From Quills to Keyboards
Friday, August 31, 2001
I saw the cab he was in pull up. He was climbing out of the yellow and crumpy old car. And his figure suddenly filled the screen as he got off and the cab drove away. Paranoia filled his mind I believe. Looking out for everything, and everyone, not possibly capable of ever trusting anyone. Not me either, I was also a hacker, a most wanted, and most feared, looked for in almost all of the twenty remaining countries. But I feared no one, I could easily escape, plug the jack into the brain do a little mumbo-jumbo here and there and make them forget me, even possibly forget who they were. I have the power, that was my weapon.
Now the screen was just filled with the roof of his building, the city doesn't have the budget to install z-ray cameras, so I have to work with these old pieces of surveillance equipment left from before the Depression.
I turned away the monitor, looking at my crib, just some apartment that could be raided by the police anytime, but it wasn't going to happen. The brothers of the community will help out, anyway they also live here.
I rolled my chair to the nearest window frame, no window of course, no point in having a glass that will sooner or later be broken.
I looked into the horizon, the city lights brilliantly burning and finishing off all fuels we had. And far beyond this part of town I could see the high rising buildings, the only thing left of what was once an inmense economic empire. Most of them inhabited by the rich, but not even them survived the Depression, it is just a status that has stayed with them.
And above the moon, charred and destroyed by the filthy americans, the ones who thought everything was possible, and now what? Ironic really, every empire had its time, and so did the americans, now it was just a bunch of divided people forming one nation, ready to fall apart. Beyond the moon, no, not beyond, beside the moon I could barely see the glint of what was left of the Space Station, a project so powerful, but never capable of becoming real. Now it was just pieces of metal floating around in space, no interest in that deep and dark territory now, bigger problems to face.
A car pulled up on the street below me, I squinted hard, but not even the implants helped me see from this far up. A dark figure came out of it, and because of the magenta colored hair that I could distinguish, I knew it was her.
