I searched a bit but couldn’t find any post like this:
Let’s build a series of cyberpunk impressions that one could slot in his description of the Neon and Chrome future. Just a sentence or 2 to give some colour to you Sprawl. Let me start:
A gang of young scooter freaks leaning against their bikes breathing hard drugs through cheap plastic asthma inhalers.
Neo-Khrisna monks with bright orange robes and shaved heads except they have a single ponytail made of twisted cables in the back.
Go…!
A little old lady in a faded flower – print dress, pulling a cart laden with junk down the alley, sunlight occasionally glinting off of her chrome plated Alpha grade cyber arms…
My Augmented Reality book does a bit of this… ; )
Geist of course but I want to pool the hivemind of this community fun specific setting color.
A grizzled American super-soldier sitting on a stool in a seedy Hong Kong noodle-counter, chrome half-skull and meat arm as brawny as the cyberarm, struggling to control his hormonal accentuators as he also struggles to remember the Cantonese for, “I’m good for my tab if you can wait for my payday Thursday.” (我可以支付我的積累的賬單，如果你可以等待我的星期四的工資付款日期。)
No worries. Didn’t mean to hijack! Always need more ideas for my own games. Particularly like the monks – might drop them in to tomorrow night’s game, along with the old bag lady!
Here’s one:
Two paycops in bulky black body armour, company logo prominently displayed, paying more attention to their smart phone feeds, rather than the swarm of potential suspects passing by them.
A pair of Korean jo-pok, in smart grey suits, stand vigilantly outside the the entrance to the local GoGisaeng branded franchise-brothel.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
Is that cheating?
Dave Sealy of course not! 😉
A small traditional sushi shop nested at the bottom of a giant parking building. The warm glow of orange light filtering through it’s rice paper wall. A small respite from the cold dark street. ( based on an actual place in japan I have read about)
An automated self-serve intant noodle drone slowly drifting between the passerby. A voice advertise the goods in Cantonese, Portuguese and Souahili repeatedly.
A woman in a clear plastic raincoat, bathed in neon rain, inhaling a designer dream from her contaminant mask.
a groan, audible to the whole city came from the dome as the miasma settled. The crowds filled the streets to watch in a collective silence.
Thumping tribal electronic music pulse in and out as the bright pink neon door of the club filled with holotags and stickers opens and closes.
You get a good look at the city from the luscious corporate rooftop garden. From that far away it look like a colony of bright colored ants moving in unison.
Dave Sealy Haha, the first line of the novel NEUROMANCER by William Gibson. When asked why he wrote it, he said, “I was in [Vancouver?] collecting Welfare and I didn’t have anything ELSE to do!” My hero!
But technically obsolete. Old TVs had hissy snow because when there is no antenna signal they are picking up the static from the original cosmic Big Bang, with hissy sound. New flat-screen HDTVs show a silent blue screen if there is no cable channel at that number, so no digital signal, blue being zeroes probably! Ah, the dizzying pace of technology. Future editions of novels may need cultural annotations about what flip-phones and mouse-cords were…
You pass a gene-sculpted bio phreak and a cyborg-centaur arguing in loud voices about the fiscal merits of joining a NeoSatanist cult or a Techno-Pastafarian commune.