Category:The Emerald City

Posted by: #Callista

The human landscape of Cascadia has shifted signiﬁcantly over the last ﬁfty years. The population has ebbed and ﬂowed in response to the land and its own seismic and volcanic shifts, with molten rock and changing sea levels carving the shoreline into new shapes. Political boundaries have been redrawn as well, with the seat of power for the northwest settling in Portland rather than its once-overshadowing sister city, Seattle. It’s an understatement to note how hard times have been for this one-time jewel of the Paciﬁc coast, the city once nicknamed for the canopy of trees it bore. That canopy of green is now tattered, replaced with concrete and glass, and that’s not the only thing that’s changed.

''#Phaedra: Nice imagery, Callie. ''

''#Callista: Thanks, Phae. ''

''#Phaedra: Wait, so why are you writing this again? ''

''#Callista: A favor for a friend, let’s say. ''

''#Phaedra: I warned you about keeping those gambling debts paid up, didn’t I? Nobody listens to me. ''

OVERVIEW
There are some who say that the heyday of Seattle was back in the early naughties and teens of this century. The companies who’d led the way into the information age still had some good game going and the money ﬂowed, though perhaps more like honey than wine — sticky and slow rather than fast and heady, but deﬁnitely still circulating. The weather was good, the sports teams had a couple of good seasons, and the economy seemed to be improving. Of course, that was before the Death and the whole United States-breaking-apart-thing, but even that wasn’t as bad for Seattle as for some places. It was, all things considered, a small oasis of calm and peace that was happy to be forgotten in the greater scheme of things. That was, naturally, when Mount Rainier chose to blow its top, sending the whole thing to hell.

Don’t get me wrong; it didn’t blow the city off the map. It kinda felt that way between Seattle and the mountain, giving us a re-sculpted landscape and some spiffy lavaﬂow mesas we didn’t have before in place of small cities, but that wasn’t the worst of it. No, the worst of it for Seattle proper was that the Seattle Fault went at the same time, rupturing bridges, opening the seawall like so much tinfoil, and liquefying a goodly portion of the southern half of the city.

''#Sounder: Talk about a mess. I’ve seen before-and-after footage. It’s no wonder so many people left. ''

''#Cray-on: You mean left all their stuff. Some of it was trashed between the water and the dirt, but for the rest… it’s like panning for gold, man. And some of it really is gold, which is even better! ''

''#Victoire: A modern-day prospector, just what the old town needed. Or, you know, maybe not. Do you know how many would-bes die in the ﬂooded tunnels every year? ''

''#Cray-on: I don’t see you returning the grift you got off that sweet deal in the Heights, so maybe you should get off that soap box. ''

Part of the city sank, part ﬁlled halfway with water, and a whole bunch of downtown Seattle ended up ﬂooded with only the upper ﬂoors of buildings accessible. The tunnel under the waterfront ﬂooded and the old underground collapsed, taking a lot of streets and infrastructure with it. The human cost was high enough, but the property damage cost was astounding. I suppose, in retrospect, it wasn’t really any surprise when a lot of people ended up leaving. There was just less room and what was still livable was astronomically expensive to get into — single-family houses only accommodate so many. But that was thirty years ago, and Disaster-Flick Seattle isn’t the same as Cascadian Seattle, not by a long shot. We’re back on the cutting edge of the frontier in a lot of ways. People come from all over by air, land, and sea for a shot of getting in on the ground ﬂoor and making the next big fortune hereabouts, or at least making life the way they want to live it. Folks here have bigger ﬁsh to fry than getting all het up about your lifestyle choices or cultural background or crazy thing you do, assuming it doesn’t affect them personally. That much has not changed, thank Neptune.

