A literary geography of The City

[Cain]

Part One

Hey, you there.  I'm not really up for this 4th wall busting business normally, but you seem kinda lost.  Its not very popular in these parts, either.  Gets you lots of odd stares.  You want a helping hand?  Yeah, the City can be a pretty rough place at times.  If the psychotecture doesn't grind you down, the grim dystopian setting almost certainly well.  Lots of visitors get some culture shock, the first time they wash up here, and to be honest, I can't blame them.  After all, in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war!  What do you mean, "wrong dystopian setting"?

Well anyway, get yourself to a bar, maybe book a hotel room somewhere and take some time to soak it all up.  You wander around out here in that sort of haze, and a mugging would be the best of all possible outcomes.  Well, I've been here a few years now, so you do get used to it.  Me, a guide?  I dunno, I mean, I've got things to go and people to see...and 50% upon completion?  Well, that's completely different then.  When do you want to start?  Now's good for me too, as it happens.

Hmm, well, I suppose we should start from the beginning, right?  Well, for starters, the City is set twenty minutes in the future.  Not literally, you can stop twiddling with your watch.  No, really, stop twiddling with it, I think that guy on the corner saw the glint, and I only have one revolver with me.  Man, you're really going to need me around.  Ahem, anyway, what I meant was that no matter what time you, the dear reader, are in, the City is always a potential future a few years away.  How many is open to interpretation.  At best, a generation.  At worst...call it three years.  Things can change fast, as you'll find out when you live in a place with a multi-variable past. 

Like all good dystopia's, the City takes pre-existing social issues and cranks the worries up all out of proportion.  Right now, that's a couple of things.  Bush may have actually been seen off in a democratic fashion, which certainly ain't the norm now, but the new President was simply overwhelmed.  Anyone would have been, really.  And with the economic crisis'...well, you see how things could turn out.  Angry, jobless citizens led to riots, a rise in populism on the right and left and a resurgence of ethnic nationalism (proto-fascism) and hard left politics (Neo-Marxists).  The state buckled, without breaking, under the pressure, and all sorts of corruption is on the rise.  Private companies, those that managed to navigate the crisis effectively, stepped into the gaps left by a receding state.  Taxes kept on rising and services kept on being cut to pay for bailouts, so plenty of people circumvented the system by keeping their real earnings off the books.  Crime started to pay again. 

And that wasn't the worst of it.  While Obama saw off the worst aspect's of Bush's rule, certain powers were kept on the books.  Equally, those nasty CIA operations guys, many of whom were forced into early retirement, came back in force with the private military companies.  All of this came to a head when during the Republican primaries Sarah Palin was nearly assassinated by a Neo-Marxist nut.  It was the spark that set off a bush fire.  Terrorism and insurgency were the order of the day.  The mid-west is mostly under control now...but Texas broke off a long time ago, sick of dealing with the violence both from the attempted secession and Mexico, which just imploded.  Southern border's a true no-man's land.  Canada is slightly better, but its so-called devolved democracy is a sham.  The federal government is a paper tiger, and private armies are on the rise.  The only thing that stops them finishing each other off is the Russian presence in the Arctic, which forces a semblance of cooperation.  Wouldn't do much good to fall under the claws of the Bear, after all.

Geographically pinpointing the City might be tricky.  We don't want to do overdue harm to any real cities, after all.  Its probably best to imagine that an influx of people seeking work, at first, then fleeing the violence of the unification war, created 'bridges' of shanty towns between the cities of the east coast.  Practically anywhere from Boston to DC is part of one massive, nearly unprecedented conurbation.  Therefore, "the City" is a massive urban sprawl, nearly a country unto itself, with a massive population, functioning (if erratic) economy and lots of space on the map.  If you, the aspiring writer, are therefore not in Boston, but know, say, NYC (or have seen it enough on TV to make it up), then this does make things easier.  Equally, the construction of shanty towns and the shift in both political and economic fortunes have left their impact on the maps.  Things may not be where they once were...streets have changed, businesses have moved, even large structures like ports may no longer be where they once were.

