Interlude
Eegleet finished working at his nial job at the factory, a job too low for the corporation to purchase and maintain a robot to perform, and made his way ho. Mass transit was crowded that day, with everyone looking down at datapads, working or not, or seemingly involved in conversations on ear-buds. Eegleet pretended to be the latter, wearing a non-functioning eye-piece that wouldn't perturb him if it was stolen. By pretending to be in conversation with soone, just mumbling to oneself, no other being would bother him, panhandling or raving or just lonely.
Eegleet knew a basic fact that everyone learned on Gulmisvan.
Life was lonely.
Still, Eegleet felt a surge of anticipation as he entered his small dwelling. It had a basic food dispenser, a basic waste disposal, and a single room. The only two things inside were a comfortable nest, at least as comfortable as soone of his economic status could afford, and an EVR rig that he had recently upgraded to the best he could afford.
Even better, he had entered a contest recently and won, which ant his EVR rig was capable of more than he had ever imagined.
Today was the day.
Eegleet had been looking forward to it for almost a third of a Great Cycle, since ssage boards and virtual eting places had begun talking about it.
A new ga.
It took effort to find information about it. It took effort to even get any previews of it. Eegleet had heard it referred to as an "Alternate Reality Ga", where there were hints hidden all over, so even in real life. At one point he had found a broken food dispenser with a shiny keypad. He had followed the instructions and punched in his comm-code.
That night he had received a GalNet address, a one-ti use GalNet address. Navigating to it with a text-only communications program had earned him another address, this one deep in the old abandoned sectors of GalNet, where virtual reality gas had been tried and failed over the eons.
There a rusted and battered robot had given him an orb. The orb contained a file, heavily encrypted, that claid to be a prize, and it was inscribed with a real-mail postal address to a location that the curious had discovered was an old abandoned scientific research station on the edge of the Outer Rim Civilized Races territory.
He had mailed his address and "I WANT TO BELIEVE" on the actual, physical paper.
In return, he'd won a new EVR rig, but had to promise to keep it secret. After all, supposedly agents of the "GalWiz Corporate Security" were looking for any "outlaws" who possessed the rig.
It was exciting, to play the ga.
Eegleet, like many others across the Unified Civilized Races, had furrowed out the clues, deciphered the riddles, decrypted the files, and bit by bit, sotis literally, had discovered more and more about the mysterious ga.
Each drop of information had intrigued those searching out the data even more. Set on a world before star-drive. Containing only a single species. Set in a world much like their own where corporations ruled everything and governnt was just a place for the corrupt and incompetent to earn an easy paycheck off of the backs of everyone who paid governnt extortion.
The ga promised to be in real ti, to link as many players as logged in, with full EVR support.
The only downside was it was a single race ga. But what a race. Able to accept cybernetics without pain and suffering and ntal anguish. Able to accept enhanced biological parts without rejection.
Able to commit violence and give back so of the misery beings like Eegleet felt every day.
Everyone knew soone, a tenth of a Great Cycle, who had been allowed to play the Alpha, and then the Beta, test. Who had gotten to experience the world. There were bugs, problems, in the Alpha, but by the Beta they had been ironed out.
Except one.
That bug had beco a feature.
The chance of crippling, agonizing pain if you were "killed" that lasted for cycles and couldn't be disconnected from.
It even worked player versus player and Eegleet, like so others who would never admitted it, felt a thrill at the idea of inflicting such agony on another being.
It had been an entire third of a Great Cycle.
But today, today was different.
The flashing light that the download was complete. Even the Day One Patch had finished.
Even at Eegleet's slow GalNet connection that was the sa that everyone had a right to by the Civilized Races Rights and Entitlents Compact.
Eegleet ate sparingly, preferring to wait to eat his tasteless paste till he was in The Ga. He had found the "Sal's Diner" area during his searches, and found that purchasing a al there and then eating his own sustenance gruel made it so he tasted what he ordered.
Only a hundred or so ARG players knew about "Sal's Diner" and yesterday the owner, one of the stocky bipedal primate race, had given him a "key" that would allow him to find the diner and enter it in the ga.
A reward.
Eegleet shivered with anticipation when the EVR synched up with his body. It was a non-invasive model, a dermal contact rig, but amazingly it worked. He leaned back and closed his eyes, consciously surrendering his two motor control cortexes to the EVR rig.
WELCO TO CYBERLIFE
YOU ARE NUMBER 23121351 OUT OF 23121357
appeared in front of him.
But his participation in the ARG had given him sothing better. He reach out and tapped the little bouncing whiskered cartoon creature called a 'dawg' twice, scratched its belly, then said its na.
"goodboi"
The scene in front of him, a fairly boring GalNet holding wait screen, vanished. He felt like he was being sucked through tubes that looked like they were made of neon and electricity. It stung, slightly, which thrilled him because he knew that it wasn't a lie, pain was part of the risk.
It dumped him out in darkness with a single window.
WELCO IAEGLEETMALE
YOU ARE 15 OUT OF 16
The number dropped to zero and he felt a surge of disorientation. It stung again, but once again, it thrilled more than bothered him.
He found himself on a street. It used black pavent, an archaic form of roadway that the ARG players actually had to look up in ancient data-archives. He was sitting against a wall, made of red brick, dressed in black clothing. His stomach hurt and in his hand he held a projectile weapon.
Blood was around him and on his stomach.
