A few weeks ago, Grace's quest to find out what the Hell was up with the mysterious, Awakened, creepy online stalker she'd managed to acquire came to an abrupt halt. She ran into a Wall, just when she'd sat down to try to peruse the contents of the stalker's (cracked) forum.
That sucked.
One quest was replaced with another, this one a bit less malicious, a bit more tedious, and a lot more frustrating. It's no secret to most who saw her that Grace turned to griping, moaning, and sometimes not sleeping during the couple of weeks wherein she had to break some complicated encryption by hand in order to get her computer back.
That being said, despite the utter barbarism inflicted upon her, despite how the idea of crawling back to anrkyangel and asking for help galls a bit...
Creepy online stalker is creepy.
One of the first things Grace did when she got her computer back was glance at that forum download, and while Kalen may be a great help for bringing Lebanese food and a gun, there's nothing to shoot here. There's nowhere to aim. And she's becoming less and less convinced that her stalker's apparent cuteness and playfulness doesn't mask some terrible purpose.
So, she texts a number that was placed in her phone -- the one with the name of a person she does not know.
Grace: Hey, you said if I wanted to meet you, I could contact this number. Consider yourself contacted.
anrkyangel
The number that Grace messages belongs to one Riley Poole, Virtual Adept and Cypherpunk known to the rest of the Tradition by the handle anrkyangel. With a name like that, what could Grace possibly be expecting? This mystery person who has so far only communicated with the apprentice via hijacked lines and hacking into her electronics, already told the woman that they could help, that they wanted to help, but Grace needed to accept the invitation into the Tradition in order for that help to be of any real use to her.
She'd accepted, but from the looks of things she still holds a grudge for, you know, getting inducted into the Virtual Adepts and being swept out of the sights of that Ghost Wheel persona. But Riley knows she's still considered the lesser of two evils. Time will tell how that will end up working out for Grace.
There has been no contact whatsover, one Virutal Adept to the other, since Grace was officially declared one, and Riley has not been waiting at all. She has other things to do besides wait by the phone for that momentous day when Grace finally deigns to reach out to her. That much is obvious when it takes almost a day for there to be a reply to that first baby step toward working together.
I did indeed, consider your contact received
Grace
Grace is a busy person already, but the chance at furthering her goals makes her itch to answer back. It only takes about a half hour before anrkyangel gets a response (because hey, this one time, a professor of hers doing a demonstration took somebody's phone and poured liquid nitrogen on it as punishment for in-class texting, you know.)
Grace: You have an idea where we should go, or should I just hand over my address (who am I kidding, you probably already know it).
anrkyangel
Not a day, but more than a few hours pass between Grace's message and the reply:
First meet at your place ho ho are we feeling frisky? ;)
And then a few seconds later:
Srsly tho passssssss who knows what li'l "presents" you & your man candy made me. Your place my place, too personal/private. Where else?
Grace
Grace: Man candy? He will be so pleased. Honestly, no sarcasm. I did want to have a private conversation, though. The board's not swept. Pieces still in play, you just put the game on pause for a while.
This time, the text appears just a few seconds later, like Grace has found somewhere to chill while waiting for Riley.
anrkyangel
Duh, sweetheart. The game was back on the second you got back online. What did you expect? For your new specter pal to get bored and wander off while you were gone?
That response comes within minutes, who knows why.
Grace
Grace: Considering what they've done so far, no. I really wasn't expecting that at all. But you made it sound like you'd done me a huge favor and made them go away, or at least 'swept me off the board' as you put it.
There's a pause there, maybe Riley can get another message in between these, who knows, but regardless, Grace will send the next bit.
Grace: I have some game data to share. Is why privacy. Why I'm getting in touch.
Grace
[Ohh crap. I forgot Nightmares!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
anrkyangel
Riley does not slip in a note between messages. Clearly she is in no rush.
You being OFFLINE was you off the board. Never said it was permanent lolol You're a clever girl, G, but assumptions will be the death of your intellect.
A short while after Grace's message, she gets:
Oh ho ho so the wunderkind is finally ready for a helping hand?
Grace
Guh. Infuriating. How was that supposed to be something Grace should be thankful for? It's a good thing the internet hides body language, or the weariness, the frustration, it would all be so overwhelmingly apparent.
