“So Mal, give me an outline of what you know about netrunning and I’ll fill in the gaps and build from there. From the start.” Marchand said, leaning forward in her chair, elbows on her knees.

“Not a lot for sure really. Just a bunch of vague stuff. I know the old net was all wireless signals and went all over the world and into space to Luna, Mars and so on. The dark war wiped that all out and now the net is bunch of infrared grids and junctions. Lots of air-gaps and human real world intervention so the AIs can’t wander around freely.” I said, settling back into the sofa chair. “Outside of that I know the net has it’s own language interface thing that makes it so you can function how you want in the net like you would in the real world. That and some stuff about daemons being programs, some stuff about the net being weirdly sized or spaced or something. That’s about it.”

“Not too bad for a youngster these days actually. The true net is still out there Mal, riddled with AIs of all sorts from human to eldritch to unknowable of course, but you could connect to it right now if you had the right device. Some even still do from time to time.” Marchand said while smoking.

“I still think people must have panicked a bit with the AIs, even if they were smarter they couldn’t reach out and stab you or anything. They were still ultimately a box.” I said, thinking of how far Sanctum made it as a swarm of nanites through the fercrete building. It wasn’t exactly a grand escape of huge power, it was a scramble that nearly killed it.

“AIs are not smarter than humans Mal, they render the concept of intelligence as humans understand and perceive it an irrelevance. They operate in ways, speeds and scales that simply don’t fit into human comprehension, I personally hold that the eventual surrender of the true net to the AIs and the plan leave them to fall behind human development was one of our biggest mistakes as a species.” Marchand said with a stern expression. “But yes, the grids are our net now and the junctions to a lesser degree. Most of your actual time will be spent setting up elaborate IR mechanisms in the real world to create private, secret connections between multiple IR grids without passing through junctions. That is what most illicit netrunning is these days.”

“Junction fees are awfully expensive, not having to pay would be preem.” I said.

“It’s not about the fees Mal, it’s about traceability. You might get your job done in the net, and you’ll need to have the knowledge, programs and practice to be able to get that job done. But you’ll also need to secure your way into the relevant grid and due to the grid system that means a lot of real world work that’ll see you in climbing rooftops in the rain in the early hours of the morning just to line up an signal override device in the path of a hidden IR laser at just the right time that the local netrunner guardian changes shifts.” Marchand said with a reminiscent smile.

“I thought netrunning was just sitting nearby and connecting to the grid and bang your in and things happen? I’ve seen kids open doors and cars using their decks without a huge issue.” I said, a little confused. Netrunning at higher levels was just office work, I thought.

Marchand then began laughing and pounding her knee with her free hand, just uproarious laughter. I’d never seen her laugh before so it was weirding me out a bit.

“Mal! You… Oh my goodness. If my mentors were around to hear that, they’d have likely grimaced so hard they would do themselves an injury. They were there for the dark war you know? They still remembered the true net being full of humans and human works. When yes, you could sit in a chair and break into a bank vault across the city and make yourselves hundreds of millions before taking a shuttle to orbit in the space of maybe an hour. Or just look at a camera or a sentry drone and turn it off.” Marchand said when she’d calmed down a little.

She took a fresh drag on her cig. I just sat there awkwardly.

“Those times are sadly in the past with IR lasers being the common tool these days, although there are other laser systems of course. No, now we have to get out into the world and build the physical infrastructure ourselves. It has to be robust, hidden and despite the cost of this high level equipment it has to ultimately be disposable.” Marchand said.

“Disposable? So with all the IR equipment set up and using it you have to just ditch it anyway? Your own little grid and you just dump it?” I asked.

“If you have to, yes. Not every job will let you clean up after yourself. Sometimes you’ll be able to spend a little time retrieving your tools and sometimes you’ll be better off being long gone by the time they discover what happened, tools be damned.” Marchand said while waving the cig around leaving pale blue trails drawn in the air.

“Right like a trap in an exit strategy, it’s just a sunk cost you have to deal with. Even if it’s not used you might not be okay to grab it after the job.” I said, realizing the meaning.

“Exactly Mal. So your job as a netrunner at first is to build your way to your target, skipping over the junctions without being discovered which is quite difficult these days, then you need to gain access to your target grid which can be a big ask if it’s a highly secure location. Then the netrunning begins, you move through the net and achieve whatever goal the job entails and get out. If you have the luxury you can dismantle your equipment backwards, if not you pop the kill-switches and scuttle the lot of it to cover yourself and get away. The longer your approach is, the safer you’ll be at extraction.” Marchand said.

“Do they even sell IR grid building stuff like that to normal people? The night markets would skin a kid like me alive if I went looking around one of those. I don’t know prices and they’d know that immediately.” I said, a bit defeated.

“You’ll be able to source some stuff from me if you require it, base cost to begin with. But I’ll also be giving you the means to build your own equipment, which you will be primarily relying on. A netrunner needs the best programs, the best daemons and the best ICE but you’ll never get to use any of it if you don’t have the best networking gear and you’ll never afford the best so you’re better off just designing the best you can make yourself.” She said.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I quite liked this Marchand, the one behind the old lady routine. It felt more real even if she was more prickly.

“So what’s the first thing we’ll be doing? I’ve got the tech I need in me now, do I connect to your grid or…?” I asked a bit excited to start being on the net.

“Oh no Mal. Nobody steps foot on my grid, unless they want to lose the foot. No, you’ll be building your own little grid to run around in. First thing would be your physical equipment, but you’ve got that covered so we’ll move on. Second will be your actual persona, an operations platform that represents you in the net. That will be your first task today. I want you by the end of today to build a basic persona that has what you think it will need to begin with and I’ll comment on what you end up with.” Marchand continued. “Not that you need to be here or that, you can go wander off for the rest of today and leave me to my business while you read through the documents I’m sending you and writing your scripts.”

