When I started building this world, I quickly realized I was dissatisfied with how much science fiction treats human resilience when things go south.
I’m not interested in utopias, and I have no appetite for dystopias. Both feel too clean, too neat, too smug in their certainty—or else they simmer with a pessimism so heavy it makes a brooding teenager look like a ray of sunshine.
There’s a lot of rain in cyberpunk, and I’m not going to blame it on the rain.
Instead, I prefer to look at those grand labels and blow a well-deserved raspberry at the whole concept. I’d rather live in the messy middle ground where humanity has always existed: hopeful, worried, stubborn, resilient, ridiculous, brilliant—and doing its best with what it has left.
So I’m pouring a cup and inviting you into that space. A future that didn’t get hit by a meteor, didn’t endure a zombie pandemic, wasn’t invaded by aliens, and—God forbid—doesn’t hinge on yet another “chosen one” destined to save the human race.
This is a world that grew not from perfection or despair, but from the strange, honest parts of being human: a cup of coffee in hand, and a robot for company.
A world born from being unemployed far too long, drinking too much coffee per day, and carrying a simple desire to imagine a future where we can finally breathe for once.
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