I plugged into my laptop with my personal link, and opened up the program for Ping.

I was going to start at the beginning.

Instantly I felt literal revulsion.

Whoever had put this program together should be shot…

Okay I had been shot before so I’ll give myself a pass here.

It was a mess. My own work wasn’t… good. But it wasn’t just my work I was critiquing. Such a simple program bloated and twisted.

I could fix this.

But why bother?

Instead I started a new program, and started typing, my mental interface helping me adjust settings without needing to stop typing as my hands blurred over the keyboard.

There were a few lines in the old program I carried over. A few that had acceptable coding.

But I still fixed them. I altered them, smoothed them out.

Removed fluff.

Despite being a large enough program my Cyberdeck registered something as simple as Ping as actually taking up space on the Cyberdecks slots.

It didn’t need to be.

It could be tiny, a small efficient program that did exactly what it should do.

Hell. The way the program worked at a base level could be completely altered. Right now it connected with the foreign system, and basically blasted the system with requests for everything it was connected to.

It was like walking into a server and ringing a bell. Sure you would get the information, but anyone watching would now know.

So I did something different.

A little trick I had picked up thanks to Ghost Touch, and with the tiny size Ping now was, and the fact system connectivity was by definition less secured data than nearly anything else.

I looked up as Jun pushed my screen down. “Jun?” He ignored my question for the moment. Plopping a burrito in front of me with a look.

“Eat.”

“I’m in the middle of something.” I grumbled instantly especially at the sight of the burrito.

“Motoko, you've been on that laptop all day. Eat.”

I blinked looking out the window.

I had thought the dim light meant the sun was still coming up, but no.

The sun was going down.

“Oh.”

“Oh she says.” Jun grumbled at me, but I had decided to be a better Imouto. So I reached out despite my fingers desperate to go back to the keyboard and peeled the disgusting not burrito.

It was horrible, but it did fill me up.

—--

“Hiromi is here!” The voice calling out as our front door opened nearly sent me on the floor, only the fact I was holding my laptop full of wonders meant I didn’t end up tossing it to reach for a gun.

“Hiromi!” I snapped at her once again surprise entrance. I really needed to teach that girl to knock.

“Motoko!” She called back, instantly leaping over the side of the couch to land on me.

My quick reaction to save the laptop the only thing saving it from fat Hiromi ass destroying it.

“Hiromi! Watch it! You almost broke my laptop!”

“Nah you were gonna move it. Now what’s this I hear from Jun about you going all nerdy hermit?” She asked and I scoffed looking around the apartment for my brother, but I did vageuly remember him leaving a while back after making me eat… again. What time is it?

“Jun is a narc. I’m fine. I’ve been programming!”

“Ooh! Let me see?” Hiromi demanded sitting sideways in my lap, as she kicked her boots up on the couch.

“Hiromi, take your boots off. I like this couch.” I told her firmly, and she blinked before looking a little sheepish and did as I asked, although she then flopped back on top of me demanding attention.

“Personal space?”

“Don’t need it!” She replied instantly to my comment and I rolled my eyes at her, as I reached over her and grabbed my laptop.

“I’ve been fixing my Ping Quickhack.” I told her as I opened the laptop showing the code. Literally just lines of code all organized together.

I knew what was going to happen the moment I did so of course.

“I have no idea what this is.” She tells me after a minute of making understanding noises and looking over the code.

“Gonk.” I told her as I closed the laptop that wasn’t any use to my choom. “So Jun called you to come check on me?” I asked adjusting myself a bit as Hiromi continued to lay on top of me.

“Basically! He told me you were acting weird and to make sure you were okay. So… Want to go party? I’m still mad that last time you went with Malcolm and Ichi without me.”

“You had school!”

“I hate that you actually care about that.” She told me, as she sighed and slumped over me even more. “Motokoooo.” She whined at me as she flopped against me.

“Fine, we can go out for the night.”

“Great! I want to ride around all night! I’ve been stuck in a classroom forever! Motokoooo! Let’s goooo.” She whined at me, and I couldn’t help but laugh at my lap full of squirmy demanding best choom.

“Alright, let me get dressed and we will go for a drive.”

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

“Great! I’m dri-”

“No.”

“Ugh! I want to take my bike!”

“I’m not letting you drive again. That’s dangerous.”

Hiromi scoffed at me, before smirking, “Fine! You drive my bike.” She reached out and poked my nose and I snorted.

“Your bike is so…”

“Hey! Don’t badmouth my ride! If you don’t like it get your own Kusanagi!”

“Maybe I will!” I offered back and then Hiromi smirked at me. Ah.

She tricked me.

“Cool, I want to be there when you buy it and I demand the first ride.” She said looking proud of herself.

