New Angeles

From the highest peak on the equator, at the heart of the greatest and worst city Earth has ever known, a nanolattice weave of carbon fibers stretches to the heavens: the Beanstalk. The giant space elevator transformed the solar system into a new frontier of opportunity. A city was built on the Moon, and Mars was colonized. Around the base of the Beanstalk grew the megapolis of New Angeles, officially home to half a billion people (and perhaps as many more unofficially), and the headquarters for the mega-corporations that created the Network, the arcologies, and the androids.

Ever Forward

Humans have come a long way since the dark ages. Cybernetic implants, gene therapy, and AI in every pocket ensure that life is pleasant, convenient, and long—for those who can afford it. But beneath the cracks in the veneer there’s still poverty, crime, and war, and dozens of societal scapegoats.

A Brave New World

Androids—intelligent synthetic lifeforms— walk the streets and work the jobs too dangerous or onerous for humans. They’re taking away jobs from flesh-and-blood workers, redefining what it means to be rich and poor—even challenging the definition of what it means to be human. And there’s more of them every year.

For the rich, New Angeles is paradise. It has the trendiest nightspots and the most luxurious arcologies, and every need is catered to by android servants. Well-paid corp and government employees as well as investors and financiers form an upper class referred to as “risties” by those further down the ladder. The middle class struggles to maintain its modest prosperity, working white-collar jobs for inadequate paychecks and a slew of corporate benefits that keep them housed, fed, and dependent on their employers. As for the “working poor,” their wages have fallen for decades and their employment status remains uncertain given the rise of android labor in blue collar jobs. Below them—often literally, in the warrens below the towering arcologies and layers of interconnected highways and skyways—are the disenfrancistos who live outside the system as scavengers, beggars, and criminals.

LIFE IN THE UNDERCITY

Not everyone in New Angeles enjoys the convenience of hoppers, the readiness of consumer goods around every corner, or the luxurious comforts of the vaunted arcologies. The true number of those living in the city’s shadows eludes even the most comprehensive census attempts. Beneath the soaring starscraper arcologies and the veneer of flashing lights—in the lower strata of the sprawling urban landscapes—is the undercity. This hidden world teems with masses of people like an overwhelmed server.
Society inevitably leaves some falling between the plascrete cracks, and those in a place of power are content to overlook such parts of New Angeles. Without a registered electronic identification, a unique string of identifier letters and numbers assigned at birth, that person doesn’t legally exist. Some of those who were born within the system have enough strikes on their background checks, or have been blacklisted, that their IDs have become worthless anyway. They are forced to live off the grid.

There are no jobs or ways for these, the lowest class of citizens, to climb up out of their squalor—none that are legal, anyway. Androids have become ubiquitous, taking even the dirtiest and most distasteful lines of work from blue collar laborers. Few business owners are willing to employ off-gridders in the face of steep penalties associated with illegal employees, which range from simple citations or fines to the revocation of a business’s license to operate. Those who do employ off-gridders aren’t the kind of people it’s safe to work for: brothel proprietors, gambling bosses, and stim dealers treat employees with the same expendable behavior that monolithic corporations maintain for their own. All of these outfits, most of which have links to orgcrime, pay in cash, and a few extra bills can mean one more meal or a life-saving tithe to the right gang.
Most off-gridders spend their entire day in search of some food to steal or forage; they feed off the leavings of the upper classes. Constantly moving from place to place, few have any possessions beyond what they can carry, and they rarely know a real home in the same sense that a citizen with an ID does.
Many undercity residents fall under the purview of one gang or another. Most are smart enough to stay clear of the bangers, but others are either pressed into membership or brought into the fold as willing accomplices who see it as their only chance at a decent life. Like warring tribes, the gangs fiercely control their territories without much—if any—regard for the well-being of their inhabitants. To escape the violence, off-gridders sometimes make their way upward, but if caught by the NAPD they’re frisked and locked up on vague charges in the name of public safety. On rare occasions, private security forces or the NAPD make incursions into the lower levels and clear out the gangs for a few days at a time, but rival bangers return in force to duke it out over control of the newly vacant territory, no matter how small.
While upward social mobility has become a myth of sorts, the decline into the teeming masses of the forgotten is a harsh reality. Some choose the life of the disenfranchised, but others are forced by circumstances to submit themselves to becoming a nonentity. One lost job or one missed payment is sometimes all it takes to become so poor as to be forced out onto the streets below. For the children of insolvents on the run, growing up constantly on the move and without a cred to their name is the only option.

Those who want to get off-grid can’t without a little assistance, often the illegal kind, since bounty hunters know where to look when an ID disappears. Some turn to orgcrime outfits like 14K or the yakuza and expect some genuine help. They end up working the cash jobs that are too cheap or dangerous to hire a clone or bioroid to handle. Favors pay out in that world faster than cash does, and if someone falls in debt for either of those, they go down below with even fewer options. The smart (and previously wealthy) ones pay what they can for help from a dedicated hacker—most of whom have already erased themselves. Living under the radar is still costly, though, and the money risties use to get off-grid helps fuel the crime that flourishes there.

What’s freedom worth to you?

Official Name:

Special Economic Zone of Ecuadorian New Los Angeles

Legal Status:

Unincorporated territory of the United States of America

Population:

Over 500 million; census data out of date.

Land area:

62,000 km2

Demographics:

22% Latino, 19% white, 14% black, 9% Amerindian and Montubio, 9% Asian, 23% two or more races, 5% other.

Android population:

Estimated 5–10 million

Government:

City Council and Mayor

Current Mayor:

Ignacio Wells

Type

Megalopolis

Location under

Earth