District 1

Finally, you might reach District 1. The lights and luxury of the 2 give way to imposing corporate edifices, glass-fronted fortresses policed by robot tanks and surveillance drones. There’s no need to flaunt wealth here. Just getting past the automated checkpoints requires a pre-approved biometric ID and a damn good reason, and residence here cannot be bought with mere money. No one who lives in District 1 has anything to prove.

The corporate headquarters cluster within the sea wall in a forest of steel and glass, criss-crossed by skybridges. Here the corps conduct their most sensitive business and, even more importantly, store their most valuable and incriminating data. A megacorp server room is among the most secure places in San Francisco. Vaults of archaic material wealth – gold, property deeds, antiques and priceless art – are buried beneath multiple layers or armor and concrete.

Security is everywhere, and ready for war. Garrisons of heavily armed and armored troops are ready to react to anything from kidnapping to a military invasion. The police rarely bother with District 1, as corporate security deals with any threats, and crimes between the corps are settled between them, too. Anyone who is not supposed to be here needs an excellent cover story and information backup of they’ll get smoked by the first gun-toting drone that sees them.

Private residences are in penthouses or deep in fortified bunkers, accessible by helipad or private subways. Each is a formidable masterpiece of design, boasting automated gun turrets between the Impressionist paintings and imported marble. The senior executives and major stakeholders live here, each on in their own world, served by a small army of aides and synths.

Money concentrates over time, so most of the permanent residents of District 1 are old. Really old. Medical technology is in constant demand. Private clinics provide longevity treatments and tend to the diseases and infirmities that build up over the decades. Some residents are so ancient and feeble they never leave the controlled environments of their homes, sealed off from the world. The megacorps scrabble to keep the most ancient alive, fearing the wars of succession that will occur when the biggest stakeholders die.

Crime is still a constant. Illegal life-extending biotech and cybernetics are bought and sold. Organized crime hires out its best operatives for industrial espionage and assassination. Multiple lifetimes of bitter boredom engender a thirst for debauchery and bizarre entertainments, furnished by the gangs who have a foothold among the corporate elite and tolerated by the corps as long as it keeps the board members happy.

District 1 is as miserable as the 5, in its own twisted ways. Greed got its inhabitants here, and that greed is never satisfied. The money, people and luxuries keep flowing in, but it is never enough. It is a hollow and corrosive existence at the very top, an existence most people in the Golden City would kill for. And they do kill, every drop draining into the earth of San Francisco, and sprouting again as the bleak chrome towers of District 1.

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