No Borders, 2048, K, a senior account manager in the matrimonial department of ‘D Protocol Agency LTD’, handles her last three businesses before retiring.
The story has two plots:
The overt plot is the three businesses that K did before she retired, and in this story line, the mechanism of how the ‘Marital Agency Protocol’ works will be shown through the form, the clause, and the dialogue between K and the client in the business. The client of the first business is a young single male who wishes to design the Protocol and then use that to find someone on a forum who is willing to enter into this relationship with him; the client of the second business is an elderly couple who wish to undo the Protocol they made in the first place; and the client of the third business is a group of four young ladies who are college roommates and wish to have the opportunity to live together even after they have aged.
The covert plot is K’s career line. When K was young, the marriage and fertility rates were at historic lows, the credibility of the government’s social security system and currency issuers continued to decline, and a virtual currency called Duro captured a portion of the market by offering personal finance and customised Protocols, providing customised Protocols and payment services for wills, marriages, and the purchase and sale of goods across national borders, and K’s first career was as a clerk in Duro’s matrimonial department, processing customised matrimonial Protocols by salesmen for clients, who were required to provide the necessary Protocols they already had in place (labour Protocols, insurance Protocols, etc.), to identify issues such as parental retirement, maternity, place of settlement, etc., for both parties, and, after reaching a common understanding, in the several prevailing templates of matrimonial contracting Protocols - the Cohabitation Protocol, Joint Parenting Protocol, Sexual Partnership Protocol, etc. go for a choice. Supplementary clauses address areas where the wishes of the parties do not coincide, such as when one party has plans for career advancement and does not want to have children for a specific period of time, while the other party has an indifferent attitude or even a desire to have children, and the clauses are designed to increase the partner’s responsibility for contraception during sexual intercourse by imposing financial penalties for pregnancy.
The Protocol does not come into effect immediately after customisation, the client is given a kit to learn the exact meaning of all the clauses in the agreement and a list of technical service providers relevant to the agreement, the system generates a test and the agreement comes into effect once the client passes the test.