Bridgeport
Old brick, burnt oil, L trains, and block-by-block survival. The neighborhood keeps what the city stops funding.
Bridgeport, Chicago / Near future
The Rest A novel by N.L. Rowe
The corporations abandoned millions of people whose bodies depended on their hardware. Elliot Mercer kept his repair shop open.
41.838° N
87.650° W
March 15, 2051
Status: unsupported
01 The novel
Literary cyberpunk
The city runs on subscriptions. People do not.
Three biomech corporations discontinued the implants that millions of bodies depended on. They called it strategic obsolescence. Everyone else called it the Abandonment.
In a converted bank on South Halsted, Elliot Mercer repairs the hardware the industry wrote off. When corporate recall teams begin sweeping Bridgeport, his narrow shop becomes something larger: a refuge for the overlooked, the overcharged, and the quietly defiant.
SERIESBook one, shared world
LENGTHApproximately 95,000 words
PUBLICATIONComing soon
Same streets. New stories.
Near-future Chicago
A near future close enough to recognize. Infrastructure outlives its owners. Technology enters the body, then the terms change. The people who remain learn to maintain one another.
The Abandonment
Support ended. Bodies did not. A corporate update turned millions of people into legacy equipment overnight.
The Rest
A former bank where the vault protects people instead of money. Repairs happen below street level. No subscription required.
From the opening pages
Continue readingThe shop smelled like ozone and cold coffee. A rig came in dead. Elliot set it on the bench, opened it, and listened.
The author
N.L. Rowe
N.L. Rowe writes grounded, near-future science fiction set in Chicago.
These are stories about technology after the warranty expires, the people systems overlook, and the small acts of repair that keep a city alive.