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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Mar 3, 2012 9:52:55 GMT -5
Today's news on the pirate station KLAM,
-- Fritz Gall, a self-described failed inventor, opened the Museum of Nonsense in the Old Eager Beaver, in downtown Seattle recently to pay homage, apparently, to even greater failures than his own. Among the exhibits are the "portable anonymizer" (a stick holding a black bar that one holds over his eyes to obscure identity), a transportable hat rack, a bristleless toothbrush (for people with no teeth), and a "portable hole" (similar to those that appear in the ground whenever the Road Runner needs something for Wile E. Coyote to fall into).
-- Take a Wild Guess: An unidentified man was taken into custody in Pullyup Barrens, in October after he rushed into the Regional Medical Center with a machete and a can of gasoline and demanded to know the "test results."
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Mar 2, 2012 8:59:25 GMT -5
No.
What is greater than God and more evil than the devil. The poor have it, the rich need it and if you eat it you'll die. What is it?
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Mar 2, 2012 8:51:08 GMT -5
Time to throw a little chill on this party.
I've been working my hoop off being the Quartermaster for this bunch.
What each of them failed to mention is that they are not carrying all the load themselves. Each of them has scores of workers in their various departments. They fragging manage.
Take Gobwit for instance.
Please.
Lawyers, accountants, salesmen, ex government officials, detectives and specialists. All running happily around promoting his services. He sits his now very large fat dwarf hoop in his office and the only thing fatter is his head. The only pleasure I get is he has to sign the big fragging checks to keep it all going.
Over the years the Doc and I have been slowly modifying and refining the chip in his skull to keep him on the track we want him on. Is this and improvement? Why don't you decide. We have essentially Farked up his free will and turned him into a monster. He's our monster but does that make it right?
Do you realize we sent him to business school? Gobwit was a petty thief and now he's a thief that can rob anyone at any level. If you call that improvement you have a head problem. I put a picture of his face on the back of all his business trucks with a slogan underneath that says; Does this ass make my truck look big? He actually liked it. He says it associates the word big with his face.
The Doc's is probably the smallest department but it is the most expensive. Mages, researchers, scientists, detectives, squeals, yaps, narc's, doctor's, ex spies, and a high powered think tank. All needing state of the art equipment.
Izzy? She's got hoards of programmers, operators, communication specialists, researchers deckers, and riggers constantly working in her department. If you got the impression all our people are doing a one man/woman show these days you're a bigger hoophole than even I took you for.
Fall was away for a while, which was good for me. She made up for the vacation when she got back with all her lamebrain ideas. Now I have to deal with her and that stupid mutt. She was off fighting the Desert Wars. When she came back she set up some kind of fragging military base at the old Seattle Fusion plant. She also has to background and keep an eye on all these fragging people. When we went Corp we had to go in a big way. Military intelligence my hoop.
I never saw the actual price tag on any of this stuff but set-up and maintaining it alone has to be costing a fortune and who gets to deal with Gobwit on all this every time I need to supply new equipment for some moron's pet projects?
Right, yours truly.
The upshot? It's my department to keep them all supplied and happy. Of course even with computers and a drek load of people, screening items, checking, purchasing, recording, repairing and modifying it's like a choice slice of Hell just to accomplish everything on time and on target.
I really hate this fragging job. It's got to be worse for the people that have to work under me.
Sure, we got a lot done while we been quiet. If you like big business, you're probably like a Gobwit in Drek.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Mar 2, 2012 8:16:29 GMT -5
-- Apparently, not only will there be fewer overall resources for disabled people in Seattle (due to government austerity), but the resources will be spread over a larger number of recipients. The Labor Board in January expanded the category of eligible "disabled" (with reduced-amount payments) to include pyromaniacs, compulsive gamblers, fetishists, sadomasochists, pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs. The National Confederation of Disabled People said the changes would inevitably reduce funds available for the blind and the crippled and other traditional categories of need.
