CageWire 2079
A Cyberpunk Storyboard Project
Storyline
Synopsis
A young veteran travels to the bastion of his victorious enemy with Crypt.AI in his pocket. Alone in the shock of kaleidoscopic London when his contact doesn't arrive, Demyan searches for a safe haven from the encroaching corporate assassins. Where else is a 23 year old going to go, but the most bumping club in Picadilly?
Enter a cat and mouse search for safety, as Demyan rushes into the crowd and decides whether to put faith in a complete stranger with a lit suit and long pour.
CageWire Part I
Demyan Anastas pulled the asymmetrical collar of his red leather jacket up the back of a shorn neck. The last of his military haircuts, he promised his reflection and the chill London wind, which whipped the ever-present rain sideways and down to moisten his t-shirt. Regardless of the moisture wicking properties of Neo-LinenTM preserving the filtered liquid in a pocket along the bottom, the emancipated man shivered and rounded a side street to the curve and bustle of Piccadilly Circus.
Gritty holograms spackled between triangulated mirrors & unwashed lenses combated ultrabright neon emblazoned in a cacophony of colour. Ceruleans and emeralds, electric purples swept into magentas so bright his eyes stung and he grabbed for the mirrored comp-glass kept in a thumbprint-locked pocket. The lens of the glasses dimmed enough light to compensate for the explosions of pigmentation, without casting the rest of the world into a dismal shadow.
A timestamp in the lower left corner counted down in ancient cyrillic numbers, the temperature in the top left, flashes of yellows, oranges and reds alerted Demyan to potential camera angles or stray selfie shots. He searched for a blind spot, a place to wait out the contact.
Electric vehicles whispered by, their wheels barely caressing pavement not broken by mortar or the treads of the military machine he dedicated his adolescence to out of a confounded defiance. Now a lithe twenty-three, the eight-year conflict began to fill out a frame which still had growing left to do, if he survived London. If he gave the algorithms to his contact.
As he trotted to the statue of Eros, the silence in the bursts of colours arrested the fright he imagined while strapped into the side of the cargo plane he spent far too much in antiquated currency to board. London was a bastion of muted noise. To the victors across the Globe, the fractionalization of countries into multi-national interests or ghettos of contractual hold-outs, originated in the City of London.
Hopping up the side of the statue, Demyan wondered why he decided London was the place. Self-flagellation? A reticence to let the Flag War settle into the soil, covered by the clockwork push of history? The promise of anonymity in a place older than sin, yet still connected to the pulse of the Conglom and its cogs.
Two more people flooded by the returning marks, close enough for Demyan to note the similarity to their boots, the slick black garrote wire laces he recognized with a shudder.
Teeth clanking from cold, the bottom of his shirt weighted with rain water in its pouch, Demyan watched the time click down in antiquated cyrillic in the corner of his comp-glass. A tail was forming vertebrae by vertebrae, narrowing in like a snake in the damp.
Damn. Nothing but static silence on every front. The time clicked on. Demyan's hands twitched in jacket pockets as he rushed through Picadilly Circus to the nearest place with enough people to cover him in the anonymity of the swarm. Finger twitches clicked at keys imprinted in pocket linings, composing and scrapping message after message to the contact.
To tangential contacts.
To anyone within the fledgeling network created at the end of the war.
No pings, no acknowledgement after he landed north of London, nothing on his sensory look outs.
The throng of Londoners and scant tourists lost the comfortable feel of post-war progress and gained potential assassins as Demyan set foot after foot in a trot through the crowd. Electro-tech music thudded out of open glass doors, bouncers set up velveteen ropes. In yellow-gold neon, with a fluctuating hologram of a bird flitting out of an antique cage, was the name of the club: CageWire.
Piccadilly was a visual vaporwave sonata catching up to the boom and thunder imprinted in the rubble of Demyan's memories. One hidden earbud buzzed in coded pings to indicate whether he was following the city schematics loaded into his pocket deck. Why here, in Picadilly?
