phr0z0ne's phridge

The Code
[[Oddly appropriate.]]

The Code
[[Okay!  Soooo....which of Grace's prongs in her plan of attack is she heading down first?]]

Grace
[Okay! First off, we're going to set up some defenses on the laptop (mundane security stuff) and then head off to... Brighton this time to go wardriving. She doesn't want to lead anybody back to either the Chantry or her usual hangouts. So we're going to go somewhere else and find some unsecured wi-fi so that the owners of said wi-fi will be blamed for whatever goes down ^_^]

The Code
[[Go for it!  Int+Comp for the security @ diff 6 (for her), and can extend if so desired.  Then Per+Invest to find a good unsecured Wi-Fi connection.]]

Grace
[Int + Comp Diff 7-1 [Ability Aptitude] Specialty: Creative = locking this down tight.]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 1

Grace
[Extending!]

Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1

Grace
[Perception 3 + Investigation 3 = goin' wardriving]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

The Code
The security is easy enough for Grace to set up, obviously.  It's her own computer and with her expertise, making it safe is a piece of cake.

Then it's just a matter of driving around and trying to find a good, unsecured WiFi that happens to be in a place where people won't look askance at someone sitting in their car at the curb typing away for however long it takes.  Like it is in most situations, the best one she finds is when she's driving by apartment buildings in the Santa Fe district.  Someone there apparently doesn't have time to push the couple of buttons a router requires to auto-generate a password during set-up (seriously kids, it's not difficult), and she is able to find a parking spot alongside the building from which to work.

Grace
[Woohoo! Okay, now for the not-so-mundane security. We're going to set up a Corr ward...]

[Corr 2: Secure Connection -- Diff 5 - 1 (taking her time)]

Dice: 2 d10 TN4 (3, 6) ( success x 1 )

Grace
[Extending, using a WP.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN5 (4, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Grace
[And now, we're going to attempt to contact VAs through the various places she's been pointed towards...]

So, snug as a bug behind the lamp waiting to record, Grace is fairly sure it's safe. As safe as she can make it, at least. And so, it is along the street of an apartment building that she begins her work, 'breaking' into VA space.

The website she goes to is one that doesn't show up on a search engine. It's in the Deep Web. If you try to access it without some form of router or proxy going on, you're in for trouble. And its outward face is just a black screen with a single text box hovering in the middle. Passwords please?

Or at least, you'd think of course it's a password that's required. And that's only partly right. The password is your l33t skillz. It's a good thing Grace has those skills, and knows the tricks necessary to get in. Hell, knowing how to find this place is in the Deepnet is half the battle.

The Code
[[Give me a Wits+Computers, diff 7 (Ability Aptitude already factored in)]]

Grace
[Wits + Computers, Diff 7!]

Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

The Code
Grace plumps the depths of the Deep Web to make contact with her Traditionmates.  And it takes her a little time; she has to make some noise, and then have someone recognize it as the work of someone that's Elite (with a capital E).  This is the trick of establishing contacts with other Virtual Adepts; you can do it easily once you find someone who's really connected, but when you don't have that contact you have to cast the net and hope that it comes up with something tasty.

It isn't all that long though before someone takes notice.  When she's working her way around a firewall, an encrypted chat code pops up on the page and text starts floating its way across the screen.

Well hello there, wanderer.  Haven't seen you around these parts...

A blinking cursor sits underneath, waiting.

Grace
Okay. So. Time to roll up the sleeves, no? Not all interactions with her own Tradition have been... smooth. They aren't the type.



Hello. I'm kind of sort of new. New and busy. Meatspace is always doing stuff like putting me in comas and shit. Very annoying. The name is Chimeric01. Or L Marshall if you're into that sort of thing.

I'm looking for someone.

And what she means by that sort of thing? Well, it could be sci-fi, as apparently she has a rather rabid following (seriously who uses Time magic to follow around their favorite authors? These guys.) It could also be the L Marshall's Fallacy of Impulse, a game of twisted metaphysics. There's reasons why she might be more well known under the pen name.