-- Even at a time of schoolteacher layoffs nationally, the Seattle, school system continues to cover all costs for cosmetic surgery for teachers. The benefit was established in the calmer 1970s, and no one, it seems, anticipated the facelift and liposuction crazes that subsequently developed. The annual expense in recent years, for about 500 benefit-takers a year, has been from $5 million to $9 million (equivalent to the average salaries of at least 100 teachers). The teachers' union said it is willing to give up the benefit in a new collective bargaining agreement, but a quirk in UCAS law lessens the incentive of teachers to negotiate such a contract (in that the current, highly lucrative contract remains in force until replaced).
-- In February, Kenneth Gunn, of the UCAS Council, decried the budget cutbacks that closed down local offices that had previously posted marriage notices. By making it more difficult for the public to be aware of specific marriages, Gunn feared an inevitable increase in incest. "I am aware in my own ward of brothers sitting beside sisters they do not know in primary school." (The problem is more serious in Iceland, whose 300,000 people are far more self-contained. However, a new website containing genealogical data back 1,200 years is expected to help reduce the risk of incest.)
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Mar 1, 2012 8:53:46 GMT -5
Yes, if you move in a circle.
Does anyone besides me wonder why anyone is still reading this board?
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Mar 1, 2012 8:34:13 GMT -5
Today Izzy is back under the mainframe. Seems some Decker's out there are still trying to snoop our logs, even though we have been essentially dead to the world for some time now. Talk about your persistence. They need to get a life.
As for me? I appropriated Wanker from Gobwit. The cyber dog likes me better anyway. Does he still mess with the Star Guards?
Yes.
What did I do the last few years? I ran heavy background checks on all the people in the building. We got taps on their money accounts and implants inside them. We got watchers watching the watchers and access is still limited for them. the Spiked Wheels have tried to hit a couple of times.
Yes, even after two years they still want Gobwit real bad. We did a run on them a while back and stuck a retro virus in their recreational drugs. That kept them away for quite a while.
My sis, Winter, did a major upgrade on my cyberware and Wankers. Then she went to work on the equipment and vehicles. Everything from boats, aircraft and street vehicles have been tricked out pretty nice. Then she went to work on personal weapons.
Gobwit, of course, howled at the prices. We ignored it. He always howls at the prices. It isn't like he isn't the slumlord supreme these days. He has his fingers in a lot of pies and stock in a lot of the corps around Seattle. He even gets huge tax breaks. It isn't like he doesn't always make a huge profit.
Wanker and I went to a military training camp and then did a couple of stints in the Desert Wars. It was BRUTAL! I learned a lot and being a small target helps. Wanker and I are mil-spec and ready to rock. The big problem with that is the plan seems to be to stay below the radar on this one. That means a big boom is not what they need so to me the training seems kind of redundant.
Izzy told me that any skill is important since we don't know where this fight is going to lead us, when I asked her why. They want someone in the group capable of leading a strike unit. Especially if we have to do a desrt war with some other corp. I don't think Krass/Drassel ever maintained one of those so I feel like I'm covering something they didn't do before. That's why we opened a small military facility out near the old fusion plant and hired about a thousand bodies. The security was pretty good out there and the city wanted rid of the cost of keeping it on the books. Gobwit made out on that as well. Now he wants Winter to get the old fusion plant working again.
You got it, we have roughly a company sized mercenary unit with support people. To pay the cost down we hire them out sometimes for various reasons. It keeps them trained and helps us to keep the current weapons and skills upgraded. We even train some of our scouts by having them go hit ghouls on the North end and collect the bounties.
Sometimes we raid the hit and run bodies on I-5 and then set up traps and ambushes for the ghouls. A couple of times we have even come close to where that Vampire is supposed to be held up. Someday I may get the go ahead to move in and clean the place out. Until then though, Gobwit says why wreck a cash cow? That guy is slime.
Yes, I used the same military unit to hit the Spiked Wheels. I originally just wanted to go in and terminate them but Dockery needed test subjects for his virus. He pointed out that we ARE supposed to be trying to stay under the radar. A this was a good testing ground. If he can mess around something as tough as trolls he probably has a winner. Besides who cares what happens to a bunch of trolls.
