The Hopkins Institute

The biotech, morph, and resleeving corp. Built on the absorbed lineage of Johns Hopkins — medical school, hospital, applied physics lab, the works. "Institute" is the laundering: academic prestige masking a profit-extracting biotech empire.

Role in the world

Hopkins makes sleeves — and owns what they're made of. For most people resleeving is a once-in-a-lifetime mercy: one new body after a fatal injury, and only if the subscription was current. The wealthy swap morphs freely, a luxury good. Either way the sleeve reverts to Hopkins on death — and Hopkins decides when "death" counts. The cheaper the gear, the more you've signed away. Truth #7 — your mind is yours; everything else is a subscription — is most acutely Hopkins's.

Its public promise is resleeving: subscribe to live forever. What it does in its labs beyond that, it does not announce.

Public faces

• Hopkins Chief Research Officer — the public face of Hopkins biotech and resleeving; fronts the Institute's research programme and its academic respectability

Allies and friction

• Allies: the other four corps; Carrion (deep operational partnership); the Corporate Council
• Friction with: the bay communities (over Hopkins research interests in the bay); the Sankofa Collective (Howard genomic library dispute); Lazarus (who modifies Hopkins-issued sleeves off-EULA)

Where they operate

Morph clinics, subscription sleeve billboards, Hopkins-marked clinical operations vehicles. Subscribe to live forever is the campaign-marketing tagline. Everyone knows it. Everyone hates it.