META RUNNER: ANALOG

The Dream

Millions of people moved across the bars on all levels, Tari tabbed out her game, the color filter was in a way so that her eyes would never strain when she tabbed. They were colorful, dozens of augmentations, transhumans, cyborgs. The signs of civilization.

And no matter how vibrant, they were all gray formless blobs trudging as a wave amongst the swamping rain.

Tari dropped her feet into the pavement. Silica city used what is known as the "20 minute city" model. Each vital infrastructure was within 20 minutes of every housing district.

The woman realized she had to catch her appointment.

The original plan of the 20 minute city however, was one in which a resident was able to access any location within a maximum of 20 minutes. It required careful planning, though the potential was too tantalizing to ignore. Less carbon emissions and less smog.

The air was stagnant by the millions of blobs that trudged through the bars of metal mesh like an unoptimized loading screen. Personal space, a word her father and brother always pleaded, was negligible. Tari found her face packed into the polygonal flesh shoulder blades of a six foot bodybuilder and her spine curving against the oozing cozy bloated gut of a woman. she kept her hands in her pockets, clenching through the low quality nylon rubber polymers to feel for her personal belongings that lined her inner pockets.

A Hard Wallet, the first slot contains an assortment of debit chips totalling to 4000 Talogs. The second slot was designated for her cards: A Cgrade EM card for HOTLINE, An ANTIMACRO card which outlined her digital profiles, and ironically a recently emptied 4 max trip reloadable Metro card, Despite the city's structure, the need for Metro to but it's head into every urban city was an inescapable reality. Tari imagined at one point, the population reached a digit in the tens of thousands, and the bodies traversing the bars began to spill out into the speeding road. She chuckled to herself, imagining the red streaks of blood that would commemorate the victims across the MagPlat. YellowHat, contracted by TASCorp, was still expanding the now nearing "hour long city". Sparks 10 struts above rained onto the MagPlats, signifying the humans hard at work.

Metro dug its long pipes and magnetic rails into TASCorp, proposing that they begin forming housing districts that are miles from the core city, the Metro line acts as a way in and out of the city. No sane human, at least what Tari considered sane, would without a H-Goo grade 10 NC suit, would live in Silica's core anyways, There was too much background audio and free noise filtering on THE CORD didn't help at all. The loud blaring of thousands of advertisements banged against her rotting ear drums. She felt for the node hidden in the hair forest that was her scalp and turned it on. Her brain began to hum back to a breezy speed of 15 cores at 50MHz per second.

The propaganda for Coke (excluding the one projected on the muggy sky), mercenary programs, and mainstream clothing ceased, instead more calming images appeared on the projector boards. Bath houses that offered cleaning services at low rates, advertisements for snack cakes and tortilla chips beamed up and calmed her palpitating heart. The first sensory filter fell into place, a small hum of music played into her body, lubricating her stiffening joints like thermal solution.

TASCorp, the corporation responsible for the funding and construction of the company town, took after Metro's sudden intervention and improvised on the original vision. There was a noticeable lack of true cripples, the people whose physical disabilities rendered them incapable of proper traversal. These specimens were unable to enter Silica, on the basis they would "interrupt the optimizations of the city". She remembered being around when the first 5 struts were being installed, which gave more wiggle room on the bars. The form pushed through the uncaring flow, and took the stairs 2 struts up. The next sensory filter kicked in. She felt herself surfing on pulses of success and skipped status checks, the nerves in her legs fizzled into the recesses of her meat brain like static. She couldn't remember the last time she tripped, she had gotten used to the motions of signaling her spine to traverse her body across town like coolant through rubber tubes.

The terror of the draining pleasures of the horde washed away as the final sensory filter fell into place. Glowing holograms showed the body the wave flow, forcing it to reroute along the suggested pathways.

She stood before the featureless plastic wall.

"TASCorp" was sprayed in taskbar blue on a reclaimed metal sheet. She placed her hand on the door.

Tari woke up in front of her computer. The screen had gone into sleep mode and her body was wrapped in a blanket. This attempt at heating her meat was futile as the cold draft from the window flowed beneath the cover like halon gas and chilled her insides. Her Node read a safe temperature atleast, so it meant keeping the windows open if she was going to crash would ensure her meat brain didn't fry.

She reached her right arm for the mouse. Maybe squeeze out one more game before she went to bed. But she felt something warm, fleshy against her side. It was then she noticed her arm was missing. Her new arm was made of sleek black Thermo rubber, plated in fresh plastic. She could feel just like her meat hand, but each touch felt more tittilaing, each input brought her closer to her dream of cyberspace.

Her meat brain groaned through the pleasure of the Node. A small screen appears in her retina warning her that her drivers had finally worn out. Begrudgingly, she strided across the carpet, her brain yelling the next careless step would send her face first into the dirty carpet. Between her bony toes squished some indescribable matter, possible food crumbs and decades of built of dead meat skin cells.

It didn't matter to her, especially now. She could faintly hear THE CORD's pings from her friends. For once she didn't care. Her meat brain knew there was no need to run the sleep macro, tonight she slept in her own body. She made it onto her mattress, it was still wrapped in the plastic bag it came in. Her muscles released as she wrapped as much as her moist body could in her favorite material. She pressed her toes against the window and slammed it shut, not even bothering to care about the blanket still draped onto her chair.