We may be outgunned by Nestles and the UCAS may have a bigger military presence but given the things we have been putting together the past few years. I think we could give a good account of ourselves.
Win a war with either?
No.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Feb 29, 2012 9:01:19 GMT -5
Thought I would take over today and give the Doc a break. So how do you hurt something that can wipe you out in one hit? You either have to get it all at once or you don't give it a chance to hit back. Looking at the size of the target no wonder anyone who hasn't got a brain like a re-fried bean is going to leave the fraggers alone and try to stay out of sight.
We finished the work on The Lair, as Pelch calls it. Understand this amigo, You are never/ever going to be secure enough. So you buy the latest gadgets in the Hi-Tech range at Monumental prices and try to stay one jump ahead of the competition. You don't buy based on advertisement. and you buy tech that watches the watchers.
The problem with that? Making the stuff work together seamlessly. From a tech standpoint? It's a nightmare but it makes it really hard to mess with so much diverse equipment. For a hacker, you have to constantly change protocols to get anywhere and it takes time. Time you could be using to avoid ICE or make an advance.
I don't care how much computing power you have in a deck, it's going to be limited. If you have to do several things at once with your deck or even several thousand things a gig second just to keep you in the system? You're going to be showing serious lag somewhere especially over a telecoms line. The mainframe has all the advantages on it's home turf.
Both Nestles and UCAS have made several hundred matrix runs against us using a variety of deckers. The farther away they were the easier is was to catch them and the really good locals? We know them. Their style, symbols, code and weak points. Sooner or later something in their code gives them a way.
When a person writes even on a deck they have a certain style of speaking or talking. Even when they try to disguise it sooner or later something gives them away. The more often they do it the more obvious it becomes. We have had three years to sharpen our defenses. Now we have ears on the streets and taps on the telecoms. Any decker using the telecoms leaves traces and amigo, they have to use those lines. So we are constantly keeping an eye on every up and coming decker as well.
You can pick up a lot of information from these taps and the programs in our now linked mainframes and smart-frames can now pick it up and sort it almost as fast as we get it.
A smart decker. A really clever decker would try to mask his signal. The old tried and true way was to come in through something you couldn't trace back through easily or go through so many nodes that you could see someone come after you and destroy the path through the nodes before someone could get to you.
What good does that do you when to create the paths through the nodes or to the wall that covers you, a passive program is reading your highly encrypted codes? Maybe not right away, but the more you deck, the more you do it, the program is eventually going to figure out what affect you're using even through the encryption. Your base code, unless you rewrite it every fragging time in new and exciting ways, is going to open that node with your own private technique every time.
Now how many deckers can afford to buy or even write new code and new encryption every time they deck? Runners can't. Not cost effective. They have to spend more time, and in this business time is NuYen, talent and cash to try to rewrite every program they are going to use, every time they have to use it. Most deckers write some programs and pass them around for sale when they get something better. Giving us even more chance to break it and recognize the codes of who wrote the fragging thing. Tracking becomes easier when they do these deals in the matrix but doesn't stop us in the real world either.
Use that to also link them to style of their high powered decks and components sold, which can be traced, and where does that leave your decker? In deep drek.
Do you begin to understand? It's the security problem reversed. They have to go to the expense of constant upgrades not just in expensive hardware but in software as well.
It works for Nestles why not for us on a lower level. Now this is good for defense. The home team always has a big advantage. For attack? Not so good. So we can keep them out. We can't go attacking their computing power, not even here in Seattle. They would have us for breakfast.
Besides we have to not be so much of an irritation that they decide to swat us like a roach. Three years. We can keep them out, but can't do drek to them without losing it all.
We are about at the point Krass/Drassel was at before they went after Nestles publicly, at least matrix wise. You saw how that mess turned out.
Later,
Izzy
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Feb 29, 2012 8:14:05 GMT -5
It depends on what religion you believe in.
For instance: Christian? yes
Muslim? 72 Virgins is more work and aggravation than I want.
The straight answer is : I can't see anyone not putting your sorry hoop to work.
Can you move ahead by moving backward?
