Four Colour Future
From PlotBunnies
Here's an idea I thought up for a Role-Playing Game. However, what I've written so far is just the setting; so it could just as easily be the background for a story. Enjoy -- Angel
[edit] World
The future: An image of a bleak society, with social class more important than ever. Tower blocks and factories dominate the landscape. There must be farms out there somewhere, but they're operated by machine now. People are only needed for people facing jobs, and those jobs are clustered around where the people are - the inner cities, shining like neon jewels, and surrounding them for miles on every sound, the decaying city slums. Even in the poor neighbourhoods, neon and display screens cover every public surface, though here the neon fizzles and flickers, and the grimy screens display an endless parade of advertisements for loan sharks and clubs that are guaranteed* to help you clear your debt for only a $999.99 initial membership fee.
In this kind of economy, bars and clubs are making money hand over fist. After all, even the most destitute bum can afford to drown his sorrows, if the synthetic alcohol substitutes are oiners and cheap enough. Certainly, they could afford to hire a cleaner, and the place could sparkle. But nobody wants sparkle here; the barman is a sympathetic figure, universally trusted. Letting the clientèle know he has money would lose a lot of business. So they get used to dusty bottles, the familiar patina on the windows and the bar, and unidentified sticky residue on the floors. We're all poor together here, and that at least is some solace.
And among the few scraps of business too small for the megacorps to trade in, a new economy has grown up. Its real, and its personal. Barmen are one of its faces; and club owners who support the delicate trade in untaxed moonshine. Stylists too, or at least hairdressers, nail bars and tattooists. When the people have a little cash, they'd rather flash it to a guy running a studio out of his spare room than to some faceless corp. More esoteric trades too, joiners and detectives and even typists ply their trades hidden in the crannies beneath the all-seeing gaze of the Revenue Service computers. This is a world of personal relationships becoming business contacts; it doesn't stretch into the online realms of glitz and hype. Yet, anyway...
In this little economy, of acquaintances and recommendations and trust, a new social network is forming. Based around what you know and who you know, rather than which companies you buy from, a young hacker named Mart Goldsteen has created Graph, a thing that hopes to reclaim the information space in the name of the people, facilitating trade and cooperation rather than big money mergers. A lot of people are sceptical, but Mart reckons his Graph will create a community whose boundaries are defined by the people rather than the sponsors. Its a big dream.
A dream worth killing for?
---
Basically, its a pulp detective story, woven into a near future cyberpunk dystopia. The fashions are kind of like 1920s/30s, but with all the colours becoming primary coloured equivalents, brash and bold. The famous people, corporate leaders, movie stars and fashion icons, are so much larger than life; and the people lower down the chain have started living on their reputations now, so they want to stand out.
Tone ... gritty and grim, to some degree. But also with a dramatic style of combat. Comic book physics rule, not too slapstick, but not too real, either.
