EXPIRATION DATE

April 2070. Solar-City Headquarters. 87th Floor. The same office, the same panoramic walls, the same black oak table.

Josh Hall, now no longer just CEO but de facto one of the three rulers of the world, sat in his chair, legs crossed. Before him - a transparent holographic list of all members of the US Congress. Each line was color-coded: green - reliable, already signed; yellow - wavering but pliable; red - oppositionists who needed to be isolated. Seventy percent of the list was green. Senator Collins - bright red, the only one of his kind.

Josh slowly scrolled through the data, studying personal dossiers, family connections, debts, hobbies, secret accounts. He knew more about each of these people than their own spouses: who was cheating, who took bribes, who was afraid of losing authority, who dreamed of a governor's seat. All the information had been collected and systematized by neural networks that did not miss a single email, a single call, a single second of video surveillance.

Prepare the invitations, - he said to his assistant - a young but already absolutely ruthless manager with a notepad in hand. - For all deputies in the yellow and red zones whose votes could be decisive. Arrange cruises for them on yachts in the Mediterranean, excursions to our plants with velvet conditions, consultations with our financial advisors. Let them be busy on voting day. Feel important. Immersed in comfort. Cut off from communication, if necessary.

Yes, sir, - the assistant wrote without looking up.

And a separate assignment: on the day of the session, perform a global update of the protocols of all government communicators on the East Coast. The failure should affect precisely those who decide to come. So they do not have confirmation of a quorum, so they cannot transmit their vote through proxies. A technical delay of four hours. That is enough.

Understood, sir.

Josh leaned back and took a cup of black coffee from the table. He did not smile, but in his gaze was the calm confidence of a mechanic who had just finished tuning the most complex engine. The bill would not pass. He knew it as surely as he knew that tomorrow the sun would rise in the east. This was not magic, not luck - it was pure probability mathematics, backed by billions of dollars and years of planning.

May 2070. Washington, D.C. The Capitol. Voting Day.

The chamber looked even emptier than last time. Only twenty percent attendance - deputies who came out of habit or stubbornness. But even among them, many whispered, glanced at their watches, nervously checked their communicators, which stubbornly showed "no connection." The technical failure, officially announced, had paralyzed notification systems and electronic voting. Paper ballots, provided for by the old regulations, lay untouched on the tables - no one remembered how to fill them out.

Collins stood at the podium, his fists clenched, his face gray with fury and despair.

Where is everyone?! - he shouted, his voice cracking. - Where are my colleagues, where are the senators, where are the people's representatives?! This is a conspiracy! This is a coup!

The Speaker, maintaining a perfectly impassive expression, rose from his seat and said with saccharine politeness:

Dear Senator, many deputies have reported technical difficulties in confirming their credentials. Some delegations have been delayed at airports due to weather conditions. This is force majeure, we must take it into account. I propose postponing the vote to the next quarter.

Next quarter?! We will be dead by the next quarter! - Collins pounded his fist on the podium, and the echo rolled through the hall, but no one flinched. The deputies simply averted their eyes, shuffled papers, pretended to be busy.

The vote was postponed. The bill was defeated de facto, without even reaching a count. Collins gathered his folders, placed them in an old leather briefcase, and walked toward the exit. Each step cost him great effort - his knees buckled, his back ached. He felt not just defeated - he felt like the last person who still remembered what victory was.

In the empty marble corridor, hung with faded state flags, he was met by a young man in an impeccable dark blue suit with a gold pin on his lapel - faceless, polite, professional, one of those who appeared from nowhere and disappeared into nowhere.

Senator Collins? - he said in a melodic, emotionless voice. - Allow me to introduce myself, I am a consultant for the private firm "Atlantic Partners." We have been following your career and your initiatives. We would like to offer you a long-term contract. Compensation - two million dollars annually, bonuses for participation in closed hearings, full benefits package, office in Manhattan. You would no longer have to speak in this empty building. You could truly influence processes.

