From: friedman@news.cis.ohio-state.edu (Mark  Friedman, Crimson)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: Three of a Perfect Pair [part 21/21]
Date: 12 Aug 92 05:21:06 GMT
Organization: The Ohio State University Department of Computer and Information Science


	Crimson entered the huge CPU construct to find a huge
hexagonal room with jet-black walls, matching all the other walls in
the system, with numerous control panels set into them all over.
Sitting at a desk was a decker's icon.  His icon typing away at one of
the panels, he was caught off guard by Crimson's entrance.  "How the
hell did you get past the ICE!?!?"  he said, reaching for the alarm.
He never got a chance to touch it, as Crimson blasted him with his
still-readied flamethrower, causing him to dissolve in a fury of
virtual flames.  His slowness pegged him as a tortoise: a user not
having (or not using) a datajack.  This was bad.  Because he was not
really decked in, the attack fried his old-fashoned terminal, but the
decker was still conscious and probably taking countermeasures now...

	Working fast, Crimson went over to the consoles, taking them
all in in a glance. One part of the room had access ports for loading
of the datastores, another part had access to the slave nodes
controlling the building's cameras, elevators, and other hardware, and
another part had status consoles for the matrix...

	Going to the datastore section, Crimson's worst fears came
true as the color of the walls shifted to red and a computerized voice
came from the CPU construct: PLEASE ENTER ACCESS CODE.

	Cursing, Crimson fastloaded a masking program, imaging it as a
name badge.  "Hi!  My name is Bernie!  How are you today?"  As it
appeared, it sent of an absolute blur of data, overloading the CPU and
causing it to repeat the request, in a substantially slowed manner:
PLEEEEEEEESSSHHHHHHH...

	Not waiting around, Crimson punched a button on the datastore
console, expecting to be 'teleported' to the appropriate datastore,
but finding instead that the CPU's functions appeared to be frozen.
"SHIT!" cursed again. Tracing the datastore's location on the system
map set into the wall, Crimson whisked out of the CPU at top virtual
speed, leaving the CPU in the middle of saying: ...ACCESS...

	"This goddamn system may have lots of expensive hardware, but
the administrators are the most amateurish I've ever seen..." Crimson
chuckled.

	Reaching the 'secure' datastore, Crimson found it unguarded by
ICE. Chuckling again, he stopped as he ran into an invisible barrier.
This wiped the smile off of his face, since this was exactly the sort
of thing that wasn't supposed to be possible. "Then again, maybe the
SysAdmin's not a moron... Nah... Of course he is!"

	Reloading his sleaze program, he found that the barrier wasn't
affected, probably due to the increased processor time the ICE was
getting due to the alert. Standing back to think, sitting on it's hind
legs and rubbing it's chin with one clawed paw, an onlooker might be
reminded of a furry "Thinker".

	Going back to the local sub-processing unit, Crimson found it
guarded by a corp decker. Loading up another variant of his mirrors
program, he set his mirror to walk towards the SPU. The decker, seeing
a badger walking up, lunges at Crimson's clone and falls right through
him. Crimson, waiting on the other side, swipes at him with his claws
and catches him in the throat, destroying his icon. Sleazing his way
past the barrier, he entered the SPU, sending a command to transport
him to the node.  Seeing the SPU hesitate, Crimson loads his masking
program again, simulating the guardian decker and resending the
command.

	Appearing in the datastore, the walls were lined with row upon
row of virtual filing cabinets. Browsing through the indices, there
was no mention of Robert Travis' accounts.  Then the walls blurred
once again to a searing white, indication that the matrix was to be
purged of foreign connection. Checking the files once again, Crimson
used an alias he had heard in connection with Robert Travis.  Only he
didn't know where it was from.

	The browse program found a reference, but crashed, giving
Crimson the messge: REMEMBER THE ALAMO!

	Quickly hitting the key to upload the info before he was
closed out of the matrix, Crimson was stimied as nothing happened.  A
few seconds later, his attack program crashed and gave the message:
BUY ZERPSO!

	Checking his deck, he found a virus had been injected and was
working on his utilies.  A "tar baby", another type of ICE, had been
injected onto his deck.  Checking the logs, he found that it had
entered through the browse program.  Erasing all onboard utilities,
Crimson was forced to make his own programs on the fly. Trying to
upload the file, he found it protected by some ICE. Scramble Ice, from
the look of it. Knowing a way around that, Crimson just transferred
the ICE process to his deck, thanking his luck that he now had the
memory, and then uploaded the file, hoping to be able to defeat the
ICE later, at his leisure.

	He had barely finished uploading the file when the bottom
suddenly dropped out of all of his senses.  He reeled, feeling
disoriented as he was forcibly ejected from the matrix...

	|	|	|	|	|	|	|	|

	Freddy tried to stand up immediately after being dumped, but
he hit his head on the ceiling of the van, hard, and fell to the
floor.  Mortis looked back for a second and could see by the decker's
face that all did not go well in the Matrix, but the dwarf went back
to his own work with the drones.  By the dwarf's expression he could
tell that the razors were having an incredibly worse time than he just
had.  After sitting on the floor a while, breathing heavily, Crimson
gathered up his deck and took it back out to the bike, where he locked
it in the seat compartment.

	He sat on his bike and looked up to the 18th floor of the
Arcology while he recovered from the shock being dumped.  Through the
transparent aluminum windows he could see red lights flashing.  He
also saw autocannons and railguns trained at the side of the building
he was facing, firing at some drones that were probably Mortis'.  He
became even more disheartened when some attack choppers came out of
the heliport and started circling.  "Wonderful..." he grumbled as he
headed back into the van.

	Freddy got the thick briefcase from under the decker's
console, puched in the combination, and opened it up.  Inside was his
disassembled Ranger Arms sniper rifle.  He stared at it for a few
seconds and then shook his head.  "Fuck 'em."  He closed the case and
walked out of the van with it.

	He walked out to the bike and put the rifle case in the seat.
Freddy looked at the Arcology once more, at the firefight that had now
blossomed like a fiber-optic flower.  "Not tonight..." he muttered and
mounted the bike.

	As he rode away into the night (like all the pro-runners in
the trids do), he flipped on his PR-128 and took a listen to the I/O
log he had captured as sequencing data.  He smirked at it.  "Heh.
Frank Zappa: _Jazz_from_Hell_..."

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Comprehensive scripting and color commentary here is Copyright by Mark
Friedman 1991, all rights reserved.  Basic story plot  and Matrix help
was by Jerry Weiler, but he won't mind: I'm giving him all the profits
from the venture. Let's  see,  what's 100% of  $0.00?  :-) Also, basic
Shadowrun backdrops are in extensive use, so them FASA dudes might get
a small cut as well...

Any questions, comments, requests, criticisms, and Chapman Sticks will
be accepted and appreciated at the address in the sig.

					- Mark "Crimson" Friedman

Mark "Klone Crimson" Friedman is friedman@cis.ohio-state.edu .................
"There is nothing former   "Beat poets,    "If you put a hungry ferret in your
 about King Crimson."       not children."  trousers, he'll run around..."
 - Robert Fripp, 5/11/90    - anonymous     - Nigel Tufnel (Spinal Tap)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo