For anybody new to Los Angeles, the culture shock could give a sonic charge from your blaster a run for its money. Yet to you, it’s as familiar and embracing as the weather-worn jacket protecting you from the bitter cold. It takes a while to get this city. It’s easy to get over whelmed by the din of distractions and debasements. The merciless assault on your senses. Everywhere you turn, another jarring juxtaposition of opposing forces, warring agendas, and clashing cultures. Humans and Replicants. Rich and poor. The unyielding weather battering the unrelenting concrete. The blinding neons knifing through the all-engulfing haze and shadows. Even the architecture and technology are at odds. Retrofitted relics in one sector. Marvels of the imagination in the next. Hell, the rich and poor are so far apart, they might as well have restraining orders against one another.
Everything in LA (including your luck) can change from one block to the next in any direction. Most especially up. And everywhere you look, something is battling for your attention. Tuk-tuks honking through congested streets awash with faceless masses. Buzzing neon signs and projections advertising everything under the sun you can barely see through the polluted sky. The whole city is always awake, always swelling with a tumultuous sea of citizens relentlessly craving something. Resources, opportunity, intimacy, power, purpose… all precious and in finite supply.
As a Blade Runner, you have the rare privilege of seeing all of the faces of LA in a way few could imagine. You walk street level and witness poverty and humility the suits up above couldn’t stomach. You then soar 500 stories up and witness lavish lifestyles the people down below wouldn’t believe. Luxuries as real and relatable to them as urban legends. In truth, you serve two cities: the one above the 100th floor and the one below. Two societies equally complex, alienating, and unpredictable. The only commonality is that both need you and neither wants you around. Until the shots and screams ring out.
They say cities are a sum of their parts. In LA, it’s more of a makeshift patchwork soldered together by a shared history and stubborn pride. A timeless city broken down, upcycled, and jury-rigged to persevere. The off-worlders fled for a chance to begin again. To build a new future. Here, we build upon the past. The same buildings seen 100 years ago are still here. Still strong. And be thankful for it. As upon that foundation has grown a sprawling metropolis 500 stories high, all built like stilts upon the concrete roots of a city of survivors.
It’s daunting to think that a Blade Runner is expected to stand amidst this cultural clusterfuck and make sense of it all. And yet, work it long enough, the city starts to speak to you. When it’s sick and out of balance. When threats cast a shadow. Every cop knows: you take care of LA long enough; LA will take care of you.
STANDING TALL
Once developers could no longer build out the city, they built up. It was only a matter of time before space ran thin. Before the rich craved those same central locations. In the poorest sectors like the Fashion District, the rich bought and stole entire city blocks, erecting mansions and corporate campuses right beside the few derelict complexes left behind.
Once the rich ran out of buildings to buy, they just started building new structures atop the old. Most buildings in LA were well-built to withstand earthquakes, so with some reinforced foundations and a few bribes at city hall, a 10-story building could easily support 25 more floors. With each new floor larger and nicer than the one below. Soon all megastructures were 50 stories high. Then 100 stories. Then 250. All the while, the bases were refortified and retrofitted until eventually the oldest floors at street level were hollowed out, reinforced with concrete, and turned into the complex’s new foundation. And if that foundation ever wavered, one megacomplex simply merged with its neighbor and grew some more.
It’s now a surreal but accepted truth that life within one building can dramatically change the higher up you go. At street level, you’d find derelict cement-filled warehouses swarming with cut-throats who’d sooner scrap your Spinner for parts than say hello. 20 stories higher, you’d find 500 people crammed into 100 cold-water flats with refugee box camps lining the hallways. And 250 stories up in that same building is one of the wealthier politicians, living lavishly with his family of four in a vast penthouse so stunning, you wouldn’t enter in what you’re wearing. Not that their butler would even consider allowing you in, anyway. As megastructures grew and the distance between the rich and poor became a measurable gap 250 floors apart, a new caste system began to materialize. Your status in society is now defined by not just your physical address, but your altitude. After all, when your floor number alone could determine your social status, the rich embraced that the only way forward in high society was up. If the Emigration Program wouldn’t take them to the stars, they’d just call their contractor and build their penthouse as close as they could get.
Over time, a nearly irreconcilable disconnect arose between the higher and lower floors, becoming distinct and divorced socio-political and economic classes with their own ways of life. Jobs, resources, education, healthcare, even respect… everything allotted in portions equal to just how far you’ve quite literally risen above the rest.
In just a few generations, their disparate standards of living are now barely worth comparison, where two people living in the same building may live vastly different lives. Someone born above the 100th floor may attend university,
secure a well-paid job, and never question their right to comfort. Those born below will rarely ascend higher or even know how to try. Scraping by as their parents did, clutching onto whatever meager job they can find. The best-case scenario being a decent middle-management salary for a company they’d never dream of running.
This great cultural divide isn’t disputed. It’s just how things are. A city of two peoples, their only bond a longing for stars they’ll never see. And resentment for those who abandoned them for the off-world life they’ll never know.
LOWBORNS AND HIGH SOCIETY
If you want to grasp just how differently the two halves of LA live, you’d learn a lot from Dickens or Jane Austen. Oddly enough, LA 2040 and the colonial aristocracy of old have a lot in common. An upstairs/downstairs cultural divide has taken root between the megarich and megapoor in LA. Only there is no staircase connecting the two halves of society now. Just a concrete slab that neither can break through, lest they risk destroying the very foundation their worlds are built upon.
Two distinct classes and cultures can seamlessly co-exist in the same building. Both know of the existence of the other, perhaps even relying upon their unseen counterparts in some way. And yet in most respects they turn a blind eye to each other, barely even crossing paths as they live their own separate lives the only way they know how. Working jobs, wearing clothes, eating food, even enjoying entertainments unknown to the other. Many living in the penthouse suites have never walked street-side, and should they ever witness such poverty, it’d shock and appall them. Likewise, someone in a stairwell hovel can only gaze upward and imagine the possible luxuries, but if they ever witnessed the sheer waste and excess of that lifestyle, it’d turn their stomachs all the same.
THE GREAT DIVIDE
To serve the people, you must understand them. Know what it means to walk in their shoes, so that you can walk in step, disappear amidst the masses, and read in between the lines and white lies holding it all together. Remember, while you’re always a cop, you’re not always on the clock. And when you’re not working a case, you’re just trying to get by like everybody else.
Don’t let the Emigration brochures fool you, though. Sure, the Earth is dying, but it won’t die in your lifetime. And yeah, life is rough, but it’s LA. When was life here ever easy? The off-worlders fled like Earth was on fire, but in truth, life hasn’t changed all that much since they left. It’s colder. Meaner. And it’s not getting any better. Yet in the end, city life is what you make of it. People still pursue their dreams and delusions of grandeur, ascend corporate ladders and social circles, build homes and families, laugh, love, fight, screw, and screw up like humans have done for ages. Only difference is that there’s a doomsday clock ticking in your ears, reminding you that each moment counts, every good day’s a gift, and every round in the clip may be your last.
THE HAVES
The rich are focused on status. Gaining and maintaining power at any cost. No inhibitions. Everyone is out for themselves. There is no fear of losing what you have, and yet there is an insatiable desire for more. A pride in savoring more than your betters, crushing your lessers, and cheating the system. As well as an open ruthlessness among competitors and fellow chess players who are always judging your every move. Envious when you win, elated when you fall.
THE HAVE NOTS
The poor are focused on survival. Gaining and maintaining independence by any means. No indignities. It’s you against the world. There is no hope of a better life, and yet there is an inexhaustible drive to make do and endure with dignity. A pride in suffering more than your lessers, rising above your betters, and defying the system. As well as an unspoken honor among thieves who are always competing for the same scraps, but will rarely leave you to starve.