Ten thousand I am across the heavens

"Cyberpunk? Are you like a gang?" Lucy had encountered some cyberpunk terms on the LAN and outside the black wall. In her impression, these people walked on the edge of modern cities, in the gray area of ​​the law, using violence and hacking technology to deal with special problems that could not be handled by normal means. At least in Lucy's impression, it was a pretty cool organization.

"Calling us a gang wouldn't be a problem. We specialize in dealing with entities that the law can't punish. If you and the other escaped kids have nowhere to go, you can temporarily join us. We do need skilled hackers."

Brando smiled and extended his hand to Lucy and her group. Brando was also from Blue City, and Anna naturally accepted the offer without hesitation. Lucy was now inseparable from Anna, so she followed along. The other children who had escaped were at a loss, and under the influence of the herd mentality, they also followed without realizing it.

Brando's smile was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress. These kids were all top-notch hackers, which perfectly filled the gaps in their gang's capabilities.

Lucy had only recently gained her freedom and was still unsure how to plan her future. Lying on her bed in her rented room, she was momentarily lost in confusion. The thrilling life of cyberpunk might have been the perfect fit for her. Having grown accustomed to dancing on the edge of a knife, she might have longed for a brief period of peace. But it seemed that a truly stable life was no longer possible for her.

Lucy was like that, and the other kids were pretty much the same. After two peaceful days, they all started to get restless, borrowing the gang's neural connection equipment to try and connect to the internet. Relying on their powerful hacking skills, they did whatever they wanted.

However, this behavior was stopped. Brando gathered the restless kids together and reprimanded them: "Your hacking skills are strong, but to say that you've reached the world's top level, there's still a considerable gap. There are many geniuses like you, and those geniuses may work even harder than you. You may be able to do whatever you want online for a short time, but once you're discovered, the consequences will be something even I can't help you bear."

If you guys are really restless, why don't you come with me on a few missions? Cyberpunk isn't all about fighting and killing; seeing our work will probably give you a new understanding of how to survive in this society.

These teenagers weren't inherently destructive; they were simply overconfident because they found most people to be incredibly foolish and easily fooled by their hacking skills. Hearing that they could actually participate in a cyberpunk mission piqued their interest.

However, the task they faced next was completely different from what they had imagined.

In the bustling market, Lucy, dressed in a tight-fitting white uniform with the slightly rustic words "Kitahara Security" printed on the chest and back, patrolled the market round and round.

"Remember, your task is to stop uncivilized behavior, such as theft, robbery, and extortion. If you have extra energy, you should also stop things like graffiti and littering." Lucy recalled Brando's arrangements after she was assigned a job and suddenly wondered if she had been sold into working illegally.

"Is this all the gangsters do? We seem more like security guards." Lucy asked Anna beside her in confusion. Anna was also wearing the same tight-fitting uniform and seemed to have no complaints about the boring job.

"I asked the boss before. It wasn't always like this. In the beginning, patrolmen like us really had to fight with the nearby gangs."

However, after things improved and the interests of the surrounding area were coordinated, we patrolmen no longer needed to fight. We only needed to stand here and people would give us face.

"Look, we just encountered graffiti and petty theft. With just one word, they obediently stopped. Even when we encountered street vendors blocking the road, one word from us was enough to make them obediently pay the fine. This kind of influence doesn't come easily."

Lucy pondered, and it did seem a bit strange: "Our uniforms seem to be a little too effective, but even if they are, what we do is no different from that of security guards."

Lan Cheng shrugged and said, "Young people definitely don't think this is exciting enough. But from most people's perspective, is it more acceptable to live a life of danger and bloodshed, or to have a stable job where you can get a salary without fighting?"

Lucy looked at her uniform, lost in thought. Perhaps many people do yearn for their own lives when they're young. But in the end, everyone wants to settle down.

"As far as I know, our current jobs are actually a perk within the gang. Newcomers usually have to start by fighting and killing, and only after they have made some contributions or gained enough seniority will they be assigned to these stable positions to retire in."

"Aren't you good at hacking? Why don't you take a look at the statistics for the market we manage? Compare the employment rate of the neighborhood a year ago to the current employment rate, and you'll see the problem."

With Lucy's skills, it was very easy for her to secretly retrieve some employment data from the neighborhood's database; in a moment, rows of data were already displayed in front of her.

“Although the official employment rate hasn’t changed much, it seems we’ve created many jobs that aren’t officially recorded. Overall, the employment rate has increased significantly. Does that make any difference?” Lucy began to seriously consider the operating patterns of this neighborhood and this farmers’ market.

“I’ve looked through the gang’s files before. In the beginning, we were in the agricultural trade in this area. That is, we would escort convoys from the countryside, bypass layers of distributors, and transport agricultural products directly to the city to sell at low prices. We would then make a profit from the price difference to keep the gang running.”

"Sounds so... ordinary! Is this really what cyberpunk is supposed to be doing?"

“I thought so at the time, but according to the gang’s records, that period was the time when our conflicts with other gangs were most intense. There were conflicts almost every day, and brothers would be carried back from time to time. The scale of the gang firefights was rare in Night City’s history. There was even a Night City legend who died directly in our group operations.”

