Striding through the ruthless city and shrugging his black cloak around his shoulders, Ian McDiarmond reached the intersection of Pain and Ambition. McDiarmond, who had lost his position in the Second Global Corporation, when it was challenging for top spot, and whose current rank was lower than a construction worker’s, took out his cell phone and checked the weather. Unseasonably warm for November, the temperature was projected to hit 10 degrees Celsius by noon.

McDiarmond walked down Pain Street until he came to a McDonald’s. At 2:30, in direct contravention of standing orders not to get in the way of security personnel, who alertly patrolled the area, McDiarmond slipped in the McDonald’s without the least concern. A motion detector caught his presence and then an ID scanner found out that he didn’t carry an Elite Chip on him. The signal that doomed him to a security response went out in the immediate following moments.

The McDonald’s restaurant was spotlessly clean, immensely imposing with its granite and obsidian columns, and filled with elite men in black. Chatting among themselves and laughing, the men barely spared a glance at McDiarmond. McDiarmond, who felt a pang in his heart at his separation from the elite, determined not to let it affect his actions. He felt the solid presence of the strobing gun in his pocket. Its colors moved from red to purple, then back again. When exposed to plain sight, the colors would warn off others like the deadly sound from a rattlesnake’s back.

Norm Picetti, who retained a high rank in Montreal, where the system of advancement was harder, and whose dissertation thesis on power was entitled “Anglo-French relations in Pre-Empire Quebec,” was sipping a cup of coffee when a shadowy figure approached. The figure was moving at a slow speed. McDiarmond bumped into Picetti deliberately, made him spill his coffee, and apologized. Picetti, calm in the face of the mishap, waved it off. Despite the insincerity of the apology, it was accepted at face value.

To get by McDiarmond, Picetti turned to his right. McDiarmond inched to his left bit by bit until he was blocking Picetti’s way. Picetti kept going right, his dark brown eyes barely registering McDiarmond. McDiarmond reached inside his vest and pulled out the gun, his eyebrows knotting tightly together in tension. At 2:37, under pressure from the surveillance monitoring men, who routinely dispatched killers even in non-emergency situations, 3 hunters were sent to the McDonald’s to find out who had tripped the alarm.

Leveling his gun at Picetti and snarling in Old English, McDiarmond said, “Down on the ground! Now!”

The other customers in the McDonald’s stared at Picetti, who refused to budge, standing still as if he owned the world. The moment in time was dangerously stretched out, impossibly tense in all its nuances, and subject to violation at the slightest movement. McDiarmond shoved Picetti against the soda machine, an ancient model brought in by Fourth Global Corporation in an attempt to feed pre-Empire nostalgia.

Picetti rammed his back against the granite counter, a long slab of stone cleaned by the McDonald’s slaves twice a day manually. He grunted. McDiarmond, holding the gun on him steadily, growled, “I want your ID chip. Give it to me.”

If Picetti yielded up his chip, he would lose his standing in the Hierarchy. If he didn’t, he would be shot. It was a difficult choice.

At the narrowest part of Pain Street, which had been sealed off to traffic due to the emergency, a security car zipped by. Inside the vehicle, 3 large armed men sat in silence. Minutes later, they were at the McDonald’s. Meanwhile, McDiarmond was exiting with Picetti’s ID chip in his pocket and his gun hidden away.

Hurrying away from the crowded area and hoping to disappear in the crowd, McDiarmond didn’t see the security car arrive. Covered in blood and Coca-Cola stains, Picetti staggered out of the McDonald’s. With the scanners working overtime, he was detected as an undesirable. The security car stopped in front of Picetti, their official logo a flamingo standing in ankle-deep waters. The doors opened. The 3 men got out just in time to catch Picetti falling to his knees. He was badly hurt, unsubtly pained, and full of despair.

The 3 security men marched up to Picetti without asking him any questions. Simultaneously, they raised their weapons before shooting him in the face, the chest, and the balls. Picetti cried out briefly, flew back, and landed on his back. Blood was everywhere. When he died 20 seconds later, there was no one to mourn him or explain that someone else had taken his ID chip.

The lesson? If someone tries to take from you what you need to stay alive, fight rather than give in.