The Code
We're all looking for someone.  Someone, something, somewhere, somehow.  You know how it is.

Great.  Hundreds (maybe?) of Virtual Adepts out there and she got the one who felt like philosophizing.

Hello Chimeric01.  I'm phr0z0ne and welcome to my phridge.  Who can I help you find?

Grace
Phr0z0ne? Frozen ozone? Or frozen zone? Both? Neither? The naming of things is so important yes? Sounds like this may be yet another person who feels like ice.

I'm looking for a (probable) Son of Ether named Dr. Althea Morgan. And/Or someone else who knows a whole lot about Technocrat activity.

I'm not going to lie. The whole thing feels radioactive. 

The Code
It may please Grace (or worry her that she's dealing with someone reckless) that there isn't any hesitation, no dramatic beat after she mentions the words "Technocrat" and "Radioactive."  The sentance blips its way across the screen after just long enough for reading comprehension and typing.

Radioactive?  Hmm, I'll be sure to wear my big shiny yellow AIM suit then.  You're in luck, though...finding people who don't wanna be--or can't be--found is what I do best.  Cypherpunk FTW.

What else you know about this particular cool cat?

Grace
Ahh, yes. And here comes the part where we have to be all trusting and shit. Well, bite the bullet, Grace. She does pause after reading, taking her time, trying to find the words.

I know she's a (former?) friend of someone who was abducted by the Techs. Her parents live in Kansas. That someone I am talking about may have rewritten history around our dear Dr. Althea Morgan. She may or may not remember being friends with the guy. He didn't remember her after.

But I have someone here who *does* have vivid memories of a life which no longer seems to have happened, you know? I mean, props to the guy for pulling off something so extremely major, but it resulted in a few scattered threads. And probably being experimented on. There is that shit too. We just want to piece together what went down, as difficult as that might be when history has been altered...

The Code
Ooh, someone got their little steam-powered chronometer or whatever they call it going wacky, didn't they?  Interesting

There are a couple moments of pause, before the the next line comes.

I'm checking some connections to see what I can find while we chat.  So you're a noob.  How long?

Yes, he's actually asking personal questions while Grace is asking about finding Doctor Morgan.  Either he doesn't know this might irritate some people, or he doesn't care.  Hard to say which at this point.

Grace
Five months since I signed up. Little over a year Awake. You Cypherpunks are *wicked* with your Wall, you know that? I've still got the calluses in my hand from filling out three books worth of calculations for that.

You Cypherpunks. So she hasn't decided to join their group just yet. But she has taken their challenge and won. And Grace does not care about phr0z0ne's attitude. It was expected. This is normal. What was even more expected was to have her own big shiny yellow AIM suit be tested.

So far, no alarms.

Thanks for doing this.

The Code
Circle of Life, kid.  One of these days, I'm gonna need to ask you for something.  I help you, you help me.  We phreaks gotta jam together anyway, least when we're not doing the battle of the bands against each other, ya know?

A pause, and then:

Oh yeah, and trust me.  We all know how uncool the Wall is.  Everyone's been through it.  That you're here means you probably did well, right?

There's a long pause here, before he comes in with...

Radioactive is right.  Good news is, the fallout ain't blowing over us right now.  We're a good six or seven minutes to midnight still.

Grace
I help you, you help me. Certainly reasonable terms. And then he comes back with confirmation of the radioactivity. Also expected.

This is good. I was expecting some fallout. Like them infecting that guy with something and sending him back to meet his old friends type of fallout. I wouldn't be poking around with this if I didn't think it necessary.

What did you find?

The Code
I've got an intercepted Watcher message from about four months ago for Doctor Alethea Morgan.  The good news is, at least back in April they didn't have her, because they were looking harder than I look for my copy of American Beauty when it's time to do some real data parkour.  It's garbled, because that's usually the best we get with the Mirrorshades, but it looks like they'd been looking in some podunk county in Missouri.

