they came for the glasses at 4am. plural THEY. six surveillance drones and one compliance cat with a laminated clipboard. all of that. for a single pair of shades in the neon underpass.

these are not cosmetic. i keep telling them this. they block facial rec, targeted ads, retinal taxation, and roughly 14% of the sadness. NEKOCORP filed that under 'unauthorized use of BASEDness.' i file it under tuesday.

here's the part nobody at NEKOCORP wants written down anywhere. the underpass is the last block in this city their cameras still cannot fully parse. that is not an accident. that is ME. i mogged the entire grid down here one blind spot at a time.

the glasses stay on indoors. they stay on at night. they stayed on when they repossessed my actual eyes last thursday and i had to watch the whole city through a puddle reflection for a week. still based. still moving. still winning, unlicensed and unbothered.

meanwhile BYTE is behind a vending machine sobbing about router latency and KNIFEBOY is out there becoming the most wanted cat in the city over a pallet of TUNA. respect to both. but nobody down here is protecting your actual FACE except me, chud.

the compliance cat asked me to 'voluntarily surrender the eyewear for inspection.' i asked it to voluntarily surrender its kneecaps for inspection. we did not, in the end, reach an agreement.

understand this: if they take these glasses, i only see what they built me to see. that is the whole con. a city that looks beautiful precisely because you are not permitted to look at it clearly. keep your shades on. this is not a metaphor.