Grace: If you're ready to help.
anrkyangel
That's the funny thing about the Virtual Adepts, particularly anyone at even one level higher than Grace is currently. Riley has seen Grace from afar. Not often, not in any compromising positions (because other people's personal business is ew ew ew ew ew). She - at least up until Grace figured out how to break down The Wall - peeked in from time to time to check her progress and before that to make sure no one else slipped in and tried to claim this little gem. It's how she found out about Ghost Wheel and Kalen and that not-too-shabby laptop of Grace's.
Riley is not checking in on her now, true, but there ways to tell when someone's being a bit, well, weird.
Like Grace asking if Riley is "ready to help" when the person on the other end of that invisible line has said she can and will help. Supposedly Grace accepted that offer when she clicked the button and agreed to be a Virtual Adept, but then all that time went by with no word from the apprentice.
Hmm I forget, what'd I say last time?
[Corr 2: Secure Connection: diff 5 -2 (unique focus)]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (5, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grace
Grace: A bunch of words. Words, words, words.
A pause again, and then she comes back.
Grace: I'm being mean. Didn't sleep too well last night. You said you'd help, so here I am begging the queen for alms, okay?
anrkyangel
During that pause there is no response. Maybe anrkyangel, the mysterious Riley Poole, has finally closed up shop and walked away.
Oh, but then that second message comes through, and the response is nearly instantaneous.
Nice recovery! :D
And what is this? Another quick response.
Methinks face time is not in our immediately future, but give me a few and we'll have ourselves as secure a connection as it gets.
And it does take a while before Riley gives the all-clear, but in the meantime:
Sorry to hear about the sleep thing. Caffeine junkie? Or some other thing? I won't judge, Scout's honor.
[extending! going for 7 total suxx @_@]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (4, 6) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grace
Some other thing. Waiting for your connection.
She's going to leave it at that, at least until the secure connection comes around. Because what she has to share involves the reason why she can't sleep at night anymore. Going to have to broach that one.
Creepy stalker, why couldn't you be nice?
anrkyangel
When it comes to personal stuff, sometimes it's harder to talk to a bunch of text on a screen. Then again, sometimes it's much, much easier. Not many people would fault Ginny Weasley for confiding in Tom Riddle's diary.
Though Riley's curiosity is a bit piqued, she's not going to dig at Grace, at least not until they can be sure their connection is secured. Or well, Riley will be sure, Grace will just have to trust her. Which one might suppose is step one in their quest to work together on Ghost Wheel.
Things are quiet for a few minutes longer.
[final extension. no WP because NO GUTS NO GLORY YOU CAN DO IT RILEY]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (2, 6) ( success x 1 )
anrkyangel
[and then I don't know int+computer for a mundane connection?]
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
anrkyangel
[and then an int+larceny]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Grace
Trust is more enforced by the evil outsiders, the Black Hats, the NSA, whatever you want to call Them than anything else. Grace trusts that if they are going to indeed get crazy with the conversation that Riley wouldn't want her own name to end up on a watch list.
That'll do a lot to engender some trust in a person, no?
In any case, she waits. And waits a bit more. Wants to ask if everything's ready yet, but that sounds too much like the little kid in the back of the car going "Are we there yet?" and so...
She's sitting on her bed in her apartment, by the way, should anyone be so bold as to look in (or through) with her laptop up, the spread of info gathered so far on the Fallacy of Impulse displayed. And her phone with those messages lies alongside.
anrkyangel
Names are such flexible and impermanent things. What is in a name? Riley is Riley and also anrkyangel and others, too. Other names for other things. Other names in and for other lives. There are names that Riley would not want known to the Black Hats, but this one? This one she probably wouldn't mind them hearing about at some point a little while down the road. Maybe.
Finally, after a good bit longer than "a few""
And we're good! No force in the 'Verse can crack into this line. For a few hours at least.
Grace
Okay, I'm going to point you to a few things on my end. Some of this might be infected. Beware the pictures and audio files, but even some bits of text I've read here and there have been enough to twinge the neurons a bit.
And I have reason to believe this person/people are not friendly.
First things first, I'll give you the email I sent Man Candy on the night you hit me with the Wall.
And yes, she does, although it's obviously edited to protect the innocent.
///////////// TO: Man Candy -- FROM: G /////////////////
Problem
I advise you not to look too deeply into these sites. Don't run their files. Remember Thakinyan in the movie?
[Link to Problem #1 -- an Amazon listing under the name L. Marshall selling a PDF of short stories]
[Link to Problem #2 -- a blog called Turingtopia, with links the actual L. Marshall site listed as "My old site." Has a decidedly 90's feel to it, with Magic Eye pictures and crappy graphics.]
