Deep in the narrows, between the sky high blocks of steel and petraglass, lining the streets and walls like an ugly mold that just won’t go away, is where you’ll find me. A once-done raggety throw up who shone like a star for all of 12 seconds, made and lost billions in a fraction of that time, and then got tossed out of the program faster than you can say “Wait, I’ve got more in me yet.” It’s not just me here. There’s plenty others, grifters and con artists and punks with mohawks too large for their ego. You know, the kind of people who are just trying to get by in a world that chewed them up and stuck them under the desk to save for later. When I first swung by, they eyed me real bad, some double checking their neuratrackers just to be certain they knew who they were sneering and spitting at. Now I’m the one doing the sneering and spitting.
There’s a handful of them sitting near a barrel, the insides lit on fire. The smoke goes up, drifting to join the low hanging smog that ensures we never, ever get to see the light of day, not that it matters since the light of day goes straight into the big thing they call a dyson sphere and never even reaches us anymore. Nowadays it’s just the light of the next big, hot thing. Used to be me. “Jim,” I say to the one with the straw beach hat. “It’s Janet now,” she tells me. I nod, correct myself, and get straight to business. The next three echolocators are in shipment, sailing along the hyperloops. There’s a brief period where they stop, before they get loaded onto the bullet trains and disappear forever, and Janet laughs in my face. The other grimers join in, the warbling of their voice modulators stinging my ears. I pass a silent command to my neurals and they’re gone, never have to hear that shit again.
“You still dreaming, motown? Get real,” she says. “You ain’t getting back in.”
I can. I have to. I’m as real as it gets, babe.
Janet just shakes her head. She’s been down that data stream before, knows what’s up and what’s down and what’s up is never good for anyone other than the corpos tugging the strings. “You did once, burned up and died. Now you’re alive again,” she tells me, taking another whiff of the hot new thing. She’s gonna get brain jumpers doing that shit, I tell her, but she just flicks me off. “Take it from me, hun, you played their poster boy already, and they found your performance lacking. We all seen it, we all know it. Give up.”
I turn away, fuming. She’s right, in a way. I did play the poster boy, did it perfectly too, but thirty thousand zombies rotting away in culture pods between shifts saw twelve seconds of a failure on the holo and the ethernets. To them, it was a single quick thumbs down, automatically processed and registered by the hyperspeed platigold data links, something they didn’t even have to think about doing before the dish was swiped away and the next course was served up hot and ready for them. To me, well, no one wonders what the moldy piece of bread that gets thrown out thinks of. Getting plugged in was worth it, all twelve lifetimes of it. Jan says get real, but is there anything more real than having all eyes on you, being everywhere all at once, existing time and space apart from everything else? No. Never in a trillion clock cycles. I’m getting those echolocators, putting myself back on the shelf, back into the stream, and I’m hitting it big this time, baby. Fuck twelve seconds, I’m making it fourteen thirds and they’re gonna love me again.
Didn't really think too hard while writing this, just wanted to write something cyberpunk-ish.
8 long hours of work later, I finally drag my feet across the threshold of my home. A package I almost missed waits like a lonely puppy just off to the side. The serotonin that floods my brain is only partially dulled by the anger at the delivery company. I curse to myself over the fact they deliberately ignored my directions to hide the package underneath the rug and take it inside, bashing myself over forgetting to lock the door.
The 75 square feet apartment that serves as my home, likely now and forever, is host to a single tiny table, a bed, and a kitchen in the form of a Bunsen burner and two pots, with a mini-freezer next to it. The dishes, which I do in the bathroom sink, are all already clean. Squatting onto the floor, I tear the package open and yank out my old, crumbling phone. It's held together with tape and prayers. Literally. The glue holding the glass backing failed and so I keep it taped together, replacing the tape every so often. Still, I'm excited, even though the dead expression staring back at me in the reflection of my shattered screen doesn't show it. The packaging comes apart quite easily, and a shiny new phone worth 3 paychecks and a missed month of rent comes out like the holy grail out of the ark of the covenant. Or however that story goes. I boot it up, in the meantime preparing my old phone for the transfers.
The new phone blinks awake. It's already been configured, and the photo on the lock screen is of myself. A photo I distinctly don't remember taking, because I'm too ugly to come out in photos. It's a photo of me looking back at myself, in my home.
I stare at it for a while, and chuckle to myself. Maybe the phone took a photo of me just now, and automatically set the lock screen wallpaper? Or maybe an AI generated image. Who knows what these fuck ass phone companies get up to nowadays, might just be the latest gimmick. I don't really know, nor does it really matter. I unlock the phone, hoping to be greeted by the intro screen, or setup installer wizard thing or whatever. No, it's just the regular home page, with the wall paper set to another photo of me, at work, and the gallery app sitting square in the middle of the page. I blink at it. Someone had to be fucking with me. Maybe a coworker, or something, a security guard maybe? Shivers crawl up my spine, the hairs on my arm raise on end, a lump in my throat forms. I swallow, a single question tumbling in my mind like a ball bearing in a tin can. I tap open the gallery app.
A single album, my name in white, and the entire thing is photos of me. Photos of me taking a shower under a plastic bag tied to the ceiling, a photo of me cooking, a photo of me getting scolded by the boss, a closeup of me, asleep in the futon on the bed, sleeping sound as a child. My hand starts to shake. There's a small icon in the corner, a cloud sync. The album updates.
A photo of me, crouched on the floor by my table, holding a brand new phone.