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Draco {tcsh}>cd ~luna
Draco {tcsh}>cd slayers/virtual
Draco {tcsh}>ls -Fla
drwx------ 2 luna wheel 1024 Jan 6 23:49 ./
drwxr-xr-x 6 luna wheel 1024 Jan 6 23:48 ../
-rwxr-xr-x 1 luna wheel 10002 May 20 18:14 impro*
-rw-r--r-- 1 luna wheel 584874 May 20 23:17 fanfic.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 luna wheel 2591 Feb 26 03:02 presents.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 luna wheel 64305 May 22 01:09 virtual001.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 luna wheel 25542 Nov 16 13:50 virtual002.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 luna wheel 17961 Dec 09 19:34 virtual003.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 luna wheel 16227 Dec 23 22:57 virtual004.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 luna wheel 18584 Jan 6 23:50 virtual005.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 luna wheel 16278 Jan 22 00:29 virtual006.txt
-rw------- 1 luna wheel ????? Jan 1 00:00 virtual026.txt
Draco {tcsh}>less virtual026.txt
virtual026.txt: Permission denied
Draco {tcsh}>cat file_is.diz
Correct? : cat file_id.diz ? Y
@X0F SLAYERS VIRTUAL CYBERPUNK ELSE [06/??]
- Moment plus 00:00:30:26
"At the sound of the boom, rush outside to see what is the matter."
Certainly not the best advice to follow, but Hikari no Racquet in hand, that's exactly what Gourry Gabriev did.
"Hey, Gourry! Don't!" Lina called after him, but to no advail. The tennis instructor cum savior of, well, young console cowgirls in trouble was out the door before she could finish uttering his name. Against her better judgement, she followed.
Down at the foot of the driveway, where the van had been, was a column of smoke. A very black and roiling column of smoke. Lina and Gourry stared dumbfounded at it for a moment. Like any auto accident, it completely captured their attention, drawing them in to have a closer look.
To give them credit, this Pavlovian reaction didn't last long. Within moments, Lina and Gourry were swiveling their heads to find the next threat.
A few crickets chirped. A slight breeze blew. The sun shone down upon them in all its happy splendor. Other than the aforementioned rising column of smoke, nothing seemed out of the ordinary for Gourry's suburban neighborhood.
"Ne, Gourry, what happened?" Lina asked.
Gourry, apparently happy that nothing else was amiss, approached the spot of the van again. He waved his arm at it, but did little to remove the smoke, merely drawing it towards him, causing a cough.
Lina came up and stood beside him. "They're... gone! Just like that. Was it a car bomb? What?"
Gourry opened his mouth to answer...
... And the wind picked up, blowing away the smoke to reveal one van, slightly crispy.
About twenty feet from the blast site, two singed and scratched figures lay in a heap. Gourry and Lina both instinctively bolted toward them, slowing down only slightly when they saw both were groggily stirring. Amelia was under Sylphiel, apparently shielded by the larger girl from the brunt of the blast.
Neither looked particularly pleased.
In a moment, Lina was by Amelia's side, helping her up. "Are you guys all right?" she asked, in a concerned voice.
"I.. don't feel so well," Sylphiel moaned, shakily bringing herself up to a kneeling position. She coughed delicately. After a pause, she looked up expectantly at Gourry. Frowning lightly, she said, "Gourry, dear?"
"Oh, right, sorry," he answered as he leaned over and helped her to her feet. She slumped bonelessly against his side, and he put her arm over his shoulder to keep her standing. "Um, what happ--"
"What the hell was that?!" Amelia interrupted him. "Are you trying to kill us?"
Gourry blinked. He gestured at himself and blinked again. "Huh?" he asked intelligently.
"I'm talking about you nearly blowing us up, is what I'm talking about!" she cried angrily. She detached herself from Lina's grip and stood on her own, her clenched fists shaking slightly.
"Whoah, Amelia, calm down...." Lina stepped in, hoping to defuse the situation. "Now what exactly happened?"
"I don't know! Something started beeping and then there was an explosion, and it was in the bag, and it just went BOOM, okay?"
"What she's trying to say, Miss Lina," Sylphiel offered, "Is that there was something in her duffel bag that blew up."
"In her duffel bag?" Lina asked.
Sylphiel nodded slowly. "The one full of Gourry's things. I... guess... something got tripped and went off. Like a security device."
"You don't say," Gourry mused. "That's kind of odd. But it sounds like something my father'd do."
"You can be impressed about that later!" Amelia barked. "Thanks to your father's toys, all of our supplies are gone!"
"Look, we've got to get going," Lina added nervously. "This isn't exactly the quiet get-away I had originally planned..."
Gourry nodded. "If nothing else, the Hendersons will call it in. They called the police last week when I accidentally dropped the Cuisinart out the window."
