The light between the shades of neon

The neon brightness of the new Bombay was unstable as I looked through the broken window of my modest apartment, the beaten frame decorated with predefined curtains made of old Holo Ads. In a world of increased visors and cyber improvements, I found comfort in simple things: the soft laughter of my children echoing from the other room, the old day’s smell left to thicken in the kitchen, and the rainfall in the metals outside. Life was heavy here, like the smog that settled on the heart of the city, but my children were the light that interrupted them all.

Lela and Samir, my most beloved treasures, were scattered together in the wearing, caught carpet, immersed in a virtual landscape predicted in front of them. Their little faces shone with wonder. Lela, with her big curious eyes, was always a dreamer. I swear, she could see the colors better than anyone, even if most of what surrounded us was a gray dew. Samir, my little pragmatist, wore a clouding as he fought with controls before him. We lived in sector 13 neighborhoods, a place marketed for corporate skyscrapers drowned with corporate greed. But these moments, they were true, pristine gifts stolen from the ruthless quarrel of life.

I couldn’t allow them to feel the bite of darkness yet. They were very clean, very young. But I also knew that, beyond effective joys, an inevitable truth was drawn out: I had a job change tonight, five hours long at the Holo-Clerk station in Slumplex. All I wanted was to keep in these precious seconds before the mechanical buzzing of my work called me away.

“Dad!” Leela squeezed, her voice just as fragile as the flowers that appeared from the cracks in the concrete. “Look! Look at what we’ve done!”

I have moved my focus to the predicted world. It was there – a pleasant landscape rotated by their imaginations. They had created a radiant city, where rivers flowed in vibrant colors and trees danced in warm colors. Shadows do not follow this place; They simply grabbed it with depth. The view sent a bounce of warmth across my chest, a bitter pain wrapped in pride. “That’s beautiful, you both,” I said, bending over to kiss the tops of their heads. They mocked while my pumpkin tickle their skin.

But in the back of my mind, Ora became forward as an unforgivable blade, counting on my midnight change. The clerk’s work was not fascinating-there was a dungeon with green light, a mausoleum for the wildest tire. I recorded transactions, confirmed orders and cleared the outdated neuro-drug stock, illegal mods and under standard replacement parts. Parts for pieces, I sold the future a crowd of desperate souls seeking to update, save, or simply survive another day.

As the clock approached and the children left in bed, their excitement withdrew from the extended moisture of my inevitable departure, I felt a noise of deep knife repentance inside me. I saw them leave, each sighing a will of their innocence. Samir bowed to Leela’s side, whispering for a world where dreams were true, and the heroes did not live only in the data flow, but stood in front of you. However, I was grief in their fantasy, getting into a world where dreams were traded as lost loans.

Walking to Slumplex calmed down in obvious anxiety. The walls loaded with inscriptions whisper tales of despair as the billboards tables whitewashed unattainable promises, stratified illusions one after the other. It made me feel small – small against the backdrop of the widespread skyscrapers, hungry stars, and endless longing for success that blinded the wisest among us. Looking at the steel streets flooded with rain water, the splendors of my children’s world encountered my thoughts, throwing me down the quarrel.

I made the bell with a hungry noise that echoed against my hungry soul. Slumplex always buzzing with a frenetic energy, a gloomy despair dance that resonates from each empty face treading. The clerks kept their heads down, just as I didn’t see too deeply in the fighting reflections of myself within the shine of the screens. Like cogs, we all moved to unison – dumped data, process efforts, response with monotonic robotic compliance.

Tonight, I wandered deeper into my thoughts as I finger in the lines of my duties, obstructed, a very injured animal preoccupied to be afraid. The database has distributed information, transactional strokes of money exchanged for synthetic adjustments that require adrenaline emotions, nerve-colored patches for those who want to dust from permanent Drudgery of life. I could feel my soul by fading with every virtual note. I allowed myself to relocate to the memories of Leel and Samir … I photographed them looking at me with great eyes, just wishing to stay home, where the air was not saddened.

