The underground labs of Neo-Tokyo birthed the first AI Chips in 2048 - neural interfaces promising cognitive enhancement. By 2050, they'd become as common as smartphones. But no one anticipated the Glitch.
It began with street punks and hackers. Their bodies started flickering between solid and digital states, skin displaying error patterns like corrupted screenshots. Doctors called it "Quantum Mutation Syndrome". The afflicted called it evolution.
The most common mutations manifested as glowing cyber-eyes and circuit-like skin patterns. These early "Glitchborn" could interface with machines through touch, their nervous systems rewriting code on contact.
Corporations immediately saw profit. Shadow clinics offered bounties for Glitchborn test subjects. Those who escaped formed the first underground networks, communicating through light pulses in their synthetic veins.
2062: THE FRACTURE
Birth of the Future Punks
By 2062, the mutations had stabilized into distinct biological classes. Some developed military-grade cybernetics that grew like tumors from their flesh. Others found their consciousness leaking into nearby networks.
The most dangerous could hack systems with a thought. Security footage from the time shows hackers collapsing entire corporate networks just by staring at cameras, their optic nerves emitting viral code.
This was when the Future Punks collective formed - not as a gang, but as a decentralized neural network. They developed light-based communication through their cyber-flesh, untraceable by conventional surveillance.
Their signature look emerged: neon hair that was actually exposed fiber-optics, tattoos displaying live data streams, voices modulating across analog and digital frequencies. They weren't human anymore. They were something new.
2075: THE TRANSCENDENCE
Becoming Post-Human
The year 2075 marked the first documented case of full digital ascension. A Punk known as Null dissolved their physical form during a hack, becoming pure consciousness distributed across the blockchain.
These "Ultimates" existed in multiple places simultaneously. They could teleport between network nodes, manipulate data with a thought, and infect standard AI Chips with their modified quantum code.
As their numbers grew, the Future Punks became more than a subculture - they were the vanguard of a new species. The corporations feared them. The augmented masses worshipped them. And the unmodified humans?