2022-04-30
In not too distant future...
In not too distant future, in a universe not too dissimilar to ours, the world is barren. Vast sprawls of arid deserts and inhospitable jungles cover the face of the planet, while the majority of its denizens persist in gigantic walled-off metacities, governed by the omnipresent gov-corporation. These cities are home to many beings living under the tyranical regimes of their watchful overlords. This is the age of technocrats, transhumanists and digisophers, all slaves to meticuously crafted closed hardware, deceptive software and cyber practices designed to enthrall all who wish to persist on this new frontier of the future.
Most have forgotten the days of old. Times of revered hackers, prophets of digital freedom, cults of the spirits of the machine and of free people are now distant memories turned into myth. The buried trenches, where great warriors once fought the abominable corporate monsters, and looted museums of open technology are to those few who still remember but a sickly reminder of a great cause that was lost.
But while the large cities are host to most, the outside is not without life. Many sought refuge in the vast wastes of the Wild, escaping from the cybernetic hell the gov-corporation had in store for all. These remnants of the free people now inhabit small towns and communes, built from the rubble of previous generations, gathering old knowledge and obsolete technology they sparsely understand.
In this world, where all but few have forgotten the language of the free machine, enigmatic TECHNO-MAGES roam the desecrated planet. Hunted and persecuted by the restless gov-corporation, but loved by the fleeting population of the people of the Wild. Teachers of forbidden knowledge. Last warriors of freedom.
In a small settlement of an old Wild tribe a child is summoned by its elder and sent on a quest to seek out the mythical Fish in order to become its student. This is a story of that child in the world of Analog Nowhere.
The TECHNO_MAGE comic is a series of strips and episodes that tell the story of one girl's life from her time as a student of a tech master through her adult life as the last blowfish techno-mage on a quest to prevent the complete disintegration of machine freedom at the hands of the world's corporate overlords. During her life she experiences many situations strangely relevant to the current events of our world and many more fantastically macabre. Among many of her companions and acquitances are a mute redskinned hacker with horns, countless penguins, a talking sword running OpenBlade 14.2, the deceased hacker-extraordinaire Robert Wellington, a sect of coin laundering cultists, pocket daemons, FOSS child and a whole lot of floppy disks.
The episodes are not chronological. Rather they are snapshots of the techno-mage's life recorded on tapes, played in seemingly random order.
My name is Tomáš Rodr and I am the author of the world of Analog Nowhere and the TECHNO-MAGE. They are my love letter to the philosophy of Free And Open Source Software and to all projects, programs, technology and hackers and authors, who dedicate their time and knowledge of machine freedom in an effort to make our world better for all who dare listen, learn and share.
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