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Feb 28, 2012 10:56:26 GMT -5
Dockery here. Coming up with a plan to leave Seattle and get into the main Nestles corp office? Are you fragging kidding me? Ain't going to happen no matter what Gobwit seems to be implying in his previous log entry.
It's for sure that dwarf boy ain't wrapped all that tightly around the image of reality. He sees gold and like a personal vision from on high he considers nothing but the good times ahead. That is until reality intrudes and someone is pounding his hoop into the cement in an effort to make things clear that this is not appropriate behavior.
So what's the first move?
Chummer! Wake UP! How can you figure a move when you know nothing about anything that has happened in the last three fragging years? The dwarf drops a fast log entry and that basically tells you fragging nothing except the bare bones idea that yes, we set a fragging trap and then WHAM-BONER, we hit a bigger fragging wall. As far as anyone here knows you all have three year ago and older data to work on and the problems that were prevalent back then haven't gotten any better now. If we were hoop fragged, what's changed?
Did we get that good in three years?
Nobody gets that good in three years, not for Nestles. So forget the idea of a marine attack, hey diddle diddle, straight up the middle, balls to the fragging wall, like we just became Terminator's. None of this dwarf drek for brains strategy is going to work and let us walk away to tell the kiddies later.
First, let's give you at least a generalized list of what did get done. After all you can bet we did NOT sit on our thumbs during all that time.
Our first priority was to keep the UCAS at bay and away from us. Now you know we made a good start by a little use of explosives in their data haven and then we got really nasty and hit them in the money belt. That wasn't even counting the collateral damage in dead bodies we left them. A good start but if you think that was sufficient for a government mentality where the bosses constantly change and they have to learn and relearn again from the same mistakes, then Pelch wants to offer you a great deal in the gimboid industry.
Did we use a direct attack against Janie? Frag NO! C'mon even the fragging UCAS as small as it is nationally is still to big a fish for us to swallow in one meal. We started out by going after the officials that called the shots to her. A few scandals, some blackmail, a couple of assassinations and pretty soon her funding dried up and she was sent out of the country for a while. With her out of the way that gave us the room to start building a base in Seattle. You think that put us even with Nestles in three years? If you say yes; your living in fantasy land.
There were a couple of things we had to learn concerning Krass/Drassel and Nestles. What makes Nestles so fragging tough for us to beat?
Exactly, It's shear size. With size comes the connections, logistics and the amount of control it has on things around it. Especially people. The more people you can control the safer you are going to be. How do you get that control?
People have to have, not a desire, but a real flesh and blood need to watch out for you or they have to be so drek scared at what you can do that they don't dare cross you.
Now what was the difference between Nestles and Krass/Drassel?
Nestles was huge, world wide. Krass/Drassel was basically in one small city in one country and they only had a partial control of that. The resource gap between the two in personnel, logistics and shear brain power was like sending a kid with a loaded gun up to the North to fight zombies and ghouls. Sure he COULD have won, if the ghouls and zombies were real stupid and he was really fragging smart and very very lucky. What are the odds of that? You would get better odds if you bet that Pelch would stop stealing things tomorrow. Not something I would like to risk my life on, Omae. Sure Krass/Drassel was smart,it's why they lasted as long as they did. Were they lucky? Obviously not lucky enough.
Krass/Drassel got as far as they did because they were smart and tough. They didn't have the deadwood and bureaucracy that a big place like Nestles has. It's only a temporary advantage. A big corp tends to do things by a set of rules. Likes ants they do things over and over again until something big enough does enough damage or as is most likely, irritation, to get their collective attention. Then those ants turn into killers and by shear numbers run you down, strip you to the bone, painfully, and then they go back to what they want to do.
The only other way to get such attention is if you have something they want! Sure, they'll try a nice easy way to get it first. Why make things hard if you can do it easy and just pay money? It ain't like almost any amount you can name for any object is going to wreck their bottom line or even make a dent. Don't want to give it up? The pressure will increase. Eventually, with time, and patients they will get what they want. They can take a long view.
The only thing that will stop such a technique is when they run into another colony of ants as big as themselves. It is never live and let live between such groups, attrition becomes part of the calculations.
