Retro-Apocalypse
sref 2512510979
1997: a Black Pulse ripples around the globe, flash-frying silicon and snowing static across every screen. Servers die, backups blink out, and digital civilization collapses in a night. Two decades later, cities run on gasoline, rumor, and whatever still glows. Districts crackle under the control of Signal Gangs that stitch transmitters from tube radios and scavenged boards, beaming hypnotic loops to the fractured public mind. Convoy crews in armored sedans traverse avenues turned rivers to trade food, film reels, paperbacks, ammo, salvaged car batteries, and Playback—a street distillate that sharpens memory and makes past artifacts glow with a fierce nostalgic longing. Lately, a transmission called the Stitch keeps cutting through the noise, the signal stronger than any local carrier wave, leaking sermons for a new Silicon Wake: “The chip died so the circuit could live.” The Stitch preaches that the future won’t be digital like before, that something new will rise from the electronic waste. All it demands is frequency and faith.
WORLD ELEMENTS
The Black Pulse: Survivors know silicon didn't just fry...something wanted it dead. The Black Pulse left behind "Pulse Relics," circuit slabs now sanctified as shrines to dead data, guarded zealously by Signal Gangs, Playback addicts, and collectors who fear and worship what they do not understand. CRT screens throughout the dead cities still glow when powered, displaying endless static. Some show "phosphor ghosts," test patterns and final frames burned permanently into the glass from the moment of the Pulse.Playback (nostalgia distillate): Street alchemy that makes old media feel holy (pair it with a favorite VHS tape); doses are measured in “frames.” At 12 frames, forgotten words become clear; at 24, old films are holy visions; but past 36, the user risks being lost permanently in a Playback Ghost—a psychic loop of a single, perfect moment from the past.
Power Patchwork Economy: Power is currency, rationed carefully through hand-cranks, bicycle alternators, and diesel generators in makeshift micro-grids. When evening falls, the glow of lamps becomes a physical map of gang territory. Whoever controls the generator dictates curfew, propaganda loops, and who deserves warmth or darkness.
Vacuum-tube “implants”: Fashion meets function as street-level junk-smiths surgically graft vacuum-tube amplifiers and simple radio rigs into the flesh of scouts and lookouts. Wires weave through skin, powered by belt-mounted batteries. More than symbolic, these implants broadcast warnings and whispers at close range.
Truth Storms: Caused by lingering electromagnetic chaos from the Black Pulse, "Truth Storms" are violent EM events that cause the sky to go full-spectrum. For a few precious minutes, the sky crackles and old frequencies howl with a downpour of lost web fragments: websites, corrupted audio files, single frames of forgotten video. Signal Gangs send out storm-chasers who deploy antenna arrays to capture these fragments, bottling them as raw data to be sold, spliced into Playback, or worshiped as scripture.
LOCATIONS
Salvage bazaars: Underpasses flood nightly, leaving slippery pathways between market stalls piled high with gutted CRT shells housing candles or tube-radios. Vendors haggle over everything from rust-stained alternators to coils of copper wire stripped from dead infrastructure. Above hang dripping cable-vines, tangled relics of the lost digital age.
Garage Libraries: Concrete parking decks stacked with working film reels hand-cranked on rare projection nights and water-stained paperbacks. In the corner, someone always tends the turntable, the needle pulling music from grooves, while instrument circles form around acoustic guitars and harmonicas. Candlelit alcoves host nightly memory recitals, while Archivists barter Playback vials for new stories or rare media finds. The rule: "What can't be played must be sung or spoken."
Transformer Shrines: Power substations converted into defended compounds where step-down transformers redistribute electricity from main lines to neighborhoods. Every city has one, surrounded by razor wire and gang members. The transformers hum with electromagnetic fields that make teeth ache. Gang tags mark which blocks get power on which days. Locals leave offerings of motor oil and copper wire, praying the transformers keep singing.
Dead Mall Frequency Farms: Abandoned shopping centers converted into massive antenna arrays. Each store broadcasts on its own sideband: Sears runs 87.5, Target squats the AM band, the old RadioShack is mostly white noise with occassional bursts from 44.7. Store mannequins wrapped in copper wire act as signal boosters, their plastic bodies resonating at specific frequencies. These structures suffer from generational loss, with each broadcast slightly more degraded than the last.
FACTIONS
Cults of the Test Pattern: Signal worshippers who gather before flickering CRT altars. Their scripture is dead air, their hymns the discordant tones of forgotten TV test patterns. They tattoo color bars across their chests, preaching purity through broadcast calibration, and violently silence anyone broadcasting blasphemy.
Playback Syndicate Chemists: A shadowy cartel monopolizing nostalgia distillate. Their "cooks" operate hidden labs, blending tape oxide with narcotics harvested from scavenged pharmacies. They control the underground entertainment economy, peddling pure memories or corrupted blends capable of rewriting a user's past.
