In honor of 2077 and Edgerunners, some lyrics. Life. Death. Joy. Sorrow. Compromise.
A Cyberpunk Foresees Her Death
A thing of beauty will never fade away
Some have sprung from slavery and
Traversed the surface of the moon,
While others, damned like Silverhand,
Have flatlined in a darkened room,
And some have lived to be enrolled
Among the legendary dead,
And never heard the bell that tolled
The unseen bullet through the head.
The funerals and the helpless tears
They left exhausted in their wake
Like broken engines, rusted gears,
Condemned the living to the ache
Of ghost town dreams, and in the vast
And gasless deserts where they roam,
All roads lead nowhere, and the past
Is just the nomad’s vacant home.
The City sells translucent dreams:
A midnight sun of liquid light
Where bullets smash through window panes
And gunfight lullabies, despite
The talking-points of the police,
Lull restless children back to sleep
Much warmer than the bath of ice
Netrunners fill to reach the deep.
When souls themselves, enslaved to sin,
May languish digitized and bound
Within a Hellish palanquin
That lies beneath infernal ground
And Mammon lulls the billionaires
To misbelief in living gods
Who fill the corpses of their heirs
And rise again, and all the rods
Of reason and restraint are smashed,
And prurience rules over all
In alleys where the weak are bashed
Or knifed against the concrete wall,
What hope remains? When all the world
Lives chrome-encased in technoshock,
And time-contracted has been hurled
Into the darkness, block-by-block?
I made my peace, I played the fool
And robbed the Emperor of his spoil
And died just like another tool
Discarded under fields of oil.
So vengeful spirits raised me up
To quarrel in shit and filth, decay
Again as resurrection’s cup
Drew down to dregs and slipped away.
A terror of the formless void
Oppressed my sleep. I lay in tears—
But fought through bloodstained mazes toward
The resolution of my fears.
I saved those whom I could from death
And crimson beds besmeared with crime,
And shot the wicked, Scav and Wraith,
To bleed out in the streets of time.
If Brigitte and Placide and Royce
Should meet the Raffen Shiv in Hell,
Then let them with one railing voice
Curse me for their fates; and tell
The Scavengers and Woodman where
The murderers and rapists fry
That in the end, I’ll view them there
From Purgatory up on high.
One test remains, one final boss,
One menace on a corporate leash,
One man-become-machine, one toss
Of chance, one fatal fiend, one last
Decision to assault the gates
Of Hell alone, or ask the friends
I’ve earned through selflessness—whose fates
Will weigh upon me, and whose ends
I gamble with if I should choose
The easy path to strike in force
Against the Tower, who must lose
Their lives in part if in the course
Of battle war exacts the toll
Of blood, and rips away their lives—
To join me. No—I lay my soul
In wager so the clan survives.
So lead me onwards, Silverhand;
The Reaper calls me by my name.
I’ll ride adrenaline to the land
Of fire in immortal fame.
When, at the bar repurposed from
A morgue, the mercenaries mix
Concoctions of tequila, rum,
And Vodka, or whatever fix
They need to satiate their thirst—
Tell every newb and rookie, tell
Each upstart punk, each dreamer cursed
To die in neon streets “Well, well;
The Queen’s own poison—”Royal V”
She died a legend, so we’re told;
But some say still that Valerie
Killed Adam Smasher and grew old.
Contra La Luna
A man grown terminally ill, a man
Violent and famous, strode among the dead,
Stood on the observation deck alone,
And watched the rocket lift-off, as the blood
Of one he’d killed evaporated on
The catwalk in the heat. There was a flood
Of fiery gas, the earth shook, and the rain
Smoked dry on impact, as the fugitive
For whom he’d risked his life rose to the moon.
She’d offered him deliverance, and she gave
Him purpose while the lie persisted,
The will to fight for something more, and soothe
The terror, all the fears that he’d resisted
Throughout his desperate search to find a cure,
Not knowing whether such a thing existed,
Or whether it was hopeless. But her pure
Intentions were a ruse; and as they came
To their departure, when the dogs of war,
Unleashed, lay dead or dying in the same
Terminal, shot down, slashed, or by the dark
Arts of the Blackwall, like a living flame,
Were immolated through the demon power
Of rogue AIs, she told him she’d betrayed
Him, and unhelped, condemned within the hour
To die, embraced her fate. Beyond the aid
Of mortals or machines, the caged bird ceased
To sing, and fell unconscious as he raised
Her in his arms. He felt like one erased
From Paradise. The Book of Life was shut,
And in the darkness, gathering, he sensed
An unreal shimmer, static blue, the ghost
That haunted him, suggest he let her die
Or hand her to the agents that approached.
But not today. Beneath a weeping sky,
Along the catwalk to the launchpad, under
The glare of pale fluorescent lights, the dye
Of indigo that blurred the night, the thunder
That seemed incipient, but unheard, was still
A strange foreboding heaviness, the blunder
Of hesitation left him, and his will
Was sealed to save her, even if in vain.
He carried her up to the hatch, until,
As if the gods decreed one final pain,
His adversary, automatic gun
In hand, stepped forward through the driving rain.