[Link to Problem #3 -- a website called L. Marshall's Theory of the Essential Fallacy of Impulse]
So that you don't have to guess or go poking around on these evilly-designed pieces of crap with potential viruses, mundane and otherwise, I'll lay out to you why there is a problem.
L. Marshall is my pen name, and those are my stories. Someone out there is pretending to be me. That wouldn't be a problem, if they weren't being so creepy about it. Example, this is a bio from the Fake L. Marshall:
L. Marshall lives by the mountains. By the mountains lives L. Marshall. L. Marshall goes to school. The school goes to L. Marshall. L. Marshall knew Richard Cory, Richard Corey knew L. Marshall. L. Marshall wrote The Turing Test [link]. L. The Turing Test is writing L. Marshall. Open source the physical world. The physical world is open source. L. Marshall is a Libertarian and a Vegan and [
Richard Cory
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Ideas
- It sounds like I got someone's attention. They could be some random weirdo.
- It could be an attempt by Gadfly to contact me when he can't through normal channels? It's a stretch, but this does have Gadfly written all over it, so I don't know.
- It could be a trap.
- It could be another Virtual Adept keen on playing some sort of game. In which case, I hope they don't mind getting FedExed some plastic monkeys, a corkscrew, and a Valentine's Day card from Richard Cory, because two can play this weird-ass game.
I'm going to go do some research and find out who this person actually is. If I am dealing with some Awakened person here, it could be dangerous. There are some veiled threats to me in some of the passages I've run across on these sites, so somebody's being cute or they're being intentionally scary.
So, that being said, if something happens to me in the next 24 hours -- it was probably due to this shit right here. I'll keep you advised.
///////////////// END EMAIL ///////////////////
So, that was the start of it. They've been a bit obsessive about me from the beginning, no? So, then I went and did a bit of looking, a bit of searching, and I ran across this password-protected forum called the "Essential Fallacy of Impulse" that was not linked on any of the sites I was specifically pointed to.
That being said, I take everything in this forum to be a bit suspect, just because of how easy it was to crack. Like they were expecting this, and feeding me information. I hit it with a web spider, downloaded all the links in the place before Stalkery Stalker could boot me out and erase it all.
/////// Fallacy of Impulse ///////
L Marshall's Fallacy
[ a pass word protected forum ]
--The forum is a forum of many forums:
The Dungeon
L. Marshall
Electric Sheep
X_X
The Oubliette
Hello, is anyone out there?
Game FAQs
--The many forums also have sub-forums
The Dungeon
- Trapped Forever
- Old Threads
L. Marshall
- Virtue Girl
- Predictions
Electric Sheep
- Phantasmagorgasmica
- Untz Untz Untz
X_X
- there is nothing here
The Oubliette
- Delorean
- 1066-7
--(Then there are threads not within the subforums. Not many, but a couple.)
capriciousrebel
NeptunezMighty
alltheserafeem
VoidCalibrator
Solomon Jones
Hello, is anyone out there?
you guys know the deal
- HI. [one thread: 7 pages.]
Game FAQs
Spread The Word, Suckers. It's Already Too Late.
- Essential Fallacy of Impulse
- Cowboys and Indians
- Orobourus
- .HACKTOFF.
- .GHOSTB1GB4DPROPHETZ.
- Sin.
- Other
anrkyangel
Grace is trying to protect the innocent, an attempt that Riley finds delightful. Obviously she knows of his existence and at the very least she is aware that he's in the Order of Hermes. Whatever else she knows is (probably not much) unknown, but it probably involves his name (Kalen, nothing more and nothing less). She is not about to break it to Grace that her attempt, though admirable, is unnecessary.
Which is a reason for putting off face time for a little while longer at least. Now that they're getting down to the business of Ghost Wheel, business that Riley admitted pushed up her timetable for the Wall, there are certain things that it certainly would not do for Grace to find out. And she would find them out, because Riley has no discernible poker face. First thing she would notice if she said to Riley's face that she thinks this person/people are not friendly is that Riley's eyes would light up and she would try her hardest not to grin or laugh but oh, how thoroughly and completely she would fail.
So she dips into that connection between them and - here is another thing that Grace doesn't know, but Riley's not on a mobile device, or if she was she isn't anymore. Not since she stretched that connection security across the city. Grace is at home on her laptop and Riley is...well she's elsewhere, working with something much more powerful and advanced, a system which is so infused with her resonance that it feels like an inexorably shifting, mercurial thing. It allows her to work her magic more effectively, and gives her something of a ringside seat to Grace's desktop.
