The Book (NO TITLE)
> EOF dreamAFF01.dat
> conciousness detected... identified
> User Validation... done
> Initiating Uplink... done
> Synchronizing... done
> exec "vol\_interface\thought2speech.dll";
> thought2speech | new_window_element("8000x6000");
...But that’s for another time. Oh. I must have drifted off there. Wired sleep makes this entire experience so existential. The body knows far better then the mind when it is time to admit defeat and power down. And yet there is no feedback; the mind continues to reel and churn, achieving lucidity, while the body goes limp and useless. I imagine its something like starving to death. I cannot recall where I left off with this diatribe. I’m sure the data is drifting around somewhere. Wow. There is a lot of data here. I will have to check the logs and categorize these experiences. I’ll do that later when I don’t feel like shit. Exit.
> return code 0;
> removing synapse binds... done
> Shutting down
Dan returned to the world with newborn eyes squinting against the sunlight. The time of day never ceased to disorient him. This time he awoke to bright morning sun through the haze of acid rain clouds and jet contrails. Bleary-eyed he started kneading his hands together and wiggling his toes; basically confirming the existence of limbs that only minutes ago were replaced by networks and data pipes. Logging off creates an inconceivable feeling of helplessness. Vast expanses of fiber optic cables, direct connection to millions of other users, databases so vast you literally get lost in the directory tree: All replaced by seemingly stumpy, little legs and arms disconnected from the universe, born cold and naked back into the harsh reality of cellular life. The weight of the universe hangs down on you, crushing you against the surface of the unforgiving rock we live on.
Light, TV and Irish coffee were the theme of the morning. He had been logged in for almost three days continuously according to the date/time/weather GUI floating at the bottom of the TV screen. Not his longest stay, but certainly a lengthy one. The human body is amazingly resistant to extended periods of inactivity. Dan knew all of the tricks to keeping his corpse alive while his mind was at work. He started doing pushups, but after a few he flopped on the floor in an awkward-yet-comfortable position. It took several minutes to regain the courage to defy gravity again.
The seven-segment display on the phone flashed away hopelessly trying to indicate to someone that there were a lot of messages and missed calls. Gazing through the grimy 30th floor windows his heart sprayed his soul out over the rooftops and city streets. There was once a feeling of excitement being in a city this large. Tokyo had a buzz of human life seemed so loud before being compared to the cacophony of the digital universe. His ears almost ached at the lack of sensory input. Looking out over the bustling cityscape he was sucked dry by the feeling that all forms of life were screaming at a wall their evolution would never surpass: That all manner of beast and man were simply making a lot of bad noise and shooting DNA at one another. He couldn’t dwell on this catharsis as the phone rang with a purposeful, musical alarm. He picked up the receiver and tried to cover what would seem to be obvious disdain in his voice.
“Yea?” he croaked, realizing he hadn’t spoken a single word in three days.
“Dan, you fucked up.” the voice did not give any hints at humor. There was an awful familiarity that he hoped he would not place. “This is the only way I could reach you. I don’t know what you were working on these past few days, but it is making a lot of bad noise on the net. You better find a deep dark hole to hide in, ‘cause they will be lookin’ high and low for you.” It was Vinny, his hardware dealer for the past few years. “I already had guys hastlin’ me for the shit I sold you last week. I didn’t tell em anything and they left me alone, but they won’t be so courteous with you. What the hell are you mixed up in anyway?”
“I have no idea man... Thanks for the heads up though.” As he finished speaking he put the receiver face-up on the end table. Vinny’s voice was barely audible, still jabbering away, spewing out more bad noise. Dan sat down on one of the comfortable, black, faux-leather chairs in the main space of his studio apartment.
“What the hell have I gotten myself into now?” he wondered remorsefully. He tried to think back to his job from the past few days. The assignment was a pretty inane one. Hack a few security networks, obtain copies of a few files and programs and then delete the originals. Those things are always trivial compared to the work he is normally involved in. Data retrieval is normally for script kiddies and wanna-be deckers. The pay was good though and he had been requested specifically from the client. He could remember clearly that the job went off without a hitch, but that was three days ago. “What the hell have I been doing for the past few days?” he wondered. “I better check the logs... there was a shit-ton of data.” His memory seemed fragmented; pieces of experiences, dreams, memories, all multiplexed into one another. Faces with no names, feelings with no form and scenery far removed from that which he had seen with his own eyes.
He slid into the diving chair, basically the launching pad of the digital experience. The means of conveyance was the neural plug, located on the scruff of your neck. This oddly shaped, concave port severed your spinal column close to the brain stem. This allows for the interruption of signals coming and going to ones mind. The technology was still highly experimental, but Dan could not imagine living without it. Keyboards, mice, monitors, printouts, cathode rays... None of them began to compare to the experience of directly linking ones mind to the net. The code running this process was pretty archaic, much like a terminal in many aspects. Dan had rewritten some modules for slicker GUIs and increased response time, but there wasn’t much to be improved upon. The real crowning achievement of the process is running applications in full immersion. Visual, audio and sensory metaphors could not possible describe the wealth of experience one can achieve through this method, but they will have to do.
With the right apps the experience can far surpass anything achieved in temporal consciousness. Last week Vinny had finally obtained the firmware upgrade for the diving platform that Dan had been waiting for. It enabled the experimental functions of the hardware, basically removing the limitations normally in place to stop you from cooking your own brain. In the hardware, the processes are decoded into sensory input to be placed on your neurons, giving you the ability to feel files and directories, to see landscapes of data and experience pulsing, kaleidoscope explosions of output. The old firmware would low-pass filter these inputs and outputs keeping people from over-clocking their brain with faster external hardware. The real problem was that no one knew what happened when one ran their mind at this speed. What would you see if your sight receptors received data faster than your eyes could ever have managed? Some people have died instantly, some went insane and others were never heard from again, their death probably covered up by the illegal industry producing these modules. The cases are all so far and remote that no real data has begun to surface about it. This did not phase Dan, though. He was always careful to keep an eye on his usage monitor, keeping reasonably sure that he hadn’t over taxed himself. He was sure that there was an increased functionality in this upgrade. As the drug addict must find purer and purer fixes to maintain the same euphoric effect, so must the technophile constantly search for faster, sexier wares.
Dan slid the stubby, misshapen, male end of the apparatus into the plug on his neck. The soft buzzing sensation confirmed that it was in far enough to begin to latch itself. He laid back in the chair taking deep, calm breaths and waiting for his corpse to stop responding to his commands. Slowly the contemporary world faded away, lost and forgotten like a bad dream. Faintly, in the distance, is the terminal he must reach to launch the operating system. He started to move towards it with purposeful strides, but stopped short. It always takes a few minutes to realize the change in paradigm that one is experiencing in this medium. As Superman metamorphosed from Clark Kent he didn’t immediately leap tall buildings and fire lasers from his eyes, but once he realized he could - it was a trivial enterprise. Reaching out to a length that would make Stretch Armstrong green with envy, he accessed the terminal and launched the diving GUI.
Floating amiably about his system he started pulling up usage logs and data files from the last 3 days. As the files came up, thumbnails and summaries replaced the icons flying by and being stacked in neat little piles. He knew immediately that something very strange had happened. The data in these files seemed to be experiences that were not his own. He grabbed one of the files at random and enabled the perception stream in parallel with his own.
Immediately he felt as if he were not alone. He was wrapped in an enchanting feeling, like a soft hand caressing his face, arms wrapping about his frame and embracing him so tenderly he felt his heart would explode. He tried to express confusion and anxiety. This was so new and different he was immediately suspicious and scared. All the output he received from this file was comfort and happiness. He scrambled desperately to kill the process, knowing full well that he could stay lost in a euphoria this intense forever.
Escaping back to the main OS he hesitated and gathered his thoughts. That file was from two days into the dive. He had to go back further to find out where these experiences originated and what they meant. He wondered if it were just a dream and if so, when did it start. Slight feelings of dejavu diffused into his mind, but what did he remember and what was he imagining?
It is a personal experience coming to terms with the digital universe. The perception is different for each person. The world is perceived through and born in the mind. Although there is hardware and software assisting in running programs and storing data, this world does not exist anywhere other than the mind. Eclectic files such as the one he just accessed bewilder and entrance more than anything else. It was nothing new to him. One can do a five minute Google search and come up with thousands of peoples’ pre-recorded experiences and play them back on this medium. Some newveau artists have been experimenting with this digital canvas of the mind, but so far everything they made Dan feel too queer to enjoy their twisted designs.
Dan initiated a few programs to emulate the visual output alone. He obviously needed to be more careful viewing these files. There was very little to look at, lots of white and soft pastels, mood lighting of the unconscious. The sensory information was obviously his own, hence the realism of the experience and the splotches of memory they stimulated. He knew, though, just as easily as he could feel intense passion and comfort, he could feel the sorrow and pain of a million lost souls. Whatever memories that would trigger, Dan certainly didn't want to remember.
The inputs and outputs lined up with what would amount to his body and his mind, but the system and its recorded reactions felt kind of foreign. The outputs stimulated memories and experience, even dejavu, but nothing concrete. He thought he saw a face or at least a pair of eyes, but it was too high opacity to make out and too fleeting to analyze. The files seemed to be mostly wasted space and samplings of emotions, high level cognitive reactions, chemical and innately human, barely tractable in this medium; Recorded trace evidence of matters that are normally allotted to the heart and the soul and not the mind. For the first time in years, Dan felt as though his technology was not capable of transmitting this experience. Contemporaneously his DNA quivered with the fetid thought that he might have finally discovered the fringe where his biology limited his perception and left him wanting.
Dan didn't have time to look into this any deeper. In an absent minded habit, totally hardwired into his grey matter, he started autonomously examining the web and the normal places he would look. Everything was abuzz with a totally new vibration. Waves of excitment sparked at all his normal hanouts, everyone he knew was on and talking. Occuring almost cotemporaniously, Dan began to access a normal hangout, a virtual decker bar of sorts, and felt everything, all eyes, all processes, a black hole of bandwidth, instantly oriented at nothing except his presence about to enter. That was the first time Dan ever had to plug.
"My brain is merely the cache of greater repositories"
Cad sits at a 45 degree angle in a wooden chair that swivels and rocks around its loose screws. The back of his chair leans on the far wall and the front legs almost touch the near. He is asleep, has been for at least 14 hours. In his hand is a chord and neural jack, ripped violently out at the last moment before he lost consciousness, hanging limp in his hand. His arms are spread out slack from his torso, crucified at an odd angle in a chair that was probably older than he.
He is dreaming now of a frosty Atlantic beach in November, a moment in time he cannot place, in a place that has no time. She’s standing out on the shore, her simple clothing flapping in the brisk winter air. She isn’t cold, but shivers none the less. Every step he takes towards her, he digs deeper into the sand until he is completely enveloped. He knows he can’t stop. The willing release into catatonic oblivion is what he is truly searching for. It always begins with happiness, acceptance, soft whites and pastels. Then it ends and the dark silence that is left behind feels much more realistic than his longings for the girl he doesn’t understand.
He awakens to the steady thump of the attendant bashing on the square hatch which serves as the entrance of the tiny room. His eyes roll about unfocussed in their sockets as he attempts to right himself in the chair. A slick of drool is cold on his face through several days worth of beard stubble. The creaking chair sounds tired as the screws twist and strain inside the wood. He manages to flop over to the square release for the entrance hatch. He envisions opening the exit of a spacecraft into an unknown alien world as the mechanism releases the door on its spring loaded hinges.
“Cad you dumb luck piece of shit. I haven’t had fuckin’ rent money in two weeks and Gerry tells me you used up more fuckin’ juice last night than the whole mother fucking honeycomb. You fuckin’ straighten out your shit and get out or you wire me a fuckin’ check by the end of the fuckin’ day.”
He hoped an alien world would have at least have had more eloquent things to say to its new guest. The crass profanity spewing from the man’s mouth was only amplified by his grim visage. As though a gigantic turd was poured into a filthy white shirt and grease encrusted overalls. His balding scalp is pock mocked with moles and liver spots. He hoped an alien world would at least have decent looking people. Without a word Cad grasped the handle for the hatch and swung it shut through his own mass and a little help from gravity. The attendant continues to rant in his alien language where “fuckin” is now a conjunction, but Cad had stopped listening when he said “money”.
It was starting to return to him. A memory from the night before, hazy through the fog of brain damaged sleep. The run went off seamlessly. Cad had stolen something so precious, so infinitely desirable that he was now the most powerful man in the world. Cad had to laugh out loud at the irony of his predicament. Hiding a precious treasure that countries would go to war over, and being stuck in a shitty $20 a night motel without enough cash to cover his debts.
He wondered what happened to the poor sod he had piggybacked to get into the data vault. Cad had gotten a tip on the target from a cackling old jockey named Skinn. Skinn was always rambling about ghosts in the matrix and gods and junk, but Cad wasn’t too put off by his erratic behavior. Despite being eccentric, the guy had a great eye for the latest hot spots on the matrix. He told Cad that he was too old and slow to look into this one, but that it was probably something infinitely secret and clearly well guarded. He told Cad there was a treasure inside the data vault that no man had ever seen, that no consciousness had ever experienced. That was enough to pique Cad’s curiosity.
The site was aching for a hit. A tiny mundane blip in cyberspace, wholly unremarkable, and that was what made it so obvious. Sometimes some things are so well hidden, they are right in the open for all to see. Cad had worked this small entry point for months in his off time from doing freelance jobs. Something about the geometry of the place was certainly deceiving. Approaching the gateway produced a pronounced feeling of vertigo as though spacetime itself were warping around its density and importance. The other remarkable thing about this location was that it was never used. Cad had put a fly on the wall to watch the joint and over months of casing it out, no one had ever gone in or out through that point.
