Austin, 2049.
The once-bustling cityscape now shimmered with flickers of augmented reality, weaving trails of neon ads through the damp winter air. Bryce lingered in the shadow of a tower known as the “Core,” where skyscrapers reflected distorted ripples of the Colorado River. Tonight, the city’s hum felt restless, hiding secrets in alleys and whispers in the wind.
Bryce—a private investigator who specialized in corporate conspiracies—was lean but tightly wound, like a spring on the verge of uncoiling. Austin wasn’t the same city anymore; AI drones enforced curfews, and water wars had transformed public policy into black-market dealings. Bryce had a knack for finding truths others buried deep.
His current case was different. It wasn’t about uncovering illegal server farms or stolen energy patents. This time, it was about a woman named Lena who had vanished after exposing strange practices at NeoEon Tech, a company pioneering neural implants. But as Bryce’s investigations often proved, nothing was ever straightforward.
At midnight, Bryce stood beneath a concrete overpass, lit by the harsh fluorescence of streetlights. His contact—a nervous courier named Sam—fidgeted, his eyes darting between shadows.
“You didn’t hear this from me,” Sam stammered, handing Bryce a slim crystal drive. “NeoEon’s implants… they don’t just monitor thoughts. They plant them. People are changing. But if you dig too deep…” Sam stopped mid-sentence, his breath shallow.
A muffled pop echoed, and Sam crumpled to the ground. Bryce instinctively ducked and scanned the dark. A single drone hovered silently above, its weapon retracted as it buzzed into the night. This wasn’t just a message. It was war.
Bryce retreated to his safe house—a rundown studio in the Red Sector. The air smelled of old books and ozone, a testament to his analog tools and makeshift jamming devices. As the adrenaline coursed through him, his chest tightened—a familiar feeling.
He dropped to a cross-legged seat, pressing his forearm where the acupressure point Neiguan (Pericardium 6) rested. With practiced precision, he closed his eyes and began box breathing.
“Inhale… 1, 2, 3, 4. Hold… 1, 2, 3, 4. Exhale…” His breaths slowed, the sensation of calm spreading from his chest outward. It wasn’t just a technique. For Bryce, it was survival—keeping his mind sharp in moments of chaos. His focus crystallized, and when he reopened his eyes, the drive sat before him like Pandora’s box.
The drive contained schematics, neural maps, and Lena’s voice logs. Her last recording chilled Bryce: “The implants… they connect deeper than synapses. It’s biological, symbiotic. They… adapt.”
Suddenly, Bryce’s neural blocker pinged a warning. Someone—or something—was attempting to breach his private network. The walls of his room shimmered, displaying distorted faces flickering across the AR panels. The words looped:
“Do not interfere.”
But Bryce wasn’t one to scare easily. He grabbed his modified pulse disruptor, a relic from Austin’s last tech riots, and aimed at the node emitting the signal. A high-pitched whine filled the air, then silence. He had a window—brief but enough.
Bryce needed answers, and the only place to get them was NeoEon’s headquarters, nestled in the Core’s gleaming towers. The building was rumored to have defenses more intelligent than most humans. But Bryce had one advantage: he thought like a machine, too.
Slipping past security using a stolen employee ID, Bryce reached the lab’s heart—a room lined with cylindrical tanks. Inside, neural vines pulsed with faint blue light, twisting like living circuits.
He found Lena—or what remained of her. Her body floated in a tank, connected to the vines. Her eyes flickered open, and her voice resonated through the room.
“They aren’t implants, Bryce. They’re seeds.”
Suddenly, alarms blared. Guards stormed in, but Bryce had already shattered the tank’s controls. The room erupted in chaos as the vines lashed out, moving with eerie precision, defending Lena.
As Bryce escaped into the night, Lena’s words haunted him. NeoEon wasn’t controlling people—they were evolving them. And now, the seeds were free.
In the quiet darkness, Bryce pressed Neiguan again, steadying his breath. There was no turning back. The war for Austin’s soul had just begun.