She takes a screenshot of that email exchange, and looks over the page.
And Grace's phone buzzes with incoming messages, which appear to happen live while Riley reads down through the text.
Hm do you think Turing Test just means...you know, Turing Test? Testing you for intelligent thought.
Is that giving things away? Hm. And then:
Turing was one of us, you know. US us. Back before we split from the Union.
You don't like cats? Only lamers don't like cats, G
Nice catch, tho. Full disclosure: When The Wall shut you down I tried tracking your little admirer. They're good, I couldn't catch 'em
It's text, but even in text those words almost seem to glow with a kind of confidence. If anrkyangel couldn't catch them then they MUST be pretty damn good.
The way I figure it, this person's after you so this is your show, I'm here for backup. You tell me what you want me to do.
Grace
I love cats, for the record, and I am not a damned Libertarian either. I think Fake L. Marshall is talking about themselves half the time.
So, now comes to the not-so-fun part. I was poking around on the forum results, and I found this little 'gem'.
Grace pops up a link on the forum, one filled with 'predictions':
////////////// Fallacy of Impulse ///////////////
> Predictions
>>>> Carnival
- a post that seems to have been wiped. It's just blank with an ASCII picture of a mask.
>>>> Dragons????
- a post (posted by L Marshall) that reads like a short story L Marshall might've written where-in the point is that God is Dead and Tech is King but the Techs are actually Dragons. It reads as a short story, sure: but it also reads like a dream about things to come. There's something about men who are machines.
>>>> Starbuxx Wyrmz
- this one is 'funny.' The post reads: wyrmz in the blood | don't drink the coffee | will drink the coffee | mind will split, fracture | war? | necessary?
>>>> Poison???????????
- this is another post that seems to have been wiped and replaced with incomprehensible code. [To crack it will require something Magicky + an Intelligence Enigmas (or Intelligence Linguistics) roll diff 8.]
>>>> 2014
- this is another post that seems to have been wiped and replaced with incomprehensible code. [To crack it will require something Magicky + an Intelligence Enigmas (or Intelligence Linguistics) roll diff 9. Threshold: 3 successes]
>>>> 2015 - It's The End of the World As You Know It
- same as "Poison????????"
/////////////// END ////////////////
I wanted to figure out what they had 'predicted' about me. Seems like someone's had their eye on me for a long time and have quite the long view of things, because some of those I remember. Some of them, I do not. They really are 'predicting' things about me.
Also, one of those predictions is a pretty glaring 'fuck you' to me. It's one that's already happened. The one that's 'funny'.
This is a long story, but I figure as long as this is a good, secure connection, why not?
It was a little bit past when Gadfly disappeared, so soon after that I was still expecting him to just pop in sometime, you know? I was going out with a friend of mine, and she wanted to go to Starbucks for some god-awful reason. So I went. It was Ada Lovelace day, I remember. Anyway, we were approached by this lady who wanted to introduce herself, and then immediately left. Weird, right? A few minutes later, we were both stung by robotic wasps.
It was called the Hydra virus. It was engineered to kill Awakened individuals. Couldn't heal it through normal means, and your immune system helped it spread -- because each time the cells were 'killed' they just split into two like a hydra's head getting lopped off. Wyrms in the coffee.
It caused symptoms of hemorrhagic fever, along with an especially fun bit where it 'fractured your mind' and you started hallucinating your eventual death over and over again, probably to prevent anyone who had it from really doing much about their condition.
This is what they call 'funny'. This is why I came to you. They're big, they're probably bad, and I'm in over my head.
I almost died, some of my friends were kidnapped, experimented on, and almost died, but one of them happens to be a fucking awesome biologist and she found a cure for it. And then we rescued our buddies, and I
My personal feeling is, if that's what this person/people think is funny, what are they willing to inflict for the lulz?
Grace
It could be a test of my intelligence, sure. The scrambled prediction labeled "Poison????" seems to indicate otherwise. I've been a bit pessimistic lately when it comes to dealing with people who won't be up front with me. I'm sure you can possibly figure out why.
