Shiftkin Transmissions
by SiteOwner
CyberpunkDystopiaMultiple Lead CharactersPost ApocalypticSci-fi
▎ 2175. A century of overshoot and climate cascade has hollowed out a world built for billions; tens of millions now rattle around inside the leftover infrastructure. The shiftkin came after the collapse started: human-canine hybrids from an AI-merger experiment that failed badly enough to produce a people. They're the second-largest minority on the continent, and the fear that met them didn't fade so much as harden into furniture. Geoff Bohannon is a sixth-generation mutt, a salvage operator (SalOps) working the disputed fringe between two rival CorpStates east of Kansas City. He runs the exchange-rate math between them in his head and has never thought that was worth mentioning. On a routine run he pulls two things out of a sealed medical cache: one worth more than he'll earn in two years, and one with no category, no resale value, and a cassette inside that holds a charge wrong. He can't sell it. He can't dump it. So he takes it home, and it starts pointing west. Filing from that same year, on a budget that isn't his to spend, an unauthorized historian is transmitting warnings back to the early 21st century before the window closes. He calls his subject Jeff. He's been spelling it wrong since the first transmission. ▎ Two narrators, one collapse, opposite ends of it.
Updated twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays. The whole thing is already written.