90 Deg. 5 H. II – XIV

“But then why would the chairs be upholstered in red velvet?” Ada was saying.
Caleb stared intently at a pale mushroom slithering between a crack in the floorboards at the wall.
Ada tapped him on the head, “Are you even listening to me?”
He turned to look at her. “To be honest, it sounds like the couriers weren’t really on the ball. Guys like that are why drones took over 90% of the standard contracts,” he answered.
She stared at him. He turned back, waiting for her to tell him what was wrong. She sighed, folded her arms, and turned her attention towards an arc of reflected light wobbling across the jade table top.

The Shaved Matrix was a luxurious dive. The entire place was submerged, built into one of the long-flooded levels. To get down to the bar he’d had to get a large mirror-backed lift. It had descended for a full minute before coming to its stop. There was an emergency staircase, but he didn’t want to think about how many steps it contained. Large portions of the bar’s walls were made entirely of reinforced plate glass. Outside, the ocean roiled.

The designers had clearly imagined a sedate atmosphere, some low chatter over LED lamps, a light air of sophistication lingering over the jade-lacquered table tops when they built the place. What they actually had was a herd of coked-up marketers, grandstanding architects, and anxiety-riddled accountants. The din of competitive bragging and ongoing battle for airspace pummelled the walls. The bar staff, dressed as if larping as bootleggers from centuries gone by, maintained a fragile veneer of restrained respected for their bloviating overbearing customers, who bellowed their orders across the counter, waved glitter-smeared cards in their faces. Every so often they reached across the bar to grab at a tap or occasionally a member of staff.

He was sitting at a long rectangular table with a group of Ada’s friends, listening to the banter as Monitor Salve’s Cerise Wail filtered through the speaker system.  

“Sheryl? Of course, she’s my niece’s sister.” A dark-skinned woman with a ginger ponytail, who might have been Amber, was saying to another woman, tan, with a thick purple braid and a noticeable beer belly swirling a pint glass, who might have been Meera.
“Alonzo plays squash with Sheryl’s husband, you know,” a handsome man who might have been Harry interjected, fingering a salmon shirt beneath a pale-blue blazer.

An exaggerated man on a nearby table sat across from a jigsaw of a woman, laughing uproariously as his phone spat grainy strings of noise, the volume cranked up all the way to compete with the background music pumping through the speakers. Her reciprocated laughter had the undertone of a gears being frantically cranked, as it zigzagged out of her bright red mouth and over the bar room.

“But it pays into my pension, so I can’t complain too much,” a guy who was probably Robert was telling the guy who was probably Harry. Robert had his hair in a top knot, shaved bald at the sides and back, and was wearing shades and a matte gold trench coat with some kind of crocodile skin under pattern. Caleb turned to Ada, who was tapping hurriedly at her phone. She’d reeled off a list of names at him as he arrived, and then sauntered off to the bar before he could ask for clarity. Now it was probably too late to ask.
Robert turned away, paused, and then back to them with adopted a look of earnest curiosity. “Oh, I’ve just seen James Waldorf, would you excuse me?” he announced, and left without waiting for a reply, his long gold and orange coat flapping behind him.  

Probably Harry turned to Caleb, brushing something from his collar, and with a knowing smirk, his bushy horseshoe moustache twitching around wet lips, commented “Get a load of that flash prick. Who has a pension? Surprised the smarmy bastard doesn’t live on the Mountain.” 
Caleb manufactured an approximation of a good-natured laugh, nodded vigorously, and wondered if he should write the word ‘pension’ down in his phone. He’d have to look it up the next time he went for a piss, but Probably Harry seemed immensely impressed by it, so whatever it was, was probably important.

On one of the few solid wall panels there was a picture of two faceless androgynous figures. One was handing a bar of gold to the other in exchange for a deep blue gemstone. The painting was faded. Beside him, Harry was adjusting the wide cuffs on a salmon-hued shirt beneath a pale blue blazer. The diamond studs in the oversized golden cufflinks playing with the light. 

Caleb looked down as Ada slid her empty glass over to him. He looked back at the painting. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her prodding the glass further across the table into his line of view. He took it, held it up to the light as if examining a diamond. He looked over at her. She was studying him with an expression of expectation. When he did nothing, she leaned towards him, raised her eyebrows. He smiled at her, shook his head. She cocked hers to the side. He leaned back and then turned back to the painting. She drummed her fingers on the table. He couldn’t hear her tap tap tapping on the jade lacquer, but he could see the rapid movement of her fingers. He snapped around, leaned into her. They sat leaning close and staring at each other and then she leaned back, and sighed, shoulders slumping.