POPULATION BREAKDOWN
So the face of the city has changed a lot. The push to the north by the Mandarinate sent Russian émigrés scattering, many of them landing in the nearest friendly western land— Cascadia. Seattle in particular attracted a number of less-fortunates, some with shady associations that would be overlooked in a frontier town versus the capital city of Portland. Add in ﬂuctuating cases of NAC escapees, native tribal populations trying to hold on, Seattle natives too stubborn to leave, international corporate employees, and the traditional Japanese and Scandinavian cultural enclaves, and you’ve got a weird mix of socialist-capitalist-isolationist cultures that make Seattle one of the nicest and yet least-friendly places you could be.

''#Charlie: I’ll second that. The downside to Seattle’s “live and let live” ethos is that trying to get accepted is a long and arduous process. You may do some jobs with someone, but until you’ve done those jobs for years with the same people, you don’t rate on their shortlist. Breaking into facilities is easy. Breaking into social circles? Nigh impossible. ''

''#Phaedra: But don’t forget that once you’re in, you’re there. Nobody’s going to take your place or cut you out, because you know everyone and everyone knows you. ''

''#Charlie: Assuming you live long enough to collect on that good fortune, yeah. ''

Some of these cultural demographics, particularly the Asian and Scandinavian ones, will seem familiar, while others diverge wildly. Seattle was always a mecca for immigrants, but the faces of those seeking a new home and new people within the Emerald City have changed dramatically. There are fewer Hispanic faces given the difficulty with travel to the south, and fewer African families as well — the pipelines for those demographics were severed when Rainier blew its top and haven’t fully reconnected still, even after all this time. They’ve been replaced by an inﬂux of Russian and Siberian folks looking to escape life under the Mandarinate, for reasons that range from economic to religious to personal. What’s interesting about that is the wave of “neo-Soviet” thought and practice that came with. While Seattle isn’t a new communist enclave, it has sections that practice ideals of socialism and collectivism alongside capitalism, depending on who they’re dealing with. The neo-Sovs are working on agitating for change in government as well, but nothing’s really taken root yet on a larger scale.

''#Karl: Eat the Rich! ''

''#Phaedra: Oh lord. ''

''#Glowbug: So I was working for this guy, Kerensky, and he wanted me to retrieve some “lost” information, right? So there I was, data sifting, and I ﬁnd what I needed and send it back to Kerensky. 30 minutes later, out of nowhere comes this big old Sov, star tattoos peeking out from under his tank top, and he plunks down a piece of gear and says to me, “As payment for your work.” Now, the gear was nice and all, but it wasn’t all that. I was expecting funds and gear don’t trade well for groceries. I started to complain, but he just shook his head and walked away, and I took that for the conversation ender that it was. Just be careful who you’re working for and get your terms and conditions straight up front, you know? Barter system my ass. ''

''#Sounder: Uh, you do know that Kerensky is a fake name, right? Sovs go by Kerensky at least half the time when they hire out work. It’s an in-joke they use on unsuspecting capitalists, much like borscht. '' The real inﬂux of immigrants these days, though, doesn’t come from across the ocean; it comes from across the border. The NAC, like many countries, does not take kindly to “others,” by which they mean anything that doesn’t ﬁt their deﬁnition of human. Hybrids, psions, simulacra (sorry for the collective noun): if it isn’t baseline, nonthreatening, and unobtrusive, it isn’t welcome and it deﬁnitely isn’t a citizen. Cascadia, however, isn’t interested in monitoring and controlling its population that heavily, and the promise of citizenship and a life without persecution has drawn these folks by the thousands. Communities, think tanks, special research centers, activist groups, outreach centers… they’re all over the Seattle area. Not that you won’t ﬁnd similar communities in Portland or elsewhere in Cascadia— more than one group has been known to homestead out in the mountains where you have to actively work to bother them — but the “fuck it” frontier attitude of Seattle has fostered a greater public presence than even most Cascadian cities can claim.

As far as the business proﬁle goes, information is still and always the name of the game, whether it’s ﬁnancial secrets, scientiﬁc research, or personal dirt. The past thirty years saw signiﬁcant rebuilding in science and tech R&D labs and facilities, particularly since the landscape has reformed, offering interesting new options for research. There are physical imports and exports too, of course. The vice trade is always heavy and human trafficking never goes out of style, carrying on a centuries-old Seattle tradition. These days the traffic extends to hybrids, simulacra, and psions, though, for powers and muscle as much as for sex and slavery (but don’t think people who are interested in owning someone else aren’t interested in crossing those boundaries either).