I just rolled my eyes. “I don’t have the eddies for a new bike right now Hiromi. But I’ll put it on the list. I do want a Kusanagi, but just a normal one.” I said finger pointed at her.

She just laughed at me, and slipped off letting me stand to get ready.

Finally dressed I followed Hiromi out of the apartment as she skipped towards the elevator which I climbed in with. Like normal her bike was parked outside the apartments on the sidewalk. Normally I would worry about it being stolen, but in this one instance her choice of bike had an advantage.

This was a TC neighborhood, and no one lifted a TC styled bike. I mean Hiromi still had plenty of TC decals on her bike too, so it really was protected.

If only it wasn’t so stupid looking! Massive swoop back seats? On a crotch rocket!?

My eyes glaring at the stupid back seat that just ruined the lines of a beautiful bike.

“Pfft. You are so picky. C’mon hop on!” she demanded as she jumped on and made room for me to drive, patting the seat in front of her.

I did as demanded, this was Hiromi time, she did deserve some time away from school, so if she wanted to drive around the city for a while, that was no problem for me.

She quickly grabbed hold of me tightly, like she expected me to just floor it out of the sidewalk. Which I of course didn’t, waiting for a break in traffic I pulled the bike into the street and headed out onto the town. Hiromi's moans complaining of me driving like a gonk in my ear.

—--

We drove around the city for hours, just enjoying the view and feel of the road.

It wasn’t something I would normally do, I liked having a goal whenever I went out driving, but in this case Hiromi just wanted some freedom, to escape the cage of school.

In this case I could understand, and so I didn’t mind that every time I started thinking about driving home Hiromi would notice and ask to go somewhere else.

We ended up driving all over. Checking out the sites, we even drove past the old Shinto Shrine out by North Oak.

We didn’t stop to go inside, just driving past it along the windy mountain road.

It was just a tourist trap anyways.

But the sights of the city from up on the mountains was nice.

Eventually Hiromi finally signaled to let me drive home and we did, but not before I stopped to surprise her with some food.

I had heard her belly rumbling as we drove, and so we found a nice little restaurant, and spent the next hour laughing with each other as she shared stories about what it was like going to Arasaka academy.

It was nice.

—--

After Hiromi dropped me off at home, it was getting pretty late, but neither of us cared. It was the weekend tomorrow so she didn’t have school, and my life literally had no set schedule. Unfortunately Hiromi couldn’t stay over, she had a thing with her parents in the morning.

So free of any choom shaped obligations I hurried back into the apartment.

Of course the moment I went inside, I flopped on the couch and grabbed my laptop.

Time to finish this!

Ping, even the version I was writing was still a big program, taking hours to go through every line and ensure it would be as compact, and efficient as I could make it.

Even when I finished writing the last line of code, that wasn’t the end, instead I went back through it, combing over the entire program, finding a few minor errors here and there that I hadn’t caught while I was programming, but now that I was fully focused on it, debug’s experience coming in clutch to catch the tiniest of errors.

Finally I stopped. Staring at the program as it compiled.

As my work over the last two days flowed into a single efficient effective program.

Ping. No Ping 2.0!

I unloaded the old version from my cyberware and installed the new one. Laughing that it took up so little space compared to the bloated inefficient program I had before that it not only didn’t take up a slot of my Cyberwares programming, it would use practically no RAM to activate.

I looked at the TV and pinged it. Watching in fascination as the program instantly got a return, as lines appeared on my vision showing me the few pieces of tech the TV was connected to. And then more. The light flowed to the transmitter the TV used to pick up stations, and actually flowed through that. My new design for Ping, completely uncaring about the ICE the system might use, as it flowed through and kept pinging off more and more equipment. Every TV in the building was highlighted showing the connection, and when it reached the roof transmitter that connected outward it started gathering data from that, before I stopped the program.

Okay I might need to add a tiny bit more code to actually limit the spread, that might be too much data return.

Well that wouldn’t take more than a minute just to tell it to stop pinging after a certain amount of system jumps.

Of course I would still want the option to go further, so a simple yes no, would solve that.

And done, recompile and reinstalled.

This is what Ping should have been.

—--

An hour later despite it being so late at night. I traveled to my netrunner basement. I had to admit I was so proud of my Ping 2.0 that I wanted to show it off.

So I hurried over to Dewdrop Inn after logging into the net and raced around to find Yoko. The Inn was unsurprisingly super active despite it being so late.

What’s that? Hackers staying up all night and sleeping during the day? Or not sleeping at all?

Color me shocked.

I stepped into the riot of color that was the Dewdrop Inn lobby, and looked around for my target, but I didn’t see any big Kitsune hanging around. So I took a seat in a quiet corner and sent a message to Yoko.

I got an instant response, telling me Yoko was in a meeting and would reach out to me once she was done.

