The Information Exchange is a central part of life on High Atlantic, as befits a harsh, selfish society where everyone is out to stab someone else in the back. It is not, as the name falsely suggests, a single coherent entity, but rather a loose affiliation of gangs, Brokers, moles, and pirate radio stations. Navigating this quagmire of deals, agreements, and tradition is extremely difficult for the uninitiated, and it is very easy to make a lot of enemies trying.
The Exchange is also notable as perhaps the only part of life on High Atlantic beyond the purview of the Tourist Board. While the Board does employ its own Brokers, and offer its own information to the market, much of the Exchange remains beyond its grasp, jealously guarded by locals who see it as their only real source of leverage – though that equally means that the Board is one of the few things largely beyond the Exchange’s purview.
As a rule, the Exchange works via a simple bartering system, with the various members constantly trading information back-and-forth. The most important and entrenched members, known as ‘Spiders’, are thereby made aware of almost everything going on across the planet - though of course most Brokers are concerned only with matters relevant to them, offering up their local information in exchange for whatever they happen to be after at the time. Hence the manifold contributions of the various smaller players add up to near omniscience for the Spiders, who then offer useful titbits in return.
A number of gangs are closely entwined with the Exchange. The most notable of these are the Longshoremen, whose original chapter holds much of the riverside territory in Galveston and Neo-Atlantica’s Old City. For all the modernity of High Atlantic, much information still travels by river, and the Longshoremen make it their business to know all of it. They are one of the most straightforward points of access for the uninitiated trying to gather information via the Exchange, more than happy to provide in return for a fee or a favour. It is also suspected that the Longshoremen do not offer everything to the Exchange, making them the premier source of information for Galveston locals.
The Mudlarks perform a similar role, working the river elsewhere in the city, though they are less prestigious and much more liable to be bullied into conceding information than their cousins.
The Information Exchange also taps in to interplanetary information flows. A great deal of famous, popular, and powerful people are associated with and/or regularly visit High Atlantic, allowing the Exchange to trade intel on these happenings with Brokers on other worlds. Indeed, with the size of the known galaxy and the power of knowledge, some form of ‘information exchange’ is present virtually across inhabited space, although rarely as formalised and established as that on High Atlantic. The only place somewhat above this is the Reunification Alliance, which is also one of the few sources of bogus information on the Exchange, exploiting their powerful local allies and state-of-the-art covert operations to effectively leech off its services in a way even other great powers have proven unable.