"Co on, we gotta get moving," Another avatar said, reaching down. "Can you walk?"
Eegleet nodded.
"To continue you must accept the terms and conditions. Would you care to read them or do you accept them?"
The pain vanished and Eegleet felt weirdly disconnected from the ga. He didn't like that, and being in a hurry, he just clicked "I ACCEPT" and was gratified when the pain returned and the other avatar heaved him up.
"Don't talk, we'll get you to the doc. We'll get you a new face, then we'll get you out of CorpSec's sights."
In his apartnt, in the real world, Eegleet sat in darkness for hours. He was in no hurry to disconnect, he did not have another labor shift for 5 days, the minimum amount of hours he could receive as a voluntarily employed citizen.
In the EVR world, he had nad himself Calshiina, after a girl he had liked in Cultural Education.
He was a neuromancer, a wizard of the crude but amazing version of GalNet, good with a gun, and a cyberpunk with fiberoptic hair that changed colors, swirling electric tattoos, and facial piercings. By morning he was part of a gang of fellow ARG players.
The orb he had found with the encrypted program, when the program was loaded, was a coupon to let him choose a pistol and a submachine gun to start with. Sal's Diner turned out to be a place they could sell ill gotten ware and purchase illegal tech and weaponry, even get cybernetics.
Eegleet got cybernetic eyes, an induction cyberjack that he could never afford in the real world, and cybernetic wiring that made him better with his smartgun.
Others didn't dare. The very thought repulsed them.
Eegleet/Calshiina/CRASHRIDER sneered at them.
Anarchy was life. Netrunning was life. Resistance was life.
Eegleet was hooked.
And he didn't care.
He was an outlaw, but he had his chumrs.
Which was more than he had in what they all sneeringly referred to as "atspace".
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UNIFIED INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL MO
The ga Cyberlife encourages antisocial behavior in its playstyle and has unrealistic depictions of violence and cri. An attempt at suppressing it has caused no less than ninety different lawfirms on over fifty planets to engage in defending the ga under archaic "Freedom of Artistic Expression" laws.
Only the user interface and supporting software is stored on the player's local machine, unlike standard massive multiplayer worlds. It appears their system transmits user input to servers, which are currently protected by mountains of slavering angry lawyers with credit signs in their eyes. Even login nas are property of GalNet Artistry Incorporated, as is the avatar appearance, making it difficult to get warrants to electronically spy on any players.
GalNet Artistry Incorporated is less than three Great Cycles old. Funding was apparently done through the anonymous donation site "FUNDMYDREAMS" to the tune of literal billions of dollars. Programming was done via "public listserv" code sites that were password encrypted. Code acquired was variations of older code, nothing special, just applied in a strange way.
Unified Science Council suggested that the ga was built by largely inexperienced coders using publically available freeware code and volunteer coders, which is the reason for the unstable algorithm rather than any malevolent or secretive reason the gas streaming code is unable to be broken.
Further examination is needed.
//END SSAGE//
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CONFEDERATE INTELLIGENCE BULLETIN
SUBJECT: CYBERLIFE
CC: Artificial Biological States; Digital Artificial Intelligence Infonet Worlds; TERRASOL.GOV; Cyborg Cooperative; Clone Directorate; Mantid Free Worlds; Traena'ad Hive Worlds, Electronic Artistic Studios Incorporated, Galactic Studios Incorporated, Von Nuemann Artificial Intelligence Creations
Penetration of "Cyberlife" exceeds estimates. Evaluation of number beings with free ti to reach level 3 or higher within the alternate reality ga suggests automated economy with low chance of employnt or advancent.
Average player online ti is 3-7 local work cycles.
Average player engagent is 80%.
10% of players make power and ability purchases in the online store. Those often have the least engagent in ti and effort in the ga. TRA-INT estimates that these are the wealthy. Have added visual effect when player makes power or ability purchase in store to warn other players. This has resulted in "Chump Hunting" as predicted.
Nearly 95% of players online 2 or more local work cycles prefer to sleep in ga and use the ga's dream generator rather than go offline.
Estimated
Online store was hacked by in-ga players using in-ga technology and infrastructure at 70% of estimated ti, suggesting a desperate desire for luxuries even if they only exist in EVR.
In ga item shop purchases are primarily costic decorations. Power ups and gear enhancents reduced custor engagent and resulted in less custors online. This had been rectified by the "Street Ware War" story arc causing the power up and gear enhancents available on the online store being looked at as dangerous drugs and enhancents that mark out wealth players who are often set upon by "gangs" and eliminated.
80% of players spend 30% or more of their ti socializing in public areas or at private living spaces with other, suggesting a high loneliness index concurrent with low social health infrastructure.
Ga is operating at only a 25% budget loss and is estimated to break even next quarter.
Pain as a stimulus has driven off casual players as well as the wealthy and privileged.
Conversations between players continue to be logged, providing valuable insight to the lives of players and their place in culture and society.
CLON-INT is requested to add additional players as well as engage in conversations.
BAS-INT has reported "Goodboi Gang" mbers are among the most popular of companions. This suggests low emotional connection between players and other mbers of their culture/society.
TRA-INT reports high level of success playing as "Ghosts in the Net" and rogue AI's.
DAS-INT has suggested a "Free Work Cycle" period in order to encourage more players. This has been approved by CON-INT.
Next bulletin in 18 hours.
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