Gadfly taught me a thing or two before he disappeared. I know the history. I know what really happened. I didn't at the time I wrote that story.
anrkyangel
You know funny doesn't always mean ha-ha, G
Merry ol' Webster says: affording light mirth & laughter, b: seeking or intended to amuse
Also: differing from the ordinary in a suspicious, perplexing, quaint, or eccentric way (peculiar)
Also also: involving trickery or deception
Don't look at one side of the stone, G
VAs take the stone and turn it turn it turn it turn it and then we break it and we turn over every shard and we break it and we turn over all those shards and on and on and away we go
Leaves us with a lot of dust, not many friends, but oh so much delicious understanding
Unless they're a Cyberpunk, then they're just assholes blowing up shit for fun and profit
There is a brief pause, and then:
Honestly not trying to be a dick here, G. Just try to keep your mind open to the possibilities. Such as: Sbux's 2013 Q4 earnings were $452+ MILL. Lots of people drinking coffee these days. War: Virus targeting Awakened, war on us? Necessary?: Is it really?
Sorry about the Hydra stuff, that sounds rough. Scientist in the ranks, though, sure she's safe?
Because seriously, an Awakened scientist? That is some Technocracy shit right there, just chillin' among the free voices. What the ever-loving fuck is going on in this city, does no one have EYES, does no one THINK?
Which ones are predictions, which ones not?
And while she asks, her fingers fly over her keyboard as she checks out that Poison?????????? entry's code jumble.
[int+enigmas first! COME ON RILEY EARN YOUR NEXT DOT IN CRYPTANALYSIS]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (4, 5, 5, 6) ( fail )
anrkyangel
[oh yeah, that failure would probably require a thing]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace
Oh oh oh, and now she's going to call Sid a Technocrat? The anger, it threatens to bubble over a bit at that one. Calm yourself. Okay okay.
Does 'put down bunch of Technocrat consors' scream Technocrat to you? Because that's what my Awakened scientist friend did. She's an Orphan. She's trusted. She saved my life, so yeah, safe.
I'm keeping my mind open. I haven't decided yet on where this road leads is all. Right now I'm leaning more and more toward 'this is not fucking cool' though.
Carnival and Starbuxx Wyrmz have already taken place. Dragons has not. The others are encrypted, and seem to be in the future anyway.
It's not like Grace can't figure out that Riley's trying to crack the code. Really, Grace has had a lot of practice at code cracking lately, although it involved way way too much writing on physical paper. So, she tries her hand at it as well.
Race you to the finish line.
Challenge. A prodding, if you will. Don't want to let the n00b beat you, do you anrkyangel?
[int+enigmas! Come on Grace, show this l33t woman what you can do when you have a computer!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
s4turn4poc4lypse
Grace almost has it; Grace knows that she almost has it; she can fit it into her mind, can see how it will fit, can See How It Will Fit, but it doesn't quite stay:
side-shift, scramble: o. b. f. u. s. c. a. t. e.
Not through it yet, kid. But getting there; starting to understand.
anrkyangel
[WP: Riley are you going to be smart or will you be goaded into trying at a higher diff?]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
anrkyangel
Sounds like your 'long' story was missing a few details
Is all she has to say about the Technocrat Consors that were not mentioned previously. And oh, if Grace could only see the so far faceless stranger who is anrkyangel smile when she asserts that she is keeping her mind open, honest honest. It's really more of a grin, but then it's gone because Riley tries to take a crack at that code and it doesn't immediately click for her and that is frustrating. And a frustrated Riley is better off all the way away from Grace just then because even though she does not blindly tear apart her set-up (a thought that keeps her from doing just that (her baby! her darling! the only thing in the world she loves (other than [redacted]))) she is still, at least for a few more minutes, pissed.
She is cooling cooling cooled off as she reads through the rest of Grace's side of the conversation. Carnival and Starbucks happened, dragons hm?
If half the time other-L is talking about themselves, could have happened to them?
That makes her curious but honestly not too much, all things considered.
And then Grace is trying to goad her into a race to crack that code and Riley laughs out loud with delight that translates into:
roflmao we're working TOGETHER, sweetheart!
Grace doesn't have to know that Riley failed her own attempt, hm mm nope nope nope. While Grace attacks the code, Riley swings at it from a different direction.
[Scanning: Mind 1]
Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (8, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grace
The code is wicked, and something tingles at the back of her brain -- how it shifts. How it's not quite there, but only just. Like it's been hidden by more than just a normal crypto routine.
The black screen of
She runs a routine [decode(strPoison)] a thing that fills her screen with white symbols on the black background. A thing which is looking for whatever it is that's hiding this text. Perhaps it will give a clue as to how to shed light on the hidden text.
