Perion Synthetics: Original Opening

"The old man is dying."

Banks says this to me when I walk into his office in lieu of a greeting. No time for them, he once told me. As overseer of the second largest feed on the west coast, I couldn't blame him for being curt. Still, he was seated rather leisurely on a leather couch watching a vidscreen, one leg crossed over the other as if he planned to stay awhile. His desk, abandoned in the corner of the office, glowed brightly as its glass top caught the morning sun. It was the magic hour, as he liked to call it, a period after people had woken up but before they arrived at work. At the peak of feed traffic, Banks Media would be broadcasting to over a hundred and twenty million people.

"Which old man?" I ask.

Banks glances at me and then back at the vidscreen, as if the answer is obvious.

The feed is tuned to $Chan, and the screen is full of fancy graphics detailing the current and historical prices for shares of Perion Synthetics. A talking head in the upper right hand corner is flapping his lips in vain.

"Not the James Perion?"

Banks nods. "That's what the rumors are saying."

I walk around one of the single-serving leather chairs so he can see me without having to look over his shoulder. I don't sit. No one sits in Donato Banks' office without being asked.

"I don't buy it," I say, crossing my arms. "He's what, late seventies? Nobody dies at that age."

"My sources say cancer."

Having worked directly for Banks for the last two years, I'd begun to recognize when I was being led around by the nose. That familiar feeling crept up the back of my neck, but I let the man have his moment.

"And even fewer die from cancer."