It’s also fair to say that Cascadia supplies a goodly portion of its own recreational narcotics (and nearly as much to parts north and the NAC). Pot likes growing in a rainforest — who knew? Then there’s ﬁshing, lumber, mining, and a brisk trade in bio-horror bits, whether for research or consumption. Bio-horrors are thick on the ground since a few years after Rainier blew. No one knows whether they naturally mutated or whether they escaped and bred like crazy. Regardless, the now-regrown and expanded forests to the south and east of the city are full of the things, and they seem to regard hikers as tasty snacks — so be warned.

PEOPLE
Everywhere you go, it always seems to come down to a few movers and shakers: the mayor, the police chief, the major corporate exec., the crime boss, the reporter… the list goes on. I’m not saying that these are always the people who have the power, but at the very least they’re the people who look like they have the power, which counts to at least a certain degree. As always, buyer beware. If anything changes hands faster than power, I haven’t seen it yet.

''#Mikhail: Power exists only when it is put into action. Important to remember that, especially in this “Emerald City.” All else is for show. ''

''#Charlie: In other words, talk is cheap? ''

''#Phaedra: I coulda told you that. ''

There’s good guys and bad guys in Seattle, just like in everywhere else, although anyone who thinks there are clear lines for either is obviously trying to sell you something. Nobody’s got clean hands, not if their name is public knowledge. I guess it makes the most sense to start at the top of the public ﬁgures and move down. If someone’s got extra information, of course, I’m sure they’ll put it in.

MISTY HARRISON: Seattle Mayor

HOOPER FELSTRIS: City Council President

SIERRA BULCHENKO: Corporate Mayor

JUDO CARNEGIE: Ravenlocke liaison to Seattle

PROFFESSOR TILTON

NICOLAS PALMER, A.K.A ONE HAND JACK

SERGIO L’AMERICANU: Cosa Nostra Hitman

FINAL OPTION: NPC Group
 * Kaida
 * Ursus
 * Casino Jack
 * Source Code 071113

PLACES
Sometimes when people come to Seattle, they’re surprised at what things look like. It’s a far cry from some of those old 2-D prints of the city, that’s for sure. Between the volcano and the tsunami-in-the-sound and the rebuilding or lack thereof in places, the footprint of the city has changed signiﬁcantly. The old downtown is now a mess of towers and ﬂooded tunnels and unstable foundations, while some of the southern areas of the waterfront — including the touristy stuff — was utterly destroyed.

''#Sounder: So what lots of people don’t know is that Seattle was essentially terraformed from the beginning, with hills being dug up and ﬂattened and the dirt moved over to ﬁll in coastal area someone thought would be more useful. The entire former International District and stadium districts were built on ﬁll, basically — all the way over to West Seattle, which used to have water on three sides (and now does again). When Rainier erupted, and then Puget Sound came inland after us, and then the ground liqueﬁed in places… it was like the etch-a-sketch ending of the city, you know, where God shakes the world to start over while saying it’s all crap. Real end-of-the-world sorts of stuff where there’s no sun and people are just dying. ''

Everyone thought the city would rebuild. Cascadia sent emergency funding and corporations offered assistance for their workers (and a little for the public good), but how do you build on ground that isn’t there? It was such a massive, expensive overhaul that would have had to be done, given that the seawall fell when the Big Tunnel under the city ﬂooded, that large sections of the downtown were just given up as lost and deemed “irrecoverable.” Rather than recover what was lost, the city simply chose to start clearing further inland and rebuild there.

As a result, the downtown now looks rather crescent-shaped, with a curving arc of a waterfront. The old piers and harbor were resurrected and now form sort of an arm out from the mainland into the Sound, while the inner harbor is full of the upper halves of buildings that haven’t yet been torn down (and might never be).

