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were down somewhere in the district.  As with transportation, communication between even nearby districts was well beyond the scope of most people’s incomes, and thus almost nonexistent.
    Virginia made her way to the call room, the building so cold that she opted to keep her jacket tightly wrapped around her and her gloves and hat on.  She sat down at her station, trying to get comfortable in her headset.  As a call center associate, Virginia had only a switchboard, a policy manual, and an electronic pen and notepad.  All complaints she could not handle went to the call center manager, a fat, grumpy old man named Robert who often raised his voice loud enough for the associates to be able to hear him through the wall to his office.  Robert didn’t seem to mind dealing with one irate customer after another.  In fact, he seemed to thrive on conflict.  Virginia could not stand the man.
    The bulk of today’s complaints came from people who lived in the upper west end of the district, all calling from their corner-office telephones because eighty percent of the rich people in the district had gone without their personal communication lines since yesterday.  Yesterday’s storm had destroyed a couple of main circuits that fed the lines, and it seemed that the repair associates were the low level employees organizing that strike out in the garage.  They contended that they weren’t making enough money to compensate for the elements they faced each day, and unless they were paid more and were given Housing upgrades, they would be making no more communications repairs.
    Virginia forwarded every complaint to Robert, knowing there was nothing she could do about the strike or the damaged communication lines.  One could only hope that a sufficient number of repair associates would be cut a big enough deal to be back at work and have the lines up and running soon.  That would be the best-case scenario; the worst-case scenario would involve people dying in the garage.  Virginia hoped she wouldn’t have to see any bodies.  The workers did have a valid complaint, but their means of complaining was illegal and the law did not allow for excuses, no matter how valid they were.
    Zelda, a thin woman with dark features sitting two chairs down from Virginia, put a man on hold and threw her headset onto the desk.  She turned to Jane, a plump woman sitting between her and Virginia, as she put her hand to her forehead in a melodramatic display, and feigned, “I can’t take it anymore!”  She chuckled, her head nudging toward an empty seat on the other side of the room.
    Jane giggled with her.
    The seat across the room had been vacant for a few days now, after Carolyn, a young woman who had been hired fresh out of school just shy of a year ago, experienced a mental breakdown.  She threw her headset down onto the desk, clearly after having transferred an especially difficult call to Robert, and then screamed about how unbearable the system was until the security associates came.  It took three of them to drag her, hysterical and screaming, out of the building.  She had been a sweet girl up until then.  What became of her, no one knew.  What all the women did know, however, was that Corporate held her seat unfilled for a reason.  It was there to remind them of what became of those who could not handle their simple jobs.
    Virginia was old enough to remember life just when Corporate America was beginning to take hold.  A free market system was still in place, although privately owned shops and other small businesses slowly fell to the wayside as superstores and giant corporations smothered them all, one by one.  The free market system dissolved as monopolies took over.  Those in power took advantage of what they could, knowing there was no stopping the monster, and soon the delineation between the monopolies and the government became close to indistinguishable.
    Shortly after free trade disappeared internationally, the Big