Collins looked at him as if at a ghost. He opened his mouth to answer sharply, with an insult, with a spit - but stopped. He saw his hands: wrinkled, covered in age spots, with trembling fingers. He saw his reflection in the display case glass - a tired, broken old man. He could no longer fight. There was no strength left in him, no anger, only emptiness.

I will think about it, - he forced out, barely moving his lips.

The young man smiled - mechanically, with his lips only, not his eyes:

Of course, Senator. We will await your response. We need you very much - as a symbol, as a voice, as a bridge between eras.

He turned and walked away, disappearing around the corner as silently as he had appeared.

Collins remained alone. He looked along the empty corridor, where once there had been the sound of crowds, reporters, lobbyists, citizens with petitions. Now there was only an echo, and wind blowing through cracks in the windows, and dust slowly settling on the floor tiles. He stood there for several minutes, then slowly walked toward the exit, no longer looking back at the Capitol, which had ceased to be his home.

He would never return to this hall again.

SCENE 3. ECONOMIC STRANGULATION

September 2070. New York. Manhattan.

The city once called "the pulse of the planet" now resembled a giant concrete mausoleum. Its celebrated skyscrapers, which only a year ago had shone with mirrored facades, had turned into dark obelisks whose outlines were barely visible against the leaden sky. The shutdown had begun exactly at midnight, without warning, without declaration of a state of emergency - simply a click, and the world plunged into silence. First the garish neon signs of Times Square went out, then the streetlights along Broadway, then millions of windows in residential towers, one by one, as if someone were blowing out candles. The last to disappear was the light at the top of the Empire State Building, and since then the city had lain in pitch darkness, broken only by the dull crimson glow of emergency beacons on hospital roofs - and those were already running out.

Charles Davis sat in his tiny room on the sixth floor of a dilapidated apartment building in the Bronx. He was seventy-two, but he still worked as a courier - though now he delivered not envelopes and packages, but five-liter canisters of technical water dropped by rare cargo drones running on solar batteries. The delivery drones, once swarming over the city, had long been silent - their batteries were dead, and there were no charging stations. Now Charles carried water on his bent shoulders, descending and ascending dark, trash-filled staircases, each time risking a fall and breaking something - at his age, bones no longer healed properly.

He sat on a sagging chair by the only window facing the courtyard. Beyond the glass - absolute, dense blackness, only occasionally punctuated by the yellow tongues of candles lit in apartments across the way. Their light was dim, unstable, and diminished every evening - people burned them sparingly, by the minute, but paraffin lasted only three or four nights, and no one had reserves of candles. At the bottom of the courtyard, where children once played basketball, a makeshift camp had sprung up - several polyethylene tents, wood-burning heaters whose smoke hung low and smelled sharply of soot. But even there, fewer and fewer people appeared - many simply stopped coming out.

It was now the third day without electricity. Without heat, without sewage, without communication, without news, without hope. Manhattan and the surrounding areas had become a giant prison without walls - bridges blocked by automatic barriers, tunnels flooded, ferries not running. People were locked in their apartments like in cells, trying to stay warm with several blankets and hot tea brewed on gas burners - but the gas cylinders were also running out. Panic was already seeping through locked doors: somewhere cries were heard, children crying, dull thuds against walls - people were breaking furniture to light fires right in their rooms, risking burning alive.

On the streets, at human height, "Locust" drones silently swarmed - small, fist-sized, with pulsing red lights scanning every movement. They patrolled blocks along preset routes, their cameras peeking into windows, their speakers broadcasting recorded voice warnings: "Curfew. Stay indoors. Exit is forbidden. Violators will be neutralized." And they indeed neutralized. Charles had seen it with his own eyes: last night, a man about forty came out of the entrance across the way, empty-handed, perhaps just wanting to stretch his legs. A drone swooped down, the red light blinked three times - a warning. The man did not stop, perhaps he did not hear, perhaps he was drunk. Then the drone silently detached a small charge from its body and dropped it at the man's feet. The explosion was quiet - a pop, like a firecracker - but enough to shatter his shinbone. The man fell and screamed, the scream echoing through the empty streets, but no one came out to him, no one called an ambulance, no one even looked out the window. He lay on the asphalt for over an hour until he stopped moving. In the morning, cleaning machines obeying the same drones removed his body.

