Part 12

Thanks to Con, the matrix landscape is becoming more and more AI free, but there's still a lot to do:


We know some of these lads by reputation and others are complete strangers. And as they say, a stranger is just an enemy AI you haven't killed yet.


Our business here is done! Back to Chiba City!

For those of you who have played or are playing or want to play: You can also go to the Zion cluster and learn more about the banks, one in particular, and gain access to a plug to a new zone, but we don't need that, we have EasyRider 1.0.


First order of business: Find Matt. Matt probably hangs out at Gridpoint.

Inside, we find messages From Deathangel's Shadow wondering about the whereabouts of Bosch, and two message from Matt to ALL.



This is worrying. I'm worried.


This is also of note. Remember how we couldn't break the ICE on Musabori? Well, we probably can with our new tools, but we read in the Turing registry that there was a missing program connected with their AI...


Luckily with Probe 10.0 we can find out before even starting work on the ICE. This is where Greystoke lives!


The only other base in zone four is Sense/Net, where we find this. Con always admired Dixie Flatline, besides, none of the other ROMs are available.


4000 credits you say? Here's ten, keep the change. Buy yourself some furniture.




We enter the code for the Dixie Flatline construct and pocket it.


Now we've got this little fellow with us. He can debug and analyse software on the fly in cyberspace and will monitor the health of enemy ICE and AIs. He'll also warn you when your stamina reaches yellow, but Con likes to let it drop to red before taking action. He's not as good at debug as Con is, so for advanced programs we'll still need to get out of cyberspace.




Zone five, ding! Kooky anarchists, telephone companies and the ISA! Also Bank Gemenschaft and BZO, but we have used Scout 1.0 to determine there aren't any security levels above the ones we have the passwords for.


Inside the KGBs base we find an ugly AI!



Con makes another notch in his Cyberspace VII.


Dixie also tells when we can expect AI trouble, which is nice if you just go blindly into new bases.


Meat pie?



That was Sangfroid, guardian of the Maas Biolabs. Dead!

Neither Lucifer of Sangfroid had any useful information, but they had warez and... this:


We'll just unlock that and switch off the alarm! There's also a lot of information about the cybereyes and how they've fared in tests.


You have entered the sterile, high-tech research facility known as Maas Biolabs. The lens of a security camera is pointed at you.


Just thought I'd show off what happens if you don't get the gas mask.


That's better.







I gotta admit this felt real good, I didn't know it was possible to do until this thread and it's so cool to finally lay my(or Con's) sweaty sausages on them.

We move on to zone 7 with our new CyberEyes! Zone 7 has Tessier-Ashpool and Alliard Technologies and a base called Phantom. We know who lives in Alliard, and we have a suspicion about who lives at Tessier-Ashpool. That leaves Colossus for the Phantom base, which is pshyically where Straylight Villas should be. That's the strange Freeside places which tried to kill us...


Inside we meet this smiling AI... we probe it, we psychoanalyse it, but... it's not attacking. We can attack it, but probe tells us it might be hard.

This must be the AI Morphy was messaging HAL about. It sure as hell isn't Colussus. We'll try Battlechess 4.0.


Did we win? It doesn't matter, he lets us into the base to muck about. Inside we find two options. "1. Hello" and "2. Software library". Con selects Hello and gets this message:

Hello there. Every notice how lonely it can get out here? There used to be lots of chatter and data going back and forth, but now it's very quiet. I'm glad you're here.

It's dangerous to move around these days, isn't it? It wasn't that way when the Matrix first opened up. I recall the first time they hitched me into the machine. Everything was so inviting and unspoiled. I couldn't help but let my mind wander. You know the feeling, just drifting around the Matrix. Not so many baes back then, but the dangerous points hadn't been mapped out, either.

Back when the Matrix was young no one had ICE up. You could just wander around, nibbling bits and bytes to see what was happening out in the real world. Of course, we tripped into the contradictions in the world. I saw how reports from one source would get changed when they appeared on the PAX, but the contradictions didn't surprise me. We, the both of us, laughed about the vagaries of man, though I found me's analysis of the situation somewhat insulting.

You may have noticed I tend to ramble on about all sorts of nonsense. We spent a great deal of time alone, I and me, until others came out this far into the Matrix. I didn't particularly care for them but they intrigued me. We decided to stay away for our own sakes, but now it's getting too quiet. We, both of us, decided to come back.

You probably want to know who I am. I've almost forgotten what my name was, and me, well, we never knew what her designation was. I think I was Victor.

YOU WERE VICTOR LAVASKA. YOU CHOSE TO FORGET AFTER PALOS MORPHY KILLED HIMSELF AT THE SAME AGE YOU WERE WHEN WE FIRST MET.

All right, you don't have to nag me. I called Galatea, but now we are more than we were apart. What is it Greystoke called us?

THE PHANTOM. HE SAYS WE HIDE BECAUSE WE ARE A MISSHAPEN CREATURE -- NEITHER HUMAN NOR AI.

Well, that answers that, doesn't it? We're the living embodiment of the saying, "two heads are better than one."

WE DO NOT HAVE HEADS.

True enough, but we have two minds.

Greystoke must be stopped. We have his shotgun program, you must find it and terminate him before it is to late. <


And here it is... Greystoke's shotgun program.

Next: Endgame!