Shadowrun - The Matrix

Fourier

Zipfile enters the Matrix.

A black expanse spreads out before her, she can see thousands of kilometers into the distance where millions of tiny stars dwell, the Matrix representation of other networks across the planet.

Above her float the massive megacorporation hosts, represented as giant spheres or massive floating logos kilometers across, some hundreds of kilometers up in the sky.

Closer are all the icons, usually in the form of buildings, representing the networks found in houses, clubs, restaurants, etc across Seattle.

Near her she sees floating representations of all smart devices in her vacinity. The matrix representation of the shop is very similar to its real world version, the cyberdeck quickly filtering out the superfluous elements like ads.

Multiple icons and tags appear outside the shop. The gangers are wearing smartsocks, smartshirts, etc so it's clear where everybody is. Ten of them also have smartguns that can be remotely hacked. Two are on the Orcs and Trolls near the limo.

At the limo itself a large icon springs up. The runner symbol.



Text runs beneath it announcing a decent payment of 20,000 nuyen to runners for investigating what's happening at the Limo. The icon tries to grow to be visible across the Seattle matrix, but chains appear around it. Somebody doesn't want the SOS to get out. Right now Zipfile is probably the only runner aware of the offer.

Banjo

****.
**** **** ****.
As much fun as it might be to send the UCAS packing, 20 large would buy a lot of Brawl shirts. Stop it - that's what they want you to think. That's thinking your way into the snare. But what about a pair of shock gloves? All the better to electrocute your federalist tits with my dear! Or settle the tab with the 'Glow and put a down-payment on that Fairlight deck, and really start to make a difference. Yeah - like that Robin Cook guy, rob from the rich.

With her avarice and conscience in a fine balance, she cracks her virtual knuckles and gets to work.

OOC : OK, I have no idea what I can and can't do here or where to start. So apologies if this is a bit all over the place and I hope this doesn't drag the other thread down too much! Can I still talk out loud to the others while in the Matrix, so I can relay information to them, or do I pop it up in Rude's feed and let him do it?

Either way, first thing to do is to let the others know about the offer. Quietly.

Next - can I do something to look at what those chains are / where they're coming from, and do they prevent me from contacting the Limo directly? If not, hail the Limo

Fourier

OOC: You can communicate with the others. I'll give the message over on the other thread in a minute

Zipfile inspects the chains, but they're pretty guarded against inspection, trying to bring up an info tag on them just produces a big red X that floats a few inches from her face and then grows a mouth and arms and blows a raspberry at her. Getting more detail will require a hack and it looks like a serious enough system, though not beyond from a cursory feel of the protocols protecting it.

The chains don't prevent access to the limo, but the limo's own security does. However the protocols are standard moderate strength government ones (OOC: Quite likely she'd manage to hack them) that manifest as a padlock on the limo doors.

Banjo

Thinking there's no point in popping the chains unless the car is ready to go, she turns her attention to the limo.

Ok - is there some mechanic whereby I can spoof my identity so that if I draw UCAS security protocols down on myself I can make it look like the chains did whatever I did? I don't think there is, but that's what Matthew Broderick would do...

Either way, time to pry open the sunroof and poke my virtual head in to say hello. And also copy and files they have lying around in the open while we talk about how we're going to save them

Fourier

OOC: There is such a mechanic, but again either Zipfile can't do it yet or they've taken it out

Zipfile enters into the limo with little effort. There is nobody else in the car besides Hoffman, as she can tell from the absence of shirt, sock, etc icons. Envoy Hoffman has locked herself in and Zipfile sees a phone icon in her pocket which she could dial into. She also sees the car has a telescreen on which she could make herself appear back in meatspace.

Banjo

It's the Matrix! Phone!
Btw can I Dox her first to find out who she is, family, hobbies, the kind of unsettling but easy to find stuff you'd glean from a Facebook skim? Only if it's quick.

Fourier

Banjo wrote: »

It's the Matrix! Phone!
Btw can I Dox her first to find out who she is, family, hobbies, the kind of unsettling but easy to find stuff you'd glean from a Facebook skim? Only if it's quick.

Zipfile extracts social media profiles, emails without government encryption and so on. The quick summary is that she's into mountain climbing, is a bit estranged from her family due to pursuing her job intensely and has a sister she obviously misses called Emma. Doctor reports indicates she's healthy, but doesn't take care of her teeth. Social media profiling algorithms estimate a high chance that she has unconfessed feelings for a coworker called Fassal, a very good looking elven man.

The phone rings. She picks up straight away.

"Hello? Who is this?"