Charles thought of the elderly locked in their tiny cells. Of children begging for food. Of the sick who could not get medicine because pharmacies were sealed and doctors did not make house calls. Hospitals ran on backup generators, but diesel fuel ran out with each hour. Incubators for newborns had already been turned off in most perinatal centers - infants died within hours without warmth and oxygen. Elderly people froze to death right in their beds, covered in all the clothes they could find - neighbors found them only by smell when passing by their doors. Charles remembered Jacob, his friend who had left for New Eden three years ago, dreaming of work and stability. He had not heard from him since - no message, no call. Charles sometimes caught himself thinking that Jacob might be dead - or simply "shut down," like useless accounts in old databases. He did not know which was worse.

Charles stood up, picked up two empty five-liter bottles of dark plastic from the floor. He walked into the corridor - dark, smelling of damp plaster and mold. The light bulbs had long stopped working, so he groped his way, holding the railing, step by step, counting flights: sixth floor, fifth, fourth. In the basement, where there used to be a laundry, an old water pipe still survived, rusty but still yielding a thin trickle of icy water - it came from the city reservoir, which had not yet been shut off because the pumping station ran on mechanical drive. Charles placed the bottles under it, waiting for them to fill with murky, cold, rust-smelling liquid. It could be drunk if boiled, but there was almost no firewood, so they drank it raw, risking infection.

In the basement he ran into a neighbor - Mr. Goldberg, an eighty-year-old man who lived on the first floor and had not yet lost the ability to speak in full sentences.

Charles, - said Goldberg, wrapped in several woolen blankets, his voice dropping to a whisper. - Charles, I heard on the loudspeakers from the city administration… They broadcast on a frequency almost no one picks up. The shutdown will last at least another week. Maybe two. And I've run out of candles; I only light them for ten minutes a day to see if I'm still alive. And I have no warm clothes, just one shirt, a jacket…

Charles nodded, not knowing what to answer.

Listen, - Goldberg continued, - I heard that the corporations are offering a deal. If the city officially recognizes their authority - transfers management of utilities, police, courts to them - they will turn on the electricity. Not fully, but at least heating and hospitals. The mayor is thinking about it. Many are already thinking. New York cannot survive another week, Charles. We cannot survive.

Charles was silent for a long minute, looking at the murky water in the bottles. He had heard these rumors. Heard how the authorities of Boston and Washington were already conducting backroom negotiations with representatives of Solar-City. But he also knew what signing a capitulation meant.

If we surrender, - he finally said, - they will never turn the lights back on. They will keep us on this leash forever. It will not be help - it will be control. We will become their dogs, getting food only for obedience.

And if we do not surrender, - Goldberg interrupted, - we will die here. I do not want to die in the dark, Charles. I am already eighty. I want to see at least one light bulb before I die.

Charles looked at the old man, and a dull, helpless ache rose in his chest. He could not argue with him, because every word was true. He just nodded and walked back, heavily treading the concrete steps, carrying two canisters of ice-cold water that would be someone's last drink in this house.

October 2070. Boston. Massachusetts General Hospital.

Third week of total shutdown. The medical center building, once one of the most modern in the country, now looked like a field hospital after an artillery strike. The backup generators that powered the ICU and surgery had failed five days ago - fuel tanks were empty, and attempts to get diesel from military depots had failed due to drones blocking all approaches. The operating rooms were dark; sterile lights did not work; surgeons operated by candlelight and battery-powered flashlights, but the batteries were also running out. Incubators did not work, ventilators were silent, refrigerators with medications had become warm cabinets, and vital drugs - insulin, antibiotics, vaccines - had spoiled within the first day.

Dr. Emily Wilson, thirty-five, with dark circles under her eyes and an overgrown fringe, knelt by a metal cot in the pediatric ward. She wore a soiled white coat over which a woolen scarf was wrapped to keep warm. Before her - a girl, six years old, with huge brown eyes and blond hair in two uneven braids. Diagnosis: bilateral pneumonia complicated by respiratory failure. She needed continuous oxygen, but the oxygen cylinder connected to a manual mask was almost empty - twenty, maybe thirty minutes left.