She made to get up, turned towards the bar. He put a hand on her shoulder. She turned back, pouting. He shook his head, gestured at himself. Her mouth drew into a thin line, her arm jerked towards the bar. He motioned for her to calm down, and then gestured towards her seat again. She remained standing. He rolled his eyes, got up. She sat down. Then her friend with the shades and the gold trench started to say something again, and his head hurt and his jaw was tight. He chuckled, headed towards the bar. The guy with the phone on the table next to them was still competing with the background music and the girl opposite was still churning out scrap metal laughter, and Ada was talking, but he couldn’t hear her and he figured maybe it was for the best.

He was leaning on the bar waiting for the staff to take notice of him. From somewhere nearby, a snatch of a conversation:

“Did I ever tell you about the time I fucked mummy on the golf course, third hole?”
“Third hole? I bet it was!”
“Baxter, you cad!”

A yellow poster on one wall read, in heavy block capitals, ‘Dance on my balls’. He turned his attention to the screen hanging above the bar. A news anchor, frowning into the camera, reported on the latest.

“A Placement office in G11-M20-H-C-L12 was attacked this afternoon by a lone woman carrying a semi-automatic machine gun. The woman, a Verticalisation Broker in the Department for Internal Rulings at King Security, caused tens of thousands in property damage. She was taken down by on-site members of Placement’s security team, after a firefight that lasted just over 2 minutes, costing the office tens of thousands in lost productivity. She also killed 16 and injured 32 staff, which may cause recruitment spending at Placement to expand this quarter by a significant percentage. The head of site security rejected a request for follow up, but insiders are speculating on why it took security so long to eliminate the interruption to productivity.

Placement themselves have confirmed that they have let 17 of the surviving staff go, as their wounds were judged to have a negative forward impact on their productivity levels.

At the time of reporting, Harold’s Dip is running a bet on whether Placement will cut staff further in order to cover costs, rehire the lost staff, or do nothing. The bet has amassed millions of positions so far, with odds of 6-to-1 on further staff cuts. They have also purchased the rights to all related bets, cornering the market on what will no-doubt be a lucrative event for them. We salute their ruthless efficiency and would like to place a bet on profits in their next quarterly earnings report.

Identified posthumously as 0918384981, the shooter seems to have been retaliating for censorship on the platform and the ’shadow banning’ of her comments. Placement staff were back at work 20 minutes after the attack. A representative told us ‘There are other platforms out there… I think. If your message doesn’t fit out narrative, you’re at liberty to take it to a place where it does not contravene our mandates. As the controllers of a privately owned public square, we retain the right to suppress counternarratives that run contrary to our aims with the Placement platform.’”

“Sir? Sir!” the woman behind the bar waved her hand across the bar at him. He jolted, grinned sheepishly at her and apologised. She gave him an impatient smile, raised her head to glance over his shoulder as five other people lined along the bar next to him, at least one glowering in his direction. He followed her gaze to see three more boisterous sorts swaggering in his direction. He decided against flipping off the guy staring at him, turned back, and gave his orders in double time. He considered getting Ada the alcohol-free version or just the wrong drink altogether, but maybe her attitude would clean up if she drank a little more and relaxed a bit, and maybe they wouldn’t have to go another round. He turned back to the screen. 

“We interviewed the public to hear what they had to say:  
“Oh my god, how could someone do this? It’s barbaric!”
“Who cares? They deserved it. You can’t go censoring people and expect no pushback.”
“Fuck around and find out. They censored her, they get a few bullets. She fires off a few bullets, she gets a few bullets in return. Circle of life.”
“Fewer morons trying to control the narrative. Fewer lunatics running around with machine pistols. Everybody wins….”
“I’m going to make so much money on that Harold’s Dip bet!”
We’ll return to this story later tonight, in the meantime, follow us on Placement for updates as it unfolds. Until then, as always, stick with NewTomorrow for the latest and greatest in current events coverage.” 

He watched the bar woman pour the drinks in a series of tight, controlled, motions and wanted to ask her why she was serving drinks, and not the usual automated vending system. He thought better, and paid extra for her to turn the music up. She looked confused, then laughed, shrugged, and took his money. She gestured to another guy further along the bar, who disappeared through a door in the back. The music notched up.

As he walked back trying not to spill the drinks, Caleb smiled to himself as he passed the guy with the phone glaring at the ceiling, the music drowning out his music. He held his phone up to his ear, shifted position a couple of times, and eventually give up. Caleb let the syrup of petty vindictiveness roll over him, and luxuriated in it. Between the coke and the stranger’s irritation, the night might just be tolerable. Sure, the guy with the phone hadn’t done anything to him personally, and technically his pleasure in the man’s discomfort made him a dick, but it was worth taking small victories where you could.

