Some days, Artolis wished that he had never left the planet he was born on.  Today was such a day.  He was currently sitting in a bar in one of the larger cities on the planet Cyrox of the Corporate Federation.  This place wasn't as bad as Cyrox, the capitol of the planet, but it was a far cry from his home world.  Most of the planets in the Corporate Federation were actually rather clean, but that's because all the manufacturing was done on worlds whose sole purpose was heavy manufacturing.  However, all of the major corporate worlds were overcrowded and over urbanized.  Cyrox was no exception.

    In reality, Artolis Blacksword would want to say that he would never be caught dead hanging out in a bar on a world like this.  However, the corporations paid very well for quality service, and Artolis was widely regarded as the best in his trade.  After he had formed the Brotherhood of the Immortals, he decided to try out the life of a mercenary.  He had lived for over a millennium so far, and the sheer passage of time had honed his combat skills to the point where he was a match for anyone in single combat.  The job he was going to take here, however, was not combat related.  Instead, it was more or less a courier job where combat skills might be needed.

    "Are you Artolis?" someone behind him asked.

    "Yeah, I'm Blacksword.  Who're you?" the mercenary responded as he turned around to face whoever it was that was addressing him.

    A man behind Artolis wearing a blue suit and carrying a box wrapped in brown paper said, "I'm from Cyrox Corporation.  Are you still interested in taking the job?"

    "Sure thing, as long as pay is assured."

    "Good.  Take this package, then," the man said, "and take it to Cyrox City.  We would normally just have a normal courier carry it, but the package contains some rather unstable materials critical for research.  I'm sorry, but for this job you'll have to use ground-based transportation."

    "No problem," Artolis replied as he took the package, "just take this package to the R&D in the main city, right?"

    "That's right.  You'll be paid by the project manager upon delivery."

    "Alright, I'll be going, then."

    With that said, Artolis left the bar.  The streets of the city looked like most cities in the Corporate Federation: Anywhere that wasn't a building was covered by cement or some other stone-like variant.  The streets on this planet were quite a bit different from most planets outside of the Corporate Federation.  Elsewhere, you would normally see cars everywhere along the ground.  Here, however, there were bicycles and other forms of human-powered transportation, as well as a central rail line that went down the middle of the street.  People that lived in the Corporate Federation were not exactly rich, so bicycles and public transit were the ways everyone got around.  Those with extra money didn't buy cars, they got off planet to go somewhere with a better standard of living.  Most everyone that was born here was not that lucky, though.

    Artolis had to hike up the street for a couple of blocks before he found a train stop.  Along the way, he saw all the staples of cities such as this: rich corporate suits on their lunch break, hobos and winos littering the sidewalks and back alleys, prostitutes advertising their business, and the poor corporate grunts that got overworked and underpaid for the sake of job security.  Most of the shops he passed along the way fell into two categories: places that the corporations controlled and shops with "For Sale" signs in the windows.  Such was life in the Corporate Federation, where the massive corporations reigned supreme.

    Finally, he came to the train stop, a wide spot in the road where the monorails would occasionally stop to pick up more passengers.  Artolis got in line and waited for his turn to board the overpriced public transit vehicle.  He held the package under one arm, and kept his other arm at his side.  His long trench coat was stifling at this point in the afternoon, but it served quite nicely to conceal among other things a longsword, his weapon of choice.  The line seemed to stand still for hours, but that was probably because of the stench of the place.  Cities usually didn't smell too bad, but it was worse at train stops, what with all the homeless beggars around.

    When he got to the front of the line, Artolis boarded the train, paid for a trip, and sat down.  He made sure to hold the package with one hand and a bared knife in the other.  Trains were the perfect place to steal packages from a courier, at least when the courier wasn't Artolis Blacksword.  A few members of the local gangs watched him closely, but made no moves to attack him or rob him.  Though they probably didn't know who he was, it was generally a bad idea to mess with a courier who arms himself with a knife.  That usually means that he's a mercenary.  Artolis simply sat in his seat as the train moved along the streets of the city.

