FUNCTION-L₃ #34

“Let’s focus our efforts here,” you sign.

Losing track of time, or recognizing how meaningless it is in a space colony, you wander every loop and connecting path of the park, identifying every display you can and injecting your technopathic attack into each of their images and videos.

You feel you could lose yourself in this irresistible atmosphere---bright green leaves, droplets from the watering system sparkling in the Sunlight filtering sideways through the branches, music perfectly reverberating from the curved park walls and dampened by the foliage and the streams.

The girl at your side completes the scenery, the green highlights woven through her braids like the vines climbing the walls, her eyes glowing green in resonance with the serene emotional state you can feel flowing between you. The wires inside your fingers pick up the signal of the nerves in her hand---you feel almost synchronized on the surface, one electrical system.

With a simple terminal command you momentarily disable your vision and your hearing, letting your system better process the light breeze on your skin, pockets of high and low pressure in the colony’s massive atmosphere pulling air through the trees, carrying cool micro-droplets of water. The scent of sakura flowers and cedar trees fills your airways. The subtle rhythmic vibrations of the ever-flowing music reach you through the glass walkways, and the timing of your footsteps naturally falls into its sway, the cadence of your breath, even the beating of your heart feels synchronized with the world around you.

Following an instinct never put into words, you signal a light activation of the neurodissociative device implanted in your head. You feel that only touching the æther could complete this experience, maybe its faint glow on the edge of your senses would be enough to send you into a state of ego death, and you would truly become one with this world around you.

But as you reactivate your surface vision to intersect all your hypersensitive senses at once, you and Akiko both stop, a group blocking your path---standing staring you down through pairs of electronic eyes, visors of mirror glass glowing red around their edges---wearing vests of synthleather, skirts of black synthsilk, boots tall and studded with LEDs glowing in resonance with those in the piercings in their ears, their eyebrows, and the LED layers painted on their reflective fingernails. Faint auras glow around them in the near-æther, the unmistakable mark of technopathy.

“Found them,” says the tall girl on their left, her long black hair tied up in ancient speaker-wire.

“So these are the half-rate technopaths painting Analog Park with their æther-parasitic trash-art,” says the enby on their right, with tattoos across their shaved head in a visual pattern your system interprets as a melody.

“What, the ads weren’t trash before?” you say. “Not like we’re vandalizing anything important.”

“It’s not what you’re defacing, it’s what you’re painting it with!” says the enby.

Akiko’s eyes flash red as you feel the resonance of annoyance through your emotional link. “Does no technopath on AtaraChiba have the decency to learn JSL?” she signs.

The boy in the middle in front of you responds in sign, “The colony revolves around its central axis, you know, not around you.”

Akiko walks ahead, pulling you along by your hand, walking straight through the trio---mere echo projections on your vision.

“Come complain on the surface where at least I can pick up your interface’s response to your vocal vibrations and not need to mediate with peripheral microphones for my system to process you into real language!” she signs.

The avatars vanish from the near-æther.

“What was their deal?” you sign.

“Who knows? I guess they have a problem with us,” Akiko signs.

You look out into the local network, trying to trace where they were projected from. “Can you tell their origin?” you sign.

“No, whoever they are they’re no amateur technopaths,” she signs.

The sound of rubber sliding on glass and the quiet whirr of electric motors breaks the tranquility of the park. You feel a reaction in the æther, a sense of approaching threat.

Finding yourselves on a loop in the middle of the park, under the tallest tree, its branches supporting the largest screen, your eyes scan for possible exit routes. But the two paths out of the loop are suddenly cut off as motorbikes veer onto them, red lights glowing from their wheels, turning diagonally to block your exits, as the three riders on the two machines step off---looking much like the avatars who just confronted you.

“Fine, make us go all the way across the park,” the tall girl signs, approaching you while the enby and the boy from the other bike flank you on the other side.

“And who are you?” you sign.

“Senka!” says the girl.

“Kujo!” says the boy.

“Satori!” says the enby.

You feel a ripple in the æther as the image of a band logo flashes in your mind’s eye: 精震, attached to a download link, seeming like an archive of audio files.

“Sei...furu?” you say.

“Seishin!” says Kujo, “You haven’t heard of us?”

“No?” you say.

“Do you even go to shows on level 4?” says Satori.

“I’m not really familiar with the AtaraChiba scene...” you sign.

“Music isn’t normally my thing,” Akiko signs.

“Ah, I understand,” Satori signs, “it all adds up, two complete outsiders trying to come in and disrupt our music scene.”

“Who are you kids? What corpo do you work for?” Senka signs.

“Aydan, Redshift Security.”

“Akiko, DeepSpaceOps.”

“What are military technopaths doing working in our space? What could your owners possibly want with our scene? I don’t like it.” signs Senka.

“We’re not doing company work, we’re on break! Just trying to have some fun! What’s your problem?” Akiko signs.

“How do military kids end up promoting some exopath interloper?” Senka says.

“Oh, this is about Vix? What’s wrong, your scene doesn’t have room for another artist?” you sign.

“Give us all the artists you want, but not corpo artist-replacing programs!” Kujo says.

“I mean, nya corpo already rejected nyan...” you sign.

“You don’t like exopath artists?” Akiko signs.

“But Vix is really good! You’d probably like nyan if you gave nya a chance,” you sign.

“You’re too young to remember,” Satori signs, “the last time exopath music got big here.”

“What happened?” Akiko signs.

“Disaster. Nobody could get a show! Every venue would rather book exopaths who would work for a fraction of the cut and wouldn’t ‘demand free drinks’ or ‘break things’ or have any fun at all,” Satori signs.

“The scene put a stop to it then and there. We don’t let anyone try and bring back those days,” Senka signs.

“So take your exotrash elsewhere, preferably the deep æther never to be seen again...” Kujo signs.