[center]2117. Individuality doesn’t exist. Originality is an abstract notion. Creativity and ingenuity are weeds cut at the roots. Oppression. Depression. Disconnection. This is the world we created. A world we accepted. Intelligence gave us technology. Technology made us dim. A consumer culture fueled by a capitalist society kept us preoccupied. Freedom. Independence. These things are but faded memories, masked by gadgets and toys and trinkets and ploys of a faux equality amongst the classes. The News kept us ignorant. Our celebrity culture kept us aspiring for a reward that would never come. The year is 2117. Ruled under a single governing body, the world is gliding through a cultural and technological renaissance; peace reigns with a leather leash, the economy is more stable than it’s ever been, and we’re on course to repairing the damage done to our atmosphere throughout the previous two centuries. Population has flourished, bordering thirteen billion. Cities, with skyscrapers grazing the clouds, stretch for miles upon miles, brandishing neon lights with tantalizing sounds of consumerism and opportunity. Medicine has almost eradicated all disease, and the mortality rates plummeted exponentially. Genetic and physical modifications and plentiful, to those whom can afford it. But isn't that the catch; if you can afford it. Whilst these privileges are plentiful for the upper classes, the working classes slave away day after day, contempt with their lives as long as they feel they are contributing to the system and earning a ‘living’, if it could be called such a thing. Everything is connected. There is no longer a divide between the online world and the real world. Neural-Interfaces are the height of popularity, meaning that the user has complete access to the online world through their own eyes, at the cost of a small device surgically attached to them. Print media is extinct, the majority of food comes in the form of flavoured injections unless you can afford the real stuff, and we face a world in which everyone is so wrapped up in the latest technology, that they spend their lives grueling away at uniformed careers to make ends meet. Welcome to Unity, the single largest city in our capitalistic world. It's said that, whatever you're looking for, it can be found somewhere within the maze of streets and alleys, skyscrapers and dens of inequity. Unity is a city that harbors not only the most militant police force in the world, but is at the pinnacle of technological innovation; everything comes from Unity, with its outerlaying factories that stretch for miles upon miles, to its dazzling structures of glass and steel. As beautiful as it is corrupt, the city truly never sleeps. The Unity Metropolitan Police, a force to dense in Genetic and Physical modifications that they're barely human any longer, keep crime minimalistic, through 'less conventional' means. The Government has no say in the cities doings; the corporations have made it a testing grounds for their innovation, and control the streets through the police force as though they were King. It’s time to add a little anarchy into the system. It’s time to break the mold. [/center] [hider= You] [center] You are a citizen of Unity. Your story, and anything you may have done up until this point are tales you will tell. There is only one certainty here; you have been infected. Don't worry, its hardly deadly. Some may see it as a gift, others a blight to conformity. You see, you were infected with the most advanced technology our world has, and might ever, see; Nano-Bytes. Never heard of them? I don't blame you; nobody has. You have no idea where they came from, and you've had to figure out how to use them yourselves. These Nano-Bytes infested your blood-stream, and have become a part of you so much as your heart is. Mending your body to the physical brink, as well as giving you the ability to manipulate the area around you, you've become the apex predator in a world-wide food chain. It's time to break the system. Unleash individuality. [b]Name Gender Age Appearance Background Personality Morality Skill-Set Other (Please, be as creative with this as you can. Add categories, take away categories, go into detail on certain aspects; really, you go nuts. It's a basic template, add what you will. Hell, add a theme song for your character if you wish. I'm open to anything.)