My working day in NBZ

[Jamozk Ekhiss]

Before I start talking about what I do, I should tell you what I can about who I am. I'm J. D. Stryker. I taught myself how to fight hand-to-hand to an adequate degree, and I'm not a bad shot, but fighting's not my job. I live in the MatrixNet. I'm a hacker, and that's why virtually everyone hates me. That and the fact that if I see an innocent getting hurt, I'll stick my nose in regardless of who's doing the hurting. That's about all I can tell you regarding my identity, so let's get on with what I actually do.

I woke up today to the sound of gunshots and screams. I got up, grabbed my rifle, slipped on my face-breaking gloves, and went to see what the commotion was about. Bad idea. Turns out some enforcers from Mars Corp were brutally interrogating some people to find out where I was. You see, Mars has the worst MatrixNet security of any organisation in the world, so I raid their system for files I can sell or manipulate on a fairly regular basis. This makes them hate me more than anyone else, which isn't easy. But that's fine - Mars hates me and I hate them. Saying that, everyone hates me except AzTek, which is quite irritating because I don't like them either. Anyway, I found they were Mars guys, so thought it would be best if I escaped quietly. I didn't actually do that though, because being the fool that I am, I didn't want the people they were interrogating torturing to suffer on my account any further. So I shot one of the enforcers in the back, and shouted some profanities and taunts at them. Turns out they had more around the corner, including a pretty serious mechanical drone. I didn't have time to access its processing core though, as it was quite obviously shooting at me. I had no choice other than to shoot back, but there were too many to take out in the time I had. A few died, but the drone got in close before I could shoot it, as did some of their more heavily armoured enforcers. I slung my rifle over my shoulder, and started punching stuff. I got the drone's photoreceptor, which put it out of action. I then got off some good hits on the guy to my left - struck the pressure point in his upper arm (his left arm - the one with the riot shield), which gave me a clear shot to his face. Unfortunately, by the time I'd turned around to the guy behind me, he got the opportunity to hit me in the shoulder with an electrified riot bat. That hurt...quite a bit. But the muscle convulsion in my arm also made me involuntarily slap him in the face with a knuckleduster. That gave me the opening I needed to then punch him in the stomach and kick him in the chin. Then I ran away.



[Out of character] What do people think? Should I carry on?

[LordofSyn]

Keep it up. It is refreshing to see/hear your characters viewpoints during a normal game. Welcome to the Forums.

[Jamozk Ekhiss]

Thanks! It's not quite exactly what happened, but I thought it might be more interesting than a simple turn-based recount of a fight with some Mars enforcers.
I've done fanfics and roleplaying on other forums, but they're for characters I've already established in my head. I didn't have anything more for this than "hacker, Mars hates them, gets in the way of things".

[grävling]

Keep it up! Very pleasant to read.

Welcome to the forums.

Thank you.

Grävling

P.S. While you were busy hacking you missed out on some news on the street. Trade in your face-breaking gloves for Yakashima Taser gloves. Available many places, but among others Back Bay Importers in Old Kenmore. You won't regret it.

[Cory Trese]

nice post! welcome to the game's forum

[Jamozk Ekhiss]

Thanks!!! While I've done stuff before, I've not had so many positive replies in any of them! How often would you think is a good time to leave between writing each one? I don't want to leave huge gaps like one I do (I keep meaning to do it, but it's been 3 months), but I don't want to bombard you all with constant posting.

[fallen]

@jamozk - welcome to the forum! Cool stuff, keep it up. On timing -- whenever you feel like it, we've got an active team here who enjoys this kind of stuff =P

[Jamozk Ekhiss]

OK, will do :¬) -- And while I've got the Taser Gloves in-game, I'll still be writing with my face-breakers, as they make for longer and more interesting fights.

