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It’s almost impossible to get a read on Johnny, politically. He’s pretty vague for a terrorist, and that worries V. The more he learns, the less Silverhand’s actions seem like an act of specific resistance and more like the kinds of ramblings he pulls off cyberpsycho’s shards. At least if he had a coherent philosophy V could maybe come to terms with his entire personhood being overwritten, but this? He was just turning into a misanthropic drunken loner with an axe to grind and a death wish.
It was almost sad, staring too close at Silverhand’s philosophy. It comes apart at the seams with very little examination. (After all, any meaningful discussion of the absolute dominance of Arasaka and Militech in all aspects of public and private life to the point of becoming de facto governments necessitates a discussion of how capitalism tends towards monopoly and aims to turn all of human life into a resource to be mined for profit, and how this is the system working as intended, not some strange aberration, and at that point it’s just bread and roses by any other name. Not that V’s thought about it, but he’s been contracted to bust enough union busts that some of it’s worn off on him.)
Yet, despite the rickety foundation and the slapdash rhetoric, it motivates Johnny, in its own twisted way. It’s frighteningly familiar, watching him pace in circles, gesticulating wildly, working himself up into a violent fever over… what? A half century old grudge and police crackdowns that exist only in the memories of bitter old timers? It’s not capitalism, Silverhand says. Says the commies and the punks are missing the bigger picture. But if you zoom out far enough the picture becomes little more than a mess of pixels, a smudge of colour with no identifiable objects or actors, no cause and effect, just a vague sense of wrongness. It becomes nothing more than a spot of ink on a canvas, needing to be blotted out. And that’s not a philosophy, that’s a suicide bomber taking everyone else down with him. Sure the world is terrible, worse than anyone in the first half of the century could have imagined, but what was the alternative?
Uncreative. Hopeless. That’s what’s wrong with your generation you know, you’re all lacking in imagination. Can’t picture a world better than this? Man, the corpos have got you all by the balls and you’re thanking them. You’re fuckin’ lucky this is gonna be my body, gonna make something of this pathetic little pile of rubble you call a life.
The bite back is instant. I may not know what a better world looks like, but neither do you. And that’s the crux of it really. Johnny’s fighting against the corpos, fighting against Arasaka, fighting against the world and everyone in it but he’s not fighting for shit.
Doesn’t matter what you’re fighting for, what it’ll all look like after. Nobody knows, and anyone who says they do is either a liar or an idealist. Building the new world before the old one’s rubble? That’s putting the cart before the horse. You’re trying to imagine a new language but everyone making it still speaks English. Besides, that planning causes nothing but pointless infighting. Doesn’t matter if the marxists or the anarchists are “more right” when the world’s still run by the corps. Let the philosophers figure out what rises from the ashes, it’s our job to burn it.
Shoot now ask questions later then, like a good soldier.
‘Least the army gets shit done. You on the other hand, are wasting my precious time. I got a second chance here, to do something important. Something meaningful. And you’re blowing it on wild goose chases and failed trysts in the bum ass desert! Fucking wake up and smell the shit you’re living in!
It’s a low blow and Johnny knows it. It’s meant to hurt, meant to get a rise. Goddamn it, it’s the one thing he’s ever been good at. The thought blinks across V’s mind and before he can temper his rage he’s yelling back, out loud too like an idiot.
“Y’know what man? I think I’ve figured you out. This isn’t about the corpos or Arasaka or even revenge, this is about control. You’re a bitter old man watching the world change around him fighting tooth and nail to get it all back under your thumb! You’d lost control of Kerry, lost control of Rogue, you were loosing control of Alt, and this was the only way you could imagine to bring your little world back into your grip, a grip so tight everyone tries to wriggle free! This isn’t politics, it’s just ego! You’re no different from Saburo, only he had somethin’ to his name in the end! He gets a grave!”
The pain hits him like an ice pick to the skull. Johnnys flickering around even faster now, fast like when they first met. Blink and he’s pacing the floor, blink and he’s pounding his firsts against the wall, blink and there’s hands around his throat. Getting choked out by a cyber ghost is a deeply strange sensation. V can feel the idea of cold chrome and hot fingers against his throat, the weight of it, the fizzle of static electricity, all taking over his senses, filling him with the need to fight back survive survive survive. The sensory feedback loop is obviously working because he can feel his fingertips touching skin, can feel the pressure and his own pulse under his grip even as his hands scrabble at Silverhand’s ‘ganic arm. There’s a look in Johnny’s eyes he’s seen before, just not on him. The look of someone ready to kill. V knows logically that this is purely psychosomatic, he and Johnny couldn’t hurt each other if they tried (and they had tried), but the brain doesn’t care. Its job is to pump enough hormones into his system to make his muscles explode and goddamn if the adrenaline overclocker installed in his spine isn’t frying trying to keep up.
He knows Johnny’s feeling it too, as the blood rushes to his face and his breathing gets shallow and wheezey to match Vs own. Eventually, just as the top of his vision starts to pop and fizz with colours never seen before, Johnny lets go. They collapse to the floor, gasping and panting and V swears there’ll be a bruise. They sit in tense silence for a moment, two, before Johnny’s eyes flick to the cigarette case sitting on the coffee table. Come on. Owe me that at least. The desire to deny him even this simplest of victories is quickly crushed by V’s own shaking hands. Nicotine doesn’t care who’s piloting the body after all.
He stands, shaky, and swipes the case like a proper thief. One smooth movement and into his back pocket it goes, to be retrieved seconds later on his balcony. Force of habit more than anything, tucking things away.