    Every time the train would come to a stop, a few more undesirables would board.  One or two of them tried to rough him up a bit, but backed off when he blinded them with a quick spell.  In cities like this, it was not a good idea to mess with anyone who could cast spells decently, such people tended to be able to kill very quickly and efficiently.  For the most part, though, the trip was uneventful.  When the train reached his stop, Artolis simply got up and walked off.  He could hear the sighs of relief as he left, and merely smirked at this.  When you live for over a millennium, such things do not surprise you.

    Getting off, Artolis saw that night had fallen over the city.  This was not very surprising, since each day was only about twelve hours on this planet.  He simply shook his head at the quirks of this planet, and walked across the street toward the inter-city rail line.  These sorts of stations were much better kept, mainly because fewer people needed to travel between cities, and those that did tended to be higher ranking officials in the corporation.  Artolis bought an overpriced ticket from one of the automated ticket kiosks and waited for the train to arrive.

    A few hours later, the train arrived.  Most of the corporate monkeys that were waiting for this event with bated breath rushed on immediately, only to sit down and wait again.  Artolis merely read the news and waited for the fools to rush on.  Only after most people had already boarded did he turn off his newsreader and walk get on.

    The inter-city train was much nicer than the ones that drove around inside the cities.  For one thing, there were actually cushioned chairs to sit in rather than handles dangling from the ceiling.  For another, there were very few, if any, undesirables on board, so Artolis could relax for the most part.  Since the train was mostly empty, he found a few empty seats and stretched out to take a quick nap.  Before he did, however, he wove a quick spell around the package to root it to the floor until he deactivated the spell.  With this done, he stretched out along the seats and fell asleep.

    When he became aware of his surroundings once again, the train was nearing its destination: the capitol city of Cyrox.  Artolis sat up and waited for a few moments for the grogginess to wear off.  Then he cast a counter spell over the package to unbind it.  As the train neared its destination, he once again took out his newsreader to catch up on the latest happenings in the universe.

    Not much was happening today, aside from Infinity Cryogenics making another few acquisitions in the biotechnology sector.  Even so, this news was rather expected.  After all, he had discussed most of those deals with the others, Raene in particular.  She was the most vocal when it came to acquiring additional biotech companies.  After all, the more biotech firms that Infinity owned, the more biotech gadgets she had to play with.  But that was life among the Immortals: everyone had their own agenda.  Eventually, the desires of each of the Immortals were fulfilled, but it sometimes took a bit of time since money was still a limited resource for them.  Of course, time was one of their most plentiful resources.

    Personally, Artolis didn't care much for this current courier assignment.  For every assignment he did for one of the big corporations, however, he added potential informants to his list of contacts.  It usually took quite a while, but eventually he could use these missions to gather inside information about the company, which in turn could be used to know which startup companies for Infinity to buy out.  The money he made from these missions was pocket change that he tended to spend on a nice dinner.  The boost to his reputation, however, was priceless.

    The train arrived at its destination, and the doors opened.  The various corporate suits on the train exited rather quickly, giving Artolis plenty of time to get his bearings before heading out.  He picked the package up, checked his sword to make sure that it was properly concealed, and headed out into the metropolis.

    This particular city seemed to be well lit, from what he could see of it.  The streets were for the most part visible in the nighttime gloom, and the number of flickering lamps was minimal.  However, even streets such as these were dangerous in such a large city.  In this place, crime was incredibly high, with muggings and murders taking place almost hourly.  Life was cheap in these places the corporations dominated, but that was merely because it was so readily available.

    Artolis drew in some dark element and cast a quick invisibility spell on himself to avoid having to resort to violence tonight, and began to walk toward the main corporate buildings in the center of town.  He could see the various thugs hiding in the shadows and the gangs walking down the brightly lit streets as though they owned them.  Such lowlifes meant little to Artolis, but he saw no point in destroying them.  After all, if they were not there, someone else would terrorize the people of this city.

