Cyberpunk 2074: Shadows of the Past

"Xida?"

"...Five more minutes of sleep..."

2074, January 13, 6:00

It's sunny after the rain.

Sunshine travels hundreds of millions of kilometers tirelessly just to catch a glimpse of the girl's beautiful face while she is sleeping.

The man smiled helplessly, sat up from the bed, held her in his arms, and prevented the frivolous sunshine from kissing her face.

"You won't even be jealous of the sun... Yahweh, you are so childish." Xi Da half-squinted his eyes, leaned into the man's arms, and stroked his lips with his left hand as if mischievously.

"When did you learn to read minds?" He raised his eyebrows, pushed away her naughty little hands, lowered his head and kissed her half-lidded eyes.

"Hehe..." She felt the man's tenderness and smiled softly.

"Get up, I have a gift for you." He looked helplessly at the lazy creature nestled in his arms, and gently shook her body.

"What did you say first..." She coquettishly climbed up from Yahweh's arms, turned sideways, and put her arms around his neck.

"The kind that can become stronger..." He winked pretending to be mysterious and nibbled the tip of her cute nose that was leaning towards her.

"Yeah! Say it quickly! Otherwise... I'll be punished!" She wiped away the saliva on the tip of her nose in disgust and glared at her beautiful eyes with feigned ferocity.

"The chip..." He reached out and touched the interface on the back of Xi Da's head, "The kind that can make you a top hacker."

"where?"

"It's already in your head..." Yahweh rolled his eyes, "It's the prototype from before. I left some things in it."

"Did you keep something? Does it affect you?" She stopped being funny, and her beautiful eyes were filled with worry.

"No," he stroked her tight back, "My strength remains the same and will not diminish."

"Oh, then take it out for a walk!" She relaxed and lay lazily in his arms.

Yahweh shook his head slightly. He always had no way to deal with this clingy man.

"Switch the prosthetic eye to scanning mode." He poked her cheek.

"Switched...then what?"

Xi Da tilted his head in confusion. Under the scanning mode, the man so close in front of him seemed like a mysterious shadow, blurry.

She didn't like this feeling of being far away from him and was eager to end this link.

"Patience, Hope...look around..." Yahweh chuckled and pointed around.

Xi Tao looked around, his mouth wide open in surprise.

She saw a whole new world.

All electronic devices within sight are connected to a vague white thread. They do not intersect with each other and extend outward.

She quickly looked out the window.

A huge network covered the sky and the sun, trampling the entire Night City under its feet.

"What is this? Yahweh?" Her voice trembled, half excited, half scared.

She was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the glorious vision of the divine realm, stepped into the clouds with one foot, and would be far away from the mortal world.

"You can understand it as..." He frowned, organizing his words, "My perspective, part of my perspective."

Xi Da lightly jumped onto the floor and walked to the window on her slippers.

She stood on tiptoes and looked down at the tiny figures coming and going on the street.

"Have you seen those people?" Yahweh got out of bed and hugged her from behind, who was a little excited and a little scared.

"I saw it..." she murmured, intoxicated with the feeling of being like a god overlooking all living beings.

"As long as you want them to die, they will die." He whispered in Xi Da's ear.

"How to do it?"

"Just think...just think..." He tapped her little head.

"Unlike cyber hackers, they make choices when invading a target, and the options depend on the plug-ins they install..." He paused, leaving a little buffer time for the shocked Xi Dao, "I, or rather We...we just need to think..."

"You think the prosthetic body of the guy down there is too ugly and you want to take it off? When you have this idea, it has already become a reality." Yahweh pointed at the exhibitionist with a naked big steel cannon under the street.

He sighed disdainfully, and the exhibitionist big steel cannon fell away from its roots.

"Holy shit! This is too scary!" Xi Da was so surprised that he gently scratched his face to confirm that he was not dreaming.

"Can I do that?" She looked at the exhibitionist lying on the street bleeding and rolling in pain from a distance, laughing happily.

"Almost..." Yawei paused, "But I will put restrictions on you... to prevent your brain from being unable to bear it and turning into a cyber psychosis."

"What exactly is cyberpsychosis?" She turned off the scanning mode and walked to the sofa in the living room to sit down. She was a little tired from the God's perspective for just a few minutes.

"The external manifestations when the brain cannot bear the erosion of the prosthetic body..." He walked to Xida and gently rubbed her temples.

"Like..." He thought about the appropriate metaphor.

"for example?"

"For example, driving..." Yahweh clapped his hands, "You have a prosthetic body, which is equivalent to you driving..." He stood beside the sofa and pointed at the vehicles speeding by on the elevated road.

"The more prosthetics you install, the faster the car will go... You can still control the speed at first, but you will get tired one day, because this is an endless road." He smiled softly, "When you are tired When driving at high speed, every second of distraction is fatal. In a moment, you have teleported thousands of miles. Your tired brain hurriedly issued instructions to avoid the vehicle in front of you, but what you avoided was just The apparition from a few minutes ago…”

"There was a 'bump', and before my brain could react, the car accident happened." Yahweh looked at the black smoke rising in the distance, and another number was added to the Dead Man Lotto today.

"This is cyberpsychosis, Xi Da..." He touched her head, "When the brain is exhausted to the point of overload, a person becomes ill..."

"And various realistic factors will aggravate the fatigue of the brain, right?" Xi Da raised his head and looked at the man standing in the sun. His face was blurred in the backlight.

"Additional prosthetic bodies and the pressure of life will continue to aggravate fatigue... This is tantamount to actively chasing death..." He nodded in agreement with Xida's guess.

"Gloria!" She stood up hurriedly, wanting to run downstairs immediately to persuade the kind woman to change her job.

"I loaded her with nanorobots, which will bear a certain burden on her brain," he said, grabbing the hurried Xi Da.

"I have to convince her to change her job anyway! Working 18 hours a day is too dangerous!"

"There will be a chance, Xida..." He pulled the girl to sit on the sofa and comforted her softly.

"Let's finish today's commission first. I've got a call." He whispered.

The next second, Xida received a contact from Rogge.