My guess: they had a dead end, or they didn't look hard enough.  The Black Hats are usually stretched pretty thing once they have to start looking in BFE.

Anyway, there's a standing search order for her.  She's on their radar, to be sure.  But at least before the summer began, they didn't seem to have her.  Or these particular fingers in the pie didn't know if they did.

Grace
Well, that's reassuring. Not exactly hopeful though. If they're looking for her that hard, she's going to be in deep cover. Not that I blame her at all. Just she's going to be a hard person to find. Is there anyone else attached to that search order?

And what about the guy they captured? Dr. Khaled Abandonato? Is there any news about him?

And then, there is a pit opened up in her stomach -- something she won't tell phr0z0ne or anyone else. They're looking for Alicia just as hard, almost certainly. And she's so young, so new. She's not Dr. Alethea Morgan.

The Code
I got bupkis on other targets right now associated with her.  No other associated RDs on the loose, it says. That's Reality Deviants, by the way.  Us.

This Khaled guy, I don't have a lot on either.  Either he wasn't handled at these kinds of low levels I'm sifting through, or all of his data was wiped from those ranks.  All I got is a name and a Tradition--Sons of Ether.  Unawakened daughter that they don't give much of a shit about, because she not an RD.  Mother's files are redacted at this level, and there just flat-out aren't any for this Khaled guy.  Which is odd in and of itself, considering...you know.  Big TARDIS-sized boom.  If you're gonna mess with reality in any way and you wanna make absolutely, 100% sure Big Brother comes down on you with all the subtlety of an an Ayn Rand allegory?  Fuck with time.  If he could do that kind of shit, someone had to know, and that it's being kept quiet means there's a lot more to the story.

Grace
Grace is just going to continue to let phr0z0ne think that Khaled's daughter is no Reality Deviant. In fact, going back and doing some redacting on Elijah's post to Ginger might be in order too. Just in case.

Alicia needs a new name, so that when the truth comes out that there is a new Awakened woman in the ranks, that identity is not attached to her anymore. It's something to consider.

There's always more to the story. It fucks with my head this one. A lot of them fuck with my head, really. But I just *need* to know. They just disappear people and they *really* fucking disappear.

You have any contacts in the Sons of Ether I might talk to? They might know more about this considering it's their people involved. And I might find some way of finding or convincing Alethea that I'm not actually one of the Black Hats out to get her. Maybe they have a secret handshake. Or something.

The Code
Maybe.  Gimme a sec, lemme pull out my rolodex and see who I know that might still be kickin'.

A few minutes pass...long enough that he may just not be kidding or using a metaphor when he says "Rolodex."  Then...

Try Ellsworth Rose.  He's what they call a Utopian; he should still be in Pennsylvania.  He was doing a long-term study of the effects from Three-Mile Island.  Completely bugfuck, but a solid guy otherwise.  Call him Elly and tell him I told you to call him.  He may talk on the phone or if you're really nice, he may even come to you.  I'm forwarding his contact info to you now.

And just like that, a pop-up window appears to download a contact file.

Grace
Sweet. Thanks. And yeah, I know what you mean about completely bugfuck. I know a Son of Ether who cannot speak using words with less than three syllables. She orders coffee like "This specific personage requests an unadulterated beverage composed of pulverized coffea arabica epigynous berries compounded in aqueous solution."

She's also amazing. Best person ever to ride into battle on the back of a dragon with. Seriously.

I did say I have been busy, right?

When you need help, if I can help, I will. Will remember it, phr0z0ne.

The Code
Pay it forward, that's my motto.  That and 'Don't forget your history, know your destiny. In the absence of water the fool is thirsty.'  You find me a better motto than that, and I'll be in your debt forever.

Another ping.  His contact details.

Anything else you need, you let me know Chimeric01.  Best step lightly and carry a big-ass stick.  With a nice rusty nail embedded in.