Editing New Barcelona (section)

=== Thoughts from Psyche ===

Brainstorming a bit, hope that's OK. It seems strange that there is such a heavy presence of both sweatshops and organlegging, so I feel like that cries out for an explanation. I'm thinking the organlegging must not be entirely local: what if NuevoBarca is a hub for medical and implant tourism, a target of inbound human trafficking and body "disposal" for the rest of the world. The sweatshops are producing cheap knock-off cybernetics and bioware in volume, with the workers struggling to stay ahead of the threat of being worth more as parts than as labor.

District 2 could be the regional headquarters of a Kamagawa / Maxim joint venture medical center focused in life extension cybernetics, with the nursing staff on the verge of revolt and strikes over the extreme hours and the imperious top-down cultures of those two companies.

District 4 might be literally spread across the city, occupying an expansion of the Barca Metro system, which was built to provide both expanded public transport, but also cooling systems for body storage (and maybe even cryogenic preservation of wounded or severely ill patients until further medical options become available). People from all over the world pay to be shipped to Barca on their deathbeds, in hopes of eventual revival. If some of the local body banks have turned to organlegging, well, all these frozen guys look pretty similar to one another, and they are pretty quiet about any objections.

The District 6 virus is pretty bizarre, but it sounds to me like what might happen if a technology intended for clonal replacement organs got out of hand.

As for the grand structure in District 7, megacities like this always strain a little credulity when it comes to feeding themselves, and Barcelona is coastal. How about a gigantic fishery along the coast, run by SLAG, where the border dispute is between internal management. SLAG is used to managing land-based agriculture, so it has given the managers geographic regions of authority within the mega-fishery. Problem is, the fish can move (or be chased) from one managers territory to another, leading to all sorts of dirty dealing to keep the numbers up at the expense of the neighboring divisions.