The corporations weren't afraid of flies banging around inside their cage. Even if the flies filled the whole cage, they were still just flies.
In this world, they only saw other corporations as rivals.
Street gangs were like headless flies: all passion, but impulsive and disorganized. They were hard to swat, but their patterns were easy to figure out:
They just ate the shit the corporations left behind.
Corporations were different.
No matter how much people hated corporations for taking away their freedom, oppressing them, and turning the world into a mess, they still had to admit that these organizations, with their unified principles, modern organizational structures for wielding power, and firm execution of plans, were the most advanced.
They had algorithms, data, contracts, technology, and industry. Generation after generation of inheritance and hard work had produced weapons capable of destroying cities, sent them to the Moon, developed outer space, and driven everyone to contribute to their goals through the lure of profit.
Even if ordinary people didn't agree with them, they couldn't find anywhere else to shine. Otherwise, they would end up as corpses rotting in the street.
The couples who wanted to go to the Moon didn't actually have the technology to get there. The children who wanted to save their relatives didn't have the medical knowledge they needed. The passionate young people who wanted to resist the system
Could do nothing but hum crude rock songs. They couldn't do anything else; they'd even start struggling as soon as they looked at a thick book, then sink into videos of beautiful moments after less than two seconds.
So no corporation had ever really taken Night City's gangs seriously. But now, things were truly changing, quietly.
They had technology the corporations had never seen, a production system the corporations