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[hops]

There was a time, long ago, when the word 'hack' brought to mind the swinging of a machete, clearing away the weeds and branches of a forest, rather than the wielding of wares, of blades of logic tearing through the jungle of information made law. There was a time between those two, where hacking wasn't quite as rigorous, where it was tricks and treachery rather than a true constest of mind. You are thankful that you lived in a time where it was, even if everything else sucked.

The Matrix was often conflated with the internet, but it was more than that, and yet less. Advancements in virtual reality and neuroscience allowed the brain to interface with machines, in a transfer of thoughts encoded in symbols. The Matrix, was to computer interfaces what a gun was to swords. Through a cyberdeck, a person can enter a parallel reality, relayed through controlled, consentual hallucinations or through more traditional interfaces. Even now, the laymen do not fully grasp its power.

But the corps do, and so do small-timers not wishing to drown under the tides. You are a cowgirl (the term, you never liked much, but it had more dignity than cyber-jockeys), a mercenary of the Matrix. You are very good at convincing the Matrix to do what you wanted. You have to be, or you'd be out of a job. You don't regret your choice to eschew the clean, safe life, but you also knew that as time goes on, there are more alternate timelines where you're dead, or worse. Sometimes you get very, very close to that happening in this timeline. And you're only just twenty.

Today's job wasn't anything exciting. It wasn't a run. Sometimes, when a corp needed a fresh pair of eyes with their digital woes, or pair of eyes in general for small businesses, they hire a freelance cyber-jockey. Today, you drew the short end of the stick, and the only job around was for you to root around in a fence pawn shop's database, whose proprietor wanted to trace down a month-old theft. Well, at least you verified that the theft did in fact take place. But it was like looking for a needle in a hay stack.

"Got anything yet, kid?" your employer asked you, finally, after the half hour mark. You were half-immersed, your deck connected to his SmartShelf (a misleading term, it's just an AI blackcube connected to security cameras) and staring absentmindedly at trinkets on the actual shelves while most of your mind were more or less communing with the simple AI. Nonetheless, his addressing you startled you a bit. Machine logic falling to pieces as you disengage and shifted most of your consciousness to the real world fully. This took less than a split second, of course. That was the entire point of being half-immersed while sitting in front of a stranger for a long period of time.

This job was weird. Something that was minor enough for the proprietor to not notice its absence until a month, yet important enough that he would try to get its thief tracked down. Plus, it was for sale. You were told that it was just a pair of shoes, but you knew, and your employer knew, and he also know that you knew, that wasn't the whole story.

Oh, and you have done exactly jack shit except for discreetly checking his sales history and trying to piece together the sort of man he was. You were going to get paid for this simple errand anyways so you might as well steal some info. Of course, that's not something you should tell him as answer to his question.

>_

[WillowLuman]

What do we glean from this information theft?

[hops]

Your employer would not be so daft as to connect his data to a Taeyang blackbox, but that was also the thing. A blackbox was expected to work autonomously, identifying products added and removed to the shelves. This one did not track customers, which made sense in this part of town. The sheer amount of convicted felons and IDless individuals would have created unnecessarily incriminating data.

Luckily for you, and him, it kept surveillance video up to six months. The compression get worse the further you go, but he must have been confident that the video for last month would be clear enough to identify the thief. Presumably at low-light condition if it was a break-in.

But it probably wasn't. You can't hack physical locks, which you noticed he used. Well- not without some military-grade tech, which would be overkill for just a pair of overengineered footwear. Even if it had some message or other hidden inside.

From snooping around the logs, the theft was discovered when a certain Doe in a business suit entered the store, and asked him about the shoes. That was your guess, anyways. It's not like these things had audio. It could be an attempt to trace some clandestine operations, or an interception. You have seen enough to know that you won't find anything else, and you're not sure if you wanted to poke your nose in this.

Which of course, meant you will.

Now, you believe that some of the surveillance video was faked, which made sense, why else wouldn't your employer be unable to find the actual theft? You could home in the time of theft. He could then bribe some people to look for a digital trail at that time.
Or you could somehow convince him to pay you more to do that for him.

>_

[WillowLuman]

Baby need a new pair of shoes. Ply for more dough!

[hops]

“I’ve gotten the date of theft. April 22nd. The logs of that day are faked and the originals have been wiped, and I don’t think you have photographic memory,” you said, “This is a pretty normal occurrence.”

You left out the fact that you found it particularly troubling that somebody could hack a blackbox, that only connected to the Matrix through very specialized channels.

“What? I need to know where the shoes went!” the employer said, and before he could make a mention about your alleged usefulness, you decide to keep going.

“Well, why do you think people hire cowboys for this sort of thing? Everything leaves a trail in the Matrix, and it takes someone like me to track it,” you exaggerated the difficulty of the task. When you were young and just started out (it was only five years ago!) you would err on the side of humbleness, but the truth is that in this world nobody respects that. It is better to upsell yourself, because most of the times, people can’t help but believe you.

“So you’re asking to be paid more,” he started, but not before you cut him off again. People already expect to be cut off by cowboys, so that was why you do it a lot.

“Or you could spend a few more days looking for another cyber-jockey,” you said, “Not sure why you’d want to do that.”

“Alright, fine. Here’s the money for the search,” he closed his eyes, and a card that wasn’t actually there materialized. He flicked the card to you. “Get back to me when you find the thief. You know where to find me.”


As you placated your rumbling stomach with some curry rice, you thought about the job again. It wasn’t really something that someone of your station should be doing, but that’s what being a cyber-jockey is about. Someone’s gotta do the drudgery, and the newbies are too stuck up to do them.

