OPTIC

The **Omni Psyop Tactical Intelligence Corporation**, better known by the acronym **OPTIC**, is a covert organization that monitors activity within the Internet and influences public affairs at a global level.

## In the series

### Before *A Trick of Light*

Wesley Park, after leaving the sinking Whiz company and taking William Ackerson's encryption technology, launched a communications security company with perfect timing. The company quickly enriched itself during the rush to join the internet due to its encryption technology being superior to everything else on the market at the time. When Park died, the company passed to his daughter Olivia Park, who reformed it.

Now known as OPTIC, Park's company had become a world influencing hacker organization. For great price, OPTIC offered the service of controlling conversations, leaking secure data, disseminating and amplifying misinformation, and other methods of swaying public opinion rapidly through media in order to alter the outcomes of elections, start wars, or to affect the cultural zeitgeist in general. They had Russian competitors, but their operations were usually sloppy by comparison and more easily identifiable, so OPTIC quickly became the dominating force in the market.

### *A Trick of Light*

*Main article: A Trick of Light*
OPTIC algorithms eventually identified a commonality in several key hacks against agents they had installed, including Daggett Smith, Aria Sloane, and others. Each had their voices and online outreach augmented by OPTIC, only to be hacked by Cameron Ackerson and Nia during "Operation Cosmic Justice". After Cameron exposed an exceptionally well-hidden, decade-old "misinformation farm" algorithm woven by OPTIC throughout almost the entirety of the internet, OPTIC reacted by terminating the algorithm and planned to capture Cameron.

OPTIC then dispatched a strike team which successfully apprehended Cameron, and had Six, an employee, interrogate him. Cameron then hacked the security system of OPTIC's main facility, using their recording equipment to send a recording of his interrogation to his YouTube channel. Meanwhile, Xal had slaughtered her way into the facility as well, and interrupted the interrogation near its end, allowing Cameron to escape. Xal attempted to kill Six, but he cut off her hand and drove her away in fear.

Six was then dispatched with yet another strike team to recover Cameron, following a tracking device planted in his prosthetic, but he hacked their self driving cars, their helicopter, and even their weaponry. Explosions from their own weapons maimed numerous agents, their helicopter crash landed into Lake Erie, and their cars ran over at least two agents, killing the team leader. He then stole details on the personnel and sent them to local police, with falsified files of criminal activity to ensure they would be arrested, along with a fabricated terrorism-in-progress report to bring the authorities to the area faster.

Angered, Cameron then went to OPTIC headquarters itself and hacked Olivia Park's bionics, threatening to kill her, but she was supremely unconcerned with Cameron's threats and blithely bargained information for her life. OPTIC then joined into an uneasy alliance with Cameron against a common enemy, Xal. The Inventor remained with OPTIC, ostensibly to help them build a trap for Nia so that Xal could not take her first, but he quickly left as he mistrusted OPTIC.

Olivia and her few remaining agents then prepared to enter the I-X Center to confront Xal and recover the Inventor, but Olivia's bionics drew her into Xal's hive mind before she could reach the staging area, and she jumped out of a moving car to rush directly there without backup. When she did arrive, Cameron had broken the hive mind and slain Xal. Olivia assured Cameron that OPTIC would take care of the aftermath.

OPTIC then had Six dissect Xal's corpse and discovered that the rest of the Ministry would be arriving soon to assault earth. Faced with a common enemy, OPTIC's alliance with Cameron was cemented for the time being, and Olivia provided Cameron with a state of the art server array that could contain the entirety of Nia's consciousness, as a show of good faith. OPTIC wished to be involved in the selection process for new enhanced humans to defend earth, but Nia and Cameron firmly excluded them. Even so, OPTIC dutifully reported the impending arrival of the Ministry's agents, and stood ready to work with Cameron and his allies to defend earth.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 29: Revelations
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 20: Captive
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 15: Aria Sloane Gets Cancelled
4. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 10: Daggett Smith: Signing Off
5. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 12: Crush
6. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 14: Teamwork Makes The Dream Work
7. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 19: Operation Burn-It-Down
8. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 18: Dr. Nadia Kapur Takes Out The Trash
9. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 22: Fight And Flight
10. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 28: Blackout
11. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 31: Heartbreak
12. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 35: It All Ends Here
13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 *A Trick of Light*, ch. 39: Disconnect
14. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 37: The Hive
15. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 40: The Doctor Will See You Now
16. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, ch. 41: Do You Want To Play A Game?
17. ↑ *A Trick of Light*, Epilogue