[K5pbem] Story Fragment - Asagiri's Run

[Michael Surbrook]

On Jun 4, 2006, at 4:01 AM, Logan Darklighter wrote:

> I was doing some reading on Kazei 5 stuff preparatory to getting  
> back into writing for it, and came across this snippet from the  
> "storys/story fragments" folder in my K5pbem folder. At first I  
> couldn't remember what was the point of all of this, but as I read  
> it, it started coming back to me.
>
> I'm pretty sure this was going to be part of the "Raven Escapes  
> Shiroko-Tsuhi" arc. This was a data-run that Asagiri was doing as  
> part of the research trying to find either Johnny Carstairs or...  
> er... something. Can't remember now.
>
> Anyway. The first section here was a set of jotted down outlines of  
> stuff that was to happen. I don't think these were mine. Anybody  
> remember them?

Nope. I don't recall any of this.

> (Outline Section)
> =====================
> Figure that Asagiri gets the following:
>
> A data file on a transaction for [pick an amount -- 25 million  
> sounds good] in new yen.
>
> The transaction is from [individual name -- pick something].
>
> The money is being put into the account of Yoshiko Sakakibara  
> [extra credit if Logan gets the joke]. ((No... actually, I don't  
> get the reference. Would whoever wrote this enlighten me?))
Beats me.

*pause* *search on Google*

Ahh.... VA for Sylia Stingray in BGC.
> This transaction is dated one week before the hit on Midori's familiy.
>
> Additional files (some fragmented) show that the Yoshiko account is  
> a front for the main BC account.
>
> The person who did the hire works for a company that Asagiri can  
> easily discover is a simple shell that apparently exists to make  
> expenditures on behalf of someone else.
>
> Part of the grab will be: finances (hardsuit repair, ammo, energy  
> cells, etc.);
>
>  someone's collection of adult pictures -- apparently they like  
> lesbians; Asagiri suspects that the pics are from a security  
> camera... Asagiri: "Yes. The quality and positioning isn't what  
> you'd call optimal in a porn flick. And it's the same three women  
> in various combinations..."

Sylia, Priss, and Linna?
>  a whole set of gun pics with specs; computer usage logs
>
> (maintained by one N.R.); a cheat file for a popular on-line sim;  
> an order
> for computer memory (made by one Nene Romanova -- address  
> included!); and
> a listing of places that deliver in the Chicago area.