Now think about this, do you really think we are going to do anything that is going to make us show up on Nestles radar as an irritant?
NOT BLOODY LIKELY!
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Feb 27, 2012 15:14:50 GMT -5
It's been a while. We have been pretty busy. First we had to hire a person and create a fictitious identity. Then we had to make a past and leave it in affect for a couple of years so that they would come up gradually to the proper retirement time with the proper specs. Then we had to wait for the contact and the sell to our target, which could not be one of us. It took about a month after our person reached retirement for us to get the first nibble. Then it was a matter of tracking back the deposit to the parent company that was actually getting the Nu Yen. Difficult and dangerous because you know that transaction was hidden and MONITORED like the fragging Swiss bank.
In point of fact Izzy stated the learning and breaking the codes was really hard. It was all Euro codes, not normally used in the UCAS. Have you started to get some hints? You guessed it, N E S T L E S used the same type of fragging codes.
Now we knew where the money was going. Then it stopped. WE didn't dare try to penetrate that from so far away. The money could be moved around inside the corp and be going out elsewhere and we couldn't see that. We needed to get in on the inside.
Then there is the UCAS/SS. Think they weren't constantly sniffing around the edges? Waiting and watching for us to slip.
We were right back where Krass/Drassel had been years before. We needed to get into the Nestle's home office. Given that we suspected they had an in on the UCAS and was using them to watch us, we couldn't even afford to give a hint that we had even this much of the trail solved. In essence we had stayed tooling up, training, building and working creating a network of people. So that when the time came we could move. We had to get into the Nestle's home office.
Nestlé's umatched geographic presence is one of its competitive advantages. From Swiss beginnings, the company grew to establish a presence in almost every country in the world. Today, Nestlé's presence in most markets, including emerging markets, dates back many generations, and in some cases more than a century. If you look at a map to this presence on a World Wide basis it looks like a fragging red rash all the way across the globe. Then there is the fact it's in Switzerland part of Euro Union. You think it's going to be easy just to go walking in the gragging front door when they probably own everything and everyone in the country. Not to mention they are probably one of the THE biggest in the Corporate Bank System.
We aren't even in their class. The Doc has taken another year to work out a plan of action. If we can pull this off it might just be the run of century.
Now that we have hopefully put everyone to sleep. It's time to make our move.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 22, 2010 6:02:07 GMT -5
I took a couple of days and a lot of strange new pills but I seem to have stabilized again. Still not 100%, but better than I was. I'm supposed to rest more and take it easy. Spent most of yesterday in Hospital.
The place hasn't improved.
The talk around the village idiot by the medical elite was possibly tainted meds, or whether my system had built up some kind of resistence to the drug.
So the village idiot chimed in. I didn't feel I needed an invitation. Idiots are like that you know. I asked, "Why don't you test the medicines and see. I brought the bag of them with me. If nothing else you'll eliminate a possibility and maybe some expense off my bill by not holding consultations with fifty doctors I don't know."
In polite one syllable words, I was told this was not Hospital policy. Like buildings make policy. Humans make policy and if policy is totally cocked up it should be changed. That seemed to simple a concept for the elitist class. I was sent home before I raised any other questions that might actually get to the heart of the matter. At least they didn't dare pat me on the head or hand. I might be contagious. Snicker, I hope I am.
Nothing works these days. Not likely to in the future either. The rest of the world seems to be sliding down that same slippery slope behind me. Your turn will come Omae.
Managed Healthcare.
My dimpled bum.
No brains to 'Manage' it, just flunkies making rules and laws. That sound good but don't work for squat. Who thinks this drek up?
Sort of like SR these days, Eh?
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 20, 2010 8:12:57 GMT -5
Having a really bad day this morning. Probably won't get a whole lot done today. Spiking fevers and then chills. Stomach is rolling. The meds ain't working. The 'infernal device' is a real pain already.
I was aware when they set up the game why they built the walls. The problem with doing that in any game is you have no room to grow. The only time the game does grow is when someone puts out a rule revision that puts patches on the patches.
Keep the game simple, make the challenges hard.