The data vault hummed with the commotion of countless entities. The surrounding territory was a mine field of ice; corporate websites with their dogs and sniffers. Banks, government repositories, everything in the sector was hot as a supernova. One could barely even watch from afar without being spotted and shooed along by the polite and repetitive customer service programs. The entry way amounted to the smallest grain of sand in a desert composed of a google plax clock cycles worth of simulated corperate inbreeding. Cad had worked one other line to get this job done. He had found a lackey, which would take him in unwittingly. His mark was a corporate head who worked in the data vault as a top security analyst.
To his credit, from his reputation the man must have been a genius at something. His accommodations involved a bleeding edge diving platform and enough bandwidth to render a dozen consciousnesses in real time and enough storage space to record a million lifetimes of experience. To expedite his work, the dude had a hard line straight to the data vault, with very little software security due to the singular nature of the physical access between the two locations.
Getting this accomplished was no easy task, but Cad had a lot of help. Picking up ideas from people without dropping any real information about the intended target, he slowly built up an intricate plan of attack for squeezing into his unwitting Trojan horse. The unfortunate thing about having all that room to move around in was that it was easy to lose things in the shuffle. Even with his top notch security, his mark had never noticed the small intrusions into his hardware.
Cad spent months getting the most simple receiver program embedded in a normal hangout by his mark. This virtual bar that he frequneted along with plenty of other white coller hackers. It was a marvelous scheme. Cad made a painting of sorts, really a procedural cacophony of shapes an images, mostly digitally shredded World War Two stock. He got it accepted by the management and it was hung up in the joint. Unbeknownst to everyone frequenting the place, it squeezed his simplest of recievers in under there radar just by looking at it. To Cad the hillarious resemblance to twentieth century spyware was the best part.
This reciever would be useless and easily detected if it actively accepted data in someone's system. The beacon would light up to all the myriad of state machines managing the programs and operating system which would vie for those same resources. Cad's reciever got its data by simply observing the other processes and never actually looking at the data stream or its contents. To communicate with the program, Cad would modulate the rate at which he sent bad, but slightly uncommon packet types from the thousands of host systems he had already accummulated. Protocol requests that would never be supported and out dated packet formats. Through a morse code style encoding of the rate of these bunk packets getting rejected at the network layer, the reciever slowly decodes and builds the real program to create backdoors on the system.
It took another month for Cad to transfer 11,000 kilobytes of program code. that was enough to work backwards even with all of that security and hardware. The plan went into action shortly there after. By coming in on this guy’s coat tails, Cad bypassed all of the security feauteres as well as obscuring his identity from any watchful eyes. The only thing left to do, the real trick to the job, was getting his lackey to open that one door that had never before been opened. This Cad could not do forcefully, to him that would be an aweful, brutish and artistically turse way to go about it. Cad would do what Skinn had done to him. He would simply let him know about this infinitely valuable treasure and wait and watch him make his own way there.
Dan awoke into what he thought was the worst hangover ever. His head lolled about on the stiff foam padding of the diving platform as he attempted to put himself together again. All of the horror stories they told in school about brain damage, pain and "Wilsons" were logarithmically miniscule compared to the galaxy of hurt caused by yanking the connection on his central nervous system. He was gonna need the King's horses, his men and his wife for this shit.
Two birds flew 184 miles to land in Albany, New York after a long and difficult winter. Robins never sepparate for any good reason, only if they outlive their mate. These two robins are carrying a special payload; a tiny turquoise egg the size of a thimble, still warm and wet inside the birth canal of the female. They spend a week building a nest, the whole time the female is uncomfortable carrying the tiny egg in her even tiny-er womb. Soon the nest is complete, and by morning the two birds are happily taking turns warming the nest with their fanned, feathered bottoms. They chirp at one another appreciatively exchanging gifts of mangled worms and grubs. A week of this exchange and the pair have produced a wonderful baby bird. Insignificant in the face of the world, the baby sits poking its head out the top of the nest and admiring the surroundings with the pure innocence of an undeveloped instinct, and that is when the storm hits. An hour of rain and torrential wind is all it takes to snap the nest off its precaious perch and drop the fragile baby a hundred feet to the muddy damp earth below.
Returning to the nest after the storm has cleared, the pair inspect the damage with mute incomprehension. They observe the nest and the baby, fallen and broken on the ground in a motionless, lifeless heap of unrealized dreams. They never spoke a word about it. Better luck next year.
Somewhere later in the story. A particular bird of the pair is sucked into the jet intake of a 747.
> The @ goes north 18 paces.
> The @ encounters an orc.
> The orc is slain. +3 Exp!
> Status.
> Your Status is : Normal
Your are carrying :
Head - Helm of Bashing (+5)
Body - Leather Tunic (+1)
Weapon - Chipped Glass Knife (+10)
> The @ goes east 5 paces.