The girl looked at Emily with the trust that only the very young possess. She still did not understand she was dying - she just felt that breathing was hard, that something in her chest was wheezing and blocking the air.

Mommy? - the girl whispered, her voice weak and intermittent. - Where is my mommy? She promised to come when I woke up.

Emily squeezed her tiny, cold hand, trying to pass on her warmth. She knew the truth she could not say: the girl's mother had died the day before yesterday, frozen in her apartment when the heating was cut off - neighbors had found her in the morning, already cold, hugging a pillow. The girl was left alone. Emily had taken her under her care, but it changed nothing.

She will be here soon, - Emily lied, trying to keep her voice steady. - She was just delayed, sweetheart. Just breathe, please, breathe…

The girl closed her eyes, her breathing becoming slower and shallower. Emily pressed the mask tighter, but the cylinder let out a final hiss and fell silent. Life was leaving the child before her eyes, thread by thread, her pulse weakening under her fingers.

A senior nurse burst into the room, her face twisted with panic.

Doctor, there is a huge crowd outside. Thousands of people. They are demanding we open the gates, they say it's minus five outside, they have no roof, many with children. They want to take shelter here, in the building. They have started beating the gates with metal bars.

We have no free space, - Emily replied without taking her eyes off the girl. - We have no fuel, no heating, we can barely warm our own patients. If we open the gates, they will bring in infections, chaos, and then everyone will die.

And if we do not open, - the nurse's voice cracked, - they will die out there. And they will still break through sooner or later. There are too many of them. They are peaceful now, but in an hour they will be angry.

Emily closed her eyes for a moment. Through the old, dusty walls of the hospital, she heard the rising roar of voices - hundreds, maybe thousands, chanting: "Open up! Help!" Somewhere a baby cried. Somewhere a man hoarsely shouted that his wife was pregnant and unwell.

The girl under her hand stopped breathing. Emily checked for a pulse, put her ear to her chest, tried to perform CPR, though she knew it was useless. After a minute she leaned back on her heels, covered her face with her hands, and sat there, feeling tears mix with sweat and run down her cheeks.

Open the gates, - she said dully. - Let them in. We will do what we can.

The nurse ran out. Ten minutes later, sirens began to wail in the hospital corridors, people flooded inside - dirty, frozen, frightened. Doctors and nurses, now three times fewer, tried to distribute them in the corridors, wrap them in blankets, give them hot water. But there was almost no water, blankets for no more than a hundred. Chaos grew - shouts, crying, swearing. Someone started pushing, trying to get to the reception desk. The sound of breaking glass was heard.

Emily remained in the pediatric ward, alone, next to the body of the girl she could not save. She took her cold hand, straightened her braids, and quietly, voicelessly, cried in the silence broken only by the noise of the dying city outside the windows.

November 2070. Chicago. City Hall.

The city administration building - once a glass cube, a symbol of modern urbanity - now looked like a bunker. Inside, dark, cold; employees sat in coats and gloves, on tables - kerosene lamps and candles, the smoke from which settled on the ceiling in a thin layer of soot. The city's mayor, Frank Miller, a man about sixty, in a worn wool suit, sat in his office on the top floor, from which there had once been a view of Lake Michigan. Now the lake was invisible - the windows were fogged, and outside there was only gloom and occasionally flashing lights of "Locust" drones circling over the square like vultures.

The mayor had gone seven days without sleep, without communication with the outside world, without support from the federal government, which simply stopped answering calls. He knew from radio intercepts that Philadelphia had capitulated two weeks ago - its mayor had signed an act transferring infrastructure to Cyber-Fund, and the first lights had come on in the city. Houston surrendered a week after Philadelphia. Detroit - three days ago. Now it was Chicago's turn. On his desk lay the only message received via a satellite communicator running on its last battery. The text was short, typed in perfect font:

"To His Excellency, the Mayor of the City of Chicago. On behalf of the united council of corporations Solar-City, Cyber-Fund, and Green-Matrix. The corporations are ready to restore power to Chicago within two hours of signing the agreement on the transfer of control over city grids, port infrastructure, and public safety systems. You have twenty-four hours to make a decision. If no response is received, the complete shutdown mode will continue until April 2071. Estimated number of casualties: 780,000 people. We trust in your prudence."