“But I really think we need to upscale windows of opportunity to drive outreach to third-party core competencies across all customers, monetising with seamless integrations and SERPS to empower OKR and soft strategy,” Harry was telling Larisa, flicking one hand at the table to emphasise his point. Larisa nodded at him, aligning the expression on her face to synergise with his outreach expectations.
“Why do they have human barkeepers here?’ Caleb asked the table, setting Ada’s drink down and then his own, ‘Why not machines like everywhere else?”
A bored shrug, “Image thing, a USP. It makes the clientele feel special.”

Someone had bought his seat while he’d been at the bar and taken it somewhere else. He wanted to know why they’d let it go without his input. The guy with the shades, who had returned from his conversation with James Waldorf and now plastered his face with a profoundly smug expression, shrugged and told him a profit was a profit. He asked whether he was going to see any of that profit, and the guy with the glasses told him no, but assured Caleb that he was free to buy a seat from him. Caleb nodded and took a long drink out of Ada’s glass while he suppressed the urge to walk over and glass the trenchcoated twat. She protested loudly, and he apologised, assured her he’d taken her drink our of a moment of stupidity. She scowled at him and then her drink, studying the glass as if suspicious that it was going to jump up and slap her.

He stood there awkwardly listening to them all talk, like a substitute teacher that none of the kids respect. He tried squatting at the corner, but then grew self-aware, felt awkward. Then his thighs started to protest and he realised he couldn’t hold a squat for potentially hours at a time, and stood back up feeling even more stupid.

Harry had turned to the guy with the shades, whose name, apparently, was Robert, and was telling him, “We’ve really got to quell this remote work situation. I mean I drive a car, an expensive car. People deserve to see that. I have this suit. You know how much this is worth. What’s the point of this suit if nobody witnesses it?”
“It’s about the order. Maintaining the true pillars of society. You can’t have the bottom of the pyramid not supporting the top.” Robert responded, swishing translucent liquid around a tall glass. “The whole thing collapses without the top.”
“Right!”  Harry agreed, stabbing his index finger defiantly into the table top, “There has to be the correct arrangement of people.”
“I mean, I like a good coffee in the morning. And my friend Bill Morgan over at Stakely & Organs -“
“He had that international account, right? The Iketa deal?”
“Right? I’m half convinced that’s why he got the job.”
“Hey, I’d hire him.” Harry said, holding his glass out to Robert.
Robert met it with a soft clink, “Anyway, he runs a nice little side line on the board of Grounds Group and they own Maltese Mug.” 
“Oh, right, I think I know those guys – purple sign over by Herbal Maximums?” 
“Bingo. Go in there all the time. I just like the brew. But in Maltese Mug there’s a waitress, Sally, and I always get Sally to make my coffee, even if the other staff are on the counter. I tell them to bring me Sally.”
“What do you do if she’s not working?”
“She’s always working.”
“Admirable dedication.”
“She’ll go places. Commitment – it’s what’s missing these days. Anyway, so she’s always there. And I think, look, if she wasn’t there to serve me my coffee just the way I tell her to serve me my coffee, what the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Right, society falls over!” 

Caleb looked over at the bar, where some short scruffy guy in an ill-fitting mustard suit was moving from one end of the bar to the other. He seemed to be hitting on any woman in turn, and judging by the responses, he wasn’t getting very far. Caleb couldn’t hear anything that he was saying, but the women looked alternately confused, revolted, or simply laughed. It was hard, he decided, to make his mind up as to whether this character should be pitied for his incompetence, disliked for the blasé manner in which he felt entitled to invade other people’s lives, or cheered on for his tenacity in the face of continuous rejection. When the guy got to the end of the bar, he ordered a drink, the barman looked at him the way a judge looks at a junkie.

On Placement, NewTomorrow were promoting a new article: ‘What coat-hanger abortions taught me about leveraging market brainshare’. A grey fish the size of a small car with saucer eyes like sour milk drifted past one of the walls.

“Did you guys hear about the FastGrid bombings?” Meera asked the table.
Caleb tensed.
“Yeah, happened a little while ago, right?” Larisa asked
“Yeah, that’s right. But they’re investigating it still. They’re not sure who it was. All the surrounding camera footage was wiped. It’s like someone detonated an EMP and then this bomb.”
“Got to be a professional attack, then,” Harry stated.
Meera drained her drink, “Yeah, they think it was an inside job, brought in by hand. Nobody has a matching drone at that time.”
“Can’t they just ask what anyone saw?” Caleb asked, and hoped he didn’t sound as anxious as he felt.
“Nobody left alive.” Harry said with a shake of the head, “The whole tower collapsed. There’s just a chunk of that entire level gone.”

