Phantom Pain in the Clouds

[This story is not competing for rankings or going premium, so please don't send me tips or gifts. The story is actually pretty conventional, just an exercise in writing and self-indulgent fantasy. No unsolicited advice or comparisons, and updates will be irregular.]

[Thanks for enjoying the story.]

Dunlop Morey is an ordinary low-level resident of the cyberpunk city of Mandolin.

Living from day to day in a cramped little den, eating synthetic meat and drinking recycled water, he is just another part of the entertainment experience for the upper class. If they don't allow it, even his cybernetic eyes can't look directly at them... Like every other Mandolin resident, he lives in this world at a frantic, frivolous pace.

Until one day, a massive blackout strikes all of Mandolin.

Electromagnetic interference knocks every augmented person who isn't a natural human unconscious. Countless people die, but no one compensates their families for their losses.

But that is no longer the most important thing to Morey.

Because from that day on, thanks to an anomalous chip, he develops a BUG.

After a certain incident, all kinds of phantom pains simulating different deaths begin to plague his entire body.

His left cybernetic eye is damaged, and a riot of dazzling scan lines invades his vision.

When he gets worked up, electrical signals interfere with his right cybernetic eye too, changing the color of his entire field of vision.

He feels the agony of people connected to cloud servers, and the pain of powerful strangers in their final moments. It encompasses everything, from pain transmitted through electrical signals to emotions transmitted through hormones. Occasionally, he also gets fragments of combat skills, strange knowledge, and broken memories loaded into him, but never a complete memory bank.

The errors on his display outline the city's truest, most deranged face. Limbs controlled by electrical signals tighten around guns and blades.

From the ant-nest-like Lower City, Morey, who doesn't want to die, crawls out of the chaotic darkness and heads toward the distant, hallucinatory lights.

In this city, where the brilliant neon lights have come back on, he will uncover the truth behind everything.

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Cyberpunk.

The protagonist is Dunlop Morey, a stray cat in the human world, not strictly a natural human, but a cyborg destruction machine who is about 40% physically human!

[Salt Salt won't tolerate personal attacks or insults aimed at other readers when a normal conversation is possible. Otherwise, you'll get my rabbit flying kick.]

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Changed it to no CP. This stray cat, barely scraping by, has decided not to mess with normal people. But I can't change the tags, and I don't want to bother the editor. Since I'm not ranking or earning anything anyway, I'll just leave it as is.

Theme: Searching for a primal hope.