[Jamozk Ekhiss]

Now, when I started running, I didn't actually think about where I was running to - I just ran blindly away from the injured Mars enforcers. Eventually, when I thought I'd been running for long enough, I slowed and went to look for a data terminal from which I could find out my location. Turns out I was in an Independent Street with financial connections to Mars (just my luck) and paid Cyber Knights from Brave Star for security. Now, me being the idiot that I am, I couldn't help but test their firewall strength. It wasn't very strong, and I couldn't resist going further. In the end, I stole a load of Mars financial data and Brave Star pay records. Brave Star didn't actually notice at first, it was only when some of the Cyber Knights in their pay nearby thought they could intimidate me into giving them my stuff. That's another thing that makes me a fool - when someone tries to mug me, I try to kill them. So that's what I did - I punched the first one in the face straight off, and kicked the second where I really shouldn't if I had any honour in battle, if you know what I mean. Then they got angry and brought out their pistols. What followed was some running, hiding, and occasionally leaning out from my cover to take a shot with my rifle. Eventually, I got one in the chest and one in the arm - the former seemed dead, while the latter I had to finish off with my hands. I then got a map up with the dataport, and headed for the nearest cheap hotel. On my way, I noticed I'd picked up a tail. I decided to simply lose them rather than find out who it was - on several occasions, I've been followed and nearly shot when I turned round - so I ducked down an alleyway, when I heard a voice behind me...

[fallen]

@jamozk - cool post! It starts to bring up the question of other types of helpful things you should be able to achieve from inside the Matrix -- stuff that might help with your current mission, mapping, or other "on the ground" stuff. Thoughts?

[Jamozk Ekhiss]

I got the idea from the fact that when accessing the Matrix, it shows the IP address of the terminal - and if one knew their way around those IP addresses, they could find out where that address corresponded to physically. Then all they had to do was to get a map of wherever the IP was situated, and they would know exactly where they were.

[Cory Trese]

The function that builds the IP address can tell you the location and the connections that the IP address has

[LordofSyn]

I am hoping for a day when these are possibilities within the matrix:

camera feeds (archived or live)
Corp confidential emails/wires (supposedly secure)
newsfeeds (where the aftermath of big missions are given the Twist treatment by the media)
SimStims or other electronic entertainment media that can be sold ( even better if it could be used too)
ability to set off false alarms for distraction
ability to set self destruct on systems or droids
ability to turn off cameras
ability to screw with their communications
Taxi conditions of the area
ability to turn lights on/off in an area and lock them.
Fugitive reports (maybe using it activates a side mission where you play Vigilante and go after the Fugitive(s) for the cash, masked of course)
ability to turn a corp. areas defenses against themselves and/or the corp. soldiers themselves.
download download download.


I know its longer than I expected and now I have more percolating in my brain. I know some require interiors and most require exponential depth, that's why they are called wish lists, no?!

[Jamozk Ekhiss]

The voice I heard wasn't saying what I'd expect - generally, when someone follows you even when you're tryign to shake them off, they want to kill you and take your stuff or blackmail you intodoing their dirty work for them. This wasn't like that. It was the voice of a woman who sounded calm, confident, and altered to seem more..."appealing". I turned around, and her appearance matched that. She also seemed completely unarmed, which would be a terrible mistake anywhere in NBZ, but then I noticed the dangerous-looking blades in her hands. Clearly an experienced negotiator, I decided to hear her out.
She started with the usual "I saw what you did to those dead people back there" nonsense, and I quickly cut in saying fighting wasn't my job and I wasn't about to turn into her pet thug. She asked what my job was, and I told her I worked through the Global Matrix to get information people want, and then a very surprising offer came out. She said I could hack as much as I liked, against whoever I liked, and she would arrange protection against enforcers, as long as her organisation got 38% of my profits. A damn good deal, from my point of view. I accepted, but before she agreed formally, she wanted to see what I could do. I went over to the dataport, tapped into the Matrix, and started robbing everyone I could connect to of everything I could find. Soutably impressed, it was made an official binding agreement until her organisation cancelled it (she was very clear on my inability to pull out), and that was that.
Time for the greatest hacking spree the world had ever seen.