Cyberpunkapocalypse

One spring afternoon, about 5 pm, a man stands on a crowded train heading to what felt like nowhere. In this bizarre ever-transitory space between spaces that seemed to be so far removed from reality, his mind couldn’t help but wander. He thought about all the millions of people travelling here and there. The millions of glances, the billions of breaths all exchanged between passengers in enclosed spaces such as this one. In his heart he lamented a tragedy that wouldn’t be remembered. A tragedy defined by not being remembered. All of those uncountable exchanges, footsteps, thoughts, the checking of watches, intimate embraces with bars and rails, the petty dramas in our minds when others don’t and do give up seats, where we are, where we’re going. It all felt like sacrificing treasure not to Gods but to a void. He lamented the continuous destruction of information, and he dreamt of a world where bureaucratic gods hurriedly recorded every occurrence both subjective and intersubjective. He didn’t know it, but he dreamt of hell. He thought about the end of the world: a final destination, like a train that was never reaching one.

-

Joan sat anxiously on the stone wall as she watched the sun set on the silent city. She had been waiting for close to an hour wondering what could be taking Monkey and the others so long. In that idle time she watched the sleeping city. A city she knew was once awake: living, breathing, with people and the prospect of the future, was now silent and deserted. It felt as if the city slept. The cars strewn around the road all abandoned mid-transit and others parked roadside as if their owners would hop in gave the imagination the idea that maybe someday the city might wake up. But, this sleep was more like a long indefinite coma. Concepts like “tomorrow” and “the future” were concepts she was logically familiar with, but say them here and they dissipate in the expanse. This place had no sense of the future;it would sleep forever.

There were many such places in the world now, she thought. The nuclear war of 2151, and the ongoing climate crises has left many such haunted places and their futureless phantoms in their wake. But this was her world for as long as she could remember. Her mother had left New Manhattan long ago free from the reaches of the Administration to join revolutionaries, data miners, hackers, bandits, and anyone else who tried to make a life in the wasteland. Jaon could still recall the day her mother died. The day The Disruption became her family.

This brought her back to the present, and she again wondered why this meeting dragged on so long, and she hated all the secrecy surrounding it. She had been a member of this group and dreamt of revolution almost all of her life so why were there things she wasn't cleared to know?

No sooner than she thought this, Monkey and the others appeared from the abandoned office building they had made into their HQ. Monkey, in proper Monkey fashion, spoke only two words: “Let's go.”

With him came two others: Rosa and Twossaint. The mission that we were to carry out called for a small team. It was a covert operation that would take them to the heart of New Manhattan. Her entire life had been leading up to this. This was a chance at real revolution, or at the very least (as their name would suggest) a big disruption in the order of things and the continuous control. She felt the weight of the heart shaped locket around her neck. The heart shaped chip that was the key to this mission and had the power to produce change or atleast catalyze it. How it was to do this Joan did not know; she wasn’t allowed to know. All she did know is that she had to connect it to the nexus at the right place and the right time.

She walked beside Rosa who was only 3 years her senior at 27 and quietly asked, “Are you nervous?”

“Yes, I think we all are. We have a lot ahead of us.” Rosa replied.

Joan and Rosa usually had a lot to say to each other but the entire group walked in silence. Even Twossaint, who was the most lively of the organization, didn't say a word. They remained in silence until they reached the truck, made almost entirely of pre-war parts. This was to be their transportation, since they never bothered to smuggle any new vehicles. Most of their efforts and resources went to smuggling computer tech and data that could be appropriated for their cause.

-

On the ride they discussed the plan: First, they reach the outskirts of the city and are smuggled in. Second, they kill their targets who were members of the Administration. Third, they assume the identity of their targets through a comprehensive body modification surgery complete with a computer chip planted in their brain that carries a code that would help modulate their behavior. They would also need to keep the eyes and fingers of their targets as these two would become theirs.Third, they would head to the node and upload the data on the locket. Anything further was not discussed, but everyone understood that this was a mission they would not return from.

-

From the window of the train she watched the nighttime city from far above the ground, and marveled at the brilliance of the LED maze. Up until then, she had only heard stories of life within the mega-cities from her mother years ago and the others. To her it seemed like the city had a vendetta against the light from which nothing seemed to escape. Everything was completely illuminated by the multitude of streetlights, headlights, windows, billboards, signs, cars, and the various varieties of flying vehicle. In the openings that lead deep into the Earth into the underground portion of the city the light still reigned. You couldn’t escape it even at the extreme 1 mile dwellings.