It’s never quiet in Night City, but the click of the lighter drowns it all out. Sweet and bitter and hot, the smoke fills his lungs, and he holds it there just long enough to feel a bit lightheaded before letting it go in a short sharp breath. The cloud drifts off the balcony, twisting and glowing with the blue and red of the neon signs. A breath, made visible, twisting out into the city.
Digital noise fills his ears and V sends up a silent prayer for a moment of peace. He glances over at Silverhand, leaning against the railing, pointedly not looking at him. He’s picking at his nails like he wants to say something, wants to try and mend the rift, but isn’t quite sure how. V lets him think.
It’s hard is all Johnny says as way of an apology. Seeing your own grave. Seeing your friends sit fat and happy. Seeing the world moved on. V says nothing, not wanting to spook him out of this rare moment of vulnerability. We thought we’d change the world, fix it all, and then we’d be happy. Well the world hasn’t changed, not for the better, but they’re still happy. And that gets me thinking, maybe the world isn’t the reason. Maybe the problem was… something else. He stops. Swears. Kicks at the railing. There’s a loud clang, and V feels tip of his steel toed boot. Shit, V… if Rogue has it figured out…
“Ehh… Corpos are still evil, you were right about that at least.” V takes another long drag. “We have a responsibility to do something. Can’t just… let it all happen. ‘S like walking by an assault, you just… can’t help but intervene. Either that or the guilt keeps you up at night.” Johnny knows. They’ve both done a lot to keep the nights long and dark. “Shit’s gotta change. This isn’t tenable. People are scared, and angry, and ready, they just need some sorta direction for all that energy.”
The whole conversation feels wrong, on a physiological level. It’s wrong for V to be calling for action, for Johnny to be thinking pragmatically. Three months ago he would have called this the south bank of the Rubicon, the moment his consciousness was beyond saving but well… people change.
That’s the problem. Someone says. It’s not clear who.
“Shit.” V clicks his tongue. “Need a beer.”
Make it tequila and then we’re talking.
V pulls a face. “Don’t understand how you can drink that shit… ‘m sure that between you and Jack you could keep the entire Mexican economy afloat.”
Think of it as reparations. Johnny grins wide and lazy, the way he does when he’s hiding something. Besides, nothing like tequila drunk. Flat on your ass after a bottle and no bad memories the next morning.
“No memories at all you mean.”
Precisely.
But he doesn’t have any tequila stashed away in the apartment and V’s not really in the mood to schlep into town to find some, so they sit on the balcony a while longer while V’s beer slowly warms. Below the megabuilding, police sirens cut through the air like searchlights, and the actual searchlights of a trauma team helicopter flicker on in the distance. Someone must be using the elevator because that fucking THRUD ad starts up again, so loud everyone in the building must hear it. Fucking constant, the ads in this place. Almost impossible to escape.
Rage. Fury. Carnage. Too right.
Thinking about it too long turns the city hollow, a concrete and steel shell meant to suck the eddies out of any living thing that dares set foot in its borders. Everything designed, at every level, to keep your attention just long enough to sell something. It’s fucking dystopian, a city full of armed, angry, desperate people pumped so full of corporate chrome they have no choice but to stay lest their entire bodies shut down because they stopped paying their subscription to a fucking beating heart. Insurance won’t cover it either. He can feel the hard line of the Militech motherboard pressing against the back of his head, between the skin and skull.
But at night, the neon signs, the screens, the lights from the cars and AVs, it’s kind of beautiful. Comforting, in a way. All that hustle and bustle, all that life. People nearby, but so distant. They wouldn’t notice if you disappeared you know…
Memories are getting mixed up. Houses keep their people like secrets, no matter where you are. Graffiti slathered concrete, or weather beaten once white stucco, it doesn’t matter. Suburban Texas is a nightmare just as much as the city. It’s so fucking quiet at night. That’s really the heart of it, for all he talks about car culture and ticky tacky houses and third spaces and urban sprawl, all the rhetoric falls away at night. It’s just dark, and quiet, and alone.
No one would notice if he disappeared.
And he did, once. The second that letter came in the mail he was gone, whisked away to boot camp and Westpoint and eventually out of the country. Never told anyone he was leaving, just got on the plane and as far as his hometown friends were concerned dropped off the face of the earth. Grow your hair out, change your name, and nobody will notice you’re gone until it’s too late.
It’s easy to disappear in the city. Cheap apartments mean corporate landlords, no Mark and Susan trying to pay off their mortgage, who pop by from time to time for tea. And Merc work doesn’t mean a lot of office Christmas parties, not much chance to mingle with coworkers. If you’re motivated, it’s easy to go a week without talking to anyone. It’s lonely, sure, but it means when you’ve wrung every eddy you can out of Atlanta and the creditors have graduated from emails to tire irons, you can hop on a train. Cut your hair, change your name, and nobody will notice until it’s too late.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what we’re fighting for. A fresh start.
Doesn’t matter what comes next, just that you can do anything. No rocks or hard places to fall between. Freedom from your past.
Freedom to become better.
V rises, flicking the smouldering butt off the balcony. The beer is fully warm now, gone flat too, but he downs it anyway. Feels the alcohol and nicotine thrumming in his system, staving off the ache that has long settled into his bones and the dull throbbing of the relic still lodged behind his ear. Wasted enough time today. A quick glance at his holo shows a neglected message from El Capitan, a gun for hire gig deep in the suburbs of Arroyo, and the idea of blowing up some nationalists feels downright poetic right about now. He can feel Johnny’s approval, washing over his brain like sea foam. Out, into the night, to make the city a little more habitable.
Silverhand’s philosophy may be built on sand and vapour, but it drives him, and damn him if V isn’t starting to understand.