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BURNING CHROME

by apparent sensory perception

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1.
THE SPRAWL 03:24
The sky above the port was the color of iron oxide, scraped off of second-rate black market augmentations. Ever since the acid rains had started to reach the city's lower alleys through a jungle of cables and wires, illegal off-grid generators and the corrugated sheet roofs of unauthorized shelters, little patches of rust had started to grow all over the walls. Most people wouldn't know since the bright lights of the neon signs immediately drowned them out once the sun went down, and those who knew had bigger things to worry about.
2.
Air inside the tall main building was different to the sulfur dioxide filled humidity of the streets below; cool and odorless, thanks to the type-4 generator which had been provided by the adminstration as accommodation for the increased workload put upon by the sudden rise in crime. Walking through the clean and bright lit corridors, you could almost forget you were still in the Sprawl.
3.
With more and more people working long hours and the strict enforcement of designated curfew closing times for most main street shops and bodegas, illegal car park night markets became more popular among residents. The mobile food stalls allowed to be set up fast and were built to leave even quicker. While most workers would flock to the carts for a variety of foods ranging from cheap ramen to chop cheese, some enjoyed the anonymity of the crowd to buy drugs or illicit hardware that altered your experience when jacking into cyberspace through off-brand decks like the ones modeled after the widely-used Ono-Sendai CS9.
4.
He knew right away that he was having a bad trip. Something had felt different when he connected through his neural transmitter, as if he was experiencing someone else's déjà-vu. Instead of the drug-infused numbness that was supposed to help him forget, he was greeted by a celestial structure, a spirit, a snake, a horse-riding warlord, a voodoo god speaking in a foreign tongue. There was a doubt in his neck running down his spine and fear in his brain and he tried manouvering backwards but he was stuck in place, pinned down by a huge weight, suffocating pressure, as if he was chained to the bottom of the ocean.
5.
A grenade of pure and merciless white light exploded directly in front of his eyes, in between him and the deity. Pushing him away. His eyes were open, but he couldn't see any shape or form, just pure white brightness. He tried screaming but he couldn't move his jaw or make a sound at all. His ears filled with the most brutal high frequency sound, deafening. He suddenly knew what dying must feel like.
6.
The Sprawl's own Bradbury Building was a direct copy of the famous hypermart complex located in the heart of Los Angeles; city council had commissioned it thirty years ago in hopes of burnishing the area's image and attracting new investors. Nowadays most spaces were empty and abandoned or overtaken by questionable and unregistered businesses, with the two top floors being completely under yakuza administration. The basement was mostly known for its countless brothels, gambling parlors and opium dens, but also a high number of unlicensed dentists and doctors performing emergency surgeries, making it a shelter for those who needed medical help without anyone asking too many questions. Visitors were still welcomed with the same old music that had been playing for the past twenty-five years.
7.
Sitting at the top floor of a fourteen-story building, Jammer's nightclub enjoyed the security of a very vigilant environment. Most people occupying stalls sold stuff they didn't have out in plain view and were very sensitive to strangers turning up. He tried remembering how he got here, why he was sitting at one of Jammer's round black lacquered tables at four in the afternoon. It wasn't like he didn't knew who or where he was or what his occupation had been for the past seven years, but he couldn't help but feel a strange gap where the past twelve months should have been, as if they were blocked from his memory. As if he had skipped them. He didn't understand why, but after a while, a bittersweet sense of relief started creeping into his mind and he drowned his thoughts in the bitter taste of his Gin Tonic.
8.
Hours had passed when he finally left. It had gotten dark outside and streetlights and neon signs started to light up the mean streets of the inner city. Low life goons tried selling their stolen goods and some of the less fortunate prostitutes started to swarm to the streets freezing in their skimpy outfits. It was the time of the year where the nights got colder and sun went down earlier, so he put on his worn-out jacket (the one that combined the silhouette of a down kimono with the aesthetic cues of a military bomber) and aimlessly roamed around town. For a split-second he thought he recognized a face in the crowd. It felt like he was hit by a truck. A familiar smell passed. It shattered the wall that had carefully been implanted into his mind.
9.
LOVELESS 02:48
Once the first cracks appeared, the memories started to flow. What and why he had tried to forget, it all came back. The guilt, the shame, the anger, the regret, the inability to find closure. All that he had tried to suppress for the past year, the reason for his drinking, the drugs, everything. Overwhelmed, numb and on wobbly legs he struggled through the city, well past midnight.
10.
CHIBA CITY 02:14
The town located in the middle of the Sprawl was hostile to outsiders and residents alike, yet still most locals held a sense of pride over living and surviving in this environment. Getting into fights was much easier than avoiding them. It got to the point where people got so used to them happening that they stopped calling for help or even acknowledging them altogether. When scuffles started to spill into the crowd, you'd be best advised to simply ignore them and go along your way. You wouldn't want to get dragged into something that could prematurely end your night and leave you in a prison cell, grave or worse.
11.
He needed to get away. Thankfully the Sprawl was filled with people, experts, who - for the right price - were able to let anyone disappear. Cracking the firewall on the registration office's database wasn't exactly easy and very dangerous, but these guys had routine. The whole procedure was very expensive and involved a bit of luck and good timing. Once the customer's identity was erased from all records, they went and looked for dead IDs that were still registered but belonged to deceased people whose death had never been reported. Cheap face projection augmentations were just good enough to fool the old and outdated hardware that was still being used at the colony's border. After resetteling, there was no coming back.
12.
Three years later. This dissonance will never go away.

about

Full album stream: youtu.be/LfEt0PmDXdk
公安9課 HEADQUARTERS music video: youtu.be/VGEehHy22bE

___

The sky above the port was the color of iron oxide, scraped off of second-rate black market augmentations.
Ever since the acid rains had started to reach the city's lower alleys through a jungle of cables and wires, illegal off-grid generators and the corrugated sheet roofs of unauthorized shelters, little patches of rust had started to grow all over the walls. Most people wouldn't know since the bright lights of the neon signs immediately drowned them out once the sun went down, and those who knew had bigger things to worry about.

