Shadow Spinner

As MrY began yet another day in a nameless city, he could feel the pressure exerting on his skin from the dense urban sprawl confining him. If the city was a network of veins and arteries, through which its inhabitants coursed, then he was a trapped blood vessel.

He had so many plans, projects and motivations but he was constantly thwarted by the overburdening regulations and Forces which governed all. There were no prospects for creativity; any projects, great or small, could only be undertaken by broaching an inpenetrable bureacractic sphere. It required a source of funding just to be able to process the mass of mandatory municipal permits, which would allow you to move at all. Only the wealthy, who could hire someone full-time to keep on top of their personal beauraucractic workload, could actually move freely through the city. Everyone else found themselves pushed to the fringes.

Most found that they never moved outside of their domiciles and simply stagnated. Any form of transport was now so heavily taxed and monitored that the costs outweighed any possible gains. The hospital fees for bed sores are cheaper than any bus ride! Besides, no one would breach the regulations anyway. If you didn't have a Permit to Travel, you simply didn't travel. Even the municipal Forces were under obligation to follow their own regulations to the letter. This they did with unwavering dilligence.

The city was completely electric now. Everything used the smallest amount of moving components. This concept resonated throughout the fabric of the entire city. Not only through its infrastructure, but into the lives of its human populace. The city and its braindead inhabitants were closed to the idea that this was in fact their city. MrY on the other hand spent his days dreaming of how he could make this city his own, if only he knew how. He eeked out his time in his council-designated dwelling by tinkering with his electronics projects for remote-controlling other electrical devices. This he hoped would be his magnum opus.

The city breathed easy at night as if relieved from its working hours respiratory disease. It opened up in the darkness, freed of the scurrying drones which formed its congestion. Over the years, less and less people were venturing out into the city at night and then the curfew was imposed. Now only the brave, criminal or deranged roamed their local patches after dark. MrY stepped out into this social melange and breathed deeply, feeling liberated as if this hostile environment could show a beautiful side which was found only in these conditions, the still of the night.

As the weeks go by MrY drifted further away from caring about the curfew. From the 14 th floor window of his flat he begins to notice at first seemingly random strange occurences. Pockets of the city would power-down; lights would go out, traffic lights would halt all vehicles, the cameras would not record. The reliance on electricity running everything meant that a complete freeze of electrical current in one area would mean a complete loss of consciousness to that part of the city. As more weeks passed MrY decided that these events formed too much of a pattern to be random, or be part of the system. He realised that if these events truly were organised then somebody was probably using them for their own gain. He would make a note of the patterns and use it as a map of temporarily de-regulated zones of the city, which he too could utilise for his own mischievous exploits.

The map he drew up became his precious and intriguing personal saviour. It allowed him relatively free movement within the city. Whilst on his moonlight expeditions MrY couldn't help but notice another figure whose steps he mirrored through the shadows. It was surely impossible for him to also have gone unnoticed by this enigmatic and furtive character. MrY bit the bullet and approached them whilst they were in the midst of modifying a street-corner junction box. To his surprise, and his relief, the figure introduced herself before he had the chance. MsX apparently had been waiting for him to instigate a dialogue.

Their initial meeting contained scant words as both parties were more interested in sussing out each other's motives. As more weeks passed, and after further encounters, MrY and MsX realise that the bond between them already existed and that in a city such as this, they would need all the allies they could get. Taking a security risk MsX divulged information about a broader hush-hush network of mischief-makers.

The Flicker Project specialises in counter-surveillance networks. They are an extremely organised, and indeed regimented, organisation mostly composed of hackers, techies and engineers who finally looked up from their keyboards long enough to realise they could make a difference. Their success relied upon having a number of moles within the Forces and operatives such as MsX who under cover of the electrical-blackout dead-zones would manually rewire channels of communications from the moles. These moles were unbeknownst to their secondary function. This meant that the Forces, who when policing the city would have to abide by its stringent traffic systems, would not be alerted to the electrical-current suppressing activities of The Flicker Project. They had learnt how to tame the city, how to traverse through it undetected and how to begin to make it their own.

They utilised technology to countermand the surveillance, monitoring and regulating techniques that the municipal Forces employed themselves. They made their own maps of CCTV cameras, kept tabs on police movements, jammed and diverted broadcasts, spoofed information and surreptitiously controlled the flow of traffic. Which meant the flow of the city itself, and in turn the flow of commerce and wealth. Whereby their miscreant deeds were currently limited to being nocturnal, they hoped that soon they would extend to wreak sublime havoc during daylight hours. The traffic manipulation could be reapplied to stopping brokers reaching the start of their day at the Stock Exchange; bomb disposal teams could be prevented from their duties; judges wouldn't turn up to trials they were to preside over. The crucial factor in the extension of The Flicker Project revealed itself to be MrY's devices. These allowed for control of the various regulatory systems from remote locations and without detection, as opposed to the more risky manual method.

By Anon

 

BACK