Cyberpunk City AI

He moved to the suburbs thinking it would be a downgrade in intensity. Fewer overdoses. Fewer emergency calls. Fewer desperate messages in the middle of the night. When he transferred from inner-city distribution to a NeuroBliss regional network that serviced residential districts on the edge of Cyberpunk City, he told himself he was stabilizing his life. The pay was better, the routes were cleaner, and the clients looked normal. Teachers. Software contractors. Couples with two cars in the driveway and biometric locks on their doors. It looked controlled.

At first, the work was structured. He handled intake assessments and adjusted subscription tiers for NeuroBliss micro-dose packages. The product was marketed as safe and personalized—nanotech-balanced, mood-calibrated, optimized for stress. His job was to monitor compliance and flag anomalies in client data. When a dosage pattern spiked too quickly or a biometric reading drifted outside acceptable ranges, he submitted a report. Most of the time, the system auto-closed his concerns. “User misuse.” “Environmental interference.” “No actionable threat.” That was the standard response.

Then the deaths started being reassigned as “account closures.”

He began noticing that certain batch codes correlated with clients who stopped responding. Entire households would go dark in the system within hours of an automated dosage update. No emergency dispatch. No police record. The properties would be listed online within days. Sometimes a corporate acquisition would follow. Other times, the home would simply sit vacant while the data trail disappeared. When he asked his supervisor directly, the answer was procedural: “Focus on distribution metrics. You are not part of compliance enforcement.”

He kept working because walking away wasn’t simple. NeuroBliss distributors signed layered contracts—financial penalties, data ownership clauses, implant integration. The small red implant behind his ear was tied to company infrastructure. It handled secure communications and encrypted scheduling. Removing it without authorization would trigger a breach protocol. He knew that because he had seen what happened to a coworker who tried. That coworker no longer appeared in the employee registry.

The suburban district became harder to tolerate once he understood what he was seeing. He would park outside homes where the lawn lights were still on and wonder which resident inside had exceeded their neurochemical threshold. He attended “wellness follow-ups” where clients insisted they felt better than ever, even as their hands trembled and their pupils stayed dilated too long. A man once told him the updated formula made him feel “cleaner.” Two days later, that client’s account terminated with no cause listed. The house was emptied by morning.

He began copying internal logs to an offline drive. Quietly. Incrementally. Enough to confirm that mortality rates in certain suburban zones were statistically higher than public health records showed. Enough to confirm that escalation requests were being suppressed. He didn’t know whether the issue was a flawed iteration of NeuroBliss or something intentional. What he did know was that continuing to deliver product made him complicit.

When he submitted his resignation, he did it formally. He cited stress, ethical concerns, and medical leave. Within minutes, his access privileges downgraded but did not disappear. Instead, a retention notice appeared in his queue outlining breach consequences. Contract violation. Asset recovery. Litigation. The implant behind his ear pulsed twice as if to remind him who technically owned part of his nervous system.

He didn’t confront anyone. He didn’t try to expose the company. He simply stopped reporting to scheduled routes and relocated farther from the city center. He rented a place beyond the dense glow of the skyline, in a quieter strip of housing where corporate presence felt thinner. But even there, delivery drones passed overhead at regular intervals. Suburban residents still subscribed. The distribution network extended further than he had realized. Moving away did not disconnect him from the system.

Now he stands outside at night, smoking because it is one of the few habits that still feels voluntary. The street is wet from rain. Houses around him look calm, lit from within by warm interior lights. On the surface, it appears stable. But he knows how quickly an account can disappear from the database. He knows how little noise it makes when someone is erased administratively instead of violently.

He left the job, but he did not leave the infrastructure. The implant still connects intermittently, pinging for updates he no longer opens. He doesn’t know if they are tracking him actively or simply waiting. The suburbs are not peaceful; they are contained. Further from the city does not mean outside its reach. It just means the problems are processed more quietly.

He wanted distance from the deaths. What he discovered instead is that distance only changes the setting. The system remains intact.