Digitalplayground - Alessandra Jane -the Pulse-... Now

She pulled the spike deeper. The Core screamed in a frequency that shattered the chrome masks of the Moderators. Beneath them were not faces. There were only more screens, looping advertisements for a happiness that didn't exist.

The sky above Neo-Tokyo wasn't a sky at all. It was a datascreen, a bruised purple bruise of corporate logos and weather modulations. Alessandra Jane knew this better than most. She wasn’t a citizen; she was a ghost in the machine, a freelance "pulse diver" who hacked the bio-rhythmic streams of the city’s elite for a living. DigitalPlayground - Alessandra Jane -The Pulse-...

The club’s heart was the Core—a floating, crystalline obelisk at the center of the dance floor. Surrounding it were the Moderators: humans who had been so thoroughly absorbed by The Pulse that their original faces were gone, replaced by smooth, chrome masks. They moved in eerie unison, their bodies conduits for the club’s will. She pulled the spike deeper