I groaned. My desire to show off my program made me impatient, but nothing else I could do. So instead I decided to people watch.

Hackers were an interesting bunch. Some gathered in groups, some were on the dancefloor showing off their purchased or made dance routines.

I knew they were emotes though I don’t think any of them were showing their actual dance ability.

But that was what the net was like. It didn’t matter how you were at something physically, if you could hack, or program yourself with the skill you could be a master.

It was certainly interesting to watch.

In the end it was someone sliding into my booth that broke me out of my people watching. I guess I should have marked the booth private or something, if I didn’t want to be bothered.

If I knew how to do that. I had seen a few of the booths with the message floating over them.

“Hey, I don’t recognize you. Names E><. You can just flag me as Ex though. New around here?” He asked and to my surprise he didn’t sound flirty.

Thankfully.

I looked over his face, the only part of his avatar I could see just like everyone in the server, and was doubly glad. He had to be in his twenties at the youngest.

“Not my first time, but I don’t usually hang out here. Just waiting for a contact.” I offered, and unfortunately he didn’t take the hint that I wanted to be left alone.

“Well it’s always nice to see a new face! How’s hacking been? Run into any trouble? I know a lot of people with a lot of connections. If you need some info, or backup.” He offered with a smile and I shook my head.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Ah listen, I’m trying to help you out kid. You’re obviously new. I’m part of a Netrunner collective, we help out newbies, give them gigs that can put their skills to use, you should-”

“Ex? Thanks but I’m good.” I denied cutting him off. I wasn’t really looking for netrunner gigs. I would make my own gigs here on the net.

Ex sighed and stood up. “Well good luck then kid. But don’t think it’ll be as easy to join up in the future if you end up needing help.”

“I doubt that will be an issue.” A third voice intruded, and I didn’t sigh only because I was too annoyed with Ex, at the sight of Yoko standing at the end of the booth.

“Yoko. How goes?” I greeted her, sounding relieved at her appearance.

“Fine, Motoko? You wanted to chat?”

Ignoring the other hacker I nodded, now smiling from ear to ear.

“I got something I think is pretty preem, I wanted to show it off a bit.” I told her as I twirled a finger pulling a copy of Ping 2.0 into a visual medium showing it as a glowing shard over my finger I offered it to Yoko.

I could see the interest in Ex as he looked like he was trying to peek, but Yoko’s own ICE slammed up a moment before my own.

Yoko was quick! That was a pretty insane processing speed!

Made me wonder what her cyberdeck actually was.

But a moment later Yoko had touched the shard file and accessed it. I couldn’t follow along because I couldn’t see the screens she was no doubt seeing visually infront of her face, but I could tell that she was impressed because she went from her normal sensual smirk to a flatter more focused look as she looked it over.

“Where did you get this? No wait, don’t answer that.” She demanded suddenly and waved a hand. I got a transfer request and accepted leaving the booth and Yoko and I both appeared in her private lobby instantly this time.

Last time Yoko had always used a gate to let me access it myself. It was a weird feeling to be moved like that.

“Motoko, where did you get this?”

“I made it.” I told her with a fox-like grin of my own.

Her neck jerking towards me as she focused on me told me everything I needed to know about Ping 2.0.

It was good.

Way better than something a fourteen year old should be capable of.

I kept my smirk as Yoko seemed to consider whether she would believe me or not before seemingly deciding not to argue.

“I’ve been working on my programming for a while, but in the end Ping was just too messy for me. So I rewrote my own basically from scratch. It’s more of a stealth hack than the original.” I offered and Yoko nodded.

“I’ve had a chance to see the best of what Ping can become, and while you don’t hit everything that it is capable of, this is… Different. It’s not the same program at all!” Yoko offered, sounding delighted.

“Like I said, I wasn’t happy with the original so I wrote my own.”

“I’d like to trade for it. The ability to trade copies as well.” She said suddenly and I blinked.

“What?”

She gave me a smirk this time. “I work as a trader Motoko. New programs, hacks, and information are all things I trade in. Something like this has real value.”

I nodded at that. It was true, but did I want to go down that route? Right now Ping 2.0 was completely unknown, no one could develop a counter to its stealth nature because no one knew it existed.

But in the end I shrugged.

“Alright, but it won’t be free.” I offered and instantly Yoko scoffed.

“Of course not! I’ll open up my stores for you. Let’s see if I can’t find something that catches your interest.” She offers with a smirk and I couldn’t help but feel a little excited. It would be nice to see what sort of things Yoko had collected. What valuable programs she had found over the years.

“Excellent… Now before that, I have to ask about the coding here.” She said, causing a screen to pop up and show the lines of code on the program.

“Oh!” I grinned as Yoko asked me code questions! Was I going to geek out about my code with Yoko?

Yes. Yes I was!