The Corporate Sea was not made of water. It was made of Liquidity.
New Seattle drifted silently through a thick, golden fog that smelled like old coins and hand sanitizer. Below the jagged concrete edge of the city, the "ocean" rippled with the faces of dead currency—Bitcoins, NFTs, and ancient Roman Denarii bubbling to the surface before popping into nothingness.
"Running silent," Elara-Zero whispered into the comms. "I've dampened the Reality Jammer to the lowest setting. To their sensors, we should look like a rounding error."
Elara Vance stood on the observation deck of the Space Needle. She watched the radar screen, which was taped to the wall with duct tape. Blips were circling them. Massive, slow-moving blips.
"What are they?" Aldren Vance asked, adjusting his plastic tricorn hat. He was looking through a telescope made of two toilet paper rolls (the real telescope had been pawned for fuel).
