In Commonwealth City, communication is infrastructure.
Speech, text, video, data, and presence move as freely as people do. The City treats information flow as survival-adjacent: you cannot meaningfully participate in civic life if you cannot communicate.
This does not mean communication is safe.
It means it is available.
The City assumes communication should be:
Accessible
Redundant
Fast
Interoperable
It does not assume communication should be:
Private by default
Untraceable
Free from consequence
Privacy exists, but it must be actively maintained.
Most residents use implanted or wearable personal links.
Text, voice, video, and data transfer
Always-on connectivity by default
Can be muted, filtered, or sandboxed
Emergency channels override most settings
Links are standardized and publicly regulated. No one is locked out for lack of money.
Public terminals exist everywhere: transit hubs, markets, civic buildings, megablocks.
Full access to the Net
Civic services and messaging
Anonymous modes available, logged contextually
Heavily used by visitors, Digital Sapients, and privacy-conscious residents
News, alerts, cultural programming, and emergency messaging are distributed through public channels.
Opt-out is allowed
Emergency broadcasts override preferences
Multiple independent news cooperatives exist
No single authority controls all narratives
Screens are everywhere.
So are competing versions of the truth.
Neighborhoods and districts maintain local feeds.
Community announcements
Event coordination
Informal warnings
Reputation signals
In Stackside and Neon Row, local feeds often matter more than citywide news.
The internet still exists.
It is still global.
It is still fragmented.
It is still political.
What changed is how people experience it.
The baseline internet layer.
Text, media, commerce, archives, forums
Mostly recognizable to pre-collapse users
Slower than local systems
Subject to external interference and geopolitics
The Open Net is where the outside world touches the City.
A dense, localized data ecosystem operating alongside the Open Net.
Civic systems
Local platforms
Cooperative services
Cultural networks
Faster, more reliable, and deeply embedded in daily life.
Most residents rarely notice when they switch between layers.
The Net, Experienced
Cyberspace is a visualized interface layer, not a separate internet.
Users experience data as spatial environments
Accessed via neural links, rigs, or terminals
Abstract concepts rendered as places, structures, and flows
Highly customizable per user
Cyberspace is not required to use the Net.
It is simply faster, deeper, and more dangerous.
Some individuals interact with the Net at a deeper level.
System intrusion
Data architecture manipulation
Live environment navigation
Real-time countermeasures
These interactions are rare, regulated, and closely watched.
When something goes wrong in cyberspace, the effects often spill into the physical world.
The City monitors communications for:
System health
Traffic optimization
Emergency detection
It does not default to mass policing.
Targeted monitoring requires justification, documentation, and review.
Still, most people assume they are being observed.
They are usually right—just not constantly, and not always by who they expect.
Privacy is a skill, not a guarantee.
Encryption is legal
Obfuscation is common
Anonymity is contextual
Absolute invisibility is a myth
The more private you are, the more noticeable you become.
When communications fail:
Redundant systems activate
Physical notice boards appear
Runners and couriers resurface
Rumors spread faster than facts
Total silence is almost impossible.
Noise is not.
Information travels faster than people
Misinformation is a weapon
Silence is suspicious
Going dark is an escalation
Visibility has consequences
Talking is easy.
Being unheard is hard.
The City solved communication.
It did not solve:
Truth
Trust
Attention
Control
Words still shape reality.
They just move faster now.
And once something is said—
the City remembers it.