Caleb suppressed a groan. There were bodies, thousands of bodies, charred and smoking, falling through the air, the stack collapsing around them, the wood splintering and bursting as the blast ripped through walls and struts and pillars. Harry was still talking. Caleb moved his head like a marionette, nodding as if profoundly interested by whatever it was that Harry was saying, but he could barely hear the man. His voice seemed distant, as if coming to him through a vast body of water, or from the other side of one of the bar’s plate glass panels. He hadn’t expected the conversation to shock him. After all, he had seen the blast, watched the collapse. Watched the wood splinter and the metal buckle and the stack shudder and lurch. He had not stuck around to take it in. He had deliberately and systematically avoided everything around it after the fact. For some reason, he wished he had the briefcase with him. He wanted to feel the familiar weight in his grasp.

“Whoever delivered it must have been in on it,” someone was saying. “Real professional attack.”
“Wow, wonder who and why?”
“There’s a million theories on Placement. Some people think it was The Mountain,” Larisa said.
“For FastGrid? Not a chance. They’re way too small; not even on The Mountain’s radar.”
“That’s what I think. But you know what people are like.”
“But how do you explain the lack of stills of footage? That’s got to be a coverup.”
”Oh, don’t start with that conspiracy bullshit,” Robert groaned, rolling his eyes
“You don’t know,” Larisa protested
“Right, I don’t. I don’t pretend to, either.”
“I’m just following the facts.”
“What facts?” Robert shook his head, “You don’t have any facts.”   
She jabbed a finger at him across the table,” Neither do you, you arrogant dipshit.” 
“Not everything is a spooky deep state false flag psy-op…” Amber said, eyeing the remaining liquid in her glass
Larisa’s mouth drew into a small line, “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

They broke off as a woman in a fur-collared lime green blazer slashed with navy blue down the right side, crashed into their table. They managed to save their drinks, but several empty glasses cascaded over the side of the table and shattered, spraying glass splinters across the floor. The woman, running both hands through the luxurious auburn hair flowing around her shoulders, slurred a lengthy apology at Robert, who stared at her with the dead-eyed contempt of a judge. He seemed about to tell her to fuck off, when she latched onto his bicep, and began regaling him with a teary-eyed account of… it wasn’t clear. Caleb listened with a frown of concentration, but remained none the wiser. It seemed to involve a pair of fish nets, a pneumatic drill, and a harpsichord mounted on a drone, but the connection between these three items was lost in an avalanche of words that poured out of her mouth in an unending torrent.

Now seemingly more bewildered by the interruption than irritated, Robert let her talk, blinking and nodding at her. Unfortunately, she took it as encouragement. Their group around the table watched in varying levels of bemusement, occasionally stifling guffaws behind hands or laughing into their sleeves, as she prattled on. Only Larisa seemed irritated by the interruption, but, looking around at the distracted table, apparently thought better of making the woman leave. Eventually, the drunk woman paused, belched, and looked around. “Oh, fucking hell, I need to piss like a sea sponge,” she announced, and then tottered past Robert without a backwards glance. There was silence as the table processed the event, and then collectively subsided into fits of laughter.     

“So what do you think happened?” Larisa resumed, not missing a beat, as they pulled themselves together.
Ada shook her head, “To her? Isn’t it obvious?”
Larisa made a noise in her throat, “No. Obviously not her. To FastGrid!”
Would it be ok to excuse himself and head to the lifts? Would they notice that?
Robert shrugged, staring after the woman as she staggered off towards the bathrooms. “It’s all speculation. Corporate sabotage, angry employee, gas leak…” He looked around, as if bored by the question, “You could offer a dozen different answers from the mundane to the fantastical. None of which go anywhere.”
Amber shrugged, “Whatever draws eyeballs.”
“What about integrity?”
“What about it?”
“At the rate PPC pays out?” Meera scoffed. “Let me know when you can buy shares with integrity.”
Maybe he could tell them he was taking a piss and then leave. Then again, that might be suspicious. It would probably be best to hide in plain sight.
“It’s got to be someone high up on the inside, that’s all I’m saying,” Larisa protested, staring down into her empty glass “You have to know the place to pull off something like this.”
“Whatever, drop it.” Caleb said, aiming for casualness.
“No, why? It’s an interesting event!”
“Is it?” Ada yawned
“That’s like saying your maid is responsible for your failed marriage!” Harry said, subsiding into another burst of laughter.
Larisa’s head snapped around, “You have a maid?”
“Of course, don’t you?”
“I mean, yeah, of course.” Her eyes darted, “I just didn’t think you did.”
“I do.”

Caleb let himself relax a notch.

“Any good? Did you go freelance or did you get her through an agency?” Robert asked
“Who said it’s a woman?” interrupted Ada.
Harry rolled his eyes. “Of course it’s a woman, Ada.”
“I can confirm – it is a woman. I wouldn’t have hired a man.” He laughed and gave Harry five.
“Well why not? Why does it have to be a woman cleaning your apartment?”
“Hey, look, let’s be clear: the maid is there to suck me off and serve me drinks. That’s what I pay her for. The cleaning is complementary.”
They collapsed into peals of laughter, their glasses chiming off each other. Ada scowled at them. 