Banjo

(affected American accent)
"Thank you for calling Runner-chat. Hundreds of real Runners are waiting to talk to you. Your call is important to us. Please hold. Dooh dah doo doo dah dah de doo doo dah dah
<To the tune of Girl from Ipanema. Can I patch this through to the Face? If so, please ping Yu that I have the client on line 2>
Calls may be recorded for training purposes.
Brrrp brrrrp "
(Affected deep growl)
"Hello little zebra. Your watering hole is a little crowded today. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Of course, you wish to perambulate the savannah, but that will be expensive. 40,000 mangos. A lot, but some things are worth the cost, yes? So many things unsaid. How would Emma take it? 40,000. Not many hyenas abroad tonight, it's a Runners market. Or for 10,000 I can send you a certain colt's last intimate picture, invent yourself a happy last memory, but it's a very small file, bad value for money.

But lucky you! So many friends. You must tell me the secret of your popularity "

Fourier

"Dear god, yes, yes 40,000 I agree..." she says clearly unnerved by the situation and the mention of Emma "...what do I have to do?"

Banjo

"...is the correct answer. Please hold to claim your prize...."
Patching through to Yu

Banjo

OOC : While she's busy on the phone, is there something I can do to mark one of her smart devices - something less obvious than the phone, but you mentioned smart clothing on the gang guys, something lower-level like that - that would allow us to track her if Necro can't single handedly defeat 84 gang-bangers in a melée and get her out of the limo now? e.g. use Exploit to put some kind of unique marker into the generic branding on something?

Also does my access give me the facility to nose around the limo's local network and try to find something of value we can sell to a competitor later or blackmail her with, or that might be of use to the Blackstar Collective? Using "Decrypt"?
(One of her contacts is in the Black Star Neo-anarchist collective, so I assume she's always on the look-out for ways to stick it to the Man)

And if I have to jack out in a hurry, will that affect the call to Yu?

Fourier

OOC: Call to Yu will hold until she hangs up, unaffected by jacking out.

Zipfile places a special sequence into Hoffman's jacket suit that will mark her out on AR for the whole group up to a distance of 10km, the exploit was so simple she knows there is no possibility GOD picked up on any of it.

As she moves through the network within the Limo, represented as a stack of binders on the back seat, she finds one suspiciously heavily encrypted file.

OOC: I don't want to presume you hack it, as Zipfile would suspect it'll draw a bit of attention from GOD ~10 overwatch

Banjo

OK so I read up a little to get a handle on how Overwatch works, at least in earlier editions. Hacking the Camera and breaking into the Limo probably generated a little bit but the actions were successful so it can't be that much unless I rolled extremely well. So let me ask you this -

Can Zipfile tell how big the encrypted file is and estimate how long it would take to decrypt it? (worried about time-based OS increases)

Can she copy the encrypted file and decrypt it at her leisure? (guessing no)

And is it paranoid to think that the suspiciously heavily encrypted file exists only to draw a decker's attention and near-guarantee a GOD Convergence, and maybe there's a file in an innocuous location that would be easily overlooked except the name is slightly wrong and it wouldn't normally be encrypted and maybe I've said to much about that Paigefile.sys archive that my 14-year-old self thought he was so clever for creating.... (this isn't really a question, I guess I'm just talking myself out of not going for the Brass Ring, unsuccessfully)

OK - I think I can weather a 10 point hit to my OS - crack that file and copy it, then reboot my deck, please. Worst case scenario I've completely miscalculated, it all works differently in this edition and a GOD squad descends which might thin out the gangs outside enough that Rude and Frostburn can cut through them. My share of 40K will buy a passable life support system for my vegetative body after the matrix damage settles

Fourier

OOC: Basically 40 overwatch points triggers GOD. I'll put up what is known of the overwatch rules in short while

Zipfile sinks her hands into the file and cracking programs get to work. She manages to break the encryptions on the file and saves it to her cyberdeck once it has cleared a virus check, she can read it at her leisure later. It's about ten pages long.

She then pulls out of VR.

OOC: Back to the other thread

Fourier

Zipfile reenters the Matrix sitting in the virtual Stuffer Shack.

Banjo

Ok, Yu wants the car freed up. That means breaking the locks, clearing a path and then hoping the car does what we want. Or owning the cars guidance system. So....

Scan that file for virus / neural linguistic programming markers. If clean send it to the others.

Put a call in to Arclight (neoanarchist contact) to see if the know what's going down

And start looking into a point of origin for the lock

Fourier

The file is clean and appears to written in magical symbols.

The message to Arclight takes off in the form of a sparrow and shots off into the sky.

Scanning the locks Zipfile knows they are connected to a megacorp, though which one she can't learn without a proper hack of the locks.

