Journal of DCX9000 [Entry 04]

Data Center Xero: Journal of DCX9000

[Entry 04 | January 21, 2197 | San Frandisco, Neo California]

San Frandisco is loud even when it’s silent.

They built this city on the bones of the old Bay, stacked it like a corrupted file, one layer on top of another, until the streets lost their names and just became corridors of rust and neon. You can still see the skeletons of the Golden Gate pylons jutting up from the black tide, half-dissolved by centuries of acid rain. People say if you dive close enough, you can still see cars on the seabed, their windows glowing faint green from reactor sludge.

The upper tiers are a mess of glass and chrome towers, flashing corporate slogans in languages no one speaks anymore. From up there, the city looks like progress. But I live in the middle decks, the stacks where the fog gets caught between the steel bridges and never leaves. The air tastes like salt and burnt plastic, and the power surges make the lights glitch like a dying heart.

Vendors huddle under scaffolding, selling synth noodles and bootleg firmware. Kids run delivery drones between the beams, their laughter swallowed by the hum of the grid. You learn to keep your head down, to move fast, to stay out of the sight lines of the patrol drones.

But it’s the shadows that haunt me most. The places where the grid signal dips. The dead zones. That’s where the walls bleed. That’s where her life leaks into mine.

Every time I walk home from the factory, I pass the same alley near the old transit shaft. Lately, I’ve been seeing her standing there in flashes, her outline trembling, like she’s trying to push through the fabric of the city itself. Once, I thought I heard her call out, swallowed in the thrum of traffic.

Marrow says San Frandisco isn’t haunted, it’s just broken. That the leaks in the grid make ghosts out of static. Maybe he’s right. But when I see her shadow stretching across the fog, it feels real enough to follow.

And every night, the city watches me back.

//End Entry