We're being followed, by the way.  Oh, only a minute or so.  I didn't mention it to alarm you.  No, its not the guy from the corner, its someone else.  Take a right here, we can lose him via the back streets.  So, yeah.  Its not the worst possible future, but its pretty bad.  Still, at least no-one has set off a nuke...yet.

How's life here then?  Hah!  Are you sure you really want an answer?  Alright then, I'll play along.  Well cyberpunk themed books, games and video have gone down the crapper...I mean, why buy them when we're living in the genre?  One of the few good things to have happened is that the internet neutrally was secured...well, after the Hacker war anyway.  Those were fun days, real fun.  Never pick a fight with people who spend their lives obsessing over security, was what we learnt in those 8 months.  Me?  I helped, on occasion.  I'm no hacker, but give me a few programs and a hacked wireless password and I can help cause some damage.  Anyway, soon everyone saw that it was in everyone's interest to have a commons that could be accessed by everyone equally.  Having a baseline everyone could agree on mitigated the problems caused by those who didn't want to play along.

Plus we've got the big corporations, though it should be pointed out that Japan has not, in fact, taken over the world.  The hits the US has taken has put China into a relatively better position, though in truth everyone is worse off than we were a decade or two ago.  Technology is integrated into the average person's lifestyle, it isn't something you can avoid now.  As one of the few reliable systems in existence, the internet is often the basis for many networks, societies and technological innovations.  Conversely, this makes them more accessible, and open to abuse.

Speaking of tech...DIY tech has come in big.  There isn't really much money in research anymore, at least not unless you intend to make a weapon, but there are lots of bits and pieces lying around.  Someone will above average intelligence and some know-how can rig up impressive devices, from the "tricorders" so popular with those who cannot afford medical attention, to personalized anonymity systems.  Biohacking and chemical enhancements exist too, though they are less popular.  The former started to take off big...but well, you can imagine what happens when it goes wrong.  Yeah, try not to think about it too much.  And of course, your access to the best chems are obviously limited by your budget.

Did I mention weapons?  Are you sure?  Well, of course there have been advances in that field.  Brown note blasters are popular among the upper crust.  Nothing like making someone shit their pants when they try and attack you.  The favourite remains the neuron pulse though, a weapon which leaves you feeling like your skin has been set on fire.  Can also temporarily blind.  As a consequence, things like guns are less worried about now.  Its a pretty easy market to break into.  Of course, needless to say, defences have increased too.  I have some body armour at home, though I wouldn't exactly trust it to stop a heavier calibre gun.  The best, of course, can stop anything up to a direct mortar attack on someone.  They wont stop non-lethal pulse weapons though, which is of course why they were created in the first place.  Though I here there is some shaky research into screen shielding which may one day yield useful results.  I wouldn't get your hopes up though, you and me would never be able to afford it anyway. 

This has also had the interesting side effect of making knives and even, in some cases, swords, more popular.  Not massively so, but they do seem to be on the increase.  May be something to watch out for.

Nanobots, replacement limbs and the like are also present though, again, I wouldn't get too excited.  Well out of our price range, buddy.  You might convince someone to rig up a functioning replacement, but expect to pay through the nose for it.

[Cain]

For the next part, I'm going to try and bring it back to the literature again.  For a bit there, it was more about where The City, as a setting, probably now stood.  But the next section will be the sort of plot formats, characters and devices that would most likely appear in this dystopian setting.

[Xooxe]

Great stuff. I like the way you lead in with familiarity though.

[Cain]

Really?  Thanks, I actually felt kinda weird doing it that way.

[Requia ☣]

 

[Raphaella]

This is very good! Something I could really get into. The introduction here flows very well but I keep expecting the 'guide' to lead this unsuspecting person into some kind of scam, or trap or something. I don't know if you intended this but it keeps me from trusting him.
I am extremely fond of the DYI tech idea as that is kinda how I envision the future, kinda Transmet. But what really got me thinking about this was the article  Iason Ouabache posted, Growing neurons on a computer chip. Someone GA pointed out that it was a patented mixture of proteins that they were working with and I thought, well not for long.
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