Patrick Barber Writings

  From the Archives of the Historian: Nexopolis, 4200 XE. The corporate elite in the upper arcologies believe their air is pure and their streets are clean. They do not think about the sprawling subterranean labyrinth of the Waste Reclamation Sectors. They do not think about the men who operate the drones that scrub the city’s filth. But when you are tasked with cleaning up the organic and mechanical refuse of thirty million citizens, eventually, you will find something that refuses to be disposed of. The following is a recovered visual-feed transcript from a Sector 4 Sanitation Hub. Read the unsealed records below, and look closely at the shadows... FILE 004: THE FILTRATION BREACH The console in Sanitation Hub 4-B smelled perpetually of stale sweat, ammonia, and burnt ozone. Silas Trench didn't mind. He had twenty years of Sector 4 smog baked into his synthetic lungs, and the smell of the Hub was the smell of a steady paycheck. Silas was a Drone Handler. From his stained plasteel...

  From the Archives of the Historian: Nexopolis, 4200 XE. The corporate arcologies of the upper levels are deafening, but not because of the machinery. To be an empath in Nexopolis is to be a sponge in an ocean of anxiety, greed, and corporate ambition. But what happens when the psychic noise of humanity suddenly stops, and the void begins to speak instead? Read the unsealed records of "Odd" Oscar Goodwin below, and learn why the transit hubs are no longer safe...   FILE 003: THE NOISE OF NEXOPOLIS The Sector 7 Transit Hub was a masterpiece of corporate efficiency, moving three hundred thousand bodies an hour through a labyrinth of polished chrome and bullet-trains. To the average citizen, it smelled of ozone, cheap synthesized coffee, and damp raincoats. To "Odd" Oscar Goodwin, it smelled like a migraine. Oscar was a Tier-4 Empath. He didn't have the cold, calculating control of the corporate telepaths who could weaponize a mind, nor the discipline of the Seek...

FILE 002: THE BLEEDING FREIGHT From the Archives of the Historian: Nexopolis, 4200 XE. The towering arcologies of the Techno District are bathed in sterile light, but the foundation of this city is built on shadows. In the labyrinthine Undercity, the mega-corporations hold no power. Here, the Shadow Network controls the flow of illicit Arcanetech, moving stolen psionic amplifiers through the dark. But when you smuggle technology designed to channel the void, you run the risk of the void looking back. The following is an intercepted audio-log from a known subterranean courier. Read the unsealed records below to discover what truly bleeds in the dark... The lower transit tunnels of Nexopolis didn’t hum with electricity like the upper sectors; they rattled. They groaned. They sounded like the dying breaths of a rusted iron beast. Oren Red preferred it that way. The noise covered his tracks. Oren was a smuggler for the Shadow Network, a man whose loyalty was bought with hard credits and w...