She hadn’t touched her drink. Caleb wondered if there was something wrong with it. He thought about how much it had cost, clenched his jaw reflexively, unclenched it. He started to say something, and immediately thought better of it. Almost everything he did tonight seemed to draw more aggravation from her. She turned to him, asked what he’d said. He waved her off, told her he’d just been clearing his throat. She turned back to the table. Robert stood, “Drinks?” Ada raised her hand, “Here.” He looked at her full drink, frowned briefly, went around the table. Caleb shook his head, indicating a half-full glass in front of him. Robert swaggered off to the bar.

A shark swim through the oily water outside, its black eyes flickering in the light filtering through the windows. They all turned at a smashing glass and a shrill shriek. One of the staff had dropped a column of glasses. Patrons at a nearby table stood with hands over their glasses or with hands covering chests and faces. A woman stood staring and clutching a tall glass staring at the blast of outstretched shards tracing a jagged glinting road across the floor. The stunned staff member quietly cast about, and then lurched into a series of apologies, asking the patrons whether they were hurt. The barman watched the staff member with an air of bored disdain and turned back to a waiting customer, and turned back to a customer writing to be served. Chatter resumed as someone else came over with a broom.

Robert returned followed by a waitress carrying a tray of drinks. One for everyone, even those who’d refused the offer. Caleb was staring off through the windows into dark waters beyond when Meera tapped him on the shoulder. She wanted to know whether her lipstick was smeared and if he thought she looked ok. She looked like she hadn’t slept in a couple of days, there were bags under her eyes that no amount of hustle could compensate for, and her dress shirt was taught against the swollen dome of her beer belly. He told her she looked great.

“Hey, y’know, what you were saying earlier…” Harry said, gesturing at Robert, “I knew a guy, Jimmy, who tried to start a drone-delivered coffee operation. Makes sense, right? Everything else goes by drone. Coffee is an easy choice. So he gets a loan, puts down the money for all the drones and machinery, the coffee, the website, phone app – the works. Well, how does a drone keep a coffee tray stable while it’s puttering through the sky? So he had spilled coffee, dropped coffee, stolen coffee, orders showing up empty, and one lawsuit he managed to escape after one drone dumped four steaming venti Americano’s over some poor accountant minding her own business as she passed a beauty spa. She sent three different private investigators to look for that drone, or a GPS tracker or an order receipt. None of them could find anything. 

So Jimmy figures he’ll just make the holders better. Encloses the cups, reinforced holders, flight stabilisers, yada yada. Sends them out. He gets photos of boxes full of biodegradable cups floating in pools of coffee. Someone who quit around that time suggested they send the drones out with bendy straws…”

The shark swam off into the dismal ocean and disappeared from sight.

“Anyway,” continued Harry, “he spends more on more powerful drones to lift the extra weight, better batteries, etc. Then there was all the other stuff – storms, bird collisions, hackers, anything that can make something like that go missing. Damage from collisions, bent propellers, technical failures, people shooting because they think it’s a surveillance operation from their bosses or their exes or it’s carrying a signal transmitter that’s going to scramble their brains or something…  You get the idea.

Suffice to say, the operation was dead within a year. Poor jimmy lost a lot of money on that one. He fucking hates drones now. And coffee.”

Some guy across the bar started singing. Caleb followed the sound of his voice to a chubby guy who’d loosened his tie and too many buttons on his shirt. His friends carried on talking amongst themselves. The guy continued singing. To what end or to who was anyone’s guess. He couldn’t carry a tune but his singing had the straining awkwardness of those stricken with delusional earnestness. The words were an unintelligible blur. He seemed to believe whatever it was that had prompted him to subject the rest of the patrons to his keening.

Apparently, someone got sick of it because they hauled a bottle across the room. It missed and crashed across someone else’s face, showering the three people next to him in glass. All four of them erupted from their stools, pawing at bloody faces. The guy who was hit went down and didn’t get up. The other three staggered but maintained their feet and stumbled around alternately screaming and then demanding to know who’d thrown the bottle. As they screamed, the drunk guy continued to warble. Around them, people turned back to their drinks and resumed conversations amongst themselves. The guy on the floor lay forgotten and unmoving.  

A door in the back of the bar slammed open. A guy in a shirt, greying hair, followed a waitress out at speed. He was tight-faced, she stared directly ahead. He grabbed her arm around the bicep. She span. Her slap echoed across the bar, audible even over the music. His head swivelled. The heads of patrons swivelled. She yanked her arm free, marched across the bar towards the lifts. The man, clenching and unclenching his fists, made to yell something and then, eyes darting over the customers crowding the room, clamped his teeth around the words. He stood a moment more and then turned on his heel and slammed his way back through the staff door. As the she marched past them, Caleb realised it was the girl who’d dropped the tower of glasses.

