Setting up the shell presence was simple enough with it mostly being a bunch of tracked numbers that stored my position in cyberspace and tracked the different points of my joints and other important physical elements.
This would be used to set up an avatar, a visual representation of me in cyberspace that could be adjusted or hidden depending on what was needed. You could look like whatever you want to look like in cyberspace. Some people even set up their shell with inhuman anatomy but you need special cyberware for things like that to be actually properly functional in cyberspace.
I didn’t really want to fight a weird human with twelve legs and forty arms or whatever strange designs people had in cyberspace.
Just making myself look like I did in the real world would improve my initial synchronization, so I just made it like myself although it was just a silhouette with a few details really.
Synchronization was just how much translation code needed to run between your physical body and your digital one. The more translation code running, the less other code you could run without running out of RAM. I wanted to keep my running costs low to give myself more room for mistakes.
With the shell presence covered with an avatar I now had a proper visualization for myself in the net. Now I needed build off the shell to create my operating platform, it would function as my defense and offensive tool on the net and would store my scripts and active programs in active memory to be used on foreign grids where I couldn’t access my storage. Sort of a computer backpack that had my tools and weapons in for when I couldn’t get hold of my arsenal at home.
The platform was a more complex tool than I really understood because a lot of it was tied directly into what hardware and cyberware you were using and then a whole load of compatibility between everything. I followed the codes on the documentation that accessed the circuitry and storage of my cyberware and eventually received the right pings from the internals from my program after a few wrong pings that weren’t right and some null returns, gonk twelve digit codes.
With an empty platform around my shell I added an empty script and used the platform to give it a simple stick like avatar over the script. Running the simulation in the testing mode led to a bunch of errors which took some time to work out. After that the empty script compiled and ran properly the simulation showed me t-posing next to a white stick in a blank gray void, nova.
I sent the simulation an instruction to grab the stick and watched it robotically grab the stick and hold it awkwardly. I checked the net scripting interface to see the empty stick script was being run through my avatar’s platform properly, or at least trying to as there was nothing to run.
So the physical interaction simulation was working in regards to running the platform. That was the basics of cyberspace. If that stick had some sort of attack script on it I could use the stick against an enemy to attack them with the script organically. The true power of the net.
With the simplest functions of my cyber self were now working so I checked the time on my interface. I had been sitting in a ball on Noe’s sofa for almost four hours without taking a break or moving much, Noe was sitting in her small sofa chair opposite doing something on her own interface.
I quickly checked my messages.
[User profile updated.]
[Acquired Skill: Programming. User Rating: Untrained.]
[Acquired Skill: Cybercombat. User Rating: Untrained.]
“Oh hey Noe, sorry I didn’t know you’d come back out. I was kind of super focused in there, don’t know what came over me.” I said uncurling into a sitting position and grabbing my orange juice box, it was empty.
Noe looked up from her interface and then popped out of her chair and went over to her fridge and grabbed two more juices.
“No problem choom but you were deep into it there. I’ve come and gone a few times and even called out to you once and you were just plugging away at whatever you were doing. I thought it best to let you get on with it, here.” She said while handing me a pineapple juice.
“I got it done in the end though. It all works fine. Marchand should be happy with the work.” I said happily. I needed to pee though. I got up and went to the bathroom.
When I got out Noe was standing there holding a small piece of metal.
“Look, I finished the main part of the action for your gun, I worked very hard on the specs to get it perfectly cut. Took extra time but this part at least will probably not need any work on it for thousands of rounds unless you decide to use your gun as a club like last time.” She said showing off the cylindrical piece of metal around, it had a few moving parts on it but I didn’t know enough to name anything from it.
“It looks good Noe, very exact cuts, very precise. You know I can’t really recognize the quality at this point in the build properly but it seems solid. I look forward to seeing it all finished.” I said lamely.
“I’m sure I’d say something similar about your work today Mal. It’s no problem. We both did some good work. Why don’t you go hand it to Marchand early? She might appreciate the enthusiasm kind of thing.” Noe said while picking at the entirely clean edges of the cut metal she was holding.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Just going to swing by my apartment first and check in with mom. When’s your mom scheduled to be back anyway?” I asked as I finished my juice.
“She’ll be back in a week apparently, she sent a runner last night that left a secure message on the grid. Something either went right or went wrong, she was meant to be another week away.
Hopefully it’s good news, for now she’s likely cleaning up her trail to make sure no one can trace her in the operation and then she’ll be home, the kind of stuff you should be considering as well Mal.”
She said as she seemed satisfied with the metal and headed back to her workshop door.
I wished her goodbye and she waved from her workshop. Headed out and across the street, I kind of wished there was a bridge. I’d seen some hand-made bridges built by the residents between walkways in other streets, sure they were dangerous and you’d hear about them breaking and hurting people below. But at the same time, more walking. So really it all balanced out.
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Getting to the apartment I checked in on mom and she was reading about new incarna releases on her interface in the living room. She seemed fine though, not all zombie mode so I left her to it. Heading across to Marchand’s and buzzed it but quickly got a prerecorded message from a synthesized voice saying Marchand was in a meeting. Fair enough.
Heading back to the apartment I sat in the big single seater armchair that was here when we moved in and opened my interface to check over my work.
Sanctum how’s that translation process going?
[Ability translation is complete but pending a number of User choices, Sanctum had suspended these choices until it was relevant to the situation as it was not a high priority.]
Oh, well I’ll make that choice now, not much going on.
[Kinetic Dispersion has two possible choices for the User.]
[It can be translated into ability that allows the User to directly throttle the transfer rate of all effects on the User’s shell while ignoring grid bandwidth, delaying deployment of any attacks received the
User is aware of and applying a temporary tag to their source location in the grid.]