Free-Wire Co-op: Ragtag coalition of linemen, mechanics, and community engineers defying gang monopolies. They operate covert repair collectives, rewiring city blocks into independent micro-grids. Gangs target them for sabotage, citizens revere them as folk heroes, but no one knows how long they can survive without choosing a side.
Signal Schisms: The Stitch's broadcasts are not a monolith; they are a mystery deciphered through a haze of static and faith, creating warring interpretations of the transmissions. These "Signal Schisms" divide listeners into fanatical, warring camps: The Rebooters believe its broadcasting fragments of a master code to restart the digital age, The Wake-Keepers believe its guiding humanity toward phase-locked consciousness, a "hive mind" bound by analog waves, and the Silencers are convinced The Stitch is a rogue AI, the architect of the Black Pulse, now seeking to erase all competing signals until it is the only voice left in the world.
CHARACTERS
The Stitch: Former tech mogul turned shadow-broadcaster operating from Station 15.0—broadcasting at 15 megahertz on the old international band, his signal bouncing off the ionosphere to reach every continent. His calm voice drips from hidden speakers, soothing anxiety or stirring rage with strategic sermons. The station's physical location remains unknown, its atmospheric skip signal stitching the fragmented global mind into his singular narrative. Whether he seeks unity or control, nobody seems to know...Film Runner: A fearless convoy driver who navigates flooded streets and gang-controlled territories to deliver irreplaceable film reels and vinyl records. Known to stop mid-run to hand-splice broken film, believing in preservation as fervently as survival. Carries a hand-crank projector for roadside screenings when bribes are needed at checkpoints.
Switch-Mother: An older woman controlling district electricity schedules from a makeshift tower of salvaged switches and meters. Her favor can bathe a block in light or plunge it into darkness, making her both respected and feared.
The Circuit-Breaker: A legendary saboteur who moves silently between factions, cutting power-lines, disabling amplifiers, and vanishing into thunderstorms. Seen as a hero by the Free-Wire Co-op, an enemy by the Signal Gangs, and a wildcard by the Stitch, their true allegiance remains ambiguous.
STORIES
Playback Overdose Crisis: A corrupted batch of Playback floods the market, plunging neighborhoods into nostalgic delirium. Crews must find and eliminate the source lab before half the city becomes permanent dead air, broadcasting nothing but phantom signals from long lost childhoods.The Last Upload: A dying engineer claims to have a working hard drive with pre-Pulse internet archives. She's broadcasting on as many frequencies as she can, her body becoming a living antenna as cancer eats through her. Factions converge on her hideout, but she'll only surrender it to whoever can prove they'll use it for "truth, not control.” It’s a test no one seems able to pass.
Frequency War: Two Signal Gangs discover they're broadcasting on overlapping frequencies, causing destructive interference that's making locals sick with "static fever." Neither will yield their bandwidth, so they must either broker a time-sharing deal, sabotage the other’s transmitter, or find a way to shift to a new frequency, despite all the good ones being taken.
The Prophet’s Frequency: Every street mystic who reads static patterns has simultaneously gone catatonic, all tuned to 87.3 FM—dead air since the Pulse. They mumble in unison: "The return window opens at moonrise." Tonight, for the first time in twenty years, something's beginning to broadcast on that frequency. Crews must decide: protect the entranced until they wake with the full prophecy, or trace the signal to its source before whatever's returning actually arrives.
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BIG QUESTIONS
Who owns the message when the medium dies? Does nostalgia reveal a forgotten truth, or does it just manufacture a better ghost?
If reality is constructed by broadcasts and tapes, can truth itself ever escape the control room?
When you follow someone else's frequency, are you finding direction or losing your own signal?
Which is better: the chaos of a thousand broken signals, or the quiet of one perfect lie?
Does generational loss apply to human memory—are we all degraded copies of who we used to be?
CULTURAL REFERENCES
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960, Walter M. Miller Jr.) - BookMad Max (1979, George Miller) - Film
They Live (1988, John Carpenter) - Film
Hardware (1990, Richard Stanley) - Film
Fallout (1997, Interplay) - Video Game
Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuarón) - Film
Pontypool (2008, Bruce McDonald) - Film
PROMPT GUIDE
Main aesthetic notes (--sref 2512510979): Ensure analog keywords are in each prompt. Core aesthetic uses no style weighting (--sw).Personalization Codes: Primarily Photo --p eg1dl45 and Overall --p okz8wvj codes, can try others as well.
PROMPT ATOMS
Atmosphere: AM static whispers, electromagnetic hum, nostalgic delirium, signal interference, post electromagnetic collapse, gritty texures, analog decay, rust, post apocalypseInfrastructure: flooded underpasses, transformer shrines, cable-vine tangles, micro-grid territories, rust-stained alternators, convoy driver
Social/Political: frequency wars, gang territory, manufactured memory, static fever
Technology/Media: CRT static glow, vacuum tube implants, phosphor ghosts, magnetic tape patterns, hand-cranked projectors, weathered technology, cassettes, salvaged electronics, batteries, nostalgia distillate, tape oxide, copper wire coils, ozone smell