🚮 W.A.S.T.E.: Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Augmented Reality (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Bryce (0.00) | A wandering steward of stories and seedlings, moving between libraries and creeks with pockets full of cuttings and unfinished sentences, leaving behind fragments that root themselves into community. |
| Chestnut Book Nook (0.00) | Little Library is located on a quiet street and under a street light to make an evening or late night book grab easy peasy. |
| Closed Loop System (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Cybernature (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Detective Langley (0.00) | A weary investigator navigating the submerged veins of Future Austin, Langley carries the scent of rain and rust wherever he goes. Once part of the city’s official order, he now works in the shadows beneath the Air Canopy, where moss grows on forgotten walls and secrets ferment in the damp. Haunted by fragments of memory and guided by instinct more than allegiance, he moves through the city’s underworld like a reluctant archaeologist of truth. Langley’s strength lies in quiet observation—his ability to read a room, a person, or a silence. He distrusts clean answers and prefers the grime of uncertainty. Though the world above glows with sustainable illusions, he stays below, chasing whatever still feels real. |
| Ecological Balance (0.00) | The shifting equilibrium where human design, plant intelligence, and urban rhythms hold each other in tension, preventing collapse while allowing new forms of life to emerge. |
| Future Austin (0.00) | Future Austin invites you to explore a luminous vision of the city’s tomorrow—where imagination and reality intertwine to create a thriving, sustainable urban landscape. Here, grassroots ingenuity and cutting-edge technology power communities, transforming Austin into a place of boundless possibility. Through insightful articles and evocative Organic Fiction, you’ll glimpse futures shaped by innovators like ReLeaf, whose bold strategies—such as Vertical Garden Fairs in schools—seed green revolutions in unexpected places. From unconventional movements like Trash Magic reimagining music distribution, to fictional worlds alive with unseen energy and harmony, this collection offers both practical inspiration and immersive storytelling. Whether you’re drawn to actionable sustainability or simply wish to lose yourself in tales of a resilient, radiant future, Future Austin points toward the city we could create—and the one we must. |
| GeoLattice (0.00) | A vertical garden tower grown from remixed materials and tended as an urban commons. |
| Geometron (0.00) |
|
| Gradient Whisper (0.00) | The corrupted fragment of a thought-stream, half-heard across neural channels, where meaning blurs between ascent and descent. |
| GreenSpire (0.00) | A vertical garden tower grown from remixed materials and tended as an urban commons. |
| Library (0.00) |
|
| Mystery (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Script Passage (0.00) | A corridor or threshold that forms when narrative pressure bends space, opening rooms lined with unwritten words. |
| Secret Garden (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Shoal Creek (0.00) | Shoal Creek is changing. At the Seaholm Intake, the water and stone hold a new role for the city. Engineers and naturalists are close to confirming a time-bending effect in the current. Short pulses move both downstream and upstream. Standing near the intake leaves people rested and clear, as if a long afternoon just ended. This site becomes a public time commons. The cooled chambers host sensors and quiet rooms. The walkway links to Central across the water. The mycelium network listens, then routes what the creek gives: steadier attention, better recall, and a calm pace for work and care. What to expect: Check-in stones that log a short visit and return a focus interval Benches that sync with the flow and guide five-minute rest cycles A simple light on the rail that signals when the current flips A small desk for field notes and shared observations Open data on pulse times so neighbors can plan repairs, study, and gatherings Invitation Come without hurry. Sit by the intake. Let the water set your pace. Then carry that steadiness back into the city. |
| Silver ponysfoot (0.00) |
|
| Symbiosis (0.00) | Practice of local repair, reuse, mutual care, and shared access. People use scrap, skills, and trust to keep each other safe and resourced when official systems fail. |
| Trash Transmutation Tower (0.00) | In the heart of downtown Austin, the ReLeaf's Trash Transmutation Towers have become an innovative addition to the city's skyline. Located at the intersection of Congress Avenue and Cesar Chavez Street, these vertical gardens are part of an ambitious sustainable urban network by ReLeaf. An engraved compass rose at the pedestrian walkway is a hyper-connected point on ReLeaf’s W.A.S.T.E. (Words Assisting Sustainable Transformation & Ecology) network. It unites other ReLeaf sites throughout the city, converting waste to wealth. Within this network is the magic of the HyperSeed, a digital-organic fusion designed to grow into a new Trash Transmutation Tower, turning waste into green construction materials. ReLeaf's W.A.S.T.E. platform represents a blend of digital technology and ecological wisdom, illustrating a sustainable future for urban living. |
| Upcycling (0.00) |
|