“How long before she’s behind on rent, d’you think?” asked Caleb.
A series of shrugs sloshed an almost synchronised wave around the table.
Harry looked nonplussed, “I don’t know. Not long. Six months? Who cares?” 
Larisa arched an eyebrow, squinted at the ceiling, “I wonder what her exit package was?”
“Probably not great,” Meera guessed, pressing her lips into a thoughtful pout. 
“I don’t know – we’re on the 14th level,” Harry pointed out. “It’s market competitive. They’re bound to have employee programs.”

Caleb listened to them speculate on the waitress’ severance program, workshop percentages per year and how she might have leveraged herself in performance reviews, what the benefits packages were like, and a series of other concerns. Eventually, for his own amusement, he asked which bars or restaurants they’d worked at. Larisa had managed a fine diner at one point, which had subsequently gone out of business during a downturn, Meera had been involved in the buyout of a bistro chain that only ever opened on the 16th tier and above, and Robert, as an accountant, had once had a long talk with a restaurant owner about his finances.

“But none of you have ever worked behind a bar or waited tables or washed dishes.” he asked when they had talked themselves into a lull.
“Of course not.”
“That’s hardly our fault,” Ada answered.
“Those jobs are for young low-tier people,” Meera added
“It’s not their fault, either,” he answered
“Hey, of course it is,” Harry said
“It’s a meritocracy.” Robert stated. “The reason we’re rich and they’re poor is that we’re better than them, we’re smarter than they are. We saw the tide rising and we moved our assets and ourselves, and they didn’t.”
“Well, then by rights shouldn’t every waitress and bar staff be within retirement shot after ten years? They work hard.”
Robert shrugged. “The rising tide lifts all ships.” Behind him, the shark returned, erupting from the murk of the water in a savage burst of momentum, and jaws enveloping a large pale fish. 
“It’ll all just go to the top,” Caleb grumbled.
“That’s rich, coming from someone renting a pod on the 15th level,” said Ada.
Harry took a swig and burped, “It goes to the top because they earn it.” 
“Do they?”
Robert squinted at him, “Certainly. You have to know this.”
“Explain as if I didn’t.”
“Well, are you yourself not an embodiment of it?” Robert began. Caleb flinched internally. Robert continued, “As the economy grows, everybody benefits, from the richest to the most deprived.”
“What happens to services aimed at the most deprived? Year on year we hear about price hikes and bankruptcies, business being taken over or dissolving or collapsing. Where do the customers go?”
“The customers move on to the next available service. A business closing down just creates a new gap in the market.”
“What happens when these businesses either don’t have the facilities to handle demand or are out of reach of the transferring customer base?”
“If the businesses don’t have the ability to service new clients or meet demand, then they can restructure in order to raise product and service prices. This allows them to increase capital with which they can invest in expanding capacity. Or they can seek to raise capital from external sources like VC funding or a loan.” He gave Caleb a searching look, sighed and continued, “They are still unable to serve their potential customer base, that suggests a failure on the part of the management and their overflow will, like spilled water, find the easiest available point of collection – an equivalent service that can take them on and suit their requirements.”
“And if one is not available?”
“That’s just a gap in the market and the demand will inevitably be met. It’s the invisible hand,” said Harry
“And,” said Meera with a flick of her thick purple braid, and tilting her glass at him with an unearned air of authority, “don’t forget as the broader economy improves, and the living standards of everyone improves, that means that there should be less overflow. As fewer people need the services that cater specifically to the poor – like budget healthcare, for instance. Fewer sick people in society…” she trailed off.
Caleb smiled at her, not quite understanding her point. Presumably she’d had a few too many glasses. Looking around, he wasn’t the only one. Robert offered her a pained smile full of forced enthusiasm. “Right. Exactly.” He floundered about for a way to continue. “Anyway,” he inevitably settled on, “the standard of living improves for those at the bottom as well as the top, and so as everyone has more money, then fewer people struggle in daily life. No more homelessness, no more poverty, just healthy, housed, employed citizens.”
Caleb nodded, doing his best patient teacher impression. “So why did I hear on a news report that debt levels have increased for everyone on the mid-tiers and below, and the number of people living on the lower levels, and sleeping rough, has risen for decades?”
Nervous laughter. Stretched smiles. “These things just take time to work out, is all. Plus, the attitude of the lower tiers isn’t our attitude. They aren’t work-oriented people.  They have no ambition. They’re work shy.” The reply delivered in the forced congeniality of a PR representative.
Caleb smiled, “I would have imagined two plus decades would be enough.”
“Well, perhaps. But leave that aside, that number will start to fall as market efficiencies find ways to optimise and consolidate participants.”
“Look, a courier contractor shut down a few months back – one of the few left. That’s about 25,000 people out of employment. How is the market going to optimise that?”
“What are you even saying, Caleb? Whose side are you on?”
“That is the market optimising,” Ada said, waving a hand in bored dismissal. “Human couriers have been growing increasingly obsolete for decades. What’s left of the industry has been clinging on to the past for far too long, even as mass drone delivery is commonplace.”
“Also,” put in Harry, “in today’s world, 25,000 people is a drop in the bucket. A single corporation could, if they were so inclined, absorb that many new employees in a single recruitment drive.”
“That’d be a pretty heavy recruitment drive,” said Ada.
“True,” he agreed, “but it could be done without a major amount of hassle, with the right HR automation, streamlining, infrastructure, financials, etc.”

