Zero smokes, and drinks soju while he waits. Rumbles of traffic and subway bass. Two empty bottles on the table now. He’s been pouring one glass for himself, then placing a second in a growing pod on the other side of the table. He’s one third of the way through a pack of Smokes. The…

Zero Moon sits near the food stall, a bottle of soju and two glasses set before him. Around him the city powers down, OT steam blasting from small vents and holes in its skin. The sub-audible hum, capillaries of electricity fading out. Information still shuttles around, via its own networks deep in the air, almost…

The next morning you crystal clear patch in over the PCB’s secure line, and I can sit with the headset cradled in my arm, watching the morning through Windows, podding your voice’s every urgent burst. Proposing an informational kind of messing with the static stations on OT. Old tech, or off-topic? Your missives, fired like…

When you call I can hear a bug in the line, and not much else. Awoken at 2am by my PCB’s random koan. Finding it face-down by the lamp. Flicking its switch, I imagine you in an airport hotel, staring out the window with the headset held in one hand, a mouse in the other.…

Jet Moon doesn’t have a ticket but she’ll ride on to the next station. She’ll get off, ride the escalator upwards, jump the turnstile and emerge onto the street. It’s raining in Jongno. She’ll pass by a comic book stand, plastic meals in a window. Rain sluices down the window. There is a bar on…

Like a hawker trundling bananas up and down the laneways, the RFK broadcast begins, its strident rhetoric pock-marked with apaches of radio static. Blue days and green days, orange dawns and summer frosts; all part of the terraforming mandate. Unfurling fogs along the coastal waterways and islands, the mandate encompasses both canals and streamlets, giant…

In the silence of the empty kitchen I unwrap bowls and pair chopsticks. The larger soup bowls feel at home on the shelf above the sink, along with the cannisters of rice, dried onions and pickled lemons. I call up some tulips on Windows and start chopping mint. The glass bowl steams with the heat…

The graffiti walls disappear overnight, only to be replaced by acres of crumbling bricks. Animated characters from Monkey prowl the screens of the subway cars and stations, drilling the denizens in security and respect, performing kick-flip manoeuvres with pixellated aplomb. I watch vacantly as the main display shows the progress of the train through the…

I stumble through the laneways and backstreets of Aramis, catching the occasional snatch of conversation and dice rumbling. The awnings are still out, despite the dark hour, and just as I realised I’ve taken a wrong turn to the left the rain begins to fall again, unannounced and with great speed. I freeze beneath the…

The mood in this PC Bang is bleak. Most screens switched off and the ones that run blink urgently, error messages forming solitaire cascades. Still this small corner of connectivity on this far deep space of the south continent is pleasant enough for 3am, and about seven tubenerds are here, feeding tubenews into their headsets,…

Under the gloom of moonlights I wander the streets of Aramis, scouring the intersections for PC Bangs, those unofficial shelters for Korea’s refugees, the engine room of the diaspora economy, racks of aloe drinks and snacknuts. Beneath a giant podpark I find an alleyway arcade of fried pork stalls and freeband stations, instant access, newband…

Surrounded by rain. Nowhere to go. Rain sheets all evening. Loose laces in my boots. The sirens stop at about the same time as the feed dies out. I take a shower then, in the dark, and leave the extraction fan off. Great clouds of steam bloom in the recess and the mirror. Raining myself…