A friend wrote a short story which i thought was really good so i decided to translate it from Russian to English and share it with you guys
Cyberpunk
Written By xSync
Transtlated by CryptFS (aka PAGAN)
I was standing on a roof and looking down. I was looking at the city and it was beautiful- like never before. Closer to the evening the blizzard got stronger, forcing everyone off the streets. By midnight the sidewalks were covered with a thick layer of fresh-fallen snow. Sometimes a path of footprints will cut across the smooth layer. The streets were silent and empty- just the way I like it. The 20th floor rooftop opens to a beautiful view-flooded with soft orange light as if it was glowing from the inside lighting up the air. Silence, - only rarely broken with distant scraping of shovels against ice and pavement. Long streets gradually blend in with the distant mixture of polluted air and snow.
The whole focus of this beautiful view is the blizzard. Tiny crystals of snow reflect light from street lamps spilling it everywhere. The reflection of the orange street light causes the air to glow filling the entire city with a sepia effect of an old photograph. And the city is covered in silence, - an urban silence.
Standing on a rooftop gazing at the scenery, I tormented myself with a question – Where have I seen this before? Everything that was below my feet, all the distant sounds of cars and police sirens, the sound of a snow shovel scraping against the pavement, the wind howling trough a web of wires- all of it was very familiar. As if it happened before.
Then I remembered: when I was 16-17 years old – I loved to read. Well I still love reading today, but to be honest, I don’t have the time. I grew up. Work, education attempts, well you know…
But back then I really loved to read. Around that age I discovered the cyberpunk genera.
William Gibson, Jeff Noon, Bruce Sterling. If these names don’t ring any bells, then I will briefly explain: cyberpunk world has no free information, everything is controlled by evil corporations and the main character is some looser like me. Although often have a brilliant mind unlike me. Back then the dark world of multimillion metropolises of the future seemed romantic in a way.
And then I lost the genera to myself. Became “civil”, - as the nonconformists say. School, work, etc. Didn’t have any time for books, hobbies and nonconformist lifestyle. I became an adult. I tried being more responsible. I tried to keep my promises, and was disappointed with myself when I failed to do so. Looked for jobs, got fired and so on. Basically I became the average person, with an average repetitive boring life, not like the books at all.
I forgot that dark city from the book. The city where it always rained.
Eventually I found a full time job. The job has to do with networking. I found out what absence of the web does to people. I swear I had an easier time dealing with heroin junkie on withdrawal. People start turning into massive, hysterical, saliva-spraying and foot-stomping nasty five year old children. It’s like they start having withdrawal effects if they happen to NOT be in the net. Its no joke, it is in fact a real addiction.
Walking trough attics and rooftops is dangerous. I remember how it was like ten years ago. Now you have to walk twisting and ducking and almost holding your breath or you might accidentally tear a fiber optic comm. - line and they are extremely fragile. And there wasn’t as much copper wires like in the modern day where every attic is tangled up with literally hundreds of wires. Its good that once in a while they are tied to a mount line.
I am not a “computer guy”, still, I often have to learn new networking standards and protocols, tunneling, encryption etc. I am not a hacker like in those books and I don’t believe in evil corporations from them as well. My government simply decides for me – what I can read/hear/know, and why should they not? I am forced to find my way around government’s attempts to “safeguard” the net. Probably because my interests expand beyond that of a common citizen.
My character is ruined because I played around with stimulants too much. I became intolerable. I am Jack- the configurator. I am Charlie-root. An incomplete console cowboy.
A command line interface is unfolded on the screen not just for showing off but because often it’s the only way to breathe life into hardware that you still need. GUI gets the job done and isn’t found everywhere. Before I argued with this point but now I understand- console is sometimes easier to use.
I am not a professional. I am a hobbyist.
Should we pray to the machine god?
I am standing on a rooftop overlooking a city filled with soft orange light, -and I think I saw this somewhere before.
A military olive jacket protects from the wind and the cold,- I am not in a hurry. I am not cold.
I am looking at the city and the sky. I remember how incredibly blue the sky is in the mountains. How dark like a bottomless pit it is in Crimea.
Am I mistaken or did the city sky become the color of a television screen tuned to an empty channel?
The future is now?
Well it doesn’t matter. Network- is a part of me. I am part of the network.
Did cyberpunk already arrive?
dont hate people who rip you off,cheat and get away with it, learn from them
