COMPANY LIFE

The lifestyles of full-time company employees vary tremendously, from the bottom-rung service workers living in coffin-apartments and commuting to work to the highest executive millionaires living in penthouses in the heights of luxury. But one thing is certain: the worst job working for a corporation is better than hard times on the street. The company arranges and pays for housing, be it modest or luxurious, and for health-care to keep its workers healthy and happy; as long as the worker has the job, his or her basic needs will be satisfied.

Work conditions also vary, but the most common work environment is the arcology, a massive building that combines housing, work space, shopping and entertainment for employees. Work is internet-based whenever applicable, preventing the need for commuting and the unnecessary use of precious space. Other workers go to more traditional sites, smaller factories or stores or whatever, commuting via automobile, aircar, or public transit.

Regular entertainment for company workers tends to focus on sports and the simstim technology of the Matrix. Both trends can be as passive or interactive as one wants, whether to play in a sport or watch it, or to take part in a dynamic simstim program or simply observe the story. And of course the wealthier corporate employees have many types of more costly entertainment, from live artistic performances to international or interplanetary travel to exotic weekend parties.

"What starts the process, really, are laughs, slights and snubs when you are a kid. Sometimes it's because you're poor, or Irish or Jewish or Catholic or ugly or simply that you are skinny. But if you are reasonably intelligent and if your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance, while those who have everything are sitting on their fat butts.

Once you learn that you've got to work harder than anybody else, it becomes a way of life as you move out of the alley and on your way. In your own mind you have nothing to lose, so you take plenty of chances, and if you do your homework many of them pay off. It is then you understand, for the first time, that you have the advantage because your competitors can't risk what they have already. It's a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can't stop playing the game the way you've always played it because it is a part of you and you need it as much as an arm or a leg.

So you are lean and mean and resourceful, and you continue to walk on the edge of the precipice because over the years you have become fascinated by how close to the edge you can walk without losing your balance."

-Richard Nixon, 1974