An outsider didn't take more than two turns to get lost in the badly illuminated maze. Everything was built too close together to fit as many people as possible, not taking into consideration basic construction rules such as sunlight exposure, air entrance, and window positioning.
Privacy was a rare thing when your 30 cm window faced somebody else's bathroom air exit.
The island was extremely overpopulated, over 20k residents per half square mile. We were literally mounting over each other and the slums were a reflection of that. It grew fast and unsupervised, the leadership had no way to map the streets or population growth.
My first apartment in the lower tier was on sub-level 2 of a building with floors going from -3 to 18. I spent so many bad days in that dark, smelly dump.
Funny how looking outside of my 30 centimeters window on level 15 I still couldn't see the sky.
Sun was coming down, painting the buildings bloody red and making the neon letters for tattoo studios, drug houses, and suspicious bioneers pop out.
I preferred working during the night, it was quieter plus the lighting was better. Sitting at my desk looking outside to the sky above the buildings, I was ready to start a long night when, all of a sudden, the door nearly came down.
Jake exploded in—long prosthetic legs, blonde dreads flying, dressed like some kind of neon ninja.
"Have you seen it?!" He shouted through his mask, its metallic sheen obscuring half his face, then slammed the door and dropped the bag beside it.
"Are you kidding me? I've got to update this lock." Every time I got a visit from Jake I was reminded to change my security code and every time he would make me forget to do it.
"Dude, the Mask released a statement right in the middle of First Street!"
"That's already better than hacking traffic lights." I turned back to my monitors, determined to ignore him.
If I just let him talk my ears off, eventually he would get tired and go to bed. In the meantime, pretending to listen was the best option.
But today he was determined to get my attention.
"We planted projectors on top of four buildings and he showed up in a massive hologram the size of the City Tower!"
He grabbed my chair, forcing me to look at him eye to eye.
"Are you done?"
"Why are you always such a dick?" He finally let go, spinning my chair to piss me off.
"Habit."
Jake was 17 or something. We met in one of the Mask protests. He was very energetic, always engaged with the rebellion's business and acts. After a while I stopped going to the events, it was all too dramatic. The police were getting more and more violent and the movement wasn't going anywhere. I went a few times to record and expose the cops, but that got me a few visitors which ended up with me dropping it and moving to a new apartment.
"He was talking about a bill improving workers' pay and safety that the Mayor didn't approve."
Behind the wall of monitors and projections I could see him going through my fridge.
"Don't touch my Yakut, man."
"Also, he said we should expect something on Memorial Day." The fridge door closed and I heard a soda can being opened. "I think he's planning an attack."
"Hm…"
"We gotta do something! The Mayor is a blood-sucking parasite draining everyone's life! The Assembly can't get anything approved these days."
At first, the rebellion had no name. Just university kids protesting the prohibition on cultural manifestations tied to the dead countries. Then came the beatings.
The cops didn't hold back, and the Mayor was all for it. The rebels fought back, destroying a city factory that used child labor. After that, the students had to fall back. The Mayor brought in military cybersoldiers with free pass to reprimand every act of rebellion against the city with lethal force.
On TV, it was like watching a war broadcasted live. They had choppers, an army of drones capturing everything from every angle possible, creating a narrative where the police and the military were heroes protecting the upper tier against slum terrorists.
Daily protests with the few rebels left were met with full strength that sent hundreds to the grave or jail. The rebellion wasn't winning, their opponent was merciless and ready to use any means available to finish them.
For two weeks the students resisted the military with the help of the Trinity. Until one Monday morning, the Force Chief showed up on TV saying the terrorists were taken down before they could plant a bomb in the City Tower. He accused two students of planning the attack. They were taken under arrest and sentenced to death within hours.
A terrorist, according to the City's constitution that was rewritten after the civil war, loses all one's civil rights, not being considered a citizen of Eoncity. A simple phrase allowed the leadership to broadcast the executions of the boys' sentences to the entire city. Every screen was showing those kids being injected with deadly liquid while screaming between tears they were innocent. During the transmission, somehow the signal was hacked, cutting to the video of the same students being tortured with electric sticks used by the Force. The video lasted 15 shocking seconds, then a person wearing an ancient gas mask that covered their entire face showed up.
"We are going to unmask you." Was all the masked figure said.
On the same night, that mask was painted on every bridge, highway wall, and alley in Eoncity.
The video of the masked figure was on every billboard and screen. As soon as one was taken down it popped up again. It was a massive hacker attack. It flooded the city like a tsunami, getting out of the Mayor's reach, making them desperately avoid the subject, denying everything at all costs. Even though that image was in everyone's head, no one ever came out as the person behind the mask.
Since that day two years ago, the mask's face was adopted by the rebellion officially. A group of people received information, dates, or instructions sent anonymously, all encrypted so well the city intelligence never could trace it.
The Mask comes and goes, dropping evidence against the police used by the students to press the Assembly to get bills passed. However, the Mayor never gave in. He arrested anyone preaching about the rebellion and they were questioned regarding information about the Mask. Billionaire bounties were given to whoever delivered the person behind the mask to the authorities.
Jake was one of the students who participated in secret meetings planning small attacks to the city, like the hacked traffic light that fucked me over the other week. They believe that anyone who associated themselves with any type of symbol tied to the Mask was an enemy of the city.
Often Jake's group gets beaten up for graffiting the logo, he is always among them. The boy is very passionate about the cause, too much for my taste, always bugging me to come to the acts. I had my share of electric sticks so I always refuse, which makes him call me a camper every time we meet.
"Let's go into the action, man! Stop camping in this dusty apartment."
"I have work to do."
"Same excuse."
"My life is still the same since you last asked." From the look on his glowing, unnatural green eyes, he wasn't very happy with my answer.
"So what's the job?" He leaned against my glorious window, sipping from a can.
"Wife needs proof that the husband is sleeping with synthetic hookers for the divorce."
Jobs like that were the biggest part of my income. Digging up people's online dirt for whoever paid more. All I had to do was hack the person's online address to have access to their conversations, images, house appliances, even their prosthetics. Everything was linked to the individual ID since all profiles were connected to the person's chip. Hacking into it was pretty easy… to me.
Per week I would do three to four of these jobs, but it was very fluctuating. I still had to do side jobs, like trip recordings, to make up for my expenses. Some weeks I had nothing. That's when I reached out to some contacts and would do some freelance gigs to make up for the lack of work.
Didn't take long for Jake to get tired of lurking over my shoulder and lay on the single bed to sleep comfortably like he was in his own house.
To be honest, I don't know how we got to the point he could come into my apartment, hack my lock, and just sleep in my bed. Recently he got kicked out of the orphanage, probably had no place to go. I didn't mind him coming over, I worked while he was asleep and he would leave for the city pretty early, so our schedules matched.
If it wasn't for him, I would stay days in a row without seeing a real human.