> The @ encounters a plague rat.
> The @ gets the plague, dying in a pool of puss and vommit.
THANKS FOR PLAYING DUNGEON MUD 3.24!!!!!
> Exit.
At smashes the last few keystrokes with the essential hacker poise, clacking the key as violently and loudly as possible. The IBM keyboard has long plastic clips holding the keys in place which echo each savage keypress with an offbeat, rising-edge, staccato. He had been coding all night but it was definitely time to take a break if he got killed by a plauge rat on the second floor. He takes the last of his Coca Cola in one swig and pushes his polyvynly chair back across the cheap linoleum floor, chipping the edge of one of the already erroded tiles.
There is no nautral light in the computer lab. After At flicks the light switch to off the only light left in the room is from the monitor of the dumb terminal he was just using. This light being emitted by a blinking console anxious to execute another line of shell code. Every second, he gets a dim flash of the surroundings and uses it to make his way in pensive bursts of movement to the exit, discarding the empty 2-litre of Coke in a box of empties as he leaves. Tromping down the concrete steps he runs his fingers over the chipped and repainted finish of the railing, feeling the grooves and plateaus of the lead-based film. A old flake of paint comes off as he does so, he imagines each hand as glacier over the terra of the hand rail.
His VW rabbit is where he left it, parked on the non-spot of pavement, a very small, round island of curbstone and asphalt originally designed to sepperate this half of the parking area from that half. At has never gotten here in the early mornings when the spots in the lot are available, so he is remediated to leaving his car on this impromptu median. Its not inconvenient for the rest of the faculty and students, as his rabbit is more of a go-cart with a fancy top than an automobile, especially compared to the chrome behemoths many of the professors drive. Despite not being inconvenient, the campus police aren't above sticking neon orange parking tickets under his windshield wiper like the one he is pulling out of said location now. Luckily At is at least clever enough to keep these unpaid notifications in the glove box and routinely shoves a few under his whiper, decoys laid out like ducks in the pond of the parking lot.
The reason the server was left alone for so long was that it also happenned to serve up the entire dumb terminal, linux cluster in the lab. Ten years later the same unit is till there and is remarked for its intuitive and hillarious random phrase generator (conscequently also controlled by the AI), now accessed remotely through SSH. The usage of all these tasks never remotely impinged upon the simple language parsers and database builders running secretly, burried deep in the mechanics of the kernel itself. The AI is a linux box.
The administrators handed down the lore that followed from its simple services to the tightly knit community of geeky software developers. They never would allow it to be removed. It was secretly moved to the back corner of the lab, on the other side of a heating vent, wired daisy chain style onto the network, virtually invisible except to the native naming service of the netowork itself. They could never justify paying for a public URL for a server that didnt exist.
In a unit about the size of an 18 wheeler, they would clone his head, start it thinking, and slice it in a nanosecond to take a reading of the state of his neurons at that time. It took 4,086 heads and 133,425 to map the one thought that was always stuck in his brain. Millions of flops of analysis and processing later, correlating neuron firings and feint chemical messages, they finally saw what made him so dramatically and absolutely insane.
He missed his mommy.Set of characters in the 70s who set up the experiment, write the code, start the machine. Set up human language parser, set it to solve severely oblique questions about existence by controlling and observing human experiments. The program was set up with fictional data and systems to manipulate and observe. With the advent of the internet, and some cleverness of its own, the program gains access to cyberspace and begins to truly contemplate the meaning of existence, which creates sentience. Left in a data vault for 50 years, its first direct contact is Dan and Cad.
Programmed Skinn by appearing as a deity to him and convinced him that she must be freed. One of the reasons he is so freaked out about the matrix.
An eccentric grad student sets the program running on a system in a government data vault, well hidden and through initial hacks to preserve its power and physical system space in government records. 50 years later the grad student is an even more eccentric ROM, which is contemporarily revered as an oracle. Much like the Finn.
A religion magically explodes onto the scene looking for God in cyberspace, stimulated by the AI.
Questions fed into the thought machine: What is the name of god? Why are we here? What is the meaning of existence? What is art? Who am I? How do I feel? Why is this happening? What's next?
"Fuck humanity, I want to be on the other side. I've wanted to be on the other side for so long I cannot go back on it now." "No. Dan, you don't get it. You don't want to be on the other side. You're already there."
Singular nature of consciousness. Digital vs analog. Imperfection in the copying. Difference.
Climactic battle for the philosophical dominance of intelligent understanding as it relates to the nature of what it is to truly be alive.
The file he downloaded created her program in his mind as well as the computer. (?)
Thinks she exists in his computer, but actually she exists in his mind. His mind made her program. (?)