The mayor read this letter for the hundredth time. He knew it was not an ultimatum - it was a farewell. If he signed, he would go down in history as a traitor, the man who surrendered the city without a single shot, handed it over to the mercy of corporations. But if he did not sign, by April more than seven hundred thousand people would die in Chicago - from hunger, cold, disease. He had already seen the lists of his citizens, obtained from humanitarian organizations: about three thousand people died daily, mostly the elderly and children. One thought circled in his head: "I cannot let this continue. I must do something. Even if it is wrong."

He took a steel pen, dipped it in ink - modern styluses had long been gone - and signed his name on the thick sheet of paper brought by his assistant. His hand did not tremble. It was just tired.

Fifty minutes later, with a slight delay due to technical procedures, the first streetlight on the square outside city hall came on. It burned with a steady, white, cold light - too bright after weeks of darkness. Behind it, a second, third, a dozen, a hundred came on - and Chicago awoke, but it awoke as a different city. A city that no longer belonged to itself.

The mayor looked at this light and felt neither relief nor pride. He felt only emptiness, like a room from which all furniture had been removed. He understood that he had just signed democracy's death warrant, but he could no longer distinguish victory from defeat.

He put down the pen, rose from his chair, walked to the window, and looked for a long time at the lights returning to his city - not as a gift, but as a reminder that he had just sold his soul for a few watts of electricity.

SCENE 4. THE PRESIDENT ON HIS KNEES

February 2071. Solar-City Headquarters. Satellite City "New Eden."

The presidential air shuttle landed silently on the rooftop platform of Solar-City's main headquarters at exactly 9:47 AM local time. James Harrison, the fifty-third president of the United States, stepped out of the cabin alone - without security, without secretaries, without advisors. His face was pale, deep shadows under his eyes, and his once immaculate suit hung loosely on his gaunt body. He had taken office six years ago, in 2065, with a promise to restore America's former might, but instead he had become a witness to its slow, agonizing death. Now he had come here not as the leader of a superpower, but as a supplicant - the last in a long line of presidents who had one by one ceded power to corporations, starting as far back as 2025, when the 47th president, Donald Trump, signed the first contracts privatizing infrastructure.

The corridors of the headquarters greeted him with shining cleanliness, sterile gleam of chrome panels, and soft, even light from ceiling panels simulating natural sunlight. Humidifiers, air conditioners, and ionizers worked here; the air smelled of lemon and freshness - a smell Harrison had not felt for many months, because in the White House climate control had long been shut off, and the president lived in dampness and mold, wrapped in an army blanket. He walked through these corridors, and each step echoed with dull pain in his chest, because he understood: here, in this perfectly calibrated world, there was no place for his people. Here, fates were decided. And he had come to beg.

He was led into the negotiation hall - a spacious room with panoramic glass overlooking the snow-covered domes of New Eden, stretching below like a giant anthill of identical modular cells. Behind a long table of polished black stone sat three people. In the center - Josh Hall, chairman of Solar-City, with completely gray hair and steel, unblinking eyes. To his right - a representative of Cyber-Fund, a young woman in an ivory-colored suit with a cold, detached smile. To his left - a representative of Neura-Infra, the corporation managing global communications and biometrics, a gray-haired man with a face devoid of any emotion. They did not rise when the president entered. They did not even extend their hands for a handshake. They simply sat, fingers clasped, and looked at him as one would look at a laboratory animal that had finally stopped resisting.

Harrison stopped at the table. He did not sit in the offered chair - it was too soft and comfortable for such a moment. He stood, leaning with both hands on the back of the chair, his shoulders slumped, his voice trembling as he began to speak: