Void

Night walks on speed felt like trips through outer space. The city transformed into a surreal playground, each shadow and flickering streetlamp a piece of some infinite cosmic map we couldn't quite decipher. We roamed the railway tracks, the skeletal woods, the desolate back alleys lined with crumbling garages. Occasionally, we climbed bridges just to dangle our legs over the edge and feel the cold wind rush past.

I wasn't a person during those nights—I was a machine, a perfectly calibrated mechanism. Hunger didn't exist, nor did exhaustion. Every beat of my heart was a deliberate, controlled motion, a process I could monitor and fine-tune at will. The world slowed down to meet my pace, the hum of electricity in the air becoming the soundtrack to my robotic rhythm.

Conversations spiraled endlessly but never upward. We talked about systems—political, social, financial. We dissected wars, diseases, drugs, and the fractured state of human existence. But on speed, optimism was a foreign concept. Every word carried the weight of cynicism. I usually stayed silent, the words of others fading into static while I focused on scrawling notes in my battered journal. "Water is the ultimate solvent," I wrote once, underlining the words with obsessive precision. "The whole world is dissolved in water."

One night, as our wandering stretched into the early hours, we stumbled upon an abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city. Its broken windows and rust-streaked walls loomed like a forgotten relic from another era. Naturally, we climbed in, squeezing through shattered panes that sliced at our jackets.

The air inside was thick with the smell of rust, oil, and neglect. Piles of scrap metal were stacked haphazardly, forming labyrinths of jagged edges that caught the moonlight in slivers. It was a treasure trove of absurdity. We found a rusted Soviet-era soda vending machine and spent a good fifteen minutes debating whether it still worked. Nearby, an assortment of gears and wires sparked the wild idea that we'd discovered a time machine.

Spike, ever the opportunist, tested a dusty fire extinguisher he found in the corner. It erupted into a cloud of foam, filling the room with laughter and chaos. For a moment, we were children again, unburdened by the crushing weight of reality.

Then came the inevitable complication: a drunken security guard stumbled onto the scene, his flashlight cutting jagged beams through the darkness.

"Get down, you little shits!" he bellowed, his voice slurred but menacing.

Panic erupted. We scattered like rats, scrambling through the maze of scrap metal, hearts pounding in sync with the clanging echo of our shoes on the concrete floor. The thrill of it was electric, more visceral than any video game I'd ever played. For a self-described geek like me, this was both terrifying and exhilarating.

I don't remember much after that. The only clear memory is the sensation of my hands gripping the top of a three-meter fence, my body weightless as I vaulted over it. How I landed without breaking anything remains a mystery, but the adrenaline stayed with me long after we hit the pavement and fled into the night.

The next morning felt muted, the kind of sluggishness that creeps in after hours of overstimulation. We walked the cracked sidewalks in silence, heading to Spike's place. His latest scheme? A stolen printer from his office job, destined for the black-market stalls downtown.

"It'll go for at least fifty bucks," he said, his voice buzzing with entrepreneurial energy. "That's two more packs of Tri-Fed right there."

None of us argued. Practicality had long since replaced morality.

On the way, we passed graffiti-covered walls, where we stopped to leave our own marks. Spike drew a detailed molecular structure of phenylethylamine, the chalk squealing under his hand, while Havoc scratched his favorite recipe for apple pie onto a crumbling brick façade. I added my own contribution: a quick sketch of a soda machine that, in my mind, might still be a time machine.

The day felt lighter somehow, though the undercurrent of chaos was never far.