___

Air inside the tall main building was different to the sulfur dioxide filled humidity of the streets below; cool and odorless, thanks to the type-4 generator which had been provided by the adminstration as accommodation for the increased workload put upon by the sudden rise in crime. Walking through the clean and bright lit corridors, you could almost forget you were still in the Sprawl.

___

With more and more people working long hours and the strict enforcement of designated curfew closing times for most main street shops and bodegas, illegal car park night markets became more popular among residents. The mobile food stalls allowed to be set up fast and were built to leave even quicker. While most workers would flock to the carts for a variety of foods ranging from cheap ramen to chop cheese, some enjoyed the anonymity of the crowd to buy drugs or illicit hardware that altered your experience when jacking into cyberspace through off-brand decks like the ones modeled after the widely-used Ono-Sendai CS9.

___

He knew right away that he was having a bad trip. Something had felt different when he connected through his neural transmitter, as if he was experiencing someone else's déjà-vu. Instead of the drug-infused numbness that was supposed to help him forget, he was greeted by a celestial
structure, a spirit, a snake, a horse-riding warlord, a voodoo god speaking in a foreign tongue. There was a doubt in his neck running down his spine and fear in his brain and he tried manouvering backwards but he was stuck in place, pinned down by a huge weight, suffocating pressure, as if he was chained to the bottom of the ocean.

___

A grenade of pure and merciless white light exploded directly in front of his eyes, in between him and the deity. Pushing him away. His eyes were open, but he couldn't see any shape or form, just pure white brightness. He tried screaming but he couldn't move his jaw or make a sound at all. His ears filled with the most brutal high frequency sound, deafening. He suddenly knew what dying must feel like.

___

The Sprawl's own Bradbury Building was a direct copy of the famous hypermart complex located in the heart of Los Angeles; city council had commissioned it thirty years ago in hopes of burnishing the area's image and attracting new investors. Nowadays most spaces were empty and abandoned or overtaken by questionable and unregistered businesses, with the two top floors being completely under yakuza administration.
The basement was mostly known for its countless brothels, gambling parlors and opium dens, but also a high number of unlicensed dentists and doctors performing emergency surgeries, making it a shelter for those who needed medical help without anyone asking too many questions. Visitors were still welcomed with the same old music that had been playing for the past twenty-five years.

___

Sitting at the top floor of a fourteen-story building, Jammer's nightclub enjoyed the security of a very vigilant environment. Most people occupying stalls sold stuff they didn't have out in plain view and were very sensitive to strangers turning up. He tried remembering how he got here, why he was sitting at one of Jammer's round black lacquered tables at four in the afternoon. It wasn't like he didn't knew who or where he was or what his occupation had been for the past seven years, but he couldn't help but feel a strange gap where the past twelve months should have been, as if they were blocked from his memory. As if he had skipped them. He didn't understand why, but after a while, a bittersweet sense of relief started creeping into his mind and he drowned his thoughts in the bitter taste of his Gin Tonic.

___

Hours had passed when he finally left. It had gotten dark outside and streetlights and neon signs started to light up the mean streets of the inner city. Low life goons tried selling their stolen goods and some of the less fortunate prostitutes started to swarm to the streets freezing in their skimpy outfits. It was the time of the year where the nights got colder and sun went down earlier, so he put on his worn-out jacket (the one that combined the silhouette of a down kimono with the aesthetic cues of a military bomber) and aimlessly roamed around town.
For a split-second he thought he recognized a face in the crowd.
It felt like he was hit by a truck.
A familiar smell passed.
It shattered the wall that had carefully been implanted into his mind.

___

Once the first cracks appeared, the memories started to flow. What and why he had tried to forget, it all came back. The guilt, the shame, the anger, the regret, the inability to find closure. All that he had tried to suppress for the past year, the reason for his drinking, the drugs, everything.
Overwhelmed, numb and on wobbly legs he struggled through the city, well past midnight.

___

The town located in the middle of the Sprawl was hostile to outsiders and residents alike, yet still most locals held a sense of pride over living and surviving in this environment. Getting into fights was much easier than avoiding them. It got to the point where people got so used to them happening that they stopped calling for help or even acknowledging them altogether. When scuffles started to spill into the crowd, you'd be best advised to simply ignore them and go along your way. You wouldn't want to get dragged into something that could prematurely end your night and leave you in a prison cell, grave or worse.

___

He needed to get away. Thankfully the Sprawl was filled with people, experts, who - for the right price - were able to let anyone disappear. Cracking the firewall on the registration office's database wasn't exactly easy and very dangerous, but these guys had routine. The whole procedure was very expensive and involved a bit of luck and good timing. Once the customer's identity was erased from all records, they went and looked for dead IDs that were still registered but belonged to deceased people whose death had never been reported. Cheap face projection augmentations were just good enough to fool the old and outdated hardware that was still being used at the colony's border. After resetteling, there was no coming back.

___

Three years later.
This dissonance will never go away.

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released April 7, 2018

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apparent sensory perception London, UK

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