Reckoning Wealth: Shu Yin and Xia Jun's Conflict in Dystopian China

The future was not what it used to be.

The old guard were gone, replaced by young tech billionaires who had built empires on their own terms. There were no more rules, no more governments or even police forces for that matter. The only law was the law of the jungle, and usually the bigger you were, the less likely you were to get eaten.

Shu Yin was a self-made woman. She'd clawed her way up from squalor and poverty, using whatever means necessary to get ahead. In a society where everything and everyone was for sale, she'd learned early on that the best way to survive and thrive was to buy up all the things people needed. Food and power became her specialty. Nobody could eat without her, nobody could live without her electricity, and nobody could function without her vital services.

But Shu Yin wasn't satisfied with just being number one in China - she wanted global dominance. She wanted to be rich beyond reckoning, and for that she needed more resources than she could ever hope to gather on her own. To do so, she would have to set her sights on America's vast oil reserves, untouched by human hands since they became officially depleted over a century ago.

She fingered the data chip in her pocket as she waited anxiously in line at customs inside the Los Angeles airport. Her biggest gamble had finally paid off; if the information contained on that little sliver of silicon turned out to be true, then Shu Yin would have just won herself a fortune beyond imagining. She would be unstoppable, untouchable - she would be invincible!

Her thoughts were interrupted when they called her name over the loudspeaker. Hoisting her designer suitcase onto the scale, she turned towards security where a stony-faced officer motioned for her to pass through the scanner. Shu Yin nervously placed one foot in front of the other before hearing a loud BEEP! Followed by a shrill alarm that caused everyone around her to turn and stare at her like she was a criminal about to make a run for it.

"Ma'am," said an officer standing behind the x-ray machine as he beckoned for Shu Yin to step forward. "Please remove your jacket."

She hesitated for a moment before doing as he asked, pulling off her expensive red jacket and handing it back to him. He put it through another scanner, which revealed nothing alarming before handing it back to Shu Yin again after taking out his wand and scanning her entire body instead.

"I don't understand," he muttered under his breath as he pointed his wand directly at Shu Yin's chest and waved it back and forth. "That can't be right." He handed his wand back to his partner before opening Shu Yin's suitcase himself with a puzzled look on his face before pulling out an odd-looking device and touching it against each of its sides sequentially until... "WHAT IS THIS?!" he screamed as he dropped the device back into the suitcase while backing away slowly from its dangerous owner who now lay laughing hysterically at their expense.