Secured into the lining of his leather jacket, the pocket deck sat on his lower back, its comfortable hum stunted by the shiver of his wide-eyed dive into Earth's largest still-functional city. The information locked in self-generated encryptions droned in the back of his mind. Where was his contact? The person who could take him out of the crowds? The burden of his couriered intel slapped gently against his spine.
A Proof of Concept Multimedia Storyboard & ambient soundscapes/musical feel for future creation.
Main Characters
He was twenty-three and his life began with shudders and the shrapnel of rocket and drone fire. War was his adolescence, and with its crushing weight and the din and the chokes for breath not tainted with gunpowder or the sickly smoke of stale air and explosives residues, Demyan grew. Now, Demyan's choices were his own.
He was free.
A veteran of the The Flag War, Anastas is a programmer and AI researcher with a nefarious past and present. Having hacked his way into the military at 15 in a grief-fuelled rage, Anastas proved himself capable of bypassing AI encryption and seizing control of enemy drones, while showing a knack for staying alive. As the war continued, and they found themselves on the losing side, his dwindling superiors gave Demyan the most important mission of all.
Take the encryptions for their secrets, and run. London became his playground in 2079 in a burst of morbid fascination, and post-adolescent rebellion. Demyan would hide in the enemy's own city.
“Hope you like vodka?” The clink of two shot glasses on the ceramic table caught Demyan in a jolt. A man with raven black hair cast over one shoulder smiled in the suit of a sarariman, black blazer tossed into the booth a second later.
“Not mine.” Demyan shook his head, gulping down the dust of his dry mouth.
“On the house.” The man smiled with closed lips, the faintest crinkle of his eyes less nefarious in the balmy yellow of the defeated yacht’s kraken victor. Drink in hand, the man gunned it and grit his teeth at the momentary burn of the vodka, nodding to the other shot. Hands in his pockets, Demyan shook his head again. No. “Oh? Vodka not your thing, could’ve sworn with a haircut like that, the standard issue boots, you were a Slavic.”
Demyan stilled, cerulean eyes flicked across the man’s suit a second time. Cotton too fine to be value packed, tie pin too thick, tie shining like real silk, gold watch on his wrist, analog instead of holographic.
And it came to him, lost in London... Demyan was alone.
A Canadian living in London, England, Kaoru learned street smarts from his electrician father, and good sense from his mother's Japanese parents. Wheeling and dealing his way out of military service, Kaoru has owned and continues to run multiple leisure businesses for the elite and cannon fodder alike.
The only thing more lucious than a bopping night at his club, is another piece of intel he can sell.
Setting
Picadilly, London, 2079
CageWire
CageWire was a den of unadulterated rackets. Four floors worth of balconies met Demyan's stare as he glanced up. Each floor appeared to have its own sound from where he hovered in the lull, content creation monochromatic holograms from the wage serfs of Conglomerate America or Syndicate Thailand probably attached live to hundreds of clubs around the world. He tried to find the ubiquitous logos used to indicate which multinational owned the club, but as his eyes focused to the scope of it all, ears thudding with the hubbub, Demyan abandoned caution to the crowd.
Penthouse
Safety or the Dragon's LairMusical Inspiration Copyright Norse Foundry
Penthouse
Hands shoved into his pockets, Demyan waited for the soft ding of the lift, jetting out of the doors as fast as his boots. Around him were vast floor to ceiling windows, inlaid with holographic screens which came to life as Kaoru strode into his private dominion and waved a hand. Security reports, CCTV feeds, the financials of the club played on the plate glass. Green and black furniture peppered the flat, a chesterfield and armchair in one alcove, a glass dining table with bronze pipe chairs, freestanding painted wall panels strung like stapled cards to hide a massive bed. The kitchen cabinets swelled from the floor with a wave from their owner, a refrigerator bubbled up from the subfloor.
