He can't see anything

[alexdraven]

foreverdirt wanted something more set in the same world as this ficlet, and scarletshivers wanted a ficlet for this icon.



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He can't see anything. He never has had good vision, and he never notices the distortion that Bell complains about sometimes, the edges where flouros flicker between frequencies or something.

It's been useful sometimes; being used to operating in a grey-scale haze. When there are strangers sleeping at the end of the rat run that's your best route from unit to unit. When there are stories being told to a trusted few somewhere some idiot is dumb enough to think is private. Nowhere's private any more. Not even in the clean plasticised productive zones.

The stories are worth almost as much to him as currency would be. Not as much as codes, which is what he's hunting, and not as much as clean water or meal packs, but more than currency or fire links or glimpses of girls stripping down to steal a few minutes o contact and some warmth while they earn currency their own way. Bell has said more than once that the radiation's damaged more than just his eyes, but he doesn’t feel broken. Just different.

It's useful sometimes, being different. Gives him a chance against people that would flatten him in a fairer fight, gives Bell a reason to keep him around. High contrast is easy – LED frames are best, a steady pulse of lights making words and numbers that he can use to work his way to what he needs, but carbon crisp on discarded film works.

Blood on metal is plenty high contrast, and some part of his head twitches with knowing that. He still can't see anything. The twists of metal that surround their sleeping spaces tick and settle a little and the echoes only emphasis the silence. His heart is hammering so loud he can’t listen well, and he can't see anything that he can make sense of. He wants to ask Bell to explain. Wants to find a com link that will give him scornful words in his ear telling him where to go next.

There is no voice. There is no frame. There is no film. There is blood black on white metal, and there is something fogging and burning in his eyes. He can't see anything.

Comments

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

better cyberpunk than cyberpunk ever was, even gibson. it reads like a comic book would look - panels of art without words, shaded gray or stark contrast of ink on paper. i get more of a comic booky mental picture than, say, a blade-runner-ish picture, more a drawing and less a movie still.

[ephemera-tales.livejournal.com]

*blinks* - did you just say 'better than Gibson'? Sweetpea - stop messing with my reality! Love the visuals that you get from it though. Thank you. *smooch*