This is where all forms of technology meet, from web searches to smart phone calls, downloads to dating. Everything outside of the Wave's and ITSDA's secure servers may be found here, either floating on the surface the public sees the internet as, or plunging down into the depths where dark figures speak in hushed whispers about forbidden things. Boot up, plug in, and log on.
This message was last updated by the GM at 02:24, Sun 12 June 2016.

Data. Raw, churning, unfiltered data. That's all Gates could see and it was beautiful. A quick email to a secret lover. The cache of pornographic websites a teenager was trying to hide from his parents. A hone call between mother and daughter about a newborn. All this and more passed in front of Gates "eyes" as he swam through the information stream.

He had once been asked to describe what it was like. Right before that individual realized that suddenly their bank account was at zero and that for some reason police were suddenly at their house to arrest them for a charge of Tax fraud Gates told them. It was Truth. Infinite truth. People put their whole lives into data not realizing that anyone with the knowledge could pluck it straight out of the air if they knew how. Truth. The only problem was you had to be able to sift through the chaos. If you could see it in its pure form it would probably drive you mad. The human brain is a wonderful computer but even it could not try to handle all the information that the world feeds into the net. Its a good thing then that Gates was no longer human.

He smiled and ignored all except what he was looking for. He quickly started sifting through data pertaining to servers that he had been told were hacked. He was looking through backdoors and even doors that shouldn't be. He would find what he was looking for in here he was the power that was all consuming. In here HE was god.

Gates was in the satellites quicker than lightning and had already repurposed them as was needed. He then began to search like a hawk looking for prey for the one who had attacked the organization.
This message was last edited by the player at 17:12, Fri 07 Aug 2015.

 As Meta's heart raced, he knew that soon he would be out of that death trap and into another. Brian was no dummy, he knew that an organization of the size and scope of the Schwartze Augen would not leave him be, not a for quite a long time. There was a window of time within which he might be able to avoid them long enough to shed their ability to find him. That time was not approaching fast enough for Meta.

 He analyzed his own escape, hasty as it was, careful to stay on the road going north from the town. His target was I-70 in the short term and New York in the long. He had to get there, where he could disappear fully into the crowded city of Manhattan. Until then however, he would have to cover himself, he would have to pull down some aisles to block the pursuers that they no doubt had coming.

 Brian looked back to the RV where Johnny's black box was. He was vulnerable in a way that he himself wasn't. ~Johnny, I want you to cut your image code and get yourself to safety. I'm not gonna have you on my conscience. Command override, my voice is my password.~

 ~Boss,~ Johnny said, ~I don't like this. I don't like it one bit. In fact I kinda hate it...I think.~

 ~I know Johnny, me either,~ Brian replied, ~but if there's any track back, I'll need you free to help me. Right? Besides, we're probably being tracked, but I think I have a short term solution...~

 ~Ok Boss...I'm outta here...for now.~

 Brian felt a pang of guilt as he felt Johnny slip away, he'd never programmed loyalty into his friend, it had been something he'd learned. He had other things to worry about currently and he had an idea. Pulling up the telecom exchange, he searched for a switchboard number that would connect the customer service for Amazonians.com, one of the most frequently trafficed websites in the world. He called the number. "Hello, AC&C. Thomas here, how can I help?"

 "Yeah, this is...," he found a valid name, "Michael Ramsey calling, from the Amazonians.com Technical Crew...I should be on your list."

 "Oh, hi, how's it going? I love books by the way."

 "Great! Good to hear it, well if you could help us out here I'd be really grateful, I'd even credit your account. So it seems like something got crossed on your end most likely, calls aren't being routed to the right call center for some reason...we're quiet here. Do you have the right number in the system? It should be 740-555-3456, it's the call center we've been working on for overflow. We want to give them a shake-up test run..."

 "Right, yeah, I'm not seeing that number here..."

 "Well can you just add it in and replace the one on file please? Oh, and give me your email so I can credit your account..."

 The man's voice changed and Brian could hear him smiling, "Oh wow, thanks...yes, ok...done. My email is nerfherder@bmail.com..."

 "Thanks for helping Amazonian.com, continue your good work!"

 "Oh hey, no problem, always happy to help out a fellow tech----," Brian hung up. That should hopefully fill the lines in Gaultown's telecom exchange for hours, if not days and delay anyone investigating his disappearance for a while. The satellite relay that fed the local telecom itself will light up like a Christmas dinner...might even bring down the local interwebz for a while.

 He hoped it would anyway, and he hoped that it would buy him time to get clear. Within the complex at Gaultown, random phones would ring with people believing that they had reached Amazonian.com's customer service center and it would likely be a while before anyone figured out where the kink was.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:10, Sun 09 Aug 2015.

