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By: David Siegel--dhs28@columbia.edu
C:\>
C:\>cd slayers
C:\SLAYERS>cd virtual
C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL>dir
Volume in drive C is CEE
Volume Serial Number is 186D-18F1
Directory of C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL
IMPRO EXE 10,002 05-20-99 6:14p
FANFIC ZIP 584,874 05-20-99 11:17p
PRESENTS TXT 2,591 02-26-98 3:02a
-------- --- 2 02-26-98 3:02a
CHAPTER 1 ??????? 05-22-99 1:09a
CHAPTER 2 ??????? 11-16-99 1:50p
CHAPTER 3 ??????? 12-09-99 7:34p
FILE_ID DIZ 411 12-09-99 7:36p
8 file(s) 597,890 bytes +
2 dir(s) 9,192.05 MB free
C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL>type file_is.siz
File not found - file_is.siz
C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL>type file_id.diz
C:\SLAYERS\VIRTUAL>type chapter.3
SVp3: I Have No Mouth...
Among the endless twisting connections of the all-encompassing network, one stream of electrons, of pure data, opened between two computers halfway around the world from each other. While almost every other stream holds instructions and information on how to create a near-perfect simulation of a reality, enough to fool the eyes, the ears, the skin, the mind, this stream -- even though it traveled between two computers more than powerful enough to understand those instructions, and perform them perfectly -- contained only an exchange of text.
howzit goign, Moon?
--MORE--
In a suburban tract home, an especially irate Lina yanked off her neural headband, a headache already growing, fueled to a crushing pain by the tension of her anger. "What a punk. He actually thought that I'd just give it to him, didn't he! I hate those goths, always assuming that everyone around them is a frothing idiot. Are you SURE you don't have any food here, Gourry?"
"Well, I've got oat bran. And some fruit..."
"BLECH! I said FOOD."
"Fruit would be wonderful, Gourry! Healthful food is the best, it provides fuel for your body and mind."
"This from the queen of sugar?", Lina thought. "Whatever," she said, exasperated, "Just give us SOMETHING. And some Advil, if you've got any."
Five minutes later, over bran and bananas, Lina and Amelia tried, ineffectually, to explain their meeting with Zelgadis to Gourry. Gourry, of course, didn't quite get some of the concepts involved, and it was necessary to use some metaphors that didn't quite sit well with Lina ("Grassy field next to the Information Superhighway? I don't believe I just said that."), but in the end, it was possible to make him understand that Zelgadis wanted what Lina had, and that Lina didn't want to give it to him because the consequences would be, as Lina had to phrase it for Gourry, "Very, very bad."
"There is one thing that's weird, though." Lina continued, "Why would some idiot Goth have a set-up like that? No matter how much money he might get from his rich parents or whatever, only a real bithead would have a setting like that primed and ready to go." Lina hmmmed while tapping her lips. "I'm going to do some poking around. Want to run interference, Amelia?"
"Of course! I'll keep your back clear in the name of Justice!"
Gourry just gazed on blankly.
--MORE--
America Online sprung up around Lina like Vegas coming out of a blackout. The second her feet touched the ground, or rather did so metaphorically, she glanced behind her at Amelia, touching down right after her. In a moment Amelia's interference was up, spamming various random megacorps, rifling through warez and mp3 sites, giving her the screen she needed to get to business. She had the address of the site they'd met with Zelgadis at, and that was enough to start with.
The first thing she found was that, as she expected, Zelgadis wasn't the actual owner of that set-up. It was a meeting-space, designed, hosted, and leased out by some company called Zurich On Line Federation, so that looked to be a dead end...but wait... Although she could easily find the dates and payments for other clients for that space, it hadn't been rented out in days...so Zelgadis had either hacked ZOLF, which Lina doubted, as it was a company on-the-ball about security while he was just some idiot goth, or he had some sort of connection there.
