Up The Tower by J.P. Lantern Page A

There was no one for him to turn to in this place except for Jackson Crash, and he wasn't much more to Crash than...than...he didn't know. Not much more than a tool, like the many strewn about his lab.
    He picked up his blowtorch, tapping it against his knees.
    “I wish...” He gripped the metal harder, pushing in dents in his palms. “I wish...”
    He knew the words he wanted to say. He knew them better than anything. They cradled his thoughts as he went to sleep; they were the tidal forces behind every wave of tears he ever had. They tightened every screw on Jackson’s suit. He slipped down to a junk-infested corner, putting his head in his hands.
    Go on, he dared himself. Say them. Say them. See what changes. Go on, you loser. Say it, say it, say it, say it—
    “I wish I could have somebody.”
    There. Out of him, now.
    He took a breath and called out to Partner; he told the copbot to come inside.
    * * * * *
    I t is important, I think, to ensure we are all on the same page when it comes to the lay of the land. St. Louis at this time was a unique city, and its surrender to the corpocracy that shaped its destiny so extensively was never pre-ordained.
    Through the course of my extensive research—and I tell you it was extensive—I have found that The Gateway Tower was supposedly one of those earthquake-proof buildings. But, rather than truly being a safety-measure against an earthquake, we can surmise via a number of sources that this manner of construction was adopted due to the fact that St. Louisians at the time were terrified of a nuclear attack. Enormous amounts of money and commerce flowed from their city hub due to their near-monopoly on the water boom (a result of the accidental discovery of the Mississippi River's incredible aptitude to create power for an entire generation—a record better explained elsewhere, by others more suited to the task).
    There was, in fact, so much commercial success that talk of secession was a regular part of the public discourse, and in some communities the inevitability of such a decision was taken almost as a matter of course.
    At some point, Federal money stopped flowing into the city (the Federal government itself absorbed by Groove and Tri-American), but it hardly mattered—everyone in the Western hemisphere depended on St. Louis water plants for energy. The stretch of St. Louis's influence stretched all the way up to Canada, following the Mississippi river, and the Rammin' Regulars—as the Missouri National Guard came to be called—came to guard every inch of the Mississippi's long stretch.
    No longer was that the case at the time of the disaster which I have recorded in these pages. Tri-American’s grip was solid when the earthquake hit. With the bursting of the water boom bubble—replaced years before with potent combinations of wind and solar power coming in from every part of the world, all owned unconditionally by the powers of the mega-corps—St. Louis's power had diminished.
    There is the argument made from time to time that during this in-between period, when St. Louis ran itself and still resisted corporate dominance, the city was the last bastion of real governmental power in the United States. Even if that was true, it was a period like any other. By which I mean to say, it did not last.
    Tri-American and Groove, seeing the fertile commercial territory of St. Louis, did everything they could to buy influence. First, bribery was the name of the game—which had worked well in nearby areas like Cincinnati and Kansas City. But any technology that these mega-corps could offer was already affordable by even the poorest of the city’s voting bloc, thanks to the leftover wealth from the water boom.
    Offers of Corporate Citizenship were dismissed as similarly useless, and the only real bargaining chips left were Corporate Shares—though neither corporation wanted to actually set that precedent. Corporate Shares gave individuals enormous amounts of wealth (and so