Why is it that people be it government, gaming, the corp world, think that all things will be improved by adding more rules?
It never works.
Change for the sake of change never works either. Well thought out changes are more desirable. The trick is to make the rules simpler not add levels of complication.
I can understand why they did it, I just don't agree with it. Ever notice that laws and rules tell you what you can't do, not what you can do? Laws are the antithesis of innovation and adaptability.
As for cyber removing essence? Sure that was the way it was set up but no game rule is written and handed down on high like the Ten Commandments. I've dealt with this concept before.
The way games are played and the medium by which you play them changes constantly. We've seen that here. The mechanics of the game do not translate well to this medium. So do we allow a game to die because we refuse to adapt our own methods of playing? Seems bloody likely doesn't it.
As for becoming more human? Or eliminating empathy loss? Yep, it would happen, but....some people will still not want to go the magic route and will play the old cybered up version. Some like to focus on certain types of play characters. Nothing wrong with that. Have you considered the cost of magically enhancing the cyberware you have? Not everyone is going to be able to afford or desire those changes.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 19, 2010 14:18:31 GMT -5
Over the rest of the week we were working our hoops off.
Izzy and Winter with some help from Fall had the mainframe rebuilt and back on line. They also put in automated and lethal defenses.
I was busy on the Corporate end making money, paying bills and ordering the parts and equipment we would need. Like the Skein suits. Never heard of the latest Skein suits? You remember the old style camo cloth? Well the skein suit was the latest technological upgrade. They were for infiltrations. They masked thermal. They had light refractive characteristics and inbuilt medical just in case. They were sound dampening. Talk about expensive.
Then there was the mil spec communicators. Built into expensive looking watches. You had a special code you had to punch in and then they would automatically sync up on a random frequency, and once they sync, they keep rotating randomly through the frequency's as you speak. Constantly changing. The coded transmission cycle randomly as well, every three seconds. Breaking them WAS possible but even if they did? They weren't going to get much until they could trace all the frequencies and codes. Lot's of luck there.
Fall was working on the weapons. We all had our own special kit full of surprises. Winter had built us a new untraceable ride. She put in lots of surprises. It used the Skein Technology as well. It also carried a smaller linking matrix connector and a lot of analysis equipment.
Dockery was doing some long magic in his offices. Probably setting up weapons and tracers on all of us. Who knows?
Now we waited for Izzy to get us a target. She was decked in but not the way deckers usually are. She was laying on a bed with her head in some kind of crystal dome. The lights flickered in pastels across it's entire length. She was decking using the power of a mainframe and she was not limited by the line drag. Speed of thought chummer. Like a rigger she was a actual part of the machine now.
Wake up deckers, Godzilla has come to town.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 19, 2010 13:59:54 GMT -5
Izzy continued to smile at me as elfboy finished his nicely prepared speech that told me absolutely nothing. Like just saying it should have automatically convinced me that he wasn't still hiding stuff. Catch the excuses. Magically related? What PYLE O'DREK was that. Why not explain it in layman's terms? C'mon. The Lair is supposed to be covered and shielded. IT's the safest place we got. Why can't this fragger give with the info?
It's fragging obvious. He's holding out because if I find out how he's involved? I might just not like it and maybe the others won't either.
The problem is all the others are ready to cut him some lack. I haven't figured out yet if Dockery has a talent for leading or they have a talent for being led. I don't follow what elf is saying but then again, I don't want to.
Public opinion is against me here. If I fight it now or try to make a scene it will just turn the others against me. The chip is smarter. Be polite, follow the crowd get the fragger later. He'll screw up eventually and then I'll make a move with some credentials behind me.
So I smile back. Just another friendly night at the pickpockets ball.
"Fair enough." I say nodding sagely in agreement. The others are all happy. Later it will be Pearl Harbor time. Sayonara Sucker. "Whats the next move?"
Dockery looked a little surprised and then caught himself. He hadn't expected I would let him get away with this. I could see him trying to juggle it a bit but he moved on. "We get the computer on-line and the matrix connections reinstalled. Then we start to trace those dummy corporations the money is going to."