*snicker*

> =====================
>
> (And here's that fragment)
>
> =====================
>
> With a flashing, stepping disc effect, Asagiri rezzed into  
> existence a few hundred meters from the Black Company database and  
> surveyed the scene before her. She was out in the hinterlands of  
> the Net. Of course, that term was a bit subjective, as was the  
> sense of distance.
>
> This really wasn’t a completely isolated system. There were plenty  
> of linkages to major servers and systems all around in the  
> underlying structure, but no actual addresses had been claimed  
> closer than an order of six to this particular location. On the  
> horizon the bright lights and towers of the endless night city that  
> was the relative “center” of cyberspace rose toward the sky.  
> Asagiri could see the edges of general development encroaching on  
> the unclaimed nodes nearby; a seething borderland of creativity and  
> opportunity.
>
> Personal chat rooms, data storage blocks, web pages and the like  
> resided out here. The nearest structures other than Asagiri’s  
> target were the tall spindly pylons staking claim on domain names.  
> Small businesses came into existence and died just as quickly,  
> forgotten before they could be noticed out here on the fractal  
> border of chaos.
>
> It was also a good place to place something if you didn’t want too  
> much attention. The Black Company’s home computer network was a  
> rather respectable datafortress, though it wasn’t much to look at  
> from the AV interface of the net. The featureless dark gray  
> cylinder looked a lot like the empty shell of an ISP that had been  
> bought out by one of the corporations.
>
> Sensible, Asagiri nodded to herself. Nothing to attract attention,  
> and so few would come out here to look anyway. Nothing to give away  
> what it actually is; the first line of defense is always stealth.  
> The sysop probably moves it out further every few weeks ahead of  
> the borderlands.
>
> Asagiri brought out the password from her jacket and activated it.  
> A stylized suit of power armor formed over her icon, replacing her  
> regular outfit. It wasn’t actually a combat program; it was,  
> however, apparently stylized to look like one of the Black  
> Company’s hardsuits.
>
> Interesting. Asagiri mused. Midori had guessed that this was likely  
> a low level password. However, this seemed to be a personal code of  
> one of the Black Company themselves. Perhaps not every core member  
> had high level access. That said interesting things about the level  
> of trust and the command structure of the Black company. She’d file  
> that for future reference.
>
> All right then, she would enter the Datafortress disguised as one  
> of the Black Company itself. Convenient, but it could lead to  
> problems if the person she was impersonating was in the system at  
> the same time. She shrugged to herself, nothing for it but to take  
> the chance. But all the same, she made sure her combat utilities  
> were loaded, including a customized version of Hardsuit-3 that she  
> modified right there on the fly to match the appearance of the  
> Black Company suit she “wore”. Now she was as ready as she would  
> ever get.
>
> She scanned one more time around the surrounding area with the  
> sensors in Hardsuit 3. There were no active security programs out  
> on the surrounding plain. There was just the door and the  
> datawalls. Just like the last time she had scouted it.
>
> She activated the jets on the hardsuit and flew toward the  
> cylinder. Skimming around the base of the structure, she quickly  
> found the entrance, a darker gray, almost black, section of wall in  
> front of her. She walked up to it and laid a hand on it. It opened  
> obediently in front of her. The black slab retreated behind a  
> curtain of green code that parted a moment later itself.
>
> Asagiri scanned the system out of curiosity as it acknowledged her  
> password, shifting her perceptions with easy familiarity to ignore  
> the AV interface and look at the naked code behind the simulated  
> reality...
>
> …And then she whistled low in appreciation. This was one of the  
> cleverest – and meanest – hacks she had seen in a while. They had a  
> randomized data stream running through the primary layer of the  
> door program, so that if someone touched the door to codebust it,  
> their cybermodem's data stream itself would be randomized. It  
> looked like they had killer Black ICE buried in it too, ready to  
> pounce once the hacker’s systems were scrambled – nasty.
>
> If she had touched this without a password, she might not have been  
> able to get back out of the system before it fried everything  
> important to her, including her mind. She was incredibly fast and  
> adaptable, but this might have been beyond even her. She’d have to  
> try a variation on this herself sometime. She lingered a moment to  
> record some of the code for future reference, then moved on.
>
> Inside, the system architecture was just as bland and unexciting.  
> She was standing at the bottom of another cylinder, this one much  
> larger than the one visible from the outside. Around her were low  
> level blocks and polyhedrons representing datastores, I/O ports,  
> CPUs, SPUs, slave modules and the like. Glowing datalines ran  
> everywhere, connecting various subsystems together. There wasn’t a  
> shred of original personality to be seen in the architecture. It  
> was all standardized matrix icons.
>
> Something moving caught Asagiri’s attention, something that looked  
> out of place in this otherwise bland dataspace. An eight legged  
> bug… no… an eight legged rabbit-like creature moved from one CPU to  
> another in the distance. Zooming in on it, she used her sensors to  
> probe past the outer AV shell to peek at it. A low level system  
> maintenance drone, she noted. The visual reference was vaguely  
> familiar to her, but she couldn’t place it just yet. Kinda cute,  
> though, she smiled to herself. So whoever maintained this  
> datafortress wasn’t completely devoid of personality after all.
>
> Her attention was brought back to her immediate surroundings by a  
> proximity warning from the Hardsuit. Another icon was approaching  
> her. Her hardsuit HUD identifying it as a “boomer” security  
> construct. Asagiri tensed, ready to fight or flee if she had been  
> identified as an intruder. The boomer swung its optics toward her.  
> It was a hulking monstrosity based in part on the Jinsei BU-65-A  
> combat chassis.
>
> This one, however, was painted not in a dull camouflage pattern or  
