos that there would be "no consequences" for participating?

And most importantly, who benefits?

Honestly, dear readers? I don't know. But I know several citizens who might otherwise have pursued lives of achievement, productivity, and prosperity instead allowed themselves to be shepherded into somebody else's violence. Somebody promised them purpose, pointed them toward a corporate target, and sent them forward to bleed in vain.

That is the ugly little secret behind every disposable revolutionary. The shepherd watches from a safe distance, preaching revolution while sending his flock to the slaughter.

My gratitude goes to Agent Murdoch, who stood his ground against the terrorists, took two of them down in the process, and sent the survivors fleeing with their tails between their legs. The Withmore Justice Force likewise deserves recognition for their response and assistance.

E. Reed,Globe Reporter.

There is something bothering me.

It isn't the explosions that happened in East Red. Those have bothered me plenty already.

And it isn't the death toll, either. Thirty thousand. Seventy six thousand. Dead, permed, does anyone really know? Bodies are still being cleared out. Pick your estimate. Once you are counting people by the TENS OF FUCKING THOUSANDS you have already failed somewhere.

What bothers me this moment is what came after. And I'm not talking about the heroes who rushed into the fires, or pulled out bodies, or did their best to patch up broken people.

Liat Peretz, known terrorist, stood in front of a camera and told the Mix that NLM was hiding the truth. She waved away the official investigation because she didn't like the answer. She hooked up a felibot and narrowcast her home video onto a single television at Red's Finest and asked if anyone could believe a gas explosion could do this.

YES. I. CAN.

I've seen what explosions do to people. I've zipped up body bags that no family should ever have to open again. You don't forget shit like that. You also don't build theories from it. You build theories from fucking EVIDENCE.

Tom Morrisson's article may well deserve criticism. Not because it was wrong, but because it was callous. Thousands of people had just died and he couldn't resist making jokes. He was being an asshole while people are still digging through rubble. A reporter owes victims more respect than that. But a reporter with poor bedside manners is still capable of reporting the truth.

These are two separate things: Being an asshole, and telling the truth. Ms. Peretz doesn't seem interested in separating that shit. Instead, she invites people to distrust every answer that doesn't fit the story that SHE wants to tell.

She doesn't present evidence... she only presents outrage. And she doesn't investigate... she insinuates.

When you convince grieving people that every official answer is a lie, you shouldn't be surprised when someone decides that VIOLENCE is the only fucking way to get the truth.

During her little puppet show, she described the recent bombing at NLM Tower by the group calling itself Remember Your Enemy (RYE) as proof that the Mix would not let the story be swept under the rug.

Read that sentence again.

A bomb goes off. Twenty people died. And somehow that is folded into the same story about demanding answers.

If your method of demanding answers is murdering people who had nothing to do with the decision you are angry about, you are not exposing the truth. You are creating ANOTHER FUCKING TRAGEDY.

If you've got evidence that investigators lied, then bring it forward. If you've got proof that reports were fabricated, bring it to me and I WILL FUCKING PUBLISH IT. If all you've got is 'That looks too awful to be an accident' then what you have is an OPINION and not EVIDENCE.

One wonders if Ms. Peretz understands the innocents that get caught up in her anger?

Here's another question. If the corporations wanted to wipe out Red Sector, why stop at one block?

Anyone who has lived in Withmore for more than a week knows exactly how much power the corporations have. If they truly wanted a neighborhood erased, then they wouldn't need a gas line. They wouldn't need an elaborate dumbass cover story. They have enough money, enough tech, enough firepower to FLATTEN districts before Tom Morrison can eat his motherfucking breakfast.

The fact that they can doesn't mean that they do. Dead workers don't keep production lines moving. Dead consumers don't make corporations what they love the most... THE ALMIGHTY CHYEN. There are plenty of reasons to criticize the corporations. Pick a REAL ONE. They've earned enough of those. Hell, Ms. Peretz has a great one when she repeats again and again that VIRIISOMA BIOMODDED HER AGAINST HER WILL.

