New Angeles Stock Exchange
The carbosteel dome of the NASX looks like a gigantic steel beehive from outside. Within, the interior is dominated by a massive trading floor where human stockbrokers strike deals and scream at one another. Above them sits the “All-Seeing Eye,” the NASX’s huge spherical mainframe. The NASX separates the Eye from the trading floor with a glass ceiling, offering the rather theatrical claim that this ensures that nobody can tamper with it unfairly.
Although the floor of the NASX is an impressive sight—plenty of tourists stop by to watch it from the overhead observation galleries—the real business of the NASX takes place primarily in cyberspace. Hundreds of weak AIs oversee millions of trades per day on the mainframe and in banks of networked servers scattered throughout the building. All this is overseen by the NASX’s dedicated cybersecurity task force, which interfaces with the Eye and uses its processing power to watch for tampering. Although every runner using a BMI sees the Network differently, all of them claim that when they approach the NASX servers, they see a glowing or burning eye staring straight at them and scrutinizing their every step.
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