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

Well. Where do I start with this one?

Late last night, an entire block of Eastern Red Sector went up, and I mean up, folks, I'm talking structural-integrity-is-now-a-memory up, after a resident, in his own apartment, attempted what WCS and TERRA investigators are calling "a catastrophic and frankly baffling attempt at unlicensed gas line modification" on his own gas main. His own. Not a shared line, not a building fault, a man, alone, with a wrench and apparently a grudge against WCS Certified Technicians, which, and I've said this before on this very desk, is exactly the kind of corner-cutting that gets towers vitrified.

I actually did my own kitchen wiring once. Different situation entirely. I had a permit.

The resulting blast tore straight through the man's own tower first, and I have to say, folks, there's a lesson in that, there's a real lesson in that, about the nature of consequence, bringing the entire structure down floor by floor. But it didn't stop there. The pressure wave and the resulting fires jumped straight to the neighboring complexes in the block, setting off a chain of secondary explosions across at least three more buildings before WCS and TERRA could even get units on scene. One gas line. One man. Half a block.

I sat with that for a while. In the studio. Alone, mostly, because Denise was on a break.

Preliminary numbers coming in from Withmore City Services are, frankly, staggering. Only four thousand two hundred sixty-four residents have made it through to the cloning vats, and look, that's the system working, that's what the vats are for, no need to panic, chin up, but I have to tell you, and this is the hard part of the job, the part they don't teach you in Gridworks orientation, that seventy-two thousand three hundred and ninty-nine residents are confirmed permanently killed. Gone. No clone. Across an entire block. That number may rise. It probably will. It's the kind of number you sit with.

Eyewitnesses describe a low hum, then what one survivor called "the whole east wall deciding it didn't want to be a wall anymore," followed by structural collapse across multiple towers, one after another, like, and I don't say this lightly, like dominoes, if the dominoes were people's homes. WCS and TERRA are on scene. Genetek has confirmed additional cloning units have been diverted to the area to handle processing volume, which, credit where it's due, is the kind of rapid corporate response that makes you proud to live under a dome. Speaking of domes, have you tried the new dome-roast blend down at Kro's? Not sponsored. I just like it. It's not even real, but if it was, you'd love it too. The power of the news!

WJF has confirmed the man responsible for the original gas line did not survive the initial blast, which investigators are calling, and I quote, "the only mercy in this entire situation." I'm inclined to agree, and I don't say that lightly either.

City Services reminds all residents: report gas irregularities to a licensed technician, not on your own initiative. Withmore City Services can be reached via Gridmail. Do not, and I want to be very clear about this, attempt to fix your own gas main because you watched a tutorial on the Grid. I watched a tutorial once. It was about sourdough. It went fine. This is not the same.

This has been Tom Morrisson, NLM Eyewitness Grid News.

Something big has happened.

Most people felt it before they heard it, as a rumble rolled through the city earlier today. Not long after, the sound of multiple explosions echoed domewide. The exact location was hard to pin down, but officials later confirmed that the trouble was centered in Eastern Red Sector.

The city's population counter also changed in a fucking blink. Before the incident, the population reportedly stood around 101,707,000. Minutes after, it read a loss of over thirty-five thousand.

The WJF has urged citizens to remain calm.

"The situation is under control, and there is no need for alarm." stated Judge Steele over the SIC network. The WJF has ignored this reporter's request for further clarity or statement.

No need for alarm. Thirty-five thousand fucking lives. Imagine that for a moment.

The WCS has issued a more direct statement.

"Citizens are advised to avoid entering the Eastern Red Sector area. There have been reports of multiple explosions causing collapses, and we have lost signal in the local area. Emergency response teams have been dispatched to assist with quarantine and triage of damage."

Whatever has happened to cause this destruction, it was serious enough to knock out communications and send emergency crews rushing into the area.

People closer to the scene paint a fucked-up picture of what responders are facing.

One WCS worker stated, "There's hundreds of corpses, and I'm cleaning them up one vanfull at a time."

Many citizens of Central Red Sector have reached out to assist with the aftermath. Hundreds of bodies had been brought to the Sinn Street parking lot, and they are being sorted into piles for the cloneable and uncloneable as we all wait for Clone Angel assistance.

At the time of writing, officials have not released a cause for the events of today. There has been no confirmation that the incident was an attack, an accident, or the result of something else entirely. For now the only certainty is that emergency crews have been working for hours, and are likely to have a long night ahead as the rest of the city waits for answers.

Until more information becomes available, it would be wise to listen to Withmore City Services and stay clear of the East Red Sector.

This is a developing story.

We'll keep asking questions.

-N. Juliet Barclay, Globe Reporter