    An hour later, Artolis got tired of walking, so he activated an air-based levitation spell on top of his invisibility, and flew out into the night toward his destination.  The spells he had cast took a bit of concentration to maintain, so he thought of little else than maintaining his spells and arriving at his destination.  Another hour or so flew by, and Artolis found himself in the center of the city.  He returned to the ground and deactivated his spells since this place was much safer to talk around in.  He walked another block, and arrived at the building where the Research and Development department of the Cyrox Corporation was based.

    Most of the Cyrox Corporation's buildings were fairly easily identifiable by the logo displayed prominently on the front.  The Research and Development building, however, was far different.  It was a very nondescript and simple structure that at first glance appeared to be an apartment building.  There were windows at regular intervals along the front, and each window seemed to have a different style of shade or drape on it on the inside.  The building itself was made in the standard concrete-and-steel style popular among building contractors in the Corporate Federation.  It was seven stories high, a bit short for this part of town, but it blended in nicely with the other buildings.  Unless you knew what it really was, you wouldn't look twice at the building.

    Artolis walked up to the R&D building, and walked inside.  There was a staircase leading up as well as an elevator, with little else adorning the entry way.  He walked over to the elevator, called it to his floor, and leaned against the wall to wait for it to arrive.  Unfortunately, the builders really went all out to make this place seem like an apartment, even to the point of installing a slow and inefficient elevator.  They must have thought it would make the effect of the place more believable, Artolis simply thought it annoying.  At last, the elevator doors creaked open, revealing a moderate sized elevator that seemed to be just large enough to carry six people.  Fortunately, Artolis was the only one waiting to use the elevator, so he had plenty of time.  He walked in and pressed the button marked 'B1.'  About a minute later, the doors finally closed, and the elevator descended to the basement floor of the R&D building.

    The ride down to the basement was long and boring.  Although the button claimed that it was only the first basement he would be descending to, Artolis knew that this was not the case.  The true first basement contained the water heater and the main air-conditioning unit, and it could only be accessed by the stairs.  The basement he was heading to was deep beneath the city, far enough down that it would be rather inconvenient to try to access it any other way than the main entrance.  After a few minutes of clattering down the long elevator shaft, the elevator finally came to a halt.  The doors opened, revealing a very clean and rather spartan lobby.  The floors were covered with tile, and the only furnishing in the room was a desk and chair, at which the receptionist sat. Artolis walked over to the desk and set the package down on it.

    "Can I help you?" said receptionist asked him.

    "I was told to deliver this package to R&D."

    "Ah, very good," the receptionist said, "the lab director told me that you'd be coming.  Let me just check the contents of the package before I give you your pay."

    The receptionist picked up the package, and carefully removed the brown paper that covered it, revealing a plain metal box.  She lifted the lid and looked inside, but held the lid in such a way that Artolis was unable to see just what it was that he had wasted a day transporting.  The receptionist rustled around the contents of the box around a bit, and Artolis distinctly heard the clinking of glass against glass.  After a few minutes, the receptionist finally looked up with a smile.

    "Everything seems to be in order, sir," the receptionist said, "Here's your pay."

    The receptionist handed Artolis a card, which undoubtedly contained the appropriate information to arrange a transfer of funds from one of their accounts to his own.  Back on the world he originally came from, they used paper for such things and referred to them as "banker's notes."  He nodded at the receptionist in acknowledgment, and walked back to the elevator.  He pushed the button to call it, and the doors almost immediately opened.  He stepped into the elevator, pushed the button for the first floor, and waited as he returned to the world above.  The wider universe was completely different than the backwater planet where he was born, but in some ways he enjoyed these other worlds more than his home world.  There was always something new to see or do out here in the infinite universe, making it a very fitting place for him to spend his infinite lifetime.