Below the "High City" lies the abyss—the rain-slicked neon gutters where the "low-lifes" recycle the trash that falls from above. Life in the "Zip"
The ".zip" suffix implies a world that has been squeezed to fit a limited capacity. In this setting, privacy is the first thing to be deleted to save space. Living quarters are "micro-pods," where furniture folds into walls and virtual reality (VR) serves as the only "window" to a wider world. People don't own land; they own a few gigabytes of physical space in a server-like apartment complex.
The middle class exists in the "High City.zip"—massively dense residential blocks where thousands of lives are packed into modular shipping-container apartments.