Lucy's eyes widened in astonishment. Having spent more time online since leaving, she had gained a deeper understanding of Night City and the true significance of its legends. In any given era, Night City could only have one legend. These legends typically underwent extensive cybernetic modifications, leaving them with few natural organs. These artificial organs represented their terrifying physical abilities, to the point that even the official Terrorist Mobile Unit often couldn't handle them; one individual's combat power was comparable to a small army.

These people are arguably the most dazzling figures in cyberpunk, kings in the gray areas of the law. This seemingly unsophisticated gang had actually killed a Night City legend—something that seems completely out of character for a quiet, low-profile gang. Even more absurd is how running a farmers' market business could have offended a Night City legend.

"I can see you have a lot of questions. I didn't understand it at the time either. But after doing some calculations, I found that the profits involved in this business are actually much higher than those illegal industries. It seems that illegal industries like gambling and prostitution are all highly profitable, and assassinations, robberies, and thefts are often businesses with no capital. But these are ultimately just scraps left over from the edges of society."

Even if the agricultural trade industry is rustic and inconspicuous, it is still a large-scale trade. A terrifying person may not visit a club once a year, but he still needs to eat every day and consumes vegetables and meat every day. By comparing the wealth that an ordinary person spends on these two industries, it is easy to see who is the big spender.

So when we initially established agricultural product supply chains between urban and rural areas, it was truly like tackling a major crisis. The interests involved among those layers of distributors were so vast that it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say they could crush the entire Night City underworld.

Lucy then accessed the sales data for agricultural products from Night City. Upon seeing the enormous sales figures, her expression changed. She finally began to realize just how much hardship she had endured to obtain this seemingly insignificant job.

"Back then, we directly opened up sales channels between urban and rural areas, eliminating hundreds of distributors. The conflicts we had then stemmed from distributors hiring other gangs to target us. I'm not at all surprised that such enormous profits could persuade a legend from Night City to join us."

I estimate that by then, all the well-known gangs in Yezhicheng had been brought out to target us, but as you can see, the cheap goods in the farmers' market have now wiped out almost all the surrounding shops, and even those that are still alive come here to buy their goods.

Thinking back to how those gangs supported by the distributors lost their source of income when the distributors themselves were killed, it's not hard to imagine the bloodshed that ensued.

As for now, it seems that we have absorbed these unemployed people ourselves. Admittedly, those before were middlemen who took bribes and made a profit while also supporting a group of gangsters and creating some gray-area jobs.

But these people are still in positions that require them to leave their jobs. These so-called jobs not only fail to provide wealth to society, but instead draw wealth from the surrounding area to support them.

Look at the cleaners and vendors in the farmers' market now. Many of them are people I've seen in previous files—the so-called cyberpunks who were originally henchmen in the profit chain. Now they've been incorporated into the industry chain, becoming part of the wealth creation process. The required number of people in the entire industry chain has increased, creating more wealth, while less wealth is exploited by capitalists. The wealth distributed among each person has increased, and it's this extra wealth that wins people's hearts and minds. This is the reason our words carry weight here; these things can't be achieved through violence and bloodshed.”

"Looking at it this way, what we're doing doesn't seem like cyberpunk, it's more like a government operation! And judging from that, we seem to be doing pretty well." Lucy didn't know what kind of bloody battles they had gone through to seize such a large business. But judging from the current results, the business was developing far better than before.

"It's precisely because pure gangs have no future that they develop in this way! Essentially, the existence of gangs is due to the government's insufficient ability to manage the grassroots, creating blind spots, and thus forcing the government to establish a new order in these blind spots through force."

If we could establish a smaller social system within this blind spot, the wealth we could acquire and the power we could accumulate would far exceed what simply attaching multiple cybernetic implants would provide.

Lucy has always been proud of her hacking skills, but after being exposed to a larger-scale approach to social management, she has gradually developed new thoughts.

With her hacking skills, she could easily create highly deceptive websites and secretly transfer deposits from users' accounts. But now she realizes that her actions have not created any new social wealth; instead, they have disrupted the distribution of social wealth. In terms of vision, she is far inferior to the tacky cyberpunk movement before her.

But she was also a little conflicted. With such amazing skills, she would have no use for them after returning to society, which made her feel like her precious talent was being wasted.

"Actually, we don't need to worry about being security patrols forever. Brando probably just wants us to go to the grassroots level to familiarize ourselves with the organization's basic structure. Once we have a basic understanding of how the organization exists, they will arrange for us to be in positions where we can use our talents."

In this era of widespread mobile internet, information technology will always lack talent, but... in the future, our work will likely be more in the field of cybersecurity than hacking. BlueCity's estimate was indeed quite accurate.

However, in the realm of the internet, they have even grander plans. Negative emotions in this world will spread unchecked among the masses, causing psychological distortion in a large number of people. The internet, which does not need to be responsible for its own words, bears a considerable responsibility for this.

Changing the current situation where the internet does not hold people accountable for their speech is a long and arduous task, and may even require a disruptive internet revolution.

[To be continued]

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