A quick trace up the ever-present paperless paper trail of payments and contracts, owners and clients, and Lina found the conglomerate that owned ZOLF through a subsidiary masked by a trust and a "silent" partnership. New Occident-Orient Network System Administration, a massive service provider-service provider with subsidiaries everywhere: Europe, Asia, Africa, the Americas, even a POP in Antarctica. It ostensibly only provided bandwith to ZOLF, but owned it outright. NOONSA proved a little more opaque to Lina's investigations. All the important records were locked down tight, and the administrative org chart, provided openly on their site for potential investors, was so convoluted, and so obviously obfuscated, that Richard Nixon's preserved brain could be the legal CEO of the company and no one would be the wiser.
Even if the important places were locked away, sometimes important places could be reached from unimportant places. Though the main server was too difficult to break easily or quickly, few companies larger than a newspaper stand had just one computer. Or even just one network, for that matter. With a few minutes work, Lina had cut through the "wall" separating her from one of the minor servers, and was inside what seemed to be the mail server for the bottom managers, represented as a room filled with file cabinets, stretching out as far as she could see.
From there, grabbing a piece of mail, gravid with video, and riding it to one of the higher-level, and supposedly more secure servers was cake. Once there, however, things weren't so easy.
"Please state your name and password, please." The daemon behind the counter was female, and almost vanishingly demure. Cloak rustling as she detached from the mail, Lina went right into some quick cracking routines, but to no avail. The daemon just sat there, smiling slightly, door firmly closed, without a hole showing in the security. She tried a dictionary program, resulting only in the daemon gently saying, "I'm sorry. That is not a valid password. Perhaps you misspoke?" Lina tried to slip by, and that's when things went sour.
As soon as she passed the plane of the front of the desk, the daemon's representation shuddered and changed from a mousy receptionist to a nine-foot bouncer. It growled at her, it's voice deep and growly only as a computer-generated voice designed to be deep and growly could be, "Unauthorized access is forbidden, and will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." In response, Lina quietly cursed and called up an attack program, drawing her hands back as the ICE-daemon reached for her. Just as it was about to touch her, to close to back away, she shouted the command to run the attack. With a cry of "FIREBALL", she unloaded enough digital fire into the daemon to render it, and likely any other security measures around, useless until some admin came 'round to fix them. Another fireball took care of the door, and she was in, surrounded by another near-endless field of filing cabinets, although these were nicer and slightly less obviously a computer simulation.
"No time," she hissed, "Especially not for this much stuff." A flick of her wrist readied a search program, and a few words sent it off, looking for something she thought might help her. As it sped off, flitting among the cabinets, Lina tapped her foot impatiently.
It took five minutes for the program to return to her, and when it did, once again, the majority of what she had to go through was accounts of the puerile and pompous day to day management a hideously boring multinational information conglomerate. One message, however, stood out from the bunch.
The text itself was meaningless to her, something to do with the acquisition of some other business, important only in that it was orders to the man who seemed to be the putative head of the company. In this case, the medium was the message. Rather than appearing as some piece of plain office paper, this memo was rendered as a sheet of fine vellum, and fixed at the top of the sheet was an ornate wax seal, the representation of a digital signature, affirming where the message had originated.
In slanted lettering within a line diamond, the letters RPR, all in red on a black field.
RPR Technologies. A company known, by name at least, to everyone who knew anything, even if it hadn't done anything in the past eight years, ever since they had released all their technology into public domain to rebuild after Shaburanigdo.
Funny though, she hadn't seen that logo before... she didn't even know that they had one. It seemed familiar.
A marking on a badge seen across the kitchen counter. A label on the first headset she'd ever used. Bright red, like a crimson klieg light, burning inside her head, filling her vision. The light was hot, and the light was pushing. Her head was burning from the inside and trying to fly apart from pressure, both at the same time.
Her head.
