The sound of the brass notary seal striking the obsidian slab echoed through the stateroom like a gunshot.
Julian Vance stood tall at the head of the black volcanic table. His canvas shoulder bag hung heavy with forensic evidence, and his yellow grease pencil rested firmly in his right hand. The green glow from the IBM mainframes painted his face in sharp, angular shadows.
Before him, the six oxblood leather executive chairs were occupied by the Secured Receivers of Local Number 04.
SCSI telemetry cables ran from the chair pedestals directly into the mainframe terminal blocks, pulsing with steady blue status lights. Arthur Pendelton’s Casio PCR-T280 register stayed locked into Port #03 on Rack #01. Its internal quartz clock chimed in clean harmony with the mainframe’s operating kernel.
Inside his bronze diving bell, Silas Thorne banged his mechanical claws against the quartz glass.
“Mutiny!” Thorne screamed through the hydrophone, his voice high and shrill with desperation. “This is unauthorized civil rebellion!”
“You are night clerks, bus drivers, and nurses!” he shrieked as bubbles foamed around his collar. “You have no standing to sit in the chairs of the Seven Founders!”
“We didn’t take your chairs by force, Silas,” Julian said, his voice ringing across the stateroom with diamond clarity. “We took them by foreclosure. We sit here as secured creditors holding the defaulted collateral of your six dead directors.”
