Sam Bramley

@thisguyaresick.bsky.social

271 Followers 317 Following

AVALIABLE FOR WORK Freelance Writer/Screenwriter. Ex ITV. Dyslexic. --- Feature Film - Pops - OUT NOW ON AMAZON --- https://linktr.ee/esotechnica

Cyberpunk No Save Point Episode Fourteen "End Vision" cover art featuring the Protagonists Zack and Ash sitting on a Brennan Apollo Motorcycle in the Badlands.

His voice dropped, heavy with remembered pleasure. "She thought it was just another sim job. Three hours later, she learned the difference between fantasy and reality."
Katya's instruments trembled in her hands.
"The beauty was in the degradation. Watching her realise that all that tech meant nothing against a real auteur. Twenty thousand viewers experienced her final moments through my nervous system. Felt her terror. Felt her pain. I made her a star… A dying one."

"You're going to Japan!? Really Zack? You shouldn't be running away but chasing after her."

My 'brother' said this, which is hypocritical given he's already in his third marriage and never once stuck around to "fix things."

Besides, I don't know where Ash went or where she is going, so how could I chase her?

What else was I supposed to do?

The entrance is marked by a flickering neon sign that casts everything in alternating colours. Blue. Pink. Blue.
Music flows through speakers that look like they were assembled from three different decades: F.E.M.'s (Forbidden Ex Machina) latest track, all fuzzy guitars and nostalgic synths that make you feel like you're drowning in someone else's memories.

Ash stood abruptly, breaking the spell. "It's time to get some rest," she said, her voice slightly hoarse. Without waiting for a response, she turned and disappeared into the shadows beyond the fire's glow.

The monitor fills with chunky graphics that wouldn't look out of place in an arcade from eighty years ago. A map appears - the former United States, back when it was one country. The title reads "MILLENNIUM MAYHEM!" in bright yellow letters with fireworks exploding around it. Upbeat chiptune music starts playing through Maika's speakers, the kind of bouncy 8-bit melodies that make you want to punch the speakers after five minutes.

Yesterday: northbound. Tonight: southbound. Same stretch of concrete artery, same nicotine-and-caffeine film coating my tongue, same neon lights counting down to the void.

"Your blink rate indicates increased fatigue. Perhaps we should find somewhere to rest?" The nav system's voice is all synthetic soprano wrapped in corporate-mandated empathy. They always code the AIs female. Soft. Nurturing. Digital mothers nagging you into compliance. Like everyone these days, circuitry masquerades as care. Premium package mothering from silicone wombs. I tap the override. Silence trumps simmed-sympathy every time.

The MagLift to the corporate levels takes an hour, but premium service means plush seats, no stops, no crowding, and a view of the city that most people never see. Up here, you can see how the towers really work - the Stacks at the bottom like industrial foundations, the Mids forming the functional middle, and the Suites at the top like glass and steel crowns reaching toward the sky.

This is where the believers and the broken congregate. The Digital Liberation Front thinks they can rebuild the internet from junk tech and a soldering iron. Signal Seekers chase echos that died decades ago. The Glassers collect optical media and treat them like religious artifacts, convinced that somewhere in their hoards of CDs and laserdiscs lies the key to enlightenment. Then there are the Solems, who think all technology is sin and want to burn it down to bedrock.