[Trying to get a feeling for the setting of the nano via freewriting in it]
Fluorescent lighting flickers under grime, lighting up the sidewalk to a grey haze. A receiver walks down the street, audio and video equipment protruding from all orifices (plus a few custom ones) to devour the scene for the ‘web. A few people look away, not wanting their faces captured, but the majority of the street ignores the poor fool, no one even bothering to wonder why they told themselves to become that.
It wouldn’t even occur to most of the people to wonder, or even care. Both are just roads to a messy grave half the time. Only in stories do they lead to fame or fortune, and no one in the old town believes in happy endings. In an alleyway three toughs beat a young girl to death with their bare hands, and though she has no arms no one moves to help, the blood of two of the tough’s friends decorating the grey-brown walls with a red smear of brains and blood and giving it colour for the first time in days.
A rusted cyborg leans against another wall, a few readouts on an arm the only sign he’s alive. Motors whine piteously as a hand twitches to shape a fist and failing, blood flecks on rust testimony to some strength left in him. An old scar twists the human half of his pace into a permanent sneer, as if anger could save him from running down and being worthless.
A monkey slips across rooftops, fingers and tails finding handholds as it moves, the joy of freedom from humanity exhibited by thrown feces and monkey screams of derision hiding the ruins of a mind that once knew of light years and the wind between the stars. Bored children take pot shots at it and make crude jokes about evolving down while their parents melt together in bedrooms in an orgy of mutual self destruction.
Prostitutes whisper subliminated desires, offering to become anything their clients desire, for a price. Anything, except real. The real ones, children unable to afford body mods or traits or interesting nanite perfumes, just try to hide their bruises and pretend they want sex, even if most of them came with their parents and want nothing more than to be holding their hands.
Hyperintelligent canines growl warnings to invisible stealthcats ferreting out secrets while bodyguards smile their death-head grins and wait for excitement as their own clients indulge in perversions of sex or charity. At the corner armoured policemen track gene codes and make bets on who will die first tonight. A young unreplicated rookie twitches nervously, not wanting to die even for a few hours.
A hawk scream overhead announces a winged artist plummeting into the ground, a comet trailing fire as he impacts with road, killing three people and forming a small smoking crater. Several arts students in a hovercar clap and a few of the daring ones put up score cars as their professor awards bonus points for real death and never procreating to the work of art.
Several drunken men hose the body down with urine, one throwing up something radioactive that makes the fire burn bright pink for a moment. The professor awards an extra point for encouraging audience participation and sends the marks off to the school, secretly hoping the death bonus leads more of his studies to killing themselves and reducing his work load.
Jaded passerby walk on, eyes dead and empty. Protectives whisper warnings, guarding owners with electrical discharges at those who come to close. A hungry Shaman latches onto one, drawing energy and the owner swears, then stiffens and falls to the ground twitching gently. The Shaman smirks and walks away as the man struggles to stand a few moments later, the infected Protective screaming curse words in place of discharges.
A ghost flits over the scene, only the Shaman noticing and ignoring it, secure in power and pride. Three ‘web junkies give the Shaman wide berth, closing their connections to System warily, eyes filled with hate and jealousy. A bored courier flits overhead, playing tag with something only she can see, showing off her skills.
Two real humans edge through the crowd, protective suits fragile antiques in a modern age and prayers stumbling from their lips, eyes wide in fascinated horror. A freak experiment of a gene doc’s craft smiles at them from several mouths and stumbles into a brothel to find anything willing to make it believe in love without appearances.
The rich laugh among themselves, secure in their physical immortality as everyone else just moves quickly, not pausing in case they look to closely into someone’s eyes and sees only their own emptiness and madness looking back desperately.
We are the future, a song sings through the street, from some band of the minute no one knows the name of, and a few people shudder at the notion it might be true. Everyone else just keeps going, or at least subsisting, and the children play their games without any care of worries, generators making toys and fake weapons and strange clothes and temporary forts to be recycled later, power even gods of old never had being used with careless abandon.
The freak girl without arms dies in the alley, drawing up enough concentration to cause her last attackers to suffer sudden blinding headaches and drop to the ground with blood coming out of their ears. As she dies, something whispers through her mind, voices of people she has never met, promising a revolution.
To the child eating rats made solely to devour children discarded in alleys, she feeds a whole family for almost a week.
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