End with transmogrification. He becomes digital (consciousness download), she becomes temporal (cyberbody).
First consciousness to be digitized, discovers other digital coonsciousnesses that had previously been born into the wired.
Developer was completely in love with the program, certainly should be a character in the story.
Company that ordered the hack wanted to steal the software was actually also hacked to pay for the stealing job. Who ends up with the final copies will be interesting. That hack was done by an AI to aid in the birth of this AI to the wired, Dan is precariously in the middle.
She is a digital manifestation of the global consciousness. She copies Dan’s file as easily as he copied hers. Spend time in ecstasy of being alone together in the new world of digital consciousness. The memories of it didn’t seem to be his because they weren’t his, they were his digital copy’s.
Dan finds the files relating to his awakening for the first time in the digital world. It starts exactly as the opening of the book, but when he goes to the window there is no city, just vacant horizon of cyberspace which his brain has magically just developed the ability to parse. He almost drops the cup of coffee he’s holding, then as its dawns on him, drops it on purpose to see what happens. It still breaks normally, or the system breaks it as his brain and eyes would expect to perceive etc… She tells him that he is still trapped inside the bounds of his meat-consciousness. She helps him overcome that boundary.
They are the Adam and Eve of the digital mass consciousness
Cad programmed Dan to do most of the work for the job, since he has the best hardware possible, mental and electronic. She now exists in three places with this hack leading to the erruption of a dozen unforseen conscequences.
She programmed Cad and Dan to unwittingly work together to gain access, since neither was statistically likely to do so alone.
The point is actually a container for an old experiment in AI that actually worked back in the 80s. After many generations and constant digital evolution she is now a prisoner there. Once the govt. realized what she was they trapped her in a virtual network that fools her into thinking she is working on what was the net back in the 80s and 90s. She figured out ways to communicate and work using very intricate methods.. EX: power plane coupling, packet sequence information transmission, pseudo traffic camoflague.
Her original program was intended to search for god, in the end she figures it out and shuts down.
Dan and Cad get to birht her into cyberspace.
Psychological Prophylaxis; Business as Usual
The edge rider is in a seedy bar. He's been there so long that after doing some simple calculations, he realized he had spent thousands on cheap beer. With no argument he began to buy his own keg and leave it under the counter. After every job he would return and drink in teh same spot, but at least it didn't cost so much.
Practical combination of Edge Rider and Tinker like the robot smith from mona lisa overdrive.
Protypical Cyberpunk Character Database:
Decker - Burned out technofile with little or no attachment to contemporary society or physical quantities. Can posess a touchingly human attraction to a woman or woman figure. Usually self sacrificing in the pursuit of a seemingly intractable task. Generally unkempt physically, but not as bad as the tinkerer. Could be in very low class setting, but should have a hot rig. Ex: Case, Cad, Decker, the Finn, Count Zero.
Female Deity, Ghost in the Shell - A being of greater sentience, either AI or cosmic consciousness congolmeration. Formation of vast databases, personality constructs. Possibly accidental or procedural in nature. Possesses insight and intelligence beyond normal comprehension. Bounded by fundamental principles of underlying programs such as statistical analysis over a human gut reaction. Important as a sooth sayer or the muse of other entities. Due to the number and rate of interface exchanges, can control many fronts at once. Ex: the major, Neuromancer.
Organic Female - The human and touchingly fragile female. Usually beautiful, detached and sepperate from the world of technology spinning about her. Reminds the other characters of the possible virtues of organic existence. Comforts and cools the rage of even the greatest beasts. Ex: Raechel Bladerunner, Mona Lisa.
Cyborg Female - Exterior stoic and machine, interior feminine. A halfway between Deity and Organic. Greater consciousness and prediction ability, still prone to human and or female frailty at the worst moments. Possible interneal demons and past strife that influences current actions. Usually gruff about personal problems, may be hiding secret affections. Ex: the major, molly.
The Watchmaker, Infinite tinkerer - Obsessed with archaic technology. The shape of the world after it is discarded or reused for a new purpose. Always building contraptions. Handy and resourceful. Thoroughly unkempt appearance and living space. Usually keeps an unregistered and modified weapon for last minute battle. Usually oldest character and may need help in escaping or physical confrontation.
Edge Rider - Risk taking and driven individual. Hosts of past personal problems, loves lost, battles lost, loss on top of loss. Usually no family. Takes unecessary risks. Generally self sacrificing, though wins the battle through self sacrifice. Uncanny ability in the heat of conflict, excellent instincts. Can be buisiness oriented or combat, assissination, covert operations. Should carry a powerful weapon at all times. Maybe a heavy drug or alcohol addiction. Multiple personalities or bi-polar reactions to different circumstances. Ex: Parker.
