Miles Lanier sat looking out the window of his office in the Fuchi Industrial Electronics headquarters in New York City. Known as The Black Towers, the six spires of the complex rose high above the city skyline, offering a view of the city and the distant Jersey shore. Lanier watched the shimmering lights of the sprawl and considered the lives of the millions of people teeming in its streets and the millions more in other metroplexes where the drama between the corporate giants straddling the world was played out on a daily basis. One game ended while elsewhere another one was just beginning.