Private Elevator
A Cold Bronze Box Musical Inspiration Copyright Norse FoundryPrivate Elevator
Before Demyan could wince and ask for stairs, they were trotting to a section of wall behind the bar. It jostled and unfolded into a bronze lift, large enough for three, maybe four people. Demyan stopped short.
"What happened to my tail?"
"Do you care to find out, or do you want a safe place to lay your head? If you're coming, it's now." Kaoru snapped, eyebrows twitching as Demyan jostled in his jacket, stared at the ceiling of the lift, then the floor. Stepping over the threshold, Demyan shunted his back against the wall and shut his eyes. The lift swooped. "One more truth indeed... it's alright, I built redundancies into the system. It won't fall... which side were you on? Although the boots, the goons tracking you down, I imagine not the winning one."
Level 4
NeurofunkEchosphere. Red Musical Inspiration Copyright Rawtekk
Neurofunk
In the middle of the dance floor, a writhing and shifting sphere hovers. The the music's beat causes a clumsy echo in the crackling red sphere.Level 3
Progressive JazzKraken Surrounding Yacht. Golden Yellow Musical Inspiration Copyright Greg Spero et al
Prog Jazz
Turning to spy the front door, Demyan knew not to swear outwardly as he clambered up to the level with a golden yellow hologram of a luxury yacht surrounded by a kraken in the middle of the terraced third floor, the trap metal dissolving into progressive jazz.
Two of the black laced booted marks hovered at the entrance, Demyan’s comp-glass checked their facials, ran the scan in the background as he rushed into the more refined third floor.
Tara-Epsilon, the code sunk into Demyan’s mind like the holographic yacht’s anchor, illusory and electric. His hands shook, he drifted through the crowd to a booth beside the bar and sat on the corner of faux leather seating. Lungs heaved, the Conglom’s wet work specialist nixed his contact. The swirling off-beat of jazz trumpet licked at a deepening paranoia.
Level 2
Trap MetalR&B Robots Crackling. Green Musical Inspiration Copyright Sinizter et al
Level 1
Euro Post-DubstepBird at a Turntable. Blue. Musical Inspiration Copyright Joy Orbison
Euro Post-Dubstep
Warmth, the heat of pheromonal human beings and their cologne stole the edge off his shivers, and soon Demyan was dancing to melodic if repetitive euro-tech post-dubstep quadrilles remixed by the hologram of a bird at a turntable, feathers casting off blues in the thicket of bodies. He tisked at the clunky motions, the lack of fluidity to the bird’s supposed grace. The arrhythmic stutter of the hologram, processors too slow to handle the finesse necessary for smooth operation.Sound Design & Music
Music
A post-dubstep, neurofunk fits the vibe for the instrumentals & eventual composed score. Plenty of bass and drums, a few tender more melodic harmonies taken from Slavic Folksongs.Instrumentals inspired by Norse Foundry's Cyber Resistance album, which is provided with an attribution license.
Sound Design
London. 2079The bustle of people walking by, electric cars whizzing along streets with vibrational hums. A cacophony of conversation in multiple languages. The constant metronomic thud of military boots.
A store's motion sensor doors opening and closing, the hiss of an espresso machine. Shoppers with the odd advertisment in the background noise. Quicker foot falls, and the lull of traffic as an increase of a crowd waiting in line for the club in the gentle rain.
CageWireBartenders pouring drinks, the din of too many voices and people on the dance floor. Three different genres of music heard in progression: post-dubstep, thrash metal & prog jazz.
Less conversation murmur upstairs in the prog jazz floor, for husky and low conversation between Demyan, a 23 year old man with a Slavic accent, and Kaoru with a Toronto accent.
The PenthouseAfter the ping of the elevator, silence. A stillness after boots are left on marble floors, so Demyan can go around in his socks. The rustle of fabric as Kaoru hugs him from behind, a muffled conversation augmented by digital scrubbers, from behind a bathroom door. The quietest location, plenty of empty luxurious space and glass.
Glass and a bottle klinked on the countertop... "You first."
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