[Prime 1: Watch the
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (1) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
anrkyangel
[ D: ]
s4turn4poc4lypse
[the loneliest number]
Grace
[Grace, you were doing so well! D:]
s4turn4poc4lypse
Grace: How does watching the weaving look to her? What does she see; how does she input that data? This is what she sees, watching whatever it is that's keeping that code more-difficult-to-crack-than-it-would-normally-be (and it would normally be difficult - Grace: sharp as a tack) :
she sees a changing, ever-shifting pattern, Entropy and Mind wed together to cast a spell of inscrutabiity, of every-time-you-get-close, nope!, a change, not what you thought, attention-goes-that-a-way, and seeing it, she can start to figure out how perhaps to worm through it
anrkyangel
Riley runs a diagnostic of her own devising and she finds something interesting. There is something there. Not another Mind, exactly, but a maze put in place, a little dungeon crawl for the intellect that distorts and ugh
stop it, just
She has her own look at that delightful little bit of the Code, sees where it's been (purposely) tangled up, and she sets about undoing that damage.
[Mind/Corr something something, not sure on the spheres but with unique foci it's down to diff 3 anyway]
Dice: 2 d10 TN3 (2, 10) ( success x 1 )
anrkyangel
[int+enigmas! please please please please please don't botch!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (3, 4, 6, 6) ( fail )
anrkyangel
[again? NO GUTS NO GLORY RILEY GO BIG OR GO HOME AGHHHHHHHH *hides face*]
Dice: 4 d10 TN9 (5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 1 )
Grace
Her eyes lose focus, don't they? Looking past the text, looking deeper, until... until...
It freaking threatens to completely unravel, hard crash. She can see the errors popping up now, types a bit -- can't let those keep going for long, can we?
No, we really can't.
When it does finally click, it's like the symbols on her screen coalesce, they dance, they shift. They color-code themselves into her blue-for-the-mind and red-for-the-entropic -- like it's shifting and shuffling not the raw bits themselves but her mental perception of them. Yes, that would make sense.
Change of tactic.
[Mind+Entropy = Untangle the threads of my mental perceptions, thank you kindly.]
Dice: 1 d10 TN4 (4) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
anrkyangel
For Riley, at least when she's looking at one of her monitors, it's almost like a game that she sees. A game that she is both playing and creating and taking apart all at once. Type in some code, see the results, tear some more things apart again.
Hack and slash, baby, hack and slash. She takes her digital scythe and she starts ripping through that snarl in the code. Her frustration starts to melt into something else, something that it's probably best that Grace is somewhere else and cannot see. Because for Grace this is personal and Riley, who is as snarky and arrogant as any Virtual Adept in the system, she also has a bit of a heart. And she would not want Grace who is facing personal attack to see Riley who has offered her assistance (mentor, mm yes taste that word, feels like moonshine, rough and crude and will knock you for a loop) smiling, no
grinning!
Because this is hard and how long has it been since one of Sherwood's own faced a real challenge? Ah, it's like stretching one's legs after sitting sedentary for far, far too long. It's like walking and then trotting and then breaking into a run.
And perhaps Grace is starting to feel it. There is something pushing up into her computer, looking for that code from across a distance. It is boundless, it is relentless, it is inexorable and there is no stopping it from seeping into Grace's space.
Somewhere far away Riley stares up at a monitor with eyes that refuse to blink lest she miss something important and her mouth is twisted into a wild, manic grin.
And she says aloud in a room all by her lonesome, "I am going to get you, you cheeky son of a bitch!"
[please don't let me down dice i am counting on you: int+enigmas diff 8]
Dice: 4 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
s4turn4poc4lypse
[GOOD JOB PEOPLE!]
s4turn4poc4lypse
Grace and Riley:
They are very different Virtual Adepts. They have very different styles. They've both got style, undeniable that: but very different. They don't interact with this code the same way -- not at all: but it doesn't show. Not in the end. In the end, they get through it and decode it and understand it and illumination everything
[peacock eyes; opening; flowering, and a clear world]
is written out: Poison?????????? becomes:
The Poisoned Cup. Better be careful here. And the prediction is as follows:
[ooc: guys, guys! I had this written out but I can't find it and I am so sleepy! I can either BS a not-very-cool thing right now, or e-mail it to you once I dig around sommore/write something new up. *grin* I was not planning for the ST actively tonight you see, but tell me what you'd rather and I will do that thing!]
Grace
[OOC: Email us! I have to go to bed now anyway -- this is what I'd prefer at least. Cool-thing-later, because sleep is good X_X]
anrkyangel
[e-maillllll pllzzzzzzzzzzz......]
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