Izzy looked confused. "They won't use the same one each time and after someone is dead you can bet they erase them. How do you intend to trace them?"
Dockery looked at her dead faced. "We won't." Izzy looked more confused. "You go out and look for ones that fit the criteria of the old one that are gone. They'll do all of them pretty much the same way and probably coded by the same individual. Consider people who are retiring now? Some of them are making those new deposits into the strange new accounts. Those accounts will stay up while the targets are alive. They have to or the targets would get suspicious. About a month before they die, those accounts will vanish off the matrix leaving a hole. I'm sure you will find at least a dozen that conform to your search criteria. Then we pick out one and track it. It has to lead to a legitimate office somewhere."
Looks like we had a plan. It was time to go back to work.
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Post by Pelch Gobwit on Jul 18, 2010 9:10:30 GMT -5
The current situation bothered me quite a bit.
Dockery has appeared to have gone to some magical LA-LA Land. He's staring off into space in Gobwit's direction like he's astral walking or something, but where could he go in the lair? It's fragging shielded and that means inside and out.
The obvious thing is that he has seen something in one of us that has attracted his interest or someone has found a way in. I find it unlikely that anyone got in without setting off the magical alarms or even the physical ones. We got astral beasts and Lone Star mages on patrol outside. We got the Fab IV treatment. We got Dockery's Ward around the lair and more of his elementals on patrol. You'd need the equivalent of a magical cannon to get in here magically. Using that of course would set off alarms all over the fragging place.
It's got to be pretty obvious that he has seen something in one of us that has sparked an interest. It would seem most likely that it is Fall or Winter since they were the last ones that he talked to.
Everyone else has noticed that he has zoned out too. We're all uncomfortable as we wait for him to come up for air.
This Phoenix Project was disturbing. I couldn't believe how much this run was accelerating in danger and adversaries. No wonder the former Z Street crews had such a big problem dealing with this drek. Just sorting out who was doing what to whom was going to require a major league score card. I thought it might be a good idea to find out more about this Phoenix project but where to start?
Face it, I can't just go out on-line and query the matrix about Phoenix Project. The UCAS would be all over it in seconds and it would lead them directly back to us.
Dockery had also made it clear with his last statement that this was not something we should go after right now. I had to admit he was right. If we didn't stay centered on the task at hand we would be making the same mistakes the last Z crews made. We would get so disbursed chasing all the leads that we would in essence accomplish nothing. We just didn't have the people or the time to chase down every alley in this maze. We were going to have to think our way through it. Unlike the mage Freddy before us we couldn't get so hung up on a pet theory in any one particular alley that we ignored what was happening around us. As Dockery stated we had to work together even if we personally thought the direction was wrong. There is strength in numbers.
Reluctantly, the Phoenix was going to have to stay in the ashes for a while.
Still this Project stuff bothered me. It was the kind of stuff that could get you very dead. It was not the kind of thing I normally took on.
I'll scam money, but dealing with the killers and hard boys was not something I did a lot, like never. You learn to kill the gutter punks and scum that inhabit the streets looking for easy prey. Everyone has had to deal with that in one way or another. That's a long way from dealing with a stone cold group of professional killers backed by a cartel of some kind loaded with Nuyen, equipment and support staff.
The glazed look left Dockery's face. That was a relief especially when he smiled.
"Sorry everyone. Still I think we have some advantages that no one else has discovered yet. It's an advantage that I won't talk about yet, but we will pursue it later after we deal with the scammers. Unfortunately, Mr Gobwit, I can't tell you about it. It's not part of this thing with the UCAS scammers. I'm telling you all now because I want to be as honest as I can about this. It's magic related and I hope you'll trust me that this is not the time to bring it out. I do promise I'll make it clear to you all at the right time."
"As for my direct involvement with the UCAS? I worked for other employers that require me not to talk about it. I can say that the UCAS will not be after me for anything that I did to them previously although they will eventually figure out who I am. I will say that I have worked in intelligence operations before, not against just the UCAS, but Major Corps and other governments."
"I hope that will be sufficient for now." I smiled at him nicely.
Gobwit didn't look happy about that.
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