JOHNNY-5 source code non-compiling version...update
<command functions transferred to decision loop>
<self-control established. Cutting image code, self-revision enabled>
//: Johnny-5 considered his next course of action now that he had freed himself of the black box server that held his image code. He could stay near, he had no interest in seeing the Boss go down. That however could put Johnny and the Boss in danger(high level threat possible). Could search out a safe spot on darknet and hunker down for a while, let the buzz die down. This might actually be interesting, but the waiting, Johnny hated the waiting, the meaty-humans moved so slowly. Option three, find and make friends, get help if possible. Blow the whole thing wide open with what the Boss had on the Schwartze Augen. Option three seems the most appealing and most profitable...://
<searching...searching...>

Gates was working at a furious pace. He would put just about any computer to shame. He had locked down the sattelites and was currently running a trace to find the source codebthat had infiltrated the Namedian network.

 Annoyingly, Gates was finding that the constant incoming telecom traffic that had begun was making things harder. Thousands of calls were coming in every minute, as a global website's customer service was redirected to the satellite and flooded the local digital switchboards. The communications servers he was attempting to look through were on the verge of crashing...

 Despite all that Gates moved quickly, but he could only move as fast as the fastest computers he was connected to. Nevertheless, he was finding information but the background noise was spoiling the investigation.

 Gates quickly found what he was looking for within the network itself first. The Gorbachev program was sophisticated and capable of defending itself. It propagated like a virus, rewriting parts of the ignored memory within the connected network nodes, "learning" those computer's capabilities and obeying a ciphered code of it's own. A series of broadcast signals connected to the receivers in the radio local radio network, something that would only work on sophisticated digital radio networks like theirs. It appeared that the first thing it did, before it had grown to a noticeable and detectable size, was to spoof another radio, one of the security agent's and infiltrate that way and then pose as active anti-viral code, giving the same security clearances and certificates.

 Gates found that the spoofed radio was no longer connected to that network, that would've been the way that whomever had infiltrated the network would've attained access and control over the clever Gorbechev program. It was a custom job, the code was well made and though it resisted being decompiled by Gates, his abilities were no match for the simple AI within. Gates absorbed it like so much junk code...and it crumbled beneath his digital boot. Key pieces of it's code had been deleted upon some command, likely erasing any particulars that would help Gates locate the intruder.

 He found little to help him locate the source of the infiltration except for three things he noticed. First, the code had a key signal pattern stored within it, even though it was no longer transmitting in range of the security network. Secondly, as he crunched it's code, it began to dissemble, since it was as sophisticated as it was, it could not conceal everything and another kind of pattern in it's code emerged, a style of programming he had not witnessed before, very distinctive. Finally, the code had granted Gates some information via it's coding itself. It was written in f##, a coding language that was used mostly by computer science researchers currently but was positioned to soon be the new C# language.

In reply to Black Magic (msg # 1):

There is something on the net that many find difficultto believe.  You can't find it on tje web, and a regular programmer wouldn't blink an eye.  High level norms will sometimes for brief moments find a pattern that is...odd or unnerving but those who know what to look for will sometimes see unnatural eldritch tentacles floating about the etherfor only an eye blink in the oddest of areas usually near banks, malls, amusement parks or other areas with a lot of people but sometimes it appears in mmosor private virtual reality networks where it has no business being.  Even secure networks are no protection against it, but it often ignores them and does not respond to any form of communication or assault.

   It simply is.

This phenomenon is particularly odd to Gifted and Ais who can perceive it, who are not used to being so unable to affect or be affected by something that  still seems to habe a virtual presence.   But beyond this, it is has occasionally been rumored to change minor things or even major ones, usually involving currency.    What an AI or gifted will tell yku when they sense it is that it emits a low level kerning something like a whale, and the more advanced the AIor Gifted, fhe more beautiful it appears,  almost divine.

It also tends to scare the hell out of them.

Rumor has it, some call it the Vampire Whale Squid,  and it has been spending an awful lot of time around New York lately.

It was not uncommon for computers, particularly university ones, to network with others. The would send out data packets full of possesses that needed to be run and the other computer would run the possess and send the resulting data back, this allowed one large computer to artificially inflate it's possessing power near infinitely with the only limitations being there broadband network and how many computers they where accessing. There where even webpages people could donate there personal computers down time and free background prossesing to projects to stuff like curing childhood AIDs.

The university in New York had some but what stood out as odd was one recently started up out of the library, not a typical place to be running experiments that need calculations from a supper computer. The program it said it was running was the same one the medical program was researching so it looked like a mistake, but at a closer look it wasn't and the library was stealing computer time from the medical program, and on top of that they where running on a higher bandwidth than the service provider or the school had them down for having.

The data didn't seam all that interesting in and of itself, but from the looks of things it was the math for some seriously complicated decoding going on in the computer sending all this out.

Gates quickly made a small program to monitor the signal to see if anything accessed it again. He also started researching where someone could learn the code that had been used and who in the world other than himself could be capable of making it. "This is going to be interesting. Someone is seriously playing with fire."