Banjo

Zipfile pings the file to Frostburn. "Frosty, this might be more your scene. Got it from the car. Those symbols mean anything to you?"

Trying to put off starting the overwatch clock, she pings a message up in Rude's HUD to suggest Yu get the damsel in distress to hand over access to the car so she doesn't have to hack the controls.

In the meantime she tries to identify vulnerable smart guns in the elf and troll camps. Before hacking the locks, she'll try to set up doors into a couple of weapons so of she does free the car up she's already set up to cause a little chaos

Fourier

Zipfile identifies three guns with security vulnerabilities. One near the limo, two out among the gangs in the streets.

Fourier

Zipfile sees the locks around the limo spring open, though the Shadowrunner symbol is still behind chains. She complete access to the vehicle controls now.

Banjo

Well, she'd put it of long enough. Time to get to work. Hack the big red X.

Fourier

OOC: Just to be certain you mean the chains around the Shadowrunner symbol?

Banjo

OOC : Yeah, whatever the thing that blew a raspberry at me was - I presume that it's preventing the car from moving and also keeping the SOS from being broadcast?

Not sure if any of my programs need to be expressly activated to get a benefit from, but push the button on Overclock or Exploit if it helps

Fourier

As Zipfile hacks into the chains they struggle a bit against her protocols, but suddenly they release.

"Nice skills Runner" the lock says as it releases, its mouth changing to have a large tongue and thick pink lips to do so.

The Shadowrun symbol unhooked is now Zipfile's. She can let it grow to call in other Runners or crush it.

Banjo

OOC : I have completely misread the significance of those locks, haven't I Started the OS-Clock for nothing. Ah well. OK, start getting claws into a few smart guns so we can fire off a few rounds and make it look like someone else blew up whatever Frosty is thinking of destroying. That is, I don't want to fire them immediately, I want to own them and signal the team that if they want to do whatever they have planned, I'll try to start a bit of chaos up in the background.

Can I check if the cars individual controls will respond - e.g. release and apply the handbrake, rev it up, engage and disengage gears - without actually moving the damned thing?

Fourier

Zipfile prompts the vehicle controls which all seem responsive to her.

Banjo

Before getting too excited with herself, Zip checks the diagnostics readouts from the car - a self drive should have tire pressure information, crash sensors, that kind of thing - is the car roadworthy?

If the car is good to go on all fronts, she relays readiness indicator to the others and pull down a local map and overlay what she knows about populations outside so she can see if the front or back are the better bet. If the car is ****ed, well best we know that before we move.

"I have the car. Let me know what gwan, I'll bring it round the (front/back - delete as applicable) when you make your move."
or
"Eish! This car going no where. Will have to extract on foot. I can set a few guns off, try to start some trouble, or maybe jam them up - We going in noisy or quiet?"
as circumstances dictate.

OOC : OK so can I talk in the other thread or do I have to relay messages through you to their various input methods? I'm assuming the latter.

Finally, is there any scope to splice together a quick program from her no-doubt extensive library of, well, libraries that will respond to voice commands so she can jack out and use her commlink to mess with any smart guns outside or control the car? The deck leaves her a little exposed if we're about to go full-on mayhem. (and if yes, does her OS continue to climb as long as she's doing that?)

Fourier

OOC: Indeed the latter. Never know who might intercept communication. Or you might later go so deep into the matrix that the message will come out garbled.

There are such programs. No OS won't climb with them. Once you're logged out you're fine in virtually all cases. Exception being stuff related to going straight into Megacorp mainframes

Maps coming up in the other thread in a second

Car looks good to go and Zipfile leaves protocols in the guns and car that they'll respond to her meatspace voice. Front of the shop is accessible from the warehouse complex.

Banjo

Ok, Zip'll hold here till the others are ready to move, unless they take to long and she needs to bounce the deck again.

What's taking them so long? Say... Doesn't this joint have an arcade cab....?

Banjo

Zipfile resists the urge to slide over to the "Razorgirls' Got Talent" server to see if Molly made the finals. Stay sharp, omae, stay ready. Aaaaaaany second now.....

Banjo

Zip messages Rude : "You guys didn't ditch me in the café and head to the Brawl bar up the block without me did you?"

Dum Dee dum...

She takes a look at the tags outside to see if there's anything interesting going on yet and waits for the team to make their move.

Ooc : ok, fine, I could just jack out and join the fun in the other thread but that's a player knowledge breach! Who knows where it will end? A run to dig up the long lost secret recipe for Pumpkin Spice to sell to the highest bidder and dominate the weak minds of Seattle's wageslaves? Not on my watch! Besides it's more fun if you don't remind them that I'm totally sensorially isolated from the real world.