[/b] [/center] [/hider] [hider= Prologue] [center] [i]This is a message to all citizens. Please stand by while we re-calibrate your ‘InterFace’ devices. This may take a few moments. This is a message to all citizens. Please stan-[/i] Not one person dared to sit still. The room was abuzz with the more respected, intelligent and technologically able minds this city had to offer, and they were running around like blind children. They ranted and raved between one another, screaming and shouting and passing orders, trying to regain some semblance of order from the chaos. Nothing. “We’re not picking up anything on the Eastern Board!” “Our connection has been cut!” “We’ve lost control!” Voices came without focus. There was but one man stood within the chaos of the board room to the largest corporation this world has ever known, with his fingers clenched into the rests of his chair, and his teeth clenched so tightly that they could trap the leg of a bear. “Umm- Sir? We’re not picking up anything. The entire city has been shut down, but we’re regaining control. It shouldn’t be more than a few minutes before we’re back in-“ “How?” The stoic voice came from the chaired man. He couldn’t have been any less than two decades junior to the other CEO’s bickering around the room, and yet nobody dared look him in the eye. The technician who had approached him spoke in a stuttered, meek tone that could barely be heard over the rabble. “Ex- excuse me, sir?” The technician tried to clarify, clutching to pads and papers as though they were a life line. “How have we lost control? We [i]never[/i] lose control.” From a distance, his calm demeanour could be mistaken for sincerity. But every single soul in that room knew that, ‘the calm before the storm’, an old saying from times gone by, was perfectly fitting here. “Well, as far as… umm… as far as we-“ “If you stutter [i]one[/i] more time… Oh, what’s your name again? James? … If you stutter once more, I’ll have your wife selling tricks on the street corner before the days up, and your kids institutionalized. Are we clear?” He didn’t even look the technician in the eye. He just stared at the fluctuating numbers passing over the grand screens before them, his grip in the chair arms strengthening until splinters burst under his own fingernails. "Yes sir, understood sir!” The technician breathed for a moment, a risky move. “Approximately two minutes ago, our entire control over the cities InterFace devices just disappeared. Currently, the nighty-six percent of the city’s population with such a device are… frozen. As far as we can figure, somebody hacked into our network.” “Hacked? We have the most advanced computing systems in the world. Our ‘servers’ haven’t even been released to the public domain yet, nobody knows how they work. They. Can’t. Be. Hacked.” He shot a glanced now, with a beaded blue eye, towards the cowering technician. He didn’t like to be disappointed. He wondered which the technician favoured more, his family or his career. He’d find out if he didn’t get a stable answer. “As far as we can tell, Sir, whoever hacked our systems has technology beyond even us.” [i]Systems back online. Rebooting control. Citizens of Unity, we apologize for the delay. On behalf of all of us at InterFace, have an extra five credits on-[/i] Silence filled the room once more. Jaws hung gaping, eyes unblinking at the screens before them. As though it had never happened, everything was back online. Charles Dumand stood from his chair, and walked to the centre of the room. He wiped the few speckles of blood gathered around his fingertips, brought both hands to his face and wiped at his jaw in a yawning motion, letting his eyes close for a moment. He was working with absolute idiots, but they were the best he had available unless he planned on cloning himself, which in all honesty, seemed like a better solution each day. “People,” His voice demanded respect. For a boy of only twenty-one, he was in control of everything. He was always in control. Nobody would take that away from him. “Let’s play a game called, ‘tell me what the [b]fuck[/b] just happened’. You,” He pointed at random, to an unsuspecting woman standing behind a Holo-Monitor. “It seems we’ve been hacked. Explain.” She looked flustered for a moment, and tried looking through the mass of papers at her disposal. “It –it seems that someone, or some group, accessed our network through the terminal at the U.M.P department. They shut-down our relays momentarily, which ceased transmission between user and InterFace. For three minutes and seventeen seconds, everyone with a device was rendered comatose.” “Finally, a straight answer. You, officer… guar… whatever the hell you are that I pay you for, make sure blondey over there gets recognition for being the [b]only one in this god damn building this give me a straight answer!”[/b] Straightening himself after his unprofessional outburst, Dumand turned towards the monitors, clicked his jaw and sighed. “Now, if you’re all feeling anyway competent today, I’d like to find whoever thinks they can fuck with my toys.” [/center] [/hider] [hider= Inspiration] [img]http://st.gdefon.com/wallpapers_original/wallpapers/366298_kiberpank_zakat_gorod_ogni_budushhee_neboskreby_1700x1000_(www.GdeFon.ru).jpg[/img] [img]http://rewalls.com/images/201205/reWalls.com_66269.jpg[/img] [/hider] [center] [b][i]Under Mild Construction[/b][/i] [/center]