It wasn’t as if the job was actually that unimportant anyways. You doubt the man who contacted your employer only relied on him to find the thief. At this moment, there should be at least another cowboy chasing down the thief’s digital trails.

But, like said earlier, you’re good, plus, you already got paid, and you doubt it’s going to take more than a few hours to find the thief. A bit longer if he covered his tracks the same way he did with the blackbox, but government surveillances aren’t so easily subverted.

You have some time to kill before heading back home. Maybe take a walk, or go shopping. Or some other possibilities that arise in Rosebed City.

>_

[Tiruin]

TEXT STORIES \o/

PTW!
> Go take a walk or other relaxing activity; list up priorities in life 'after that worry is dealt with'.

[Mooply]

Take a walk, get a feel for the city today.

[hops]

You go for a walk. When people say that, it usually meant through the city center. The Neon District. Even the Outer Sectors try to visit on the odd days they got extra money to burn. Your usual parts of the city only really came alive when night falls, so you might as well head for the city center.

You make a quick visit to the ATM, just to cash in the chip you got, and to sync your Virtual Wallet. That is, pay rent and bills.

It was dusk already, as it was winter. You could go for some pachinko, but your recent balance did not encourage you to the prospect. There were also the arcades. If you’re lucky you might ACTUALLY earn some money, there.

Speaking of arcades, the AR transceiver in your head correctly measured that you were not focused on any task, and a panel materialized in front of you, a chat screen.

Souprice: have you heard of the new arcade opening?
SiliconChipCookie: that’s kind of vague
SiliconChipCookie: plus, why would I care?
Souprice: it’s a vr arcade. And i hear it’s actually marketed towards GAMERS this time instead of it being a poor man’s joytoy club
Souprice: the rigs would let you run some of the more cutting-edge stuffs

You’re guessing that your friend, Soup, was trying to angle for you to come join in with him. Maybe now. Or later. You’re not sure if you should point out to him that you were busy.

On the other hand, some shoes aren’t really that big of a deal for you.

>_

[Mooply]

I'm a bit more curious at the job at hand now but, as said before, if it won't take us too long, might as well drop by the arcade after the job.

[Tiruin]

+1 to passing by the arcade; we can uncover or think about more opportunities from there, if with other people. Also simulate a conversation with our buddy.

[hops]

SiliconChipCookie: i'm on a job right now, if you want me to check it out with you it'll have to be later in the night
Souprice: well duh, i'm on the job too!
SiliconChipCookie: honestly i have no idea what your hours are anymore
Souprice: really depends on how much i want to get paid that week

You could always ask Soup which particular arcade he was talking about, but that wouldn't be a very cyber-jockey thing to do. Plus, how hard can it be to find a newly-opened VRcade?

Pulling out your phone (you could keep using the AR, but you like looking at screens more), you typed in some queries. It was trivial to find the DreamZone VRCade. The site was minimal, but very well put-together. It even had a link if you wanted to visit it through the Matrix. Of course, you couldn't do much there. Not that there would be a point, since people go to arcades for the hardwares anyways. It wasn't very far from your apartment.

There were already people lined up when you passed by. You realize that you have been out of touch with the night-life of Rosebed City for a while for you to not have heard of it sooner. You sent Soup some texts to sort out a good time and blew most of your earlier paycheck on reserving two hours on two of the terminals. Hey, it wasn't like you were broke, or anything.

SiliconChipCookie: you better buy me some nice dinner afterwards
Souprice: don't you mean breakfast?
SiliconChipCookie: i already ate breakfast in the afternoon
Souprice: your sleep cycle is hella fucked

Now you have something nice to look forward too, but it also meant you better get to your task. You got back to your apartment. You didn't really need a stronger rig for some cursory lookups, but you definitely needed it to dig deeper.

Chapter 1: VivantTech

Full immersion. Your eyes open in your true abode. The Matrix.

Flying through the wires, you travel back in time. The day of the theft. The nearby street cameras saw repeated footage. That told you this much: the thief was resourceful. You were, however, more resourceful. It wasn't visuals that you wanted.

City cameras were more resistant to tampering, because they could hold traces of edits. Either the people who would tamper with the cameras were too powerful to worry about repercussions, or they would hide their tracks.

You didn't know which one it was, and the trouble was that viewing the traces would mean that you, too, have to hack into it. It would leave a trail.

But it didn't need to be your trail, not really. You pinged one of the encryption services you knew you could trust. And then, for good measure, you could mount the attack through some random schmuck's cyberdeck.

You have several choices regarding the matter. Many options. You can choose to either attack an inactive deck (it would give you greater freedom and initial stealth, but it won't be difficult to trace it back to your encryption) or an active deck (which would be the equivalent of breaking into someone's house to use their computer, WHILE they are using their computer, but it would mask your activity pretty well, although it might get your victim into trouble). You could also further decide which kind of decks you would attack. VRcades are used to being attacked, and would have strong security. Civilians would be relatively simple. Another cyber-jockey would be funny.

Or maybe you could consider other plans of attack.

>_

[Mooply]

Let's put ourselves to a real challenge. Skimping towards the easy stuff is for amateurs anyways and we're way too cocky for that.

Attack using an active VRcade deck.

[WillowLuman]

(Hey this is some pretty good prose btw)

[hops]

((Talking about prose, I feel like the SG format is a bit awkward for the style of this, since I really do struggle to have a strong plotline and still give options. Do you guys think I should switch to a quest style? At least then it'd be obvious what choices I am giving ))

[Tiruin]

(Hey this is some pretty good prose btw)

((I like it too! Just caught up and read it :3))

Do you guys think I should switch to a quest style?

You can suggest several areas or possible choices of what we can do, actually :3 That helps.

Attack using an active VRcade deck.

+1
Possibly in a place that would help you in the big picture, too.