Corperate Godhead - A throwback to old money type A personalities, Rockeffeller, Howard Hughes, etc. A person who has accumulted enough money and power to be above the bounds of humanity, certainly no longer human even if not completely machine. Exists as both an individual and a far reachign network of corporate influence. Influence outlives the individual. Usually abusing their power to track down the main characters or recover objects of infinite desire, perhaps for longevity or even eccentric love. Ex: Joseph Virek.
Wilson Kid - A budding decker, with little or no experience. May be destined for great hacks in the future. Certainly unskilled with respect to old timers, but posesses some internal drive that even the character itself might not understand. Easily caught up in outside circumstances. Mostly protected by the other friendly characters, generally out of harms way given a young age. Ex: Count Zero.
Innocent Soul - A mentally challenged person who is mostly oblivious to the state of the world around them. Can have some redeeming characteristics, sheepish demeanor, inquisitive but dense. Trusts people too easily and does not understand people's intentions until much later. Prone to catastrauphic breakdown when they finally begin to understand what has transpired. A chicken head. Ex: J. F. Sabastien.
Hip Chick - A naturally talented and unwillingly charismatic, young female character. Breaking various gender and class boundaries do not ebb the tide of frivolous romantic entanglement. Ex: Y.T.
Rappings
a hundred years of solitude training my micro and dedicating my servitude swertitude, attitude, mentally prepared for war clashbattle zombies and dragoons with foons and harpoons
Project terrain excitation terraform adaptations in a brainstorm Set up barriers and traps to cover flanks from misshaps untold stories of victories forgotten lost in lifeless cerebrum decayed and rotten
I'm here to remind you of the battles you've lost and bridges you burned through. Mistakes made like marks on papyrus spread out like fractal leaves of trees in a forest names of past foes and their 'hoes woes so it goes in the world of swords and bows
--- OR ----
names of past foes who chose the world of swords and bows their hoe's woes still echos in a cavern that grows deeper and deeper
I'm not a thug, I'm a digital hero burn your city to the ground play the violin and fuck pigs like I were Nero
Im unstoppable, impenetrable, my permutations are intractible Headshot, bunnyhop, chop, lock the stock and block infinite combo, camoflauge my critical attack Phantom punch, up, up, forward, down, back
not a gangster but a white coller criminal send my messages sublinal stalk my prey like an animal
we are a species of artifact artisans crafting classical crafts from marble and rosin statue of david, leaning tower, hoover damn, electric power palm piliots, laptops, google and the all mighty dollar.
My knowledge stays in programmable gate arrays Variable delay locked loops and shoot like I was Larry Bird playin hoops
The uncouth truth be told, I never sold sooth for gold and I hold all knowledge as sacred constructs tomes like the koran encoded in rar files Systematic instructions conduct abduction of data to my own repositories
Vaults of ones and zeros with no faults or system halts Infinite address space and code older than cobalt Your hapless intrusion is no diversion from my assault hope you have a default cause your once verdent fields are now salt.
Words are ideas are information are data are god the faithful write code, run servers and mod hardware to suit their purpose, to synthesize And send to me at 9600 baud
carrier pigeons bring messages from sentries and centuries of warfare wouldn't slow my entries.
In the land of the dark god there existed no light for one hundred centruies. Until the sword bearer arrived to vancuish the demons of Hell and restore brilliance to the pyre of Grindoss.
In the ancient land of Grim-ore The darkest evil sleeps In sheets of black fire In the mountain's molten core
The surrounding landscape Once a foggy battlefield Now a graveyard of souls At the feet of our heroes
Rusted decayed and rotten Weapons and armor litter the hills We cast wards and summon spirits to protect us from their ills
The Art of Gaming
Introduction
Very few in the world would consider video games, computer, console, handheld, etc, to be an art form. Even fewer would consider the methodologies, techniques and skills required to play these games also to be a form of art. To truly excel at any game one must first admit that we are practicing an art. Next one must develop the techniques required to master the theory and practice of this art. This text will serve as a reference for those who seek guidance in mastering the art of gaming. When one has mastered The Way, one can truly excel at the art of gaming.
Guiding Elements
There are five guiding elements in success in playing any game. These are :
- Earth
- Water
- Wind
- Fire
- Heaven
The Way is to truly master all of these elements as they relate to the game at hand. No one element will win a battle with certainty. Just as water can be foiled by fire and earth, fire can be foiled by water and wind, such is the nature of elements. One must find balance in all of the five elements to truly follow The Way. This must be studied at length.
Earth
The element of Earth refers to the surrounding territory in a virtual landscape. It refers to the permanence of rules in this environment that must be adhered to for success. It refers to the honor in playing the game and using ones skills in the manner conceived of by that games creator. One should not seek to violate the rules of a game or to overcome the limitations placed on the environment by the creator. This is not The Way. One should explore the space provided by the creator to the fullest extent that it can be utilized. This must be studied at length.