"How did you manage to... oh never mind." Lina shrugged, and looked around. "I guess we're stuck with the car."
Gourry shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea. It's one of theirs, you know."
Lina slumped her shoulders in defeat. "Let's just get the fuck out of Dodge."
Sylphiel cringed mildly at Lina's swearing, and raised her head. "We could always take my car," she weakly offered. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her keys. "Take these."
Lina looked around, her eyes finally falling on a Range Rover. She looked incredulously at Sylphiel, then back at the Range Rover. "This is you? Who'd've thought... that... huh?" Lina began swaying dizzily, a disoriented look in her eyes. The keys fell lazily from her fingers as she tipped over and...
"Lina? Lina!" Amelia called out, catching Lina as she fell. "Oh no, what's going on now?"
"Can you walk?" Gourry asked Sylphiel, letting go of her before he heard her answer. He picked the keys up off the ground where they had fallen. He helped Amelia get Lina over the the car and put her in the back seat. Turning around to help Sylphiel in, he saw she already was buckled in. He ran inside to grab the computer and the bag of clothes they'd packed.
He rushed back out, pausing to lock up, and hopped behind the wheel. The engine started easily, coming to a low throaty hum. Gourry backed out of the driveway, ignoring the gathering neighbors.
"What about the police?" Amelia asked, sticking her head up front. "Won't they search your house?"
"They won't be able to get into the house... It's sealed up tighter than Fort Knox."
"Um, Gourry... Fort Knox was broken into and wiped out five years ago..."
"Oh, damn."
--MORE--
- Moment plus 04:27:36:55 -
For the second time that day, Lina groggily came back to wakefulness in the back seat of an automobile. Gourry was driving, and it looked like Syl and Amelia were resting off their injuries.
"Um, Lina...?" Gourry asked, as he noted she was up.
"Yes, Gourry?" she rubbed at her forehead. A headache throbbed at her contact electrodes.
"I was just wondering what that Shab-whatsit thing is, and why it's in your head..."
Lina thought about that. She did not know why, exactly, it was that Shabby had decided to take up residence in her skull. Certainly, if she knew, things would be considerably easier to deal with.
The unknown was the most frightening part.
Something tugged at her, something itching to be remembered, so that it would fall into neat ordered sense.
Blank.
"Lina?"
How far back did she need to go? The beginning might fit...
"You know what Y2K was, Gourry?"
"Hmm?"
"It was the most overblown computer scare of all time. Prophecies of doom and destruction of everything from the computers of the US Military to the family toaster. People thought civilization would fall. Survivalism became a popular philosophy.
"And then, 2000 came around. Little, if anything, happened. No fires in the sky. No massive shutdown of computers. Nothing. Life went on."
"So?"
"Well... Then along came Zoamel Gustav."
"Zomelgustar?" Gourry repeated. (Or attempted to, at least.)
Lina sighed. "No... Zoamel Gustav. He was the leader of some group of Eastern European hackers. The called themselves the Knights of the Dawn Frontier. They had predictions. They had things riding on the line. In a perverse way, they'd convinced themselves their future was invested in the world ending with Y2K. When that didn't happen a few of them took it rather hard. It's believed the idea came up, as a prank of sorts, to run a huge computer practical joke.
"But they started bugging a few of the wrong people, the authorities caught them, and boom. The Knights were no more, and Gustav managed to slip away. Or maybe they let him go... no one's heard from or of him since."
Lina lapsed into silence. She watched the scenery go by. Or lack thereof, rather. Everything was black, except for the small stretch of road lit up by the lights of the car.
"Lina?"
"Then, about nine years later something showed up. It wasn't a new virus, relatively speaking. It had old code, old methods. It shut down a few systems, worked in through servers, but generally people just assumed it was a minor problem of other people or a hoax, nothing for them to concern themselves about.
"Within two years, something had changed. They thought there was a minor AI built into the virus, so it could learn and adapt to changes. It started going for targets. It sought out servers with the most traffic. Then it changed again. Instead of looking at the quantity of data, it started looking for sites of more importance. Instead of porn sites and search engines going down, government and high priority business servers began crashing.
"It wasn't long before many things fell to chaos. WORSE than the Y2K could ever have been. It took six years for them to isolate the virus and work at closing it up. DracoNix had survived the crisis better off than others; their platform being more stable and resistant to the virus than those of PC users. They proposed the Ceipheed Solution.
"From there, it was left for people to pick up the pieces. Rezo was one, shuffling most of his fortune into restarting the world's network systems, and even making them better. Others were less altruistic. MazokuWarez, a small company, capitalized on the crisis and took over a major company that had somewhat compatible software. MazokuSoft is the result of that union."
"Then one of the jailed members of the Dawn Frontier came forward. He claimed responsibility for the virus for his group. They had given it the name Shabranigudo."
