The sun sets slowly over the sprawling metropolis known as Calhoun-MacArthur, capital city (if one can call such a grossly spread out agglomeration of suburban development a ‘city’) of the world. It was built upon the scorched ruins of what was once Gainesville, Florida. After the rise of sea levels, Calhoun-MacArthur had gained an extraordinary coastline, and once Phoenix and Houston had been rendered uninhabitable, the Orange Holding Corporation and its subsidiaries had moved their headquarters there. The city is surrounded by high barbed-wire fences; only the upper castes can live within its boundaries. Due to the toxicity of the air–which provides for beautiful blood-red sunsets–and the boiling temperatures of daytime in Calhoun-MacArthur, its residents rarely leave the comfort of their shopping malls, video arcades, single-family homes, churches, SUVs, or, if they happened to be employed by the Orange Holding Corporation, standing desks. On the occasion that they do go outside–usually to the beach with a loved one, when their VR simulations are not enough–it is always in a special suit, complete with a gas mask.
Not all the world is contained within the boundaries of Calhoun-MacArthur. Indeed, there are three other cities where the upper castes reside, all accessible via private helicopter or blimp: Hamilton-Bateman, in what was once New Jersey, Reagan-Wayne, in the area once called Southern California, and Thiel-Musk, near the Golden Gate, all of which have a comparable standard-of-living to the capital. In addition, for the bucolically inclined, there is the vast hunting reserve of Kaczynskia in what was once Montana.
Outside the cities live the masses, in great swathes of wastelands, farms, mines, and factories. All of the workers are employees of subsidiaries of the Orange Holding Corporation, though this is not enough to constitute the masses. The surplus population, thus, is split into two different institutions. The first is the army and police, and the second are prisoners. While there are legal differences between laborers and prisoners (the former generally being citizens bound to their work through debt bondage, the latter generally not having the privilege of citizenship or self-ownership), their living conditions are remarkably similar: both are housed in dingy, deeply unhealthy conditions in mass-produced Bethlehem Estates. The chief practical difference is that laborers do useful labor while prisoners are generally harvested for spare parts: as test subjects for experiments or as organ donors. If there is a surplus of prisoners, they are merely left to do unuseful labor or starve.
All aspects of life are controlled by the various subsidiaries of the Orange Holding Corporation, who are the only employers and own all property (even upper-caste individuals cannot own property, aside from stocks–they merely rent it from Orange subsidiaries). Orange is the color of capitalism, from the Reformation to spray-tans. It is the color of gilded cheese whiz. To gain the status of Program Manager is considered a great honor, but it does not ease one’s labors. All work must conform to industry best practices, and all employees are rigorously evaluated according to ‘scientific’ criteria, including value-add considerations. One needs numbers (their quality or even meaning matters little) in order to succeed, and everything must be measured. To have too high a ratio of words to numbers in one’s memoranda is to be considered an unscientific, Romantic, relic of the old stuffy state bureaucracy of the 20th century.
No one has really seen the CEO of the Orange Holding Corporation. Few would openly admit to doubting his existence, for his likeness appears everywhere, yet fewer still can claim to have ever seen beyond the gates to his magnificent palace, though they are rich in glass. Even if one were let inside to the outer gate, the palace compound is simply too large for any individual, even one so enlightened as the CEO himself, to comprehend.
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