--MORE--
Muted light, and the muted remains of a passing headache. For the second time, Lina awoke in the Gabriev guest room, time lost and mind confused.
"What the hell was that?", she wondered to herself, still too disoriented to raise her head off the pillow. "Can't have been security measures, they were all still down. Damnit, I can't keep blacking out like this. And if RPR is involved, at all, I can't keep slipping up."
A knock came at the door, shortly followed by Amelia and Gourry, both sporting looks of concern, one only slightly more vapid than the other.
"Oh, Lina! I was so worried! When you passed out while hooked up, I thought that you'd been burned! What happened in there?"
"Dunno, Amelia.", Lina said weakly, "I don't think it was ICE, or any other security doodad, but I can't imagine what else it could be." Her face turned serious. "More important than that, I think I know who's involved in this, who's behind Zelgadis. But everything makes even less sense now."
"Who? Who would want to unleash Shaburanigdo on the world?"
"Dr. R.P. Rezo. But it makes no sense! He's a legend. He helped rebuild the net after Shaburanigdo, giving away his patents for free. It's because of him that we have neural links at all, and he must have lost millions when he gave everything away like that."
A confused Gourry broke in at this. "R.D. Ragu? Who's that?"
Lina's draw dropped, and with her eyes closed, she began to explain. "Dr. R.P. Rezo is one of the greatest minds that the computer world has ever seen. Starting just around the turn of the century, he was involved in all the major advances in the technology. Immersive visual environments, pseudo-memory, early advances in cybernetics, everything. He was the major researcher behind the development of the neural interfaces that most people use now." She paused, and opened her eyes, only to gaze down at the bedspread covering her. "But after Shaburanigdo, he stopped lecturing, stopped collaborating with people, and just released all the patents he held into the public domain. The DracoNix groups hailed him as a paragon of their ideals of free information, but he didn't have anything to do with them. Nobody has heard much out of him in years now. But if he's involved, then..." She was interrupted, however, by the tone of the doorbell. Gourry, clearly uninterested in the lecture, sprang up and towards the door, pursued by a barely-mobile, but loudly protesting Lina, who hobbled after him, leaning on Amelia for support.
Gourry's cheery "Hello" as he opened the door was encountered by a man clad entirely in beige, from his hat, pulled low to touch his mirrored sunglasses, to his gloves, running up to meet with his sleeves, to his shoes, a pair of thick, heavy boots.
The only thing not beige, besides his glasses and the thin strip of flesh visible around his mouth, was the gun, gray and menacing, held calmly in his hand and pointed directly at Gourry's chest.
"I told them that it would come to this, but they refused to listen. Now I suppose you're involved as well. Can't be helped." Raising his voice slightly, the man called out around Gourry. "Lina! Amelia! Ah, there you are." With a wave at the stretch limo behind him, he continued, "All three of you, in the car. And bring your computers."
They complied, Amelia and Lina both letting out a single word, a name, under their breath. "Zelgadis."
--MORE--
In the back of the limousine, the Slayerz (so-styled by Amelia) and Gourry sat facing Zelgadis, who was still fully covered in beige, and still pointing his gun at them. Lina, as usual, was the first to speak.
"So where, exactly, are you taking us? Or are you just going to be all stupid and mysterious?"
"There's no need for that, Ms. Berkowitz. Subterfuge is for negotiations. When we've reached this stage, I have no problem telling you. You're coming with me to see Dr. Rezo. After that, you're no longer my concern."
Gesturing at Zelgadis' clothing, Lina spoke again, trying to rile him. "Aren't you a little hot in all that, Gothboy? It's not like we have a problem with global cooling, or anything."
"I'm fine, Ms. Berkowitz. The one you should be worried about is yourself. I told you that things would go better for you if you listened to me in the first place."
"Hah!" piped up Amelia, "You're the one who should be worrying, scumbag. We'll triumph over your evil, you'll see!"