Caleb turned around, looked at the TV again. He couldn’t hear what the news anchor was saying, but there was a shot of a five-lane traffic jam along a slope of road arcing down over a residential district. Behind the road, a huge billboard for Paragon Inc. depicting a giant bar of gold on a purple background. ‘Because bad people are average,’ the billboard told the cars.  

“You need consumers,” he stated, turning back. “If you focus all the wealth at the top tiers, you’ll never drive demand. If nobody can pay for anything, how will businesses make a profit?”
Harry stared at him “What century are you living in?” He waved a dismissive hand, “Look around, man, business to consumer is a dying market.”
“How? There’s no shortage of consumer products or outlets for them.”
“Are there? Have you seen the data?”
“What data?”
“A report released by Hammond & Co. last year pointed to a 15% overall decrease in B2C business. The year before that, Branley Solutions gave a similar figure, and the year before that, the same thing.” He held up a finger as Caleb prepared to launch into a response. “I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. Did you know that 5 years ago there were over 100 brands of soap?”
“Soap?” Caleb asked
“Why are you talking about soap?” Amber interjected.
“Today there are, at best, about 30 brands.”  
“Well, ok then. There’s fewer soap brands”
“And the money in those soap brands is going elsewhere. And that’s across all consumer goods. Across all markets. Namely, it’s all going to B2B services and adjacent products. SaaS. IaaS, PaaS, etc, they are all seeing significant inflows. And then there’s AI trading, stocks, digital currencies, digital commodities – they’re all controlled by botnets and AI systems trading with each other. Ok, so a handful of hobbyists that still trade, but they’re not competing with the bots. And what are the autonomous systems trading? B2B. Nothing cares about consumer goods. The ‘demand’ you’re talking about is irrelevant.” 
“Increases in supply leads to increases prosperity.”
“Prosperity for who?”
“Everyone!”
“Bullshit. Look at the lowest levels. The number of people who can’t afford to rent a pod for a night is growing. The night men are moving on larger and larger numbers of people.”
“Who cares? If they can’t afford pods, they’re just not trying hard enough. They’re not working.”
“They are.”
“Not full time.”
“Yes, full time. Their jobs don’t pay enough to cover the basics.”
“Oh, come on, what are suggesting, a minimum wage?”
“It might stop people starving to death in the street,” he said, shrugging again.

An autonomous undersea drone propellered across the far window. Its curved and slatted utilitarian bulk coated in a thin coat of faded sickly yellow, like jaundiced skin. It suddenly turned and faced the window. Its powerful headlamp blazed through the glass, the red beads of its visual scanners trained on the interior. The group at the table nearest to the window cried out, arms throw up to shield eyes, someone tipped off a stool onto the floor with a crash. The drone lingered, staring into the room unmoving, until, apparently satisfied with some unknown calculation or analytical endpoint, it turned sharply and shuddered away into the roiling murk.     

