In the City of Neon
December, 2021The clock had struck the end of the workday with the mechanical certainty of cold technology. A brief jolt of surprise replaced by the heavy relief of yet another day. The work mesmerized with its repetitive rhythm, accentuated by the boom of the languid and mocking hours in their torment. One after another, it was boredom and resignation that sank into the flesh like fangs of a metallic predator.
The workers rose, tired, with little enthusiasm for the rest of the day that still awaited them. A mass of bodies that forgot themselves, murmuring complaints or simply talking about nothing, moved towards the exit—a mouth regurgitating flesh toward the neon glow of the city.
Among the amorphous wave of laborers, Worker 56 escaped, heading straight for the city's main artery through a long alley, cutting through the buildings with the quick steps of despair. The others escaped from their fatigue to the transportation that would take them home.
Quickly, the Worker reached the main artery, flooded with light, activity, permanent distractions, an electronic life hurtling rapidly toward a final electric ecstasy.
Walking on this street was like swimming in a neon ocean, bioluminescent like many marine creatures. The organic matter of passersby bathed in light and its perpetual electric hum; thousands of bodies dancing between advertisements, propaganda, and ads with crystal-clear promises of fortune and happiness in a world that was no longer.
Wave after wave, the ads seized and moved people along the street, from the tops of buildings to the ground, a heart of light and unknown symbolism to sell. Below, people ate and drank, bought what they unknowingly needed, silent, introspective, an almost mechanical reflection of the neon that illuminated them.
The Worker absorbed this world through his eyes; every stimulus weighed on him with the burden of emptiness. He only wanted his sanctuary, a place for ghosts away from the neon, away from the horde that, like a super-organism, fed on the city and was the city. He needed to fill not his stomach but his soul, not the cubicle-apartment where he lived but the well he dug in his heart. Each step increased in him the desire to disappear; the world around him seemed unreal, a fantasy, an almost perfect copy of a society, of people who believed themselves alive and fulfilled in their personal achievement.
Interrupting his momentary introspection, a street vendor approached, selling his product with the mechanized skill of a memorized speech. A dream, 30 credits. He sold dreamlike experiences, artificial emotions and sensations; an attempt to manufacture hope, motivation, a method to feel human in the tumultuous womb of the metropolis. But for now, he desired nothing more than to savor the silence of that place he had discovered—a secret in a stripped-down city.
He headed to his favorite bar, a place where he could forget himself, where the world would take on a gentle liquidity, and in the dimness of a corner, he could be anonymous in an ancient silence, far from the energetic rhythm of the city, from people with physical bodies but absent minds, engaged in unattainable actions due to the sensory weakness of the moment.
Leaving the main street, he turned into a worn alley, scarred by trash, as silent as few places could be. A few more steps and he reached his destination. In front of the entrance, the broken neon sign, shards of glass on the wet ground reflecting a light that now seemed distant, he sensed the aroma of that place: of memories and voices devoid of the usual electric shrillness; of laughter and quarrels without the nano-technological stimuli that were the overloaded pillars of society; scents of fatigue and a past fading away amid columns of smoke from tobacco lit by ghosts.
In that old café, shadows reigned. He entered and embraced the dim warmth of the room. Dark angles, somber lines cutting through the old bartender serving drinks to an almost nonexistent clientele. Only the brief clinking of glasses; just the sound of liquids splashed into glass—a fragile dance giving way to silence. Outside, beyond the small dam of the alley sealed by the bar, a whirlwind of colors and sounds. But there, everything had the hue of forgetfulness, of recollection, of the dimness long forgotten, of those moments when reality liquefies, and timeless questions arise in the core of human existence.
Night approached, devouring the sky with its violet and orange hues. Seated, the Worker drank from his glass; more than the liquor he had ordered, he drank the stillness, a relief for the weariness of a biological brain fused with the dizzying speed of technology. So tired of the monotony of a job that still existed only to maintain the illusion of a common goal—machines could replace him and his coworkers. But the city still needed bodies to consume it, to kneel before its pleasing offers, whose sin was dry tears of regret and repressed laments.
He raised the empty glass, gazed at it languidly, and saw his own condition. Bathed in silence, he began to feel the hangover from the brilliance, the sounds, of all the countless stimuli that had fallen silent for a brief moment. He knew he would hate them again, but for now, he needed to savor the city and merge with its mechanical beat. His soul craved tranquility, but his body could no longer live without the digital excitement.
He left the café, stopped, looked at it one last time, and descended through the alley. A sonorous and luminous punch hit him when he stepped, once again, onto the main artery. An explosion of colors and sounds kissed his face and body, and he was not alone. He was one more in that organic and technological torrent flowing through the city's veins. A brief sad look at the memory of stillness before forgetting himself again in the vice of distraction, in some synthetic emotion that would make him obliviate the telegraphed monotony of the day.
Now, he walks home. The sun sets over the metal, concrete, and asphalt of the city; the last warm light kissing the cold neon of the night that awakens once again from the daily sweat. The cold, bright, uniform, and angular light adorns the tall buildings that grew from fertile ground—black trunks rising toward a sky begging for hope and dreams, protected by gargoyles and desolate angels no longer writing their names in the sky of dichromatic beauty. Expelled from the celestial vault, they now seek sleepy souls on the ground to enchant with analog promises of fulfillment. Tomorrow, he will seek that café again.
Translation from the portuguese original text by the author and ChatGPT 3.5.
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