> the neutral blue that all factory models carried by default in real  
> space…
>
> …but a shocking hot pink.
>
> Oh. My. God…, Asagiri thought to herself, I know who would be sick  
> enough to do that…
>
> The boomer looked her up and down, then said, “Identity confirmed –  
> Linna Yamazaki, Level 4 clearance, access to non-sensitive database  
> only.”
>
> Asagiri noted and recorded the name for future reference. So that’s  
> whose password I have.
>
> Acknowledging the boomer and scanning it, she then walked past the  
> security construct and over to an I/O port represented by a guide  
> window floating in midair and a glowing stepping disc at the edge  
> of the platform she was standing on. Datalines attached to it and  
> branched off into the rest of the structure. Calling up a map of  
> destinations on the window, she saw that more than half of them  
> were blocked off and inaccessible to her level of clearance.
>
> She did a detailed passive scan at this point, looking for other  
> security protocols. She found indications of several lurking in the  
> background. Now it gets interesting, Asagiri thought to herself.  
> Keeping her exterior icon immobile, she called up a file structure  
> on her own internal system and brought up another of her own programs.
>
> Pointing to one of the accessible datablocks – one that looked like  
> it held accounting and payroll information in it by the looks of  
> the filename – she entered it into the I/O port destination.  
> Stepping onto the disc, she was translated to another platform with  
> more data screen windows surrounding the edges of the platform and  
> overlapping each other, with a another guide screen in front – a  
> basic file system. Looking for Linna Yamazaki’s payroll files, she  
> quickly found she had access to them. She began checking “her”  
> account. This should look like normal activity to any security  
> watching. Making copies of the information and filing them in her  
> own system, Asagiri then turned to go back to the I/O port out of  
> the room.
>
> As she stepped onto the disc for translation, she activated the  
> program she had called up.
>
> As the hardsuit/password construct appeared back at the entrance to  
> the datafortress and walked past the security boomer standing  
> there, one of the hardsuit’s gloves flickered out to brush the  
> boomer as it went past.
>
> The Yamazaki icon appeared in another spot within the database  
> unrestricted to it. Then it began to hop from location to location  
> in a semi random fashion.
>
> Asagiri was no longer associated with it. She had duplicated the  
> hardsuit/password and left the copied shell to wander randomly.
>
> Her own network presence was now only a pinpoint in cyberspace, a  
> random packet of information bouncing back and forth through the  
> data transfer protocols, but not stopping in any one place long  
> enough to register as a presence for the system to render. The  
> experience was jarring, and not something that was pleasant to  
> endure for too long. But it had the advantage of making her  
> invisible to the surrounding system. Asagiri had her sense of  
> personal time dilated as much as possible, and even so, the  
> flickering of system environments past her spectral “eye” was  
> happening once every subjective half second. Just enough to get a  
> decent view of a location before bouncing somewhere else. In real  
> time, she was flickering in and out across the system at a rate  
> measured in picoseconds.
>
> She was not truly in control of where she wound up. The program she  
> had created took her in a random “drunkard’s walk” through the  
> system. After a few moments of this activity, she had a general  
> idea of the layout of the datafortress and where the important  
> secure information was. As she dropped in at each location, she had  
> a brief moment to decide if it had something worth getting. If a  
> location node looked like it had something worth looking at, she  
> dropped a codebreaker and a retrieval program in before she was  
> shunted to a new location. As she passed locations a second time,  
> she had a moment to retrieve updates from her semi-autonomous  
> programs.
>
> She was falling behind in processing all of this information  
> though. Bandwidth limitations between her home system, the net, and  
> this datafortress meant that she would quickly be forced out of  
> this loop she was in and take up a position in the virtual reality  
> of the datafortress. When she stopped and the system rendered her,  
> the security was likely to take notice of her. She needed to  
> already have a foothold on the systems she was compromising before  
> that happened.
>
> There... financial transaction files... transition... personal  
> accounts... transition... client lists... transition... security  
> camera logs... transition... someone’s collection of adult pictures  
> (huh?)... transition... expenditure and maintenance logs...  
> transition... a cheat file for a popular on-line sim... transition...
>
> Then she flickered past a virtual room with a
>
> =====================
>
>
> And that's where it ends. Sorry about that. I think she was seeing  
> Nene's own control room there, and was going to go back to it. At  
> that point, in order to have some conflict to the story, I believe  
> I was going to have Nene actually "there" (in the virtual sense)  
> and have them duke it out in a hacker battle. It would inconclusive  
> in terms of who "wins" because neither of them brain-burn the  
> other. But Nene would drive Asagiri out of the database, and think  
> she'd won. Only for the reader to find out that Asagiri "lost"  
> because she'd "zombie processed/duplicated" herself at the start of  
> the fight, and part of her was elsewhere doing the actual hack!  
> Thus she did get the info she was after. And left a little  
> "surprise" for Nene in the form of a derisive "gotcha" message that  
> would appear later on time-delay.
>
> That's what I've reconstructed from my spotty memory. Anybody else  
> remember circumstances surrounding this?

I think this was something Mathieu was working on. I recall a little  
of it -- like the Skud bugs and the punk boomer, but other than that,  
not much.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Surbrook
susano at guisarme . net http://surbrook.devermore.net/index/index.html

Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years  
and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some  
of the worst movies in the history of the world.

Dave Barry