You’ve got an incoming multi-media call. It’s Wormwood, obviously calling from a public booth in some public library by the looks of the ranks of media-shelves, institutional paintscheme and tables full of readers at terminals in the background of the poor-quality flat-vid camera’s view. A thin fiber-optic cable snakes from behind his left ear to somewhere on the unit he’s using.

“Hey guys, just thought I should check in. Here’s what I’ve got so far, and I’m sending a couple of files along with this call. A pic I got from the net-home along with the layout of a typical residential floor and a site plan for the Dreamland park.

Firstly – Talking Rock Tower, hi-rise home for glittering Goldens. It’s owned by Goebel Asset Management, so it’s sovereign territory and the owners use Whirlwind as security just as we were told. It’s a big tower, 72 floors and just shy of a thousand feet.

According to the Goebel web-home the bottom eight floors are, in order, a lobby and administration floor , then security offices along with the computer core, then a pool, a fitness center, a fancy restaurant, then three floors of leased offices currently occupied by an accountancy firm, some sports marketing firm and a decorating and design company that caters to the other tenants. Above that are the condos, one to a floor. Dudes, we are talking very flash. Very rich-kids. Every floor except the bottom one can be controlled by the residents to revolve around a central core which holds stairs, elevators and even a vehicle elevator! If the Golden on floor 25 likes the sunset, he can turn his floor so his main room faces it. Atop the whole thing is a copter/ AV pad and three floors of hangar space. reserved for the upper floor residents.

Being immune from local law means Whirlwind could have loaded it for bear but obviously the Golden want something low key. The windows are all self-polarizing so residents can set the level of opacity by remote and the doors all have biometric locks keyed only to authorized personnel. There are non-lethal security measures in the central well and elevators, apparently, but the net-home isn’t specific. There’s an on-site security team 24/7, the usual dozen or so Whirlwind rent-a-thugs with their usual kit I’d expect but I can’t be sure, and a rapid response team is deliverable by scrambled AV from the Whirlwind building downtown in about five minutes, tops, if the alarms go off. If you trip an alarm, I advise not hanging around to see what the latest in fashion for powered armored cops and their gunships might be, capiche?

OK, now the Dream Corps site. Their net-home has dick on the TRC itself – it’s all about the mini Dreamland resort that wraps around the TRC facility, which is separated from the rest by an honest-to-fuckness moat. They’re apparently expanding that park and the rides and attractions are often trials of new tech that came out of the TRC, before they send them out into the wider world. Apparently, you can CGI yourself as the star into old action flicks at one arcade – Pitbull would make a great Arnie or Sly, dontcha think? anyway, the TRC looks like it consists of a couple of four or five floor buildings and a tower of about 30 floors, all connected together , but forget about getting any floorplans from open-source. The whole park is sovereign and there’s nada on file with the City. Shit, the place even has it’s own fire department. Expect lots of “Faraway” Cops in those friendly pink-edged armored uniforms you’ve seen on the ad-blips, with machine pistols and tangler grenades. Also expect some lethal automated defenses in the TRC itself and some kind of heavier force in clamshells on guard there. The corp-boys ain’t playin’ – they don’t want no-one stealing their secrets. There’s an on-site AI helps run the whole park and the TRC itself has tremblers on every window. I know, I checked earlier today . Tomorrow, I’m going to see if I can wangle my way into the TRC lobby as a courier or somesuch but I think I’ll get stopped at the gate across the moat. If I get in, I’ll see about dropping some bugs where we can maybe pick up something useful.

OK, gotta go. See ya on the flipside.”

As he hurriedly reaches to cut the connection, you see over his shoulder the cleaning girl from the dangerous Seasons get up from a desk and walk away, clutching a flatscreen pad and a folder of data chips with the logo for the Berkeley campus of Night City University on the cover.