Urban Night Drift Protocol

️ Setting

Concrete outskirts. Business park ruins. Neon through dirty windows.
Train yards humming. Strip malls half-lit.
Construction sites sleeping under floodlights.
Apartment blocks with one window flickering static.

Drifter Profile

You walk alone. Not patrolling—scanning.
No destination. Just layers.
Your pockets hold both the digital and the decayed.
You’re halfway between a sysadmin and a scavenger.

Loadout: Urban Driftkit

• Modified SDR scanner or handheld radio — Scan 138–144 MHz, 4625 kHz, local FM static
• Old MP3 player / cassette Walkman — plays noise, anime soundtracks, glitches
• Nokia burner phone — no SIM. Snake and flashlight only
• Crumpled metro pass + Cyrillic fake ID
• LED keylight with red filter
• Analog camera or VGA phonecam — glitched lens
• Dust mask / layered hoodie or jacket — worker ghost mode

Scan Targets (Live Listening While Walking)

• 4625 kHz — UVB-76 / The Buzzer
• 144.000–145.800 MHz — Ham voices, packet bursts
• 145.775 MHz — Volunteer defense chatter
• 27.065 MHz — CB ch9 ghost bursts
• 303–305 MHz — NATO UHF ops
• 380–399.9 MHz — TETRA encrypted presence

Don’t just listen. Record.
Feed the signal into your portable audio rig.
Replay on repeat. Backwards. Slowed.

Mental State / Narrative Layer

You imagine the buildings are servers.
You ping them by walking past.
Some reply. Some ghost.
The static means it’s working.

You spot a camera staring from a roof.
You stare back.
You wonder if you’ve been walking in a loop.
You wonder if someone else is walking the same loop, just 5 minutes behind.

Urban Drift Ritual

1. Step outside at 00:45. Bring no goals. Only the scanner.
2. Let the walk be dictated by signal strength:
   → Left if the signal drops, right if it rises.
3. Stop at vending machines and utility boxes. These are access points. Touch them.
4. Speak a single phrase into your handheld mic every 17 minutes. Doesn’t matter what.

Moodboard Keywords

• Drainpipes and server noise
• CRT glow behind curtains
• Silent LED billboards pulsing
• Backlit tower block elevator shafts
• The low hum of a locked signal
• Heat shimmer on asphalt at 2:16 AM