Lina shrugged. "Everyone thought that it was in the past, however. Then I came across it, arguably the most powerful and dangerous piece of code ever devised. Small wonder people are after it, even willing to kill for it. I wish I knew why Rezo wanted it, though. He's changed."
She shook her head. "Suffice to say that now Shabranigudo is in my head, people are going to want to catch me. For either money or safety, they don't want me to be free. You guys just got into it guilt by association. Does that make sense, Gourry?"
"Hmm," Gourry's face scrunched up in concentration. "I've just got one question."
"Yes?"
"What's this why-too-kay thing?"
A vein in Lina's forehead pulsed.
--MORE--
- Moment plus 05:49:07:01 -
Gourry stared at the wall. He let his eyes trace patterns in the cracked tiling. He had almost gotten a pretty good map of Namibia drawn out when the steady stream became a trickle. His eyes shifted back down to the business at hand.
Two shakes and a zoot later, he was standing in front of the sink. His cheek practically glowed red. Lina didn't have to hit him; not that hard, anyway. All he did was ask a simple question.
He washed his hands and left the restroom. The rest stop was empty except for the four of them. The pre-dawn light cast pale highlights on the landscape. Gourry sniffed in deeply and let out a breath through his mouth. It showed up as a slight cloud in front of him.
"Ah! Isn't it going to be a wonderful day?" he called out.
After a moment, he realized that no one was answering. He saw the three girls seated at a picnic table. Lina and Amelia were sitting, blank faced except for the telltale shivers of being jacked in. Sylphiel paced in a small circle, worry
etched into her face.
"I tried to stop them, Gourry, but they insisted it was something they had to do."
Gourry's reply died on his lips at the sound of the siren. His gaze lept away from the girls towards the parking lot. A trio of police bounded onto the grass and skidded to a halt.
"You out there, stay still and nobody gets hurt." Six cops boiled out of the cars, taking up defensive positions, their guns already out.
Gourry flicked a glance back towards the Range Rover. They might be able to make it. "Sylphiel," he said, slightly too loud. "Get ready."
"For what?" she whispered.
"Grab Amelia and run. NOW!" He dove forward, grabbing Lina and her deck and hauling them away. A second later, Sylphiel did the same with Amelia, but had trouble dragging the smaller girl along. Gourry grimaced, and grabbed a leg to help. Awkward but it worked.
They got about five steps before the cops started firing. "WE SAID FREEZE!"
"Keep running!" Gourry called, getting a few steps ahead of Sylphiel. He slowed momentarily, so as not to stretch Amelia.
The deck in his hand jerked once then exploded in a shower of metal, silicon, and plastic. His hand stung from hundreds of small cuts.
Beneath his arm, Lina let out a bloodcurdling scream. He heard Sylphiel hiss in pain and felt her falter a step.
The truck was so close...
He stopped a step, flipped Amelia up on his shoulder, then pushed Sylphiel in front of him. He wasn't sure how, but they crammed into the front of the truck.
The windshield cracked like a spider's web as he started the ignition. His hand began to sting as he grasped the wheel around to get away.
He completely missed the exit ramp. They bounced across a curb and crashed through a fence. Belatedly, he turned on the four-wheel-drive and gunned the engine.
--MORE--
- Moment plus 09:47:41:03 -
Lina groaned. Her entire head ached, but especially her eyes and temples. "Whu happ'n?" she slurred.
"Don't move," she heard Gourry say quietly. "We got attacked by corporate cops and something hit your deck."
"Whul I w'z jakd in?" She thought that over. Dangerous, certainly; there was a reason you didn't move people who were jacked in. To destroy a deck though, that could have killed her.
Wait. Strength and clarity coursed through her system. "The deck took a hit? My deck? My amazing DNOS?" She pushed herself up and speared the tennis instructor with a glare.
Mutely, Gourry nodded.
"AGH! What am I going to use now?"
"But, um, Lina... that was my dad's deck!"
--End File--
---------------
Author's note:
The end of this is quick, dirty, to the point, and not quite up to my normal standards... but I'm still happy with it. It's also late, and I must apologize for that.
Just a word to the wise: signing up for a lot of Impros tends to cause conflicts, and not everyone can juggle that sort of stuff like John Evans. ^_^ I had to drop two of the Impros I had up this month, and I'm still in a time crunch.
Much thanks to ravi for stepping in to fill in some early scene stuff for me while I was at work on Ultra. And to Ardweden for giving much support. And 2F for starting this whole thing (Impro in general and Virtual in particular.)
@X0C컴컴컴컴컴|
@X09 .------------------------------.
@X09 | this episode by damien roc
@X09 | and ravi
@X09 | cracked by stefan gagne
@X09 | indie distro by improfanfic
@X09 `------------------------------'
@X0E컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴
@X0B
@X0E[Solaris]컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴[Jan 2000]