''#Cato: It seems like a no-brainer to tear this stuff down, right? Building implosion is tricky at the best of times, though, and always expensive. Add in permanently flooded lower floors and unstable foundations and it’s a huge risk, one where nobody really proﬁts even if it all works out. ''

''#Sounder: On the other hand, some of the coral is coming back. ''

''#Cray-on: These places aren’t exactly the Ritz, but if you need a place to stay (or a place to hide), they’ll work. Getting there’s challenging and if there’s one place the cops (rented or otherwise) don’t want to go, it’s the Heights. I know a guy who can set you up if you’ve got something worthwhile for a down-payment. ''

Otherwise the city stands much as it always did. The south end got hit pretty hard but aside from the airport (which has been restored), there wasn’t a lot that was considered crucial to rebuild. Downtown’s moved up the hill and settled in the old Capitol Hill area and the Central District. They can’t build new skyscrapers fast enough up the side of the ridge — all megacorp funded, of course.

''#Charlie: The really interesting question now is “what happened to all the workers.” See, it was a lot of the lowerincome areas of town that got destroyed or at least wrecked. The most culturally diverse neighborhoods were hit hardest, some with exciting new bio-horrors moving straight in while others just got bulldozed. No one who works for a living can afford a house anymore, so they’ve moved into corners or alleyways or cheap ﬂats or out of the city altogether. ''

''#Victoire: But there is no apparent worker shortage, because the androids and simulacra have just ﬁlled the gaps. Their “physical footprint” is smaller, meaning that they take up less living space and don’t mind cramped conditions as much, and of course their comfort needs are much smaller, so they can be packed like sardines into living spaces I wouldn’t put my dog in. ''

''#Issac: Change is coming. Unethical behavior on the part of those in power is unjust, and injustice cannot be allowed to ﬂourish. ''

''#Cato: You’ve got to love their idealism. ''

All the shifting around means that if you want to ﬁnd work and you’re creative enough in how you go about it, there’s plenty to go around. Reconstruction is still in high demand, as is recovery and its adventurous twin sister, acquisition. Regular-joe jobs are hard to come by, but it’s not like that’s new. It’s always hardest to earn an honest living. That said, if you don’t mind a mega paying your bills, subject experts in biology, weapons, transportation, civil engineering, medicine, computers, and all kinds of weird topics are always welcomed with open arms (and sometimes even room and board). It’s not my kind of gig, but I hear it’s a sweet arrangement if you don’t mind looking the other way from time to time. Infrastructure hereabouts is still kinda fucked up, and they’re always looking for people to work on the virtual overlays too.

Life here is not as laidback as it once was. Everything’s got a rougher edge to it now. The celebrities left town and the biggest bio-horrors are hanging around the periphery, and hanging over everything else are the shadows of the megacorporations. The streets are more dangerous now— harvesters and human traffickers prowl, and people vanish at a steady rate despite Carnegie’s best efforts to stop it.

''#Phaedra: Don’t forget the weird new bio-horrors and even the regular animals (bears, for example) that have started just appearing on the streets. God knows what lives down in the tunnels anymore. ''

''#Cray-on: I saw a swarm of toxic roaches just streaming down the side of one of the Heights, straight into the water below. I don’t know what scared them out of it, but anything that can make them abandon ship must be worth a ton. Any takers? ''

''#Glowbug: I didn’t know those fuckers could swim. ''

''#Perkins: Water doesn’t kill them, so what does it matter if they can’t? ''

''#Callista: Blech. I hate those things. ''

STUFF TO DO
So I talked about work, but I didn’t really talk about opportunities in the Emerald City. There are a bunch of things you can do to make a lot of money. There are also a lot of things that’ll get you killed. Some of these are the same things. Your risk assessment is your own to do, as always. I can’t promise that everything I’ve got here is the gospel truth or still would be by the time someone reads it, but it’s a place to start.

