Vortexia had already passed out on the floor of his office. Left alone, I
sat up and opened the umm-teenth can of Cola for the evening, then sat
down again and turned to face the ominous grey box which dominated so much of
my life.

I began to think back to earlier that evening, when Vortexia had been talking
to me about how much he'd love to get into a 4x4 and spend some time
travelling up the East Coast of Africa with some friends, void of any
interruptions from his usual high-pressure lifestyle. I began to think about
if he'd ever actually do it, if he would ever snap and leave computers for the
rest of his life and what he would do if he did leave them - they were his
life.

I wondered how we had come to be the way we were, and exactly what sparked off
the curiosity that ultimately made us the cyberpunks we had become. I pondered
this for some time, pausing every so often to take another sip of Cola,
carefully replacing it on the air conditioner each time to keep it cold.

It eventually came to me that the Cyberpunk nation was in fact united purely
by its fragmentation. We were united by the fact that despite we were all very
different people, with different viewpoints and different cultural backgrounds,
we could still co-exist and actually benefit from eachother, something never
seen in the rest of the world.

Coming from South Africa, most of us had gone through apartheid and all of us
had experienced the common lack of respect for other people present in all
races in our country. A Black friend of mine, Cache, has a crappy, handwritten,
torn piece of paper as his birth certificate and although SA wouldn't accept him
then, and expected him to be content with the zero respect they showed him from
birth - the hacker community welcomed him with open arms.

And yet, the outside world remains to distrust our nation - we are the malicious
imbeciles continously plotting on new ways to erase their data and ruin their
lives. And even now, *5 years* after apartheid, in the time of a new, so-called
"enlightened" government, the negative image the world has given us continues to
hound us. Why - you may ask - Let me tell you why...

No government exists without internal corruption, such a thing would be
impossible. The type of people who would want to be in a political party are
generally power-seeking gluttons to start with. Sure, I am generalising on that
point, but I would like to see some-one who can prove otherwise. And we, the
cyberpunk nation, are a threat to our perfect little governments - Because We
have the ability to, and will, expose government corruption at every possible
oppurtunity because we are moral people who want to assist those who are
governed and *not* those who govern. We are the TRUE servants of the people, and
yet, they are the very ones who distrust us.

But I can never expect our negative image to truly disappear, the government,
ever becoming more corrupt and ever trying harder to cover up the truth, are
simply too powerful a force to defeat. The cyberpunks will remain in the shadows
and the truth will never be known. Perhaps the rest of the world isn't ready
for it to happen anyway. 

Lost. The forgotten minority. The people with no hatred...

--==--==--==--==--==-->>
wyze1@xtc.za.org
www.posthuman.za.net
