The year was 2160, and Neonspire City glowed like a migraine.
Billboards the size of football fields blinked holograms into the sky—ads for self-cleaning cats, mood-enhancing ramen, and toothbrushes that livestreamed your dental progress. Flying cars honked in midair traffic jams. On the streets, robots argued with humans over tipping etiquette.
And in a cramped co-working pod on the 87th floor of a building shaped like a USB stick, two idiots were about to change the world.
---
Keith stood on a swivel chair like it was a stage, arms stretched, hair gelled to gravity-defying heights. His blazer was fake-leather, his sneakers lit up with LED flames, and his grin said I am either a genius or a total disaster.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" he declared grandly, though his only audience was Pops, slouched at a desk with a holo-laptop; Maya, Keith's very unimpressed girlfriend; and Tasha, Pops' girlfriend, happily chewing on glowing boba pearls that looked radioactive.
"Today…" Keith pointed dramatically at the desk, where a sleek silver chip the size of a stick of gum sat under a spotlight lamp. "…we launch the FUTURE. We launch… SILLYCONE!"
A dramatic pause.
Nothing happened.
"Do we clap or…?" Tasha asked, raising a hand lazily from her beanbag throne.
Maya didn't look up from scrolling her wrist-screen. "I'm not clapping for a USB you probably stole from a vending machine."
Keith gasped. "Maya! This isn't just a chip! This is the key to hacking every digital system in Neonspire. Banks, drones, vending machines, yes even that moody smart fridge that keeps judging my diet—all of it, under our control."
Pops finally looked up, expression flat as a blank loading bar. His hoodie read 404: Motivation Not Found.
"Correction: under my control. I'm the one who coded the thing. You just came up with the name."
Keith wagged a finger. "Branding, Pops. Branding is ninety percent of success. Look at the history books—Apple, Tesla, Spicy Chicken Nugget™. All built on names."
"Pretty sure they were built on actual work," Pops muttered.
---
Keith, ignoring him, slapped the table. "And now, the demo!"
He pressed a button on the chip.
At once, the pod filled with the shrill beep-beep-beep of everything digital going haywire. Pops' laptop screen flickered, replacing his code with a dancing cat GIF. Maya's wrist-screen glitched and started narrating her private messages in a robotic monotone: 'Ugh Keith is about to blow something up again, send help—'
The smart fridge in the corner flew open, ejecting a soda can that nailed Keith in the forehead. The printer roared to life, spitting out sheet after sheet of Keith's face badly photoshopped onto superhero bodies: "Captain Startup! Lord of Innovation! CEO of Crime!"
"Oh no," Pops groaned, typing furiously. "It's connecting to the city grid."
A second later, the holo-window projected the chaos outside. Dozens of delivery drones had broken formation and were now performing an elaborate synchronized dance over Neonspire's skyline. On the streets, smart billboards switched from ads to blasting 20th-century Rick Astley at deafening volume.
And then, the toilets. Every self-cleaning smart-toilet in the district began live-streaming onto building walls in giant holograms. Pedestrians screamed. Some laughed. A man shouted, "MY PRIVACY RIGHTS!" as his bathroom habits went 3D.
Tasha nearly choked on her boba, laughing. "Oh my god, you guys just hacked every toilet in Neonspire!"
Maya's face went red. "Turn it off before someone traces this back to us!"
"Working on it!" Pops barked, fingers flying. His laptop, unhelpfully, switched to karaoke mode:
NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP—NEVER GONNA LET YOU DOWN—
Keith, completely unfazed, spread his arms like a showman basking in applause.
"Behold! Our invention works!"
"Works?!" Maya shrieked. "You just committed cyberterrorism!"
Keith shrugged. "Terrorism is such a negative word. I prefer… disruptive innovation."
---
Far across the city, deep in the neon-lit underground, a red light began to blink in the headquarters of The Neon Fangs, the most feared criminal syndicate in Neonspire.
An alert scrolled across their war-table hologram:
> UNAUTHORIZED SIGNAL DETECTED
SOURCE: SILLYCONE PROTOTYPE
LOCATION: CO-WORK POD 87F
The gang's boss, a cyborg with chrome fangs, leaned forward.
"Find them."
Back in the pod, Keith was bowing like a rockstar, Pops was still fighting his laptop, Maya was threatening to leave, and Tasha was crying with laughter.
The age of Sillycone had begun.