Dinner 4_1: Alcatraz 2020 / Dinner 4_1 (ePub)

Everyone gives you the cold shoulder in the Free Cities, but if you're lucky enough to find a night out, you might end up scoring at Telephone Bar. The Haight looks sinister like its morning occupants. Its shop windows bear witness to the aftermath of another loveless evening. They reflect Cinderella's lost slipper twice removed so that the unlucky barefoot gals going home shoeless and single at the end of the night have an additional reminder that they are, in fact, all alone.

It is said that if you stand in just the right spots in Telephone Bar that one can hear a whisper from another section of the venue some 72 feet removed from each other- "Stand together. Apart". The theory is tested nightly by tourists mainly and largely the rumors have been dispelled. It's just never quite quiet enough to test the theory at its capacity and, when it is quiet enough, it's too silent to tell. Still, the barkeeps and regulars insist that, though they've not successfully employed the game themselves, that they know somebody who knows somebody who did. Americans are finally starting to come together again.

Loveheed Pharmaceuticals was called 'The Little Bioengineering Plant that could' by American Forex before word hit the Area 3 about its bold plan to move into the automotive business. There were rumors of a merger since long before the press release. Loveheed had been turning Silicon heads and making mouths water in the valley since their conception of the first workable remedy to methadone dependency. The word 'workable' is not thrown around readily in the pharmaceutical industry, especially in post Reformation times, when it's easier to get away with murder than it is to call a horse by its name. Sergeant Halestorm patrols Area 3. He's never been to Telephone to test out the game himself, and he has no intentions to pick up a bad habit this close to retirement. The Free Cities are freezing cold. Nobody really listened to each other prior to The Reforms, and they sure as hell don't now.