You don't have to invent massacres that they didn't commit.

Red sector is crowded. Buildings stand shoulder to shoulder. Aging gas lines, power conduits, and old infrastructure are all packed together like fucking sardines inside of sardines because THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU STACK PEOPLE ON TOP OF EACH OTHER FOR DECADES.

When something goes wrong in a place built like that, it spreads fast. Real fast. And that is exactly what we saw. It was a tragedy. Sometimes one bad decision is enough. And that is frightening. It is also the truth.

If we are going to demand honesty from corporations, we should demand it from ourselves, too.

-N. Juliet Barclay, Withmore Globe

There is something dark and funny about a receptionist smiling politely while a corpse cools just twenty feet away.

The brochures promising "eternal life" for a convenient 5,000c fee lined up on the walls. The keyboards behind the reception desk kept clacking away. Gold has a strange way of pretending nothing happened while the blood is still wet.

Before the custodians arrived to clean the floor, I got to the Sense/Net offices in Gold Sector. I found three Judges standing by the aftermath. Between their questions and the sterile corporate decor lay the body of a stocky woman named Fabia, with two WAI HGB-6 Urban Assault pistols left beside her. Across from them stood the woman she had come to kill.

The intended victim was none other than Elana Jewel, the rising star of New Light Media, better known to her growing audience as S1R3N.

This attack was not a random act of madness. In the days before the shooting, Fabia had publicly threatened Jewel over the SIC, vowing to unleash hell. Whether Fabia's motive was obsession, jealousy, ideological hatred, or simply another broken mind seeking fame through violence is not important. In Gold, people reach murder by different paths, but they all seem to end in the same place.

When I later spoke to Jewel about those threats, she recalled they were surprisingly direct. "They largely focused around Fabia insisting that they intended to shoot me," she told me. "There wasn't much reason given beyond a comment that I'd been shot a lot and they thought it was about time I got shot again."

What matters is that Fabia acted on her threats.

Inside the polished reception area of Sense/Net, the would-be assassin fired at one of New Light Media's most promising performers. By the time the Judges secured the scene, the shooting was already over. Jewel had survived with minor injuries. Fabia wasn't that lucky.

Despite the calm she projected afterwards, Jewel admitted the attack still shook her. "I was kind of more in shock," she reflected. More striking still was her admission that this was far from the first attempt on her life. "The previous me was shot at and blown up quite regularly... but this was the first time an attempt has physically maimed me beyond simple scars."

The most interesting detail was not the outcome itself, but the person who took the matter in their own hands.

I witnessed this fact myself: the Judges did not stop the attack. That credit goes to Arachne Fairchild. Known as a talent manager at New Light Media rather than a corp-sec gunslinger, Fairchild intervened before Fabia could finish her assault. In just a few frantic moments, she changed from wageslave to protector, executioner, and ultimately defendant.

For her actions, the Judges charged her with Voluntary Manslaughter. Is this a criminal, or someone who's willing to bend the rules to stand up for her convictions?

Jewel herself never hesitated when asked about Fairchild's actions. "Miss Fairchild is a very capable woman," she said. "Not only did she protect me, she was quick to attempt to look me over for injuries despite knowing my own medical expertise. She's capable and caring even in the heat of battle."

There is an irony in that which feels distinctly Withmore. A woman comes in ready to murder a celebrity. Another woman stops her. The corpse belongs to the attacker, yet the survivor's defender leaves the scene with an extra line to her rap sheet.

Tomorrow, when the Dome has forgotten everything and the same receptionist clacks away at the same keyboard offering the same salvation, nothing will be different. What changes is this: the city now knows that when death came for one of New Light Media's brightest stars, it wasn't a Judge who stood in its way.

It was Arachne Fairchild.

E. Reed, Globe Reporter