out of focus analog frames

he spoke of riddle by appearance. a story radiating on every wavelength of every highly sculpted synthetic feature. his morph didn’t belong here. ten’s eyes focused on nothing in particular, blankly staring and removed as fake sweat beaded along his brow. a small shop’s charged neon gas filled tubes gently oscillated across the street and reflected on his face where he sat against a bare brick wall, an arm resting on each knee. he kept time by the length of each cigarette’s remainder. waiting. this was ten bamatte’s mars.

he sought the riddle of appearances down at the edge of the domes. ten had disabled some of his sense organs to pickup a respite, but it wasn’t long before a sharp audible blip came across his AR stack from one of the higher up’s at tetsuo and ten’s eyes flashed back to life with laser focus. bamatte learned that he happened to be following the right ball of yarn and that this sprawl’s slums were the unlikely location his corporation had been looking for.