Swing Ride
28 Apr 2019Kara waldeN
On an Orbis Starport like Citi Gateway, the price tag for luxury accommodation was high, but if you truely had the means it came with the one thing absent from every other bracket of living standard. Privacy.
A regular credit score could stretch to a walk in the green spaces and parks, but a Billionaire could have their own Park, just adjacent to the public ones. A multi Billionaire, however, could have the use of their own sector and consider themselves truly alone. Kara Walden was such a Multi billionaire.
She had set up a telescope in her landscaped arboretum but had quickly grown bored of looking at the unchanging stars and was now using its powerful zoom to peer up through the protective canopy of the Hab ring and down on the milling visitors to a public park on the other side of radial star port. It was a busy time of day and she could see the queue for the brightly coloured Swing ride was very long.
She picked a figure out of the queue. A man, holding the hand of a young boy. She closed in on his face with a subtle click of the zoom dial. Then she clicked again onto a spot between his eyes.
Her communicator pinged.
She tabbed it into holo mode and went back to her snipers eye view.
The call was from her Production company.
“Good news,” said the Executive in a very cheerful tone. “I have closed the deal on the reboot of the Galaxies Greatest Jewel Thief. The show will be syndicated across the Empire,” he said, his words glossed with corporate positivity.
Kara tracked the queuing man with the telescope as he took a step forward. She activiated the targeting laser dot which painted his forehead with an invisible pin prick only she could see.
“And the rating?” she asked casually, noting the Executive had avoided mentioning the one thing she had told him to focus on.
The smile of the Executive never changed but to the practiced observer of emotion a tension around the eyes became visible.
“What have the networks decided on the rating?" she asked him, "I want primetime Holo-Log family hour. The new show needs to go mainstream remember?” she replied and he nodded quickly.
“That’s right, which is why I negotiated real hard on that issue. I was super clear, right from the outset that we had to go primetime and that the previous show with the actual piracy and the err, tragic on screen deaths was in no way related to this brand new family orientated, but emotionally hard hitting drama,” he babbled.
“That’s good to hear,” she said and reached for her other communicator.
“What did the networks say to your very firm requests?” she asked while she sent a message.
“Well, here’s the thing, they said, well they said we could have the primetime late night slot, going out at local times of 1am to 3am, which is still primetime amiright?” he exclaimed and if anything his smile grew wider.
Kara said nothing but went back to her telescope. She reacquired the man in the queue and focused the targeting laser once more.
“Kapow,” she said loudly and the smiling Executive was suddenly shot right between the eyes.
Almost instantly, another man wearing the same corporate expression slid into the holographic view.
“You want me to renegotiate this deal for you Miss Walden?” he asked keenly. Eager for the opportunity to take on more responsibility, eager to step straight into the dead mans shoes.
“No, I have already negotiated a new deal with a different network. Its going to give us an edgy cult following,” she said and zoomed out from the man in the park as he reached the front of the Swing ride.
She typed out another message on her private communicator and on the other side of the Hab zone, the Swing ride operator let the queing man and his little boy on for free.
“Oh?” the Executive asked her, “Which Network?”
“Paresa," she replied.
"We’ve just joined the Nova Imperium,” she said and killed the feed.