I had a ping from my interface but even before I accepted the connection the box disappeared and a few new files landed on my view.

“A basic persona should stop something like that with the help of the cyberware you have. Now go run along and get working, come find me again before twenty one hundred.” Marchand said with a smile before waving me out of her parlor.

I got up and backed out to the door, almost tripping over the arm.

“Thanks Mrs. Marchand, I’ll get started on this I guess.” I said a bit hesitantly.

“I’ll see you later Mal, and you can call me Anna while I’m teaching you and we’re alone. I dislike teaching people and being called Mrs. Marchand all day, it just slows down the conversation.” She said and then the door smoothly swung closed on it’s own and locked leaving me in her living room, that I’d never seen her enter.

Marchand… Anna was super weird. Then again that wasn’t new so whatever.

I left and headed back to my apartment and went to my storage, a bit of a sad thing to call a small pile of essentially trash. I untangled the storage rig and pulled all the straps out of it and the bags off, then I draped it over me and redid all the clasps at the right size and put the little side bags a bit further back under my arms.

Then I put my knife into the sheath and strapped it under my arm just above the left bag. Easy to reach quickly and quite well hidden. Noe still had my signet so this was the best I could do. I pulled my shirt back on open over the rig and said hello to mom who was working on something on her interface in the living room before heading across to Noe’s place.

Crossing the street I did find a trail of blood and aspire heading out of the street, guess Marchand didn’t let him use Dr. Wood. That’s cold. He was a gonk though so he earned what he got, let him run to a cutter.

Cutter docs were the lowest of the low but still able to save your life in a pinch. It basically went cyber docs which could literally alter your cyberware and your body at the same time to reach maximum synergy with hundreds of surgical and cybernetic modifications. You’d only find these at high level corp hospitals or rich clinics. Then there’s ripper docs that were named for their need to rip out damaged cyberware at times, they were mechanics and doctors at once and could fit you anything you need. Then there’s cutter docs, not actually doctors and more just medics with a bit of cyberware management training. They were known more for being thieves who un-installed people’s cyberware while they were at their most vulnerable to sell it on, sometimes sewing up the patient and sometimes just zeroing them.

If you were at a cutter doc then you were likely in an emergency situation and you’d rather find a ripper doc if you had the choice. Not every cutter was a scumbag though, just enough of them that people knew not to trust them unless it was a minor thing or it was their only choice.

Arriving at Noe’s gate I was let through by an old man walking out and buzzed Noe’s front door. She opened up pretty quickly today and invited me inside, so I just went in and sat on the couch.

“So what’s Marchand got you doing? Breaking into a gang hideout to steal their data? Cracking a corpo slush fund digital vault and making millions?” Noe asked with excitement as she wandered over with two juice boxes, one prune and one orange.

“I need to make my persona apparently, it’s like a vehicle that wraps around me in the net but is also me kind of. Like I need to make a ghost with a load of tech inside it that I can jump into and that can be me in the net. I don’t know if I’m explaining it properly, the documents don’t do much better.” I said, reading through the documentation.

“Yeah, I don’t get it. Sounds cool though I guess. There might be some stuff that makes sense later on with the programming, I do some of it to work on the electrical parts of some guns. I prefer cold weapons though, personally.” She said.

“Probably, what you working on today anyway?” I asked, interested.

“I’m working on the start of your special order actually, did some reading up on the material I’d need to make. Polymer formula and so on. I made a good elastomer design for the shock parts and a light but strong laminate design for the body and grip with the same laminate casing for the elastomer parts so it looks less piecemeal. The actual action is classic closed, rotating bolt design which is a little complex and needs more care, but gives the gun a better stability along with it’s supporting push-rod gas system for recoil reduction.” Noe said while going into full on presentation mode. “It’ll be chambered for forty five caliber and I can’t really push the rounds any heavier without needing more material on the body and stock, not to mention throwing accuracy off.”

“No, that sounds great Noe. I didn’t get a lot of that but it sounds like you’ve hit the books hard. I look forward to seeing it in action, thanks for working so hard on this.” I said, waving my hands in defense.

“So we both don’t know what each other are doing, that just means we’re not wasting time doubling up on specialties. That’s good. I’m gonna go work on your gun for a while, a lot of printer programming to do so the parts come out right. Feel free to grab a juice whenever.” She said before getting up and walking into her little workshop storage room.

Left on my own reading over the documentation for making a persona it mostly said to use your deck, or just rely on my cyberware in this case, and use it to first program a shell presence which was just net positional data and some boundaries, simple enough.

Opening the programming app on my interface I was met with a different user interface for the app than I was used to.

Hey Sanctum, did you eat my scripting app? It looks all different and there’s a whole bunch of extra stuff here.

[Your scripting application was a pirated software from seven years ago that had only a single integrity patch applied upon the applications installation. With the cyberware you have acquired Sanctum deemed it needed for the User to have access to a more relevant scripting software and rebuilt the pirated application into a standard Sanctum designed scripting application.]

So you made your own version? That’s pretty nova that you can just make stuff like that. How long did it take?

[The entire process took between three and four seconds depending on what concurrent micro-processes you consider sequential.]

Why am I even trying to do this myself if you can program so easily and quickly?

[Without User activity Sanctum can only create objects that meet prerequisites and patterns already extent inside Sanctum, these prerequisites and patterns cannot be added to easily. Also User will not be able to increase their pattern compatibility to a wider degree without sufficient engagement, stalling the acquisition and improvement of Skills which violates the purpose of Sanctum.]

So I still need to do this stuff. Fair enough I guess, it is my work to do. Thanks for the help with the app anyway Sanctum. Let me know if I hit a skill threshold with this work.