Treasure hunting, or rather acquisition and recovery, is a good place to start. Way way back in the day Seattle was the gateway to the Yukon Gold Rush. Today it’s the gateway to all the shit that got unearthed and left behind in the eruption and tsunami and all that. You’d think after thirty years that we’d have thoroughly dredged everything up and it’d be gone, but obviously that’s not the case. In point of fact, it’s taken nearly this long to get enough of the crap cleared away that we discovered there are things to go ﬁnd in the ﬁrst place.

One sort of treasure people go looking for is money of various sorts. The earthquakes opened up mineral veins that hadn’t been there before. Modern nanotechnology means that if you get to a spot and send your bots out, they can do some micromining and then you get to be rich. Needless to say, there’s almost as much of a business in protecting the microminers (and taking their stuff in the ﬁrst place) that private security/assault teams are always in high demand, assuming you don’t mind tight spaces and underground caverns.

If hunting’s more your style, there’s bio-horror eradication/poaching. Those weird mutant bits off weird mutant things are worth some serious money, not to mention what you get paid in bounties for protecting Cascadia from volcano bears and mutated octopi.

''#Phaedra: You get the thrill of the hunt combined with cutting bits off things and performing a public service for the community. What’s not to love? ''

''#Perkins: Well, there was the guy last week who lost his arm and nearly bled out, along with the rest of his injuries. I hear he’ll walk again sometime next year, maybe. His violin lessons are shot, though. Cyberarms never have the ﬁnesse to get really good results with musical instruments. ''

''#Phaedra: Very funny, doc. ''

Acquisition and recovery don’t just apply to tangible goods, however. Seattle has a rep for being the type of place you can go to get lost, or at least not found. The high psion population would seem to make this a bad idea, but in general it works for people. If you need to get away semi-permanently on your own terms from an employer (or just an enemy), Seattle makes a good destination. If you’re good at either recovering people or making them disappear, there’s plenty to do around here. Also there’s a thriving market in human chattel, either for the sex market or labor or just because. The Vory and other connected gangs do a lot of that sort of work around here, at least on the disappearing part, so know that’s who you’re dealing with, no matter which side you’re on.

''#Mikhail: Keep in mind who runs the city. We don’t like when people don’t understand how things work here. It gets messy. No one likes a mess.''

If you’ve got your sights set on criminal activity, there’s still a thriving drug market in the harder stuff, not to mention the more dangerous psychoactive compounds and whatever the latest virtual thrill is. Whether you’re making, buying, selling, or bringing it in, there’s some fast money there. The primary purveyors of that sort of thing, however, tend to be the gangs. Most of them are imports from the NAC and use Cascadia as an entry port for the material they want to run back home. They’re small-time, mostly, but they’re nasty and they usually have agreements in place with someone bigger, so take care.

Lastly, I’d have done everyone a disservice if I hadn’t mentioned smuggling and piracy. Cascadia’s relatively open borders and loose “vice” policies mean lots of stuff travels through to lots of other places, effectively getting laundered in the process, whether it’s money or contraband or whatever. Seattle’s a key stop in most of those routes— not as heavily policed as Portland, but easily accessible to land, sea, and air with borders to nations with high demand and much stricter policies.

''#Zekiel: It’s worth noting that all of this is on top of megacorporate antics. Featherstone in particular is a big local employer for both legit and illegal work. There’s a lot of R&D opportunity out here across the board — Nortec and TLI have major dev and production centers local. Test subjects for new wares are always in high demand if you need an upgrade, want some cash, and don’t mind too much if it shorts out unexpectedly (and are willing to ﬁll out an in-depth bug report). ''

''#Charlie: Kenta Cyber Dynamics is one of the megas that wants a share of the Seattle pie. Their “local” management isn’t official as of yet, but they’re doing a lot of hiring. Word is they’ve got people on already here doing the groundwork. ''

''#Phaedra: I hear their stuff doesn’t like Seattle weather too much. I wouldn’t bet too heavily on them. ''

''#Zekiel: Just ask Callie. Some debts have to be paid.''