My personal communicator chimed in my pocked. A message from the dataman, an address. Feng's Noodle Bar 3rd Sector 3rd Sector wasn't the same city as mine. In the corporate sector it's all about power, it's all about being neat, tidy, organised. 3rd Sector, and all the other places like it, seem to breed chaos in abundance. As I descend the staircase from the maglev train that glides silently around the city, high up above the streets on its guide rails, I know I stand out. My world is expensive, neatly pressed suits, spit shined shoes and shirts so expensive I could rent the best hotel room in this area for a couple of nights for the same amount of money. As I step into the street I am lost in neon plastic fashion, this is the wildside of the city, here, unlike the corporate sector, it's about individuality. Everybody's dress is a fusion of the latest fashions from the malls, plus whatever else can be thrown around it. The young people have it down the best, the kids, teens and early twenties, the ones who are still able to play and not worry about the mortgage, the kids, the wife or the shitty job the next morning. The place is teeming with colour, of emotion, it always overpowers me when I come here, it's alive in a way that my world can never be. It was like that when I met her, I was lost in the rhythm of the street, carried away by the fluid nature of life in a place that never worries about meeting the deadline. The people here still work for the corporations, but they're the little people, the security guards, the shop workers, and the factory people. They'll never get the corporate credit cards or the penthouse luxury apartments, but they have something the corporate centre doesn't have, or at least, they have it in a different way. They have passion for their lives, but not the passion for the projects, or the deals or the stock options. They live for the fast highs, the quick hit of alcohol and whatever street drug comes their way as they spirit the evening away, trying to forget that tomorrow they go back to a job that they don't care for. In the wildside, it's about a good night in a club with friends, perhaps the euphoria of waking up next to somebody who seemed more beautiful the night before, but it doesn't matter because you've had a good night, and they can't even remember your name. Within the layers of this street exist the fixers, the hustlers, the dealmakers and the fencers, a fabric of the wildside that provides this sleepless community with all they need that you can't by in the mall, the drugs for clubbers, a girl for the night and the illegal tech for the street hackers and techheads. The corporate centre is no different, but our fixers work over the net, taking personal orders to satisfy even the most expensive request. The dialect is different, the language the same. It was here, in the wildside, that I met her, met Nikki, I hadn't ascended the corporate ladder too much, I was on the fringe of both world's, my apartment tower sat somewhere in-between the worlds where life was disposable and life was business. I could flash cash in the wildside, but I had the advantage of being off the radar of the corporate centre, I wasn't quite ready for the sixty hour week and high-society nightlife of penthouse marketing parties. My hookers still dressed in jeans rather than designer dresses. I saw Nikki in a club, a club that has changed it's name and decor a dozen times since then to keep up with the fast pace of style here on the street. She stood propped against a bar, she had bright pink hair, it was jaggered, cropped in wild ways, hanging over her face, streaks of silver amongst the pink. There were these boots, almost like ski-boots, plastic white and the neon pink again, but they weren't rigid, some kind of durable, flexible plastic, how she danced so well in those I never figured, the rest of her get-up was similarly styled and colour, tight, shorts, low top, covered in stickers, key rings and hand painted doodles. She was nineteen or twenty when I met her and she was alive, alive in ways I hadn't known existed, there was no cynicism that the rest of the city seemed to have, you could say it was naivety, but that would be wrong, it was just a love of life, she was street smart, she knew how to handle herself, but she projected this carefree, innocent personality. I was being dragged upwards, away from this world and into one consumed by profits, baselines and statistics, I wanted that more than anything else, more than I wanted her at the time, but for that one night, and it was the last night, I wanted to feel like her, I wanted to feel free of obligations. Now here I was, standing opposite the noodle bar, the cars and bikes crawling by in gridlock, the streets crowded, the rain pouring into the potholes and running down the gutters, dark clouds of polluted grey over head. The smell of reconstituted protein and beef flavoured soya drifting over from the bar, and behind the counter she stands, the bright colours have gone, but her smile hasn't. A girl I knew for one night, five years ago, the last time I felt alive. -end of part one- I've been away from the writing for too long and it's breaking my heart. I hope this little beat is the start of something. Horrible title, couldn't think of anything else at this point.