The Beamer is a response to need. For too long the narrative around Beam City has been one of success: a healthy product of the Vertical Cities initiative, a profoundly innovative corporate sector, a strong and democratic government. If the narrative were to be believed, it is the lynchpin of the system it sits within.
These are half-truths or outright fiction. While Beam City may appear to blossom it does so with a foul core, and any flourishment is a result of deeply systemic disadvantage, corruption, and exploitation. The stories and voices of those who suffer at the expense of others’ success are unheard or silenced, and the city’s unattractive truth quietly swept into the gutter.
Here at The Beamer we seek to change this. We are a free press powered by the people, for the people. The stories we report on will come as no surprise to those who are at the heart of them, but perhaps by shining a light on the depth of Beam City’s rot we can galvanise a change. It is true that our hope for The Beamer is perhaps naïve and fanciful, but we see it at the very least as a first step to seeking justice for the downtrodden. If a man has no platform, he has no power.
The Beamer’s full weekly edition is available for free to the city’s population. This online edition captures our daily dispatches, and it is our hope it will find an audience beyond the city’s reaches. We recognise those from without the city will not understand the context this publication is produced within, and it is true you can never understand a place without living within its daily grind. However, we hope our work offers a glimpse of the dark reality and myriad of challenges those who live here face.
Those challenges are substantial, for Beam City is a city of shadows. As a Vertical City it was developed with an ‘Up Not Across’ mantra, stretching high but not sprawling along. Apartment blocks for the working class sit beneath ever larger buildings housing ever more affluent neighbours. At ground level the sky is blotted out by the dark concrete and cold metal of skyscrapers, sky walkways and sky gardens. The lower social classes are pinned to the ground, barred access to the intricate lift system which connects the city’s higher reaches. In traditional cities there is nothing to stop the poor from walking to its wealthiest neighbourhood. In Beam City they need a lift pass.
At the city’s summit exists Horizon Apartments, where Beam City’s power lies: the managing staff of its corporate sector. The city has washed its hands of anti-monopoly laws and borne fruit to a small number of deeply rich and expansive corporations. These companies preserve their status by cannibalising newer companies which emerge and comb schools and neighbourhoods for bright talent, dragging them away from families and support networks. The likes of Terra Inc. (the city’s landlord and property developer), Vira Corp (a security and weapons firm), Pleasant Tech (which holds the monopoly on anything Audio Visual), and Beam Pharmaceuticals (the drug and healthcare leaders) are the faces of Beam City’s success, but behind this mask are parasites which draw from the city its livelihood. These corporations steal, deceive, harm and corrupt with a fiery greed which has consumed the city. With a monstrous gnashing of teeth, the corporate sector chews up and spits out all who get in their way.
The city’s democratic political system is one only in name, and is propped up by these corporations. Any resident can put themselves up for Council election, but without corporate backing they are likely to face substantial challenges, whether that be raising money or holding rallies. The Mayor and Council have little power once elected, and they oversee the police force that is incredibly absent on the city’s lower floors. This gaping vacuum has sown the seeds for thriving criminal enterprise and a series of cartels who have carved up the city’s lower levels.
And so, amongst this ferocious mess, millions of people wake up every day and attempt to eke out something resembling a normal life, and every day they come up against exploitative corporations, an ineffectual Council, an absent police force, and pervasive crime. These people have done nothing but be born into this system, yet judging by the nature of their lives even this act is a punishable offence.
Here at The Beamer we hope to tell their story, for it is not the fairy tale that has been written.