A sardonic smile momentarily moved Zelgadis' lips. "It's not MY evil, little girl. I'm just working for a man I don't like very much. If I bring him what he wants, meaning you, I get what I want. And what I want," he paused for a moment as he took off his glasses, "I want VERY badly." The slight smile turned into a full on grin as Zelgadis raised his head, revealing a pair of pale metallic orbs, pricked in their centers by the black pits of camera lenses, that had been hidden behind his sunglasses.
--MORE--
The headquarters of RPR Technologies was located in a imposing office building in the middle of downtown. As the limousine arrived, Zelgadis replaced his sunglasses and motioned his three captives out of the car. The elevator ride was muted, Lina bearing her own computer, the repository of Shaburanigdo, and Amelia carrying Gourry's overpowered deck.
Up and up the elevator went, stopping only at what was indicated to be the top floor. With a practiced motion, Zelgadis removed one of his gloves and revealed his hand, made partially of flesh, partially of metallic tendon, which he placed upon a plate above the floor buttons. With a lurch, the elevator resumed its upward journey, until it came to a halt, and the doors opened, revealing a single office, with a single desk, behind which sat a chair, its occupant cloaked in shadow.
"It is very surprising," began a voice from the chair. "That these last eight years, the longest and most painful eight years of my life, should be bracketed, on both ends, by a girl named Berkowitz. Although," the figure said, raising a single finger, "I hear that you prefer to be called "Inverse". What would your sister say, hmmm?" With this, the figure rose up, entering the light and revealing itself as a tall man, in a dark red suit, with his eyes unblinkingly, unstirringly, closed. "I'm glad to see you here, Ms. Inverse. And I'm even more glad that you brought what I want with you. I hope things won't have to become any more unpleasant than they already are. Zelgadis, if you would?"
Lina gasped in shock as her arm was almost pulled from its socket by the force of Zelgadis' removal of her computer from her grasp. Mumbling words under her breath, she pulled back her hands, readying a flare arrow, realizing that she couldn't only just before thrusting her hands forward to throw it. She clenched her hands in anger, mostly at those two smug bastards, but partially at herself. "Am I going crazy? Those are just programs for online. I can't do that here. But then ... Why are my hands so warm?"
Zelgadis placed Lina's deck on Rezo's desk, and slipped a thin connector into the plug where Lina's headband would normally connect. Immediately, the window behind the desk dimmed and brought up an image, pulled from the depths of Lina's computer.
"Encrypted, I see. That's very wise of you, Lina Berkowitz. Wise indeed. You may not truly know what you have here, but you know well enough to keep it tied down. Would you be so kind as to provide your voice and passcode? Or will we have to do something to one of your friends?"
--EOF
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Note: I'm happy with this now. I'd have liked, maybe, to go a little further, but I've already done some firm things with Rezo, Zelgadis, and Lina's past, and I didn't want to be too greedy. Good luck to Mr. Harrison, and to all future writers.
@X0F SLAYERS VIRTUAL CYBERPUNK ELSE [03/??]
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@X09 .---------------------------------.
@X09 | this episode by DHS
@X09 | cracked by stefan gagne
@X09 | indie distro by improfanfic
@X09 `---------------------------------'
@X0E컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴�
@X0B
@X0E[wIN95/98/NT/DOS]컴컴컴컴컴컴컴[Dec 1999]
Fine, thank you.
good to hear. You know, of course.
Of course. I've already set some of His children to sniffing around.
Jeez. Dya haveta call it "Him"? I wonder if you should be spending so much time watching it.
He has to be watched, and I'm the one to do it. Would you just turn him off, to wait until we needed him again? He's learning this way, and so am I.
Your giving me chills, calling it 'him". Don't go wierd on us, Moon. We need it. And you.
I know we need him. I know the whole world needs him. That's why I'm doing this. And don't worry. We'll find the fragment before it becomes a problem.
Whatever. Cheers.
Her head.
HER HEAD.