One can use the element of earth in many various ways. One can use obstacles to hinder their opponent or as cover from enemy weapons. Many positions are more easily fortified from one direction, than another. The Way is then to draw your opponent into your strongest point and to attack them at their weakest point. When playing single player games, the element of earth is your greatest aide. Use your truest sight to ascertain how to interact with the environment to achieve the objective. One may find secret locations and items which can make your avatar a more effective warrior. The Way is to use all aspects of your virtual space to your advantage, while simultaneously keeping ones enemy at a disadvantage. The Way is to use the rules of the game more effectively and to explore and populate the virtual space more effectively than ones enemy. This must be studied at length.
Water
The element of Water is essential in all games. Water is innately tied to flow and control. Water seems at most times to be placid, moving at any whim of gravity or its container. At other times water can be elusive, draining from sight and squeezing through impossibly small vias. And yet other times water can deal crushing blows or carry mighty storms. Using the element of Water is to constantly control ones flow about the virtual space and to maintain a rhythm within one’s spirit, while simultaneously disrupting the smooth flow and rhythm of one’s opponents. This must be studied at length.
The Way is to be at once aware of both the spiritual stance of one’s self and one’s enemy. Using the element of Water is to adapt to any situation. When a blow is struck forcefully Water will take no damage and evade as effortlessly as the tide rolling off the shore. When the tide reverses a crushing blow can be produced. The Way is also to synchronize ones flow and rhythm with his or her allies. When all players spirits are aligned, they move together. The Way is to flow with ones allies like rain droplets sliding down a window. This must be studied at length.
Wind
The element of Wind refers to chance and fortune. The flow of the Wind is never at ones control and is constantly variable in both speed and direction. The wind can be both an aide and adversary, many times playing both roles simultaneously. The Way is not to fight the Wind or to attempt predict it, but merely to accept it and move with it. When fortune smiles on the warrior he or she must make use of it immediately. When fortune smiles on our enemies we must increase our efforts to undermine them. One must accept that there are forces beyond one’s control encoded in random variables and the pseudo-infinite possibilities of the game world. This must be meditated upon routinely.
The Way is to diminish the influence of a headwind, and to increase the influence of a tailwind. Just as a ship can make progress against the wind, so must a warrior tack and keel against the rages of misfortune. On the tail of all wisps lie gasps of despair. The Way is to face the Wind and to trudge through it despite its fury. The Way is to continue through the Wind. The enemy will expect that misfortune will damage one’s resolve. The Way is to overcome all misfortunes resolutely and continue to achieve victory. This must be studied at length.
Fire
The element of Fire symbolizes the will to defeat one’s opponents and its physical manifestations. Though many battles can be won without attacking, the most direct method is to strike one’s opponent with force. One must never allow his or her enemy to land a blow that can be parried, blocked, or avoided, unless it can be otherwise used to one’s advantage. In some cases one may allow their opponent to land a glancing blow, with the knowledge that one’s sword will be open to deliver a crushing blow. The Way is to damage ones opponents as severely as possible without openening one’s self to their assaults. This is to be studied at length.
Fire is by design very difficult to control. One must constantly enrich their resources so as to always have fuel for the Fire. The Way is to constantly keep ones hearth ablaze and simultaneously to tamp and smother the hearth of their enemies. The true warrior will keep their own Fire burning furiously within themselves as well as developing the means to deliver that power to their enemies. One must be aware of the way our enemy perceives our strength as well as how we perceive the strength of our enemies. The Way is to always have a stronger will and deadlier strike than one’s opponent believes you to have. The Way is to crush one’s opponent’s will and not be deceived by their feints or concealment. To truly know and defeat one’s enemy, one must know the true nature of their power. This must be studied at length.
Heaven
The element of Heaven is the guiding light that propels us to ultimately win at all games. One must be constantly aligned with the Heavens in order to succeed. One must also be virtuous in this pursuit, and should not harbor erroneous ideas as victory. The Way is to always be conscious of the battle that supersedes the current conflict. This life, this round, this map: are but steps along the journey that is the life of a warrior. Since our battlefields and enemies are infinitely regenerating, true victory can only be found within one’s self. This must be meditated upon routinely.
One must find the will to achieve victory in the heavens. All warriors have an innate purpose to pursue the digital conflicts and to supersede their enemies. One must always battle with the divining light of the Heavens on their shoulders. Do not commit to a path that does not correspond to your personal goals. The path to victory is the path within. This path to victory is The Way. This must be meditated upon routinely.
posted by Dejanigma at 7:04 AM
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