She thought about what she had learned of this world, and what she had learned of the world that once was almost two centuries ago. About how work had become continuous; the workday never ended and even in relaxation you are always “on the clock” as her mother would say. About how the designated “workplace” and “workspace” had been abolished; everywhere was now the workspace. The majority of people held either the generic title of “Engineer.” Machines, computers, webpages, and anything else belonging to the digital world was just about anything you could get paid to work on. Mining, construction, service jobs, hell even most physicians have been replaced over the last 2 centuries. Most people knew at least 5 programming languages and were always in continuous education, constantly moved around and overworked to plug demands. There was the top .01% wealthiest, of course, and their administrative engineers and the criminal underworld whom the wealthy also covertly controlled. Underneath it all was the ever-present unemployed masses huddled deep beneath the Earth. Prison no longer existed; all of society has become a prison. Most drugs became decriminalized but both the medical institutions and the rehabilitative institutions were privatized creating a vicious and lucrative cycle of drug abuse. The entertainment industry boomed as one of the few sources of reprieve for the exhausted masses. The ruling class carried out many covert mass killings amongst numerous atrocities, but it was only their control of the nexus that allowed them to do this. All machines within the mega-cities across the globe were connected to the nexus, and the nexus collected data: every location, person met, transaction, word spoken, what products did you interact with, which products or brands do you talk about most, which do you buy, and much more. From this it develops regressive curves and models that it uses to predict future potentialities. It knows that you have a 90% chance to go to that supermarket in the next thirty minutes with a margin of error of 5%, or that you have a 96.7% chance of contacting that girl you love so much in the next hour with a margin of error of less than 2%. What areas and people were dangerous, who’s connection to cut, who’s power to shut off, who to kill, and who to fine and punish it decided all and punishment metered out often without the need for physical intervention. All significant deviations from its models were immediately alerted to the administrators. This, as far as she was concerned, she must disrupt.

-

In the reflection of the window she saw the woman she was and the woman she killed. Becoming someone else entirely was a bizarre and often scary sensation. This coupled with this foreign city brought her to the brink of being overwhelmed, but luckily the chip embedded in her brain helped regulate her stress levels. She and her companions all had adopted new names and identities. She looked around at Sasha, Stern, and Jean who were once Rosa, Monkey, and Twossaint. But, even those were just code names, not their “real” names. Rosa’s name was Louis but she appropriated the name Rosa from Rosa Luxenburg; some person from long ago that she had studied after digging up her work from the depths of the digital libraries. Monkey’s name was Mark, but the codename monkey stuck from his consistently disheveled appearance. Twossaint’s name, coincidently, had actually originally been Jean, and his code name comes from a mixture of the name of some long forgotten revolutionary and “two” originating from the two pistols he would always carry. When she looked back in the reflection it occurred to her that they had been layering over ourselves many different identities. She felt as if she was a faded copy of copies losing sight of the original.

Before unboarding her eyes met with Sasha’s and she could have sworn she saw a flash of terror in them. This was the first time they’d met since splitting to hunt down targets.

-

At the nexus hub everything went smoothly. Actually, the entire mission felt unusually smooth to her, not that it was a bad thing. It just bugged her a bit. The retina scan, finger print, vocal recognition, the conversations with coworkers as they made their way toward the central terminal and nothing out of the ordinary. No stops or setbacks. This made her a little uneasy.

They were right there. The final door stood at the end of a hall. Entering this last room to run diagnostics was a part of their routine so nothing out of the ordinary was detected. Only a few steps and the mission could be completed before anyone could stop them.

Before taking the lead in heading for the door she looked back briefly and saw Sasha sweating profusely as she pulled a gun from her waistband. She aimed it right at her and a loud gunshot rang out. Stern stepped forward and grabbed hold of her arm while Jean pulled out a gun of his own. Sasha screamed out:

“You mustn't do this we’ve been lied to! These two have been working under the administration! The blood of millions will be on your hands!”

Stern and Jean fired what must have been 10 shots into Sasha and Stern said, “Don’t listen to her, we must finish the mission.”

At that moment the shock made her run and open the door and lock herself in the terminal room, and the exhaustion and bleeding brought her to her knees. She had never considered the possibility that she had merely been controlled opposition. She never thought that she could’ve been serving the administration. She removed the locket from her chest, and pulled out her gun. Locket in her left hand gun in her right hand, she was confronted with the only real binary.