[It can also be translated into a short, forced grid bandwidth claim upon receiving an attack from a hostile the User is aware of, this will cause the User to receive bandwidth priority slowing time for the User and speeding it for anyone else on the grid.]
Let’s go with the second one, the first might let me counter attack at deal with my attacker but the second one might let me escape easier. I prefer to be defensive when I can.
[Kinetic Dispersion translated to cyberspace variant beta.]
Is it possible to switch between the two translations? Like a switch kind of thing, seeing as they were both compatible as you’ve said.
[Translations have to applied at a very deep tissue level in order for the effects not to conflict with User function but they can be switched between with enough to recover between translations.]
Another timer for my own safety then, who knew the human body was so reluctant to change.
[The human body is very good at accepting change, but while applying change and recovering from change it can introduce many chaotic elements to apply additional changes. The human healing process is an inefficient system that is largely decentralized to avoid losing the ability to heal entirely, but also disallowing many potential benefits of a structured and consciously controlled system.]
I don’t know if I’d want to have that, but it does sound preem in a way. Just think your cut finger better.
[There are many spacer grade nanite, biosynthetic and biocybernetic systems for manual and auxiliary healing cyberware.]
Never even heard of things like that apart from some automatic medical cyberware that fill you with drugs and so on. What’s the difference between biosynthetic and biocybernetic? They both sound the same to me.
[Biosynthetic is a bioware, a cyberware composed of minimal mechanical elements and nearly entirely genetically engineered and grown from organic cells.]
[Biocybernetic is similar but composed of tungsten based cells known as wolframorganics and features many mechanical components and often a nanite supervisory system integrated.]
So far beyond the world I live in here Sanctum, I’m never going to see one of those. We’ll just have to make do with our little bits of normal chrome down here on earth and the cheap ones down here in the gutter, yeah? What’s the other ability translation? The adrenal one, AAB?
[Amygdala Adrenal Bypass can be translated into two different interpretations.]
[Translation one is a passive grid stall connection response that can be queued with a single program or daemon provided the file size is small enough to fit into the runtime buffer of your deck or cyberware. Anything larger will not upload fast enough to take advantage of the stall in runtime of the current grid and some grids may have counter measures for stalling.]
[Translation two is a buffer shell that can act as a override input node to the User, this shell can crash itself upon being attacked causing the hostile to have to manually retarget their attacks onto the User while also causing crash feedback to the hostile as they attempt to shutdown the now unresponsive program they are running. The shell has to be manually rerun by the User and has a load time based on free User RAM.]
Go with the second one, the first could be unusable in some scenarios while the second is just limited by RAM which I have control over somewhat.
[Amygdala Adrenal Bypass translated to cyberspace variant beta.]
Thanks Sanctum, that should be good to use in cyberspace… Although I don’t know about using them in front of Marchand in the net, she might ask questions, could they just be turned off for a while at the beginning?
[Not possible. Abilities are rooted too deeply into User psychobiology to suppress forcibly without causing symptoms ranging from incontinence or seizures to unconsciousness or death.]
I’ll have to work on some program dummies to hold up to casual scrutiny to explain them then… No, she’d see through whatever nonsense I can scrawl together instantly.
Even if I ask you to write something believable and say I wrote it, if it held up to scrutiny it would be advanced or complicated enough to warrant her actual attention. At which point she’d assume I was lying and lock me up until I came up with something believable… I’m in too deep to just say thanks and walk away, she’d suspect a plot and I’m back to getting locked up.
I’ll need to open up to her. Explain you, Sanctum…
No. That’s insane. I can’t. There’s so much risk and so many downsides with almost no upsides. It’s such a major vulnerability.
But I had no way to hide the abilities in the net… And Marchand isn’t blind as much as she’d like people to believe otherwise, she’ll notice me improving faster than I should with Sanctum’s help. Not to mention the abilities in the real world activating somewhere she can check on at some point.
I’m too close to her. I’m too close and it’s too late to get out, this is her web all over again.
Yet another thing I’d have likely never allowed to happen in the past, I’d never have stepped so close and depended on her charity and her resources without securing my exit first. Now mom was right there next door.
I slumped in my chair despondently, there wasn’t a way to break free of this situation cleanly.
I’d need to make an enemy of Marchand by just grabbing mom and running, I won’t have harmed Marchand directly but the suspicious behavior wouldn’t be left alone. I’d have operators on my tail before the day was over.
Trying to lie my way through Marchand wouldn’t work and even if she let some lies pass without comment she’d be keeping a sharp eye on me after that. Forget grabbing mom and running at that point. Not to mention continuing after that would just be a timer before she discovered something.
Could you help with this Sanctum? Something from your side of things, maybe? Like a nanite swarm solution. Or something.
[The only solution that solves your current problem without revealing Sanctum’s existence without outside assistance, extreme measures or an unrealistic and drastic increase in Skill levels is to use Anna Marchand’s trust of the User to get close enough to detonate a shaped charge that kills Anna Marchand before she can counterattack. It is likely that Noe Gibson either has or can produce such a shaped charge for this use.]
What? Sanctum I can’t kill Marchand. That’s absurd. And what was that about extreme measures? If killing Marchand isn’t extreme then what do you consider extreme?
[User could take or create enough explosives from the stockpile at Noe Gibson’s home to cause significant damage and loss of life throughout the local street without being considered a threat during deployment and without being immediately considered a suspect immediately after. User could collect Cara Beckett during the resulting chaos and leave the city before investigation discovers traces of your involvement, while User would be beyond reasonable reach.]
That is completely insane Sanctum. What is that idea even? I know you have a different perspective going on but you need to moderate your plans a bit down to the human level of scale. I’m not trying to protect the planet here.
[User asked for countermeasures against discovery. The extreme measures plan does breach levels of violence and loss of life that are considered unacceptable.]