A History Lesson (2/18)

 More "concrete" history for the cyberpunk setting. Again, much is subject to change* but this is the general underpinnings of the world I've made. I don't want it to be Zaun/Piltover (which I don't think it is, nor does Arcane have a monopoly on economically stratified societies) but I think it's got some neat stuff worth exploring!

*Don't know what this means. Subject to change where? When? To what end? We're just vibing atm

        The Corporate Zone was built to be a paradise for unimpeded commerce. The largest multinationals, in the way that only oligarchy is capable of, put aside their squabbling and jockeying for market value to build a community that would guarantee their continued economic domination. A self sufficient Eden, glittering arcologies in architectural styles garish and conflicting, no corporation willing to blend in with any other. The arcologies housed restaurants and parks, apartment suites and offices, concert halls and clubs. It was everything that the corporate drone needed to keep the numbers going up. The numbers were irrelevant, and often completely divorced from material conditions, but it was the pride of every suit to keep that number higher than it was the day before.

The suits were content to throw their billions at the construction, architectural firms were able to give stockholders generous dividends with the increased business. Materials, manufacturing, engineering, establishing information infrastructure, all of these were part of the ouroboros of corporate profit seeking. The Corporate Zone fed its sponsors through its own creation, which encouraged ever larger endeavors, ever higher dreams.

What the suits were horrified to learn is that their excursions into automation had not gone far enough. Construction Uprights could do the job of a dozen laborers, but a construction project on this scale needed tens of thousands. And the emotional saps frequently refused to move to the site without their families in tow. The multinationals balked at allowing non-employees access to their garden, to taste the fruit of the labors they’d slaved away for.

The bivouacs and hasty prefab housing the corporations deigned to set up were rarely enough to keep the workers housed, forget the steady stream of workers that arrived daily trying to get a piece of the only pie left. A massive slum, a writhing and pulsing mass of humanity, buttressed the clean avenues of the CZ.

The thefts began soon after.

The construction project was the largest in history, dwarfing the Marshall Plan in its scope and the rivaling Great Wall in its disregard for human life. With the sheer amount of materiel that arrived, it was exceptionally easy for a few tons of construction equipment to go missing here or there. Supervisors on the job sites, hired from the chaff of incoming laborers, were more than willing to turn a blind eye to the missing materials that would go to housing their friends and family. Corporate beancounters who had never worked a day in construction but made themselves rich off of it took the overseers at their word for what materials were needed and in what quantities.

By the time the multinationals caught on, the genie was out of the bottle. The old slums and sprawl the original workers had been forced into were torn down and replaced with competently built, if shabby, residential neighborhoods. A harlequinade patchwork of people from all corners of the globe, skilled and menial laborers, computer scientists angling to get a job in the corporate databanks, chefs and mothers and fathers and artists and rebels. The ever expanding mass of the non-employees threatened to overwhelm the CZ if action wasn’t taken. The Trace, a massive twenty foot tall wall of iron and electronics, was built to separate physically what the corporations had already separated economically. Shit doesn’t run uphill, and the Trace was the way the multinationals ensured that axiom stayed true.

The Trace was a deterrent, but not a solution to the problem. The arithmetic was simple enough. The CZ had food, medical supplies, and beds. CorpSec had a finite number of bullets to keep non-employees on the other side. Eventually, the demand for basic amenities would supersede the supply of bullets, and the Corporate Zone would collapse like so many governments before it.

The Auxiliary Residential Quarter was the extent of corporate imagination. The CZ still had a few finishing touches, but many of the corporations had already begun operating out of massive hundred story headquarters. There was still plenty of construction material remaining, and rather than write off the loss (what tax benefit could be given to a corporation who had eclipsed nation-states in geopolitical power?), the corporations extended their magnanimity to those that had built them their ivory towers. A massive company town, larger than some cities in scope and population. Corporate branding stamped on every rusty beam and girder, every leftover foot of cable bore the logo of the corporations that were so generous as to brush their scraps from the table. The Auxiliary Residential Quarter grew quickly, the passion of the workers ignited when they were building for themselves and their family rather than the palatial estates of corporations.

Massive Residential Arcologies went up almost overnight, a half dozen rust and iron pylons with the footprint of a city block, each of them able to house twenty thousand souls comfortably. Less savory aspects of the manufacturing process, large factories and noisy industrial bays, were outsourced to the ARQ. White collars wouldn’t need to be stained with sweat when there was always a high supply of cheap, expendable labor just on the other side of the Trace. Non-employees were contracted in droves to keep the impossible dream of infinite growth on finite resources in sight.

The infrastructure that had been so haphazardly assembled by the first laborers was replaced with efficient corporate leftovers. Food distribution centers, medical clinics, theaters, banks, every amenity imaginable was provided. The ARQ began to resemble something almost like a functioning city. Though not without a fee, of course. Corporate imagination could never stretch as far as charity.

Scrip was the currency of choice. Created, controlled, and backed entirely by the multinationals. Scrip was the only way to buy corporate products at corporate set prices. The rebellious and industrious first wave of laborers had unwittingly constructed around themselves another corporate cage, non-fungible bars hard and inflexible as steel.

The decades since have seen their share of growing pains. The tightening of the corporate fist always drew some reprisal from those on the other side of the Trace. In the Corporate Zone you’ll still see the phrase “Auxiliary Residential Quarter”, or see a memo using the phrase “ARQ”. That’s not the case on the other side of the wall. Those that live in the jury rigged urban landscape have a different name for it. A name known to those who live under the awnings of rust and repurposed material. A name known to the denizens of a makeshift society that formed on the outskirts of a system that deemed them unnecessary yet indispensable.

Those on the outside know it as the Rust City.