For every key I have tapped, it felt like a betrayal. Somewhere in the data stacks went the thoughts of rebellion. I had a choice! They can despise me for the permanent quarrel of existence, but in deep memory, I was angry, remembering myself that every day I worked was a must … for bills, for food, dreams that surrendered quietly in their lives, whether through hand-held slogans of Holo-Vegles or plastic shadows.

Amidst the rush of machinery and the stroke of techno -induced voices, something captured in my periphems. A figure crawls in my appearance, a shade in the shadows moving to the edge of the bright light. A client appeared – thin, soft, bright hooks of electrical impulses that light on rainbow tattoos crawling up in the neck. Her eyes were sold as she approached my terminal, and as she leaned closer, the wind hit me – infected, infected, a hodgepodge of burnt circles rotating around it as a ghost of regret.

“Hey, clerk?” She whispered, her voice a vibration was almost drowned by humor cars.

“What do you need?” I replied, keeping my tone flat, neutral.

“I need a Mr. shift,” she mumbled, the fingers that are engaged to the counter in the nervous prediction, “for my baby. They are.” “

“Z-Shift is not a toy,” I interrupted and my heart shocked my determination. “Don’t you think your child deserves something less – intense?”

She retired to my judgment and for a moment I saw the raw emotion behind the facade – it was not just another transaction; This was despair. The love of a mother was damaged by the drowning weight of the world by pressing around her. Life slammed by the noise by Slumplex was now quietly drowning her aspirations for her baby.

“I … I need it for his nightmares,” she embedded, breaking the voice, “he wakes up shouting every night. Z-Placing helps him”

I looked at it, the burden of passing patrons, their glazed eyes, keeping their cacophony of mixed problems at that useless moment of connection. My heart screaming more than the wonderful city around us. Lela and Samir were the world away from this chaos, but so close, permanently bound by the invisible verse of mankind.

Something raw grew inside me. Who was I? A clerk between shadows, faceless, soulless? It hit me hard – the weight of all, the tasks I drew behind me like old chains. It was suffocating. “Okay,” I found myself saying, and as I continued with the transaction calmly, I accepted the gloomy reality of life in the earth’s subblation.

With my fingers led by the pulse of anxiety intertwined with love, I elaborated its transaction, but not before giving it a discount, enough for it to breathe an easy time. We closed our eyes for a short moment, and I saw that she understood the despair of survival; We were the reflections of each other engraved from different paths.

“Thank you,” she murmured, her voice withdrew fragile courage.

I allowed myself a moment of clarity, a portal that opens into an empty room filled with only options. I bury the pain for my children deeper – until I punched and returned to the world shredded by the bright neon lights and the suffocating control of the future.

The house was a disappointment jump, a deplorable tangle of thoughts that tried with the electric noise of my night shift. I entered, my heavy heart, just to see the first light of dawn crawling through the window cracks, illuminating dreams rotated by the smooth fingers of sleep so far.

Lela first prompted, widely yellowed with disturbed disagreement. “Dad!” She shouted, the golden light pouring through it and thickening the shadows of yesterday night.

“Breakfast, my world,” I whispered, tightening it near, feeling the warmth washed over me once again. Samir pursued the lawsuit, climbing to our small connection, and together we created a security circle turned out of chaos outside.

This place, this fragment of reality – this was where I really wanted to be. The outside world could take her cars, her stimulants, her internet race would never touch these golden moments, carved out of the terrified whispers of a future collapsed for Lela and Samir, staring at the city’s wave.

As we dumped back into dreams, we moved safely to dawn, ten distinct breaths, pulsators aggravated with love attracted me to a world, where I did not have to choose between being a clerk or dad, where darkness did not threaten to swallow the beauty of our fragile existence. With them, I knew the truth: these moments were worth more than any transaction I could ever make.

Author: Opney. Illustrator: Stab. Publisher: Cyber.