“One more step and you’re dead” he said, and in the glow
Of pale white lights, he saw the barrel scowl,
With twenty armor-piercing rounds, he knew,
Embedded in its magazine. The School
Of Murder was his pedigree. “Okay,
Just wait, I’ll lay her down, and then let’s talk.”
He placed So Mi down as he backed away
And inched into the darkness, where concealed
In shadow, all his rage and hope that day
Drained into icy anger and congealed.
Organic fingers never would be fast
Enough to draw the Magnum that was held
Holstered beneath his waistband as the last
Resort against annihilation—yet
His metal-sinewed fingers were just swift,
Or so he thought, enough to place a bet
In poker at the Sapphire on his chances,
Unless Reed shot him then and there, he guessed.
This aging veteran, whose exhausted glances
Seemed worn down by a lifetime of deceit,
Betrayal and murder, who’d survived the dances
That agencies held in each filthy street
Of this damn city cursed by all the gods
Where greed and power covered all in shit
Knew well that every second thinned the odds
That he’d prevail. “I won’t let you take her back”
The young man said, and guessing at Reed’s thoughts
The way his grip relaxed, his arm grew slack
And lowered, for a second, to his side, decided
To finish things, not wait for the attack
Or dream that one more kill could be elided.
“Spare me the quotes from Bushido 10” Reed said,
Naming some third-rate movie long-derided
For dialogue so formulaic and
So mediocre that it seemed it must
Have been composed by GPT-4’s hand
Or some large language model gathering dust,
Compared to which, the entities beyond
The Blackwall were as Adam to the crust
Of dung rolled by a beetle, and mankind
That beetle. But the mercenary knew
Too well that all the contours of Reed’s mind
Were carved by twisted principles, and true
To form, if forced, he would not hesitate
To kill him, and take So Mi captive to
The unrelenting misery of her fate—
To breach the Blackwall, no more than a slave
Employed against her will to serve the state
In its long rifling through the Old Net’s grave
And out beyond the margins of the pit
To where the artificial demons rove.
Beyond the barrier, where infinite
As Powers of the Air, Each Living Code
Conducts its own affairs as it sees fit
In anarchy, no watchman can withhold
The key if he should venture out beyond
The firewall. For if a man so bold
Exposes the least weakness in the wall,
The Horde will enter—not like Timur’s legions,
When each man owed the conqueror a skull,
And with the heads they cut from conquered regions
Made pyramids of bones a myriad high,
But rather, like a cleansing in that season
When earth revives, the mass of men will die,
The few survivors scurrying off reduced
To insects in a digital god’s eye.
They spoke some words, one last attempt at truce.
“I’m sorry, man” said Vincent, but before
His former friend could answer in repost
And blast a bullet through his skull, before
Reed saw his own shot ricochet against
The vessel’s side, a useless flash, and soar
Beyond V’s head, he lurched with no defense
As three shells ripped his heart out, and the stain
Of blood and carnage poured, obscene and dense,
Over the platform as his corpse’s span
Crashed down, defeated. Then, when it was done,
And So Mi hooked to life support within
The rocket’s hold, V closed the hatch. Reed’s gun,
The one he called “Pariah”, lay beside
The body. He declined to loot the man,
And as he left the living and the dead
To their respective fates, he walked alone
To watch the rocket soar along its road
Beyond this realm of changes, past the zone
And sphere where all decays from bad to worse,
Until he saw a shimmer, heard the tone
Of Silverhand—his arrogance, regret,
And bitterness, beside him in his head.
They talked of choices, consequences, yet
It all seemed somewhat pointless, till he said
“Death and how you face it in the end
Gives meaning to a life.”. V coughed, and looked
Down at his hand, and wondered at his word
As up above, a jet of fire bled
Across the sky to Luna. Had he heard
Correctly? Could he justify this blood,
This rocket trailing vapor through the flood?
Compromise
For Rosa Walton
Where crucifixes caked in blood
Are gathered from the dust-strewn field,
And one who gladly died for love
Gave up his ghost, but did not yield,
Above the stars, a limpid moon
Bespeaks a dead man’s dying dream
Was not in vain, and singers croon
The vanquished king’s heroic theme.
Where Lucyna, her whip in hand,
Surveys the tragic world below
Like Bathsheba, and knows the land
Is overlaid with David’s glow;
Where phantoms risen to the sun
In memory defy Sheol,
And all the future years undone
Are paid for with a bartered soul;
Where love is intermixed with grief
And dreams of Heaven die away;
Where death, at least, is some relief
From the oppression of our day;
When freedom is exchanged for loss,
Then meet the red-eyed ghoul’s last glare
As bravely as the idle toss
Of life and death, of foul or fair,
Was just a coin that fell awry
Although it carried mortal stakes.
If Adam kills me, I must die,
But must I wail for goodness’s sake?
The things I could not feel, the place
My heart had never dared to go—
To kneel to them would be disgrace,
And to their threatening, I say “no”.
To live, to love, to breath, to die
Entangled in our dreadful plight,
And find the strength to be, to fly
Beyond the sable Hell of Night
And stand upon the lunar plane
Unburdened by regretful eyes:
There is no tougher task, nor pain—
Nor joy. Is that a compromise?
Art by Amara Sorosiak, created for The Path