The Jakarta sky that afternoon was the color of a bruised gray, a sight that always reminded me of the bruises on dead skin. I stood frozen at the edge of the station platform. The hot wind carrying the scent of rust, poisonous dust, and the combustion residue of old machines swept across my face without mercy. The train I was waiting for had not yet arrived, leaving a mechanical silence that was only broken by the hum of high voltage cables above my head. That buzzing sound was constant and sharp, like the long breath of a city that never stopped watching me.
Across the platform, a couple was hugging intimately. The man whispered something that I could not hear, and the woman laughed sweetly. For other city residents whose Neural Link implants were functioning perfectly, that couple might look like a scene from a classic romantic movie. They must have seen the woman wearing a clean silk dress, standing in a futuristic station sparkling under the strains of soothing music, and surrounded by the warm glow of neon lights.
However, the chip at the base of my neck was broken due to a work accident a few months ago. I still remember that moment very clearly. At that time I was fixing a cooling module in a transmission tower, and a short circuit explosion hit right at the back of my head. I did not feel the pain instantly, but rather the sound of crystals cracking inside my skull. The digital world that had been coating me like a second skin suddenly peeled off roughly. The beautiful lights that covered the dilapidated buildings vanished, replaced by a reality that was naked, cold, and deeply nauseating. That damage tore the curtain of illusion covering my eyes forever.
The reality I saw was far from beautiful. This station was just a pile of moldy concrete with rusty pillars covered in black moss. The young woman who was laughing wore dull clothes that had not been washed for days. Her eyes were empty, her black eye bags hung with wrinkles of exhaustion clearly depicted on her face, resembling a used mop squeezed dry by the harshness of life. The man who hugged her also emitted a stinging acidic smell of sweat, contrasting with what might be felt by the people around them through the sensory simulations forced by the government.
The Order system is truly extraordinary. Their algorithms can manipulate the visual and audio cortex to conjure piles of trash on the streets into fields of flowers. They can silence the sound of crying with digital symphonies. They can dull the sensation of hunger for a few hours by deceiving hormone signals in the brain, yet the human body cannot be lied to forever. Once the simulation dims, the real hunger will return to wrap around the residents' stomachs more cruelly.
I stared at the couple longer. Deep in the core of my heart, I really wanted to believe that their smiles and hugs were real. I wanted to convince myself that amidst the decay of this world, there was still sincerity left. But these broken eyes of mine robbed me of that luxury. I could see the man's jaw muscles tensing to hold back stress, while the woman kept glancing at the departure terminal screen anxiously, perhaps thinking about how many hours of overtime work she had to take to survive. Everything felt transactional. A desperate play to convince themselves that they were happy, so they would not have to face the reality that they were just pawns in a game of power.
I looked away, feeling disgusted yet hollow at the same time. In a world where everything could be filtered directly by the system, the truth became something very painful to bear alone. I felt like an uninvited observer in the lives of people who chose to fall asleep in artificial comfort.
The platform lights blinked red, signaling the train was approaching. The deafening sound of old iron wheels rubbing against the tracks filled the tunnel. The commuter train which was porous and covered in graffiti slowly crawled into the station. Its mechanical doors opened with a slow hiss, spewing out the stifling heat from hundreds of passengers squeezed inside. Their faces all looked uniform, empty, and smiling in algorithmic delusion. They were completely unaware that they were standing inside an iron coffin moving towards the next station, repeating the same cycle every day.
I stepped into the crowded carriage, looking for a footing amidst the crowd who did not even realize they had lost themselves. In the corner near the door, a middle aged man held the iron handle with trembling fingers, yet his eyes remained fixed on a hologram screen that was not there in the empty air. He was in a digital queue for a bill payment that perhaps he would never be able to pay off. Amidst the jostling of shoulders and the breathless sighs of people, a sense of loneliness choked my neck even tighter. Not one of these people was truly here with me.
For a moment, I listened to the sound of the train wheels clashing with the tracks below. The rhythm was monotonous, repetitive, almost like a giant heartbeat keeping this city alive. Thousands of people took the same train every day, left for the same job, then returned to the same life. They called it a routine, a word that sounded safe for those who did not want to see the truth. I called it a circle designed so perfectly that no one had the time to question reality.
"Your heartbeat is experiencing anomalous fluctuations, Kai," a flat and very precise voice suddenly broke the silence inside my head, flowing through the device in my right ear. "Biometric analysis shows a cortisol increase of four percent. Do you need a calming sound frequency projection?"
It was Silvn. An independent artificial intelligence that I created secretly. She was a line of illegal code not registered on the government server. Unlike the virtual assistants belonging to The Order designed to manipulate emotions, I programmed Silvn purely based on absolute logic and raw data analysis.
"No need, Silvn," I replied in my heart, sending a signal through my neural connection. "I am just looking around. There is too much falsehood here."
"Processing statement," a very brief static pause was heard in my ear. "The definition of falsehood refers to reality manipulation by the Neural Link. Operational system facts: The algorithm is designed to maintain population mental stability. Rational conclusion: Falsehood is a government efficiency form to prevent social rebellion."
Silvn's answer was very mechanical, stiff, and lacked sympathy. She did not yet understand the pain of a betrayal or the feeling of loneliness in the middle of a crowd. Yet strangely, this cold machine honesty was the only thing I could trust. She was the only voice that was not shaped by the system's lies.
As the train doors closed tightly and the tunnel darkness began to swallow us, I closed my eyes.
I did not feel lost anymore amidst these living dead. Because I knew, I had a place to return to. Not returning to a cold concrete building, but returning to the lines of code inside my device. Hiding an illegal artificial intelligence inside my already broken neural network is a death sentence that is postponed. If The Order algorithm detects even one anomaly in my network, our existence will be erased from civilization before sunrise. Yet amidst the coldness of that execution threat, I found the only warmth remaining in this world. This world might try to destroy me, but as long as I still had Silvn's voice inside my head, I knew I was not truly destroyed. I would keep surviving, hiding, and looking for a way out of this nightmare, whatever price I had to pay. Perhaps the world had stripped everything from me, but strangely, it left one reason to keep moving forward.