“Awful idea,” resumed Harry.
“Stopping people from starving is an awful idea?”
“Yes. If they’re earning so little, they should just get a better job.”
“What if they can’t find a better job? What if their employers just paid a decent wage to begin with?”
“I don’t know… what are you saying? What if unicorns were real and it rained popcorn? Who cares.” Harry waved a hand dismissively, “If they can’t get better jobs, then that simply means that there is no market demand for these products. Two conclusions are possible: either they are not marketing themselves well enough, or they are, what we would call, a ‘useless eater’. They have no economic value. They exist to parasitize the hard work of the market.” He took a long drink. Caleb opened his mouth, but Harry held up a hand, finished swallowing, deliberately placed his glass on the table in front of him. “To answer your other question,” he continued, “the market regulates itself. If the market rate suggests that they are of low value, whatever the cause, then they are simply being paid what they are worth. Increasing wages would be unaffordable and distort the market by disrupting the flow of capital to its proper place. Therefore, introducing inefficiencies into the economy by maintaining jobs, goods, and services that should by market dictate be dead under normal operational conditions, then you would be creating a profoundly unhealthy system.”
Caleb sighed, shook his head, took a drink. “And people?”
“What about them?”
“They lose their jobs, their pods, their possessions, and they die. Are you suggesting that is the better outcome?”
Harry nodded, “Commodities without demand are commodities without value, and must be removed from the market,” he intoned, as if reciting from a memorised passage. “My friend, Hannah, launched a supplement line a year ago. Dead in two months!” He slashed his hand through the air, grinning, his drink sloshing up the glass and spilling onto the table. He didn’t seem to notice. “There was no demand for it.” He finished, with a tone of triumph as if leveraging some incontrovertible truth.
“People are more than supply and demand metrics.”
“No, Caleb, they aren’t,” Harry said, a note of finality in his voice as if the topic were a scientific fact beyond the need for discussion. “I wouldn’t have taken you for such a sentimentalist!” he gave a short hard bark of laughter. “Whether we like it or not, whether it involves currencies or cartilage, all of our intentions are based on exchange: Affection for stability, time and money for services, pleasure for personal progress – they are all merely forms of economic activity. Therefore, man is completely an economic unit. To claim otherwise is idealism.”
“Which does nothing to address the fact that they don’t deserve to die for someone else’s greed!”
Beside Harry, Robert sighed again. With the posture of an old man educating a naïve youth, he intoned, “It is not a question of what you or I or anybody deserves. ‘Deserve’ implies some kind of moral judgement or karmic macroeconomy. Morals, karma, judgement – all of these things are erroneous.” He became still and looked Caleb in the eye across the table. “All that matters is what you can offer other people and how much you can charge for that offer.”

Caleb subsided, suddenly tired of arguing the point. Nobody could change the mind of the others. They existed on separate wavelengths so alien to one another that even the most simple grounding principles were incompatible. The basic tenet of civilisation, that people could debate and reason out their differences, and from there co-exist, seemed, in the face of these divisions, to be a tediously idealistic notion. Some deliriously unrealistic product of the ivory tower, a fantastical daydream by the most imaginative of optimistic thinkers. 

In the corner, a bored girl stared out into the impenetrable depths, her reflection mouthing along to the Cell Slop song playing. The vague suggestion of an octopus or squid writhed in the rolling shadows just beyond vision. The girl reminded him of someone he’d known once upon a time, but he couldn’t remember her name. She’d had the same brown hair. Or maybe she’d been blonde? Was he remembering a person that existed or a false memory? He couldn’t tell. The girl by the window was drinking some kind of red cocktail. What were her deadlines? Was she hitting her targets? What was her side hustle?

“Anyway, where were we?” asked Harry
“Oh, forget it.” said Ada, “I don’t want to hear any more of this. Anyone got anything less boring to talk about?” Everyone laughed.
“What happens to the people without boats?” asked Caleb
Harry waved a glass at him, spilling alcohol across the table. “Oh, stop being such a sour puss, Caleb. Everyone’s got a boat!”

They all cheered. Caleb, found himself raising his glass and cheering with them. Against his judgement, raising his glass to a principle he didn’t agree with. In the end it didn’t seem to matter. In his mind’s eye, he saw the waitress sleeping rough on the bottom tiers, shivering in the cold, uniform smeared with grease and dirt. Propositioned and harassed by every desperate abandoned scrap of humanity that survived down there, or harried and stalked by the night men on their ceaseless patrols. Settling down to sleep in a shadowed corner somewhere, before a boot flew out of a shadow and sank into her kidneys. The night men couldn’t kick enough people awake. Where they roamed, they drove bands of sleep-deprived homeless before them. They emerged from the ocean mists like the ancient ghosts of driftwood. 

Robert, grabbed the arm of a passing member of staff “Hey, can you change this song? This one’s shit.”
“Sorry, sir, I can’t do that. I doubt it’ll be on much longer.”
“How much do I have to pay you to change this song?”
“Please let go of my arm, sir.” She was trying to be patient, but it was obviously a strain. There was a telltale edge to her voice and an almost feral narrowing of her eyes that suggested her bedside manner was not eternal.
Robert narrowed his eyes, but let go of her wrist with the air of a man placating a child, and before he could repeat his demand she’d moved briskly on. “Bitch.” Robert spat, watching her go. “Total bitch,” someone agreed. Someone else said, “She won’t last long.”

He fought the urge to get up and walk away. He settled, instead, for long swallows of his drink. Ada flicked through her phone and Harry was preoccupied with staring at a woman in a navy top with a plunging neckline, drinking alone at a table across the bar. The song played to the end.