In Hippodrome City, life is cheap and chrome is prized. The rich fill their bodies with implants and graft on appendages their species isn't born with, or chop off perfectly good limbs to replace them with upgraded hardware, all in the name of fashion and performance. After all, why bother to save for the future when everything can come crashing down in a hail of gangbanger gunfire or deadly corporate-warfare systems hacks?
Better live life while you can, and on Nightmare Night there's no better way to do that than to go partying in costume.
In the criminal justice system of Hippodrome City, the Chief Cyber Medical Examiner is responsible for forensic autopsies of the deceased found in unusual or suspicious circumstances. This is the story of one such exam.
Written for the 2023 Cyberpunk Nightmare Night Story Contest, where it won second place
You know what I really like about this story? There's no villain.
Cyberpunk as a genre is a rather villain-rich one: Cold or spirited, impersonal or targeted, ordered or chaotic... there's a good chance you're more likely to run into a villain than a hero. But not here. Here, there's only a tragedy. A life lost not out of deliberate or casual cruelty, but a stupid teen doing stupid teen things.
It's difficult even to call Kel Ocean a 'villain'. Her actions, of course, were by no means 'good' - even if they hadn't killed Stonefield, they were darkly manipulative - but he comes off as much more a tragic figure as well: Just a kid who didn't think. And that helps set the tone of the whole story as one I find far more interesting than if Stonefield had been the victim of an unquestionably malicious figure.
Aside from that, I have to admit I enjoy seeing the two cops work through actually figuring out what happened here; rather than simply "knowing" due to experience or tools they have, they need to work it out step-by-step. Good stuff.