Dagny Taggart stepped into a well-lit room, adorned with fluorescent light strips, like zebra stripes across the office. Wires connected a heavy steel computer to its neighbor. She recalled the Christian minister she had been forced to see in her youth speaking about neighbors. He was more blubber than man, his thin gray hairs combed with grease over a dry, flaking bald spot. He read with lackluster enthusiasm the parable of the good Samaritan, where Jesus said that your neighbor was whoever was of use to you; despite Dagny’s feelings on the man, he had a point there. Her hands in her pockets, she noticed a terminal across the room.

The terminal was, like the rest of the room, oddly out-of-place. She was used to a life in the center of industry, where men and serfs built things with their own brawn and courage. But this room represented an odd vestige of the 1980s, a time where men devoted themselves to stock trading and cocaine. She remembered, with a slight smirk, watching a legally-purchased copy of American Psycho, and watching the scene where the main character shoved a kitten into an ATM. She was not without affection for the 1980s.

A moth-faced attendant rose lazily from his repose to speak. “I got me here the capsule, lady,” he said, his eyes and wrists too limp to meet her own, and his ancient wrinkles seemed to hang on him like bulbs of fat that should have been lanced long ago. Her dark gray eyes darted with a flicker of aggression toward the man, and then came to rest comfortably above him, her hands in her coat pockets. There was no one she truly hated, Dagny told herself, except the coward who couldn’t stand at a rigid angle when dealing with his betters.

She followed his flaccid gesture toward the capsule that sat in the center of the room. It was a virtual reality console, developed to allow its user to play a children’s game, Royal Road. The game itself was Korean, and while normally she would never let such a contemptible waste of time distract her from the more important business of trains, she had heard about this game. Specifically, about its opportunities to make money.

The People’s Republic of Korea had suffered economic catastrophe due to their impulsive, thoughtless parliament. The Labor Welfare Law, revised by Parliament, took away from all industrious children the right to work for their keep. When Dagny heard of the injustice of it, relayed to her approvingly by some slack-jawed man with clinical obesity while she was busy in her office with decisions, she thought back to her ancestor, Nathaniel Taggart, who murdered a legislator who tried to stop him from building his railroad. Nothing would stop her from working. Nothing would stop those children from working.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She walked swiftly over to the pod, and a twinge of disgust crossed her otherwise angularly emotionless face as she observed the restraints she would have to don. Dagny Taggart did not take kindly to restraint.

As she worked tirelessly to connect to the machine, the fraction of a man took notice of something for once in his miserable life, and slowly drawled out an unnecessary sentence. “We got ourselves a problem here.”

“What?”

“The terminal, computer, whatever they call it these days. It’s not connecting to the American server.”

She stared at him, unblinking, her hands in her pockets.

“It wants’cha to go to a Korean server.

Dagny remembered the pilgrims, who came to the continent in hope of freedom from the taxes and violence of the British. They found new land, land without owners, and conquered it. They were men of action. So was she. A person of action, that is, not a man, though it hardly mattered; her eyes and jawline were as chiseled as any man’s was, and her bearing itself seemed to scorn femininity. She made up her mind so quickly, it was as though the pause itself were imperceptible.

“Do it.”

“Ya sure? I think it’s better to…”

“I have made my decision, and you are my employee; you will obey it.”

“Do ya even speak Korean?”

Dagny made a mental note to replace this human failure with anyone else as soon as she returned. Possibly a Korean child; market rate of pay for them was rather low. “I take all responsibility for this decision; do as I tell you to.”

“Well, arright…,” and the ‘man’ dialed a password into the terminal. A flash of blue light crossed her eyes, and she saw a message in front of her.

– Connect to Royal Road –

Yes | No

When the message came, Dagny Taggart spoke without any hesitation.

“Yes.”