Okay, so: rules!
- any questions ask me, no worries. if something I say is confusing you can always ask to roll other stats to get a better understanding of what's happening.
- please touch base w/me re: difficulties before rolling magickal / computer feats especially since we are dealing with the Techs.
- there is obviously some danger here since we are dealing with the techs.
- if I head anyplace uncomfortable for you please let me know.
- I have about three hours today!
- I will do a quick intro post.
ginger
So.
A certain chilly morning, a certain day, a certain hour. Certain news unwelcome enough that it leaves a sour-slick at the back of the throat. Here: a disparate band of disparate Traditions of differing temperments with differing levels of background and information and drive and desire. Still, for all of that, they take their leave of the chantry that morning with the roughest outline of a plan and (for some) a newfound paranoia, or (for others) a new focus for a longstanding enmity.
Grace has her own charge: more solitary than most. Perhaps the only one of those present who could really fit within her paradigm, even tangentially, is the Dr. Sepulveda, and hell, doesn't he seem a little bit mad?
GraceGrace doesn't waste much time getting back to the Office and starting on her work. Preparations must be made. Plants must be watered, and some programs have to be written. She tries to get in contact with Atreyu, to no avail, and that is a bit concerning, but no matter. She can get her information. And she will. A nap, then. Naps are important.
Rousing herself from sleep, curled up on her couch in her office, she heads straight to the desk, currently occupied by her laptop and a sprawling, many-armed English ivy plant, whose scaffolding enclosure reads "Chloe III". The scaffolding has three small, articulated robot arms attached, with doodads at the ends. She flicks a switch. Those doodads send thin strands of green light straight to Chloe's leaves, powerful enough that the laser beams can be seen in the air.
Next, she drains the dregs of old coffee from a handy cup, because why waste caffeine?
She's not really used this planty apparatus for its intended purpose yet, and that puts a bit of a thrill through her, as she opens up her laptop and starts it, waiting for the few seconds it takes to rouse it from sleep, and then instructing it to go directly to her Special Programs.
A black screen. A little blinking cursor. And then, a chaos of activity, as she attempts to hack into the plant's photosynthesis. The lasers, with their specifically attuned light frequencies help. Because, you see, all the green things that grow on the earth owe their energy production to a bit of quantum calculation. Photons once captured must be shepherded to the right cells for processing, and they calculate the right path to take by taking all of them. To hijack that process, make it work for her -- that is Grace's goal.
[Life 2, Entropy 3, Forces 2 and Corr 3 -- Plant-Based Quantum Computing. Diff 6 - 1 (personalized instrument) - 1 (taking time)]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (5, 5, 8) ( success x 3 )
Grace[Extend!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (4, 5, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Grace[Extend again!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 4) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
Grace[again!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 6, 8) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
gingerMust give her a sense of genuine satisfaction: nay, actual thrill when she focus, when she digs, when she reaches into the fundamentals of Chloe's cells and hijacks those native processes in which she believes, entirely, whole-heartedly, and finds them humming brightly beneath her own fingers. This strange, electric sense of a sort of sub-atomic chaos, the wild rattle of greenery, briliance sorted beneath her hands.
Now, the rest of the work begins.
GraceFirst off, Ginger has to be 'secured'. For a given value of 'secure'. She's got to hack a small company in Denver who runs 1-800 lines of a seedy nature, which shouldn't be too hard. There's backdoors left behind after the first attempt, and having the ability to break any non-quantum encryption scheme known to man, thanks to Chloe, that will help too.
The universe-code runs in the background, while she brings up a special suite of tools, with a splash screen of a cartoon penguin holding a pirate flag. It slices through 1-800-FAT-GRLS like butter.
Once inside, she looks for traces left behind. Looks to see if Alex's number has called in lately, checks the archives to see if anyone's viewed the older files -- all hints that the Techs might be watching.
ginger????
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )
ginger???+
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 2, 4) ( success x 1 )
ginger???+
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 9) ( success x 2 )
ginger???+
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Grace[Hacking a thing: Diff 9 - 3 (Chloe)]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace[Oop, actually 4 successes, I forgot to double tens]
gingero_O
Dice: 8 d10 TN4 (3, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 )
Grace[Again with the rolls!]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]
gingerThere. Fucking there.
Subtle as fuck. First she does a cursory review and she can see it all in layers: Sera's post and the various views without response. Quiet before, right? Been awhile since there was anything of anything urgency shared between them and for that reason access is sometime sporadic until something: some instinct, some quiet urgency, some hint of foresight -
Little after, though it has only been a day. Nothing since the meeting at the chantry.
Back, though: one step. One quiet step. Another, another. Here, the last direct access to Ginger by Alexander weeks and weeks ago and initially even this appears benign to Grace. Ironic or maybe a little bit tragic: the day of, the day before. Nothing left behind except these miniscule suggestions of information, like the hint of perfume left in a close space when its wear-er exits. Alone; except, no.
Wait, no.
There is something that stands out; something off, something wrong, the subtlest catch in the weave and she finds herself following - following - chasing these illusory traces of information feels like trying to catch the edge of a breaking wave. But: there, there, there - the subtlest hints of a presence that she discovers to be branching in the logs: forward and backward. A command of time, perhaps: sign-ins from Alexander even during the period of his self-imposed exile from Ginger, and earlier, earlier, earlier, earlier: all from his most current point of access, before it was ever obtained.
Ginger is compromised. Is she?
Grace looks, and she finds. Alex has been a busy man, accessing Ginger when he didn't have a phone, accessing it before he Awakened even. I mean, it's a neat trick, nice try there. Still.
Gotcha, assholes.
And also, it's kind of sad, confirming this. Ginger is, for all intents and purposes, dead. It's only useful now for passing on information to the enemy, really. And she's going to have to make a lot of phone calls after this, to keep people from using it. The spare thought of "I could just let people know on Ginger" comes and goes with a sigh.
Nope, not anymore.
Now, the trick for her is obfuscation. She's got a story in mind, a program to make it look like people are discussing this new story. It had to be fake, believable, and rather a minor threat -- one the Techs might not want to look at too hard. So, for the next few weeks, there will be chatter about the discovery of a body with no blood and fang-marks. There will be talks about how to cover it up. There will be newbie Mages doing a little freaking out about vampires and their existence. Grace saying she'll check in with some contacts. I mean, that sort of thing should happen all the time, right?
Just another day in Denver. Nobody's freaking out about Alex. Who would care about an Orphan Apprentice anyway?
And in time, when it's useful to do so, this same program can be used to come up with another story to feed the Techs...
Grace[Computers/Programming -- Making a program up! Need 10 successes, diff 8 - 3 (Chloe)]
Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 5, 5, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 ) [Doubling Tens]
Grace[Again!]
Dice: 9 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 2, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens]
Grace[Corr 2, Entropy 3, Mind 2 -- Imbue with Emotional Depth -- We're trying to fake some personalities here, so that the messages seem real, and can't be easily analyzed as having originated from the same person. Diff 6 - 1 (taking time) -1 (personalized instrument)]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
Grace[Er, should have been diff 4, but it comes out the same...]
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (7, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
Grace[And I, in my infinite rolling wisdom totally didn't mean to roll that, but okay -- I don't mind.]
Grace[Extending again, spending quint to reduce diff to 4]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )
Grace[Again!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 9) ( success x 1 )
Grace[Last bit of quint!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 4, 7) ( success x 2 )
ginger?
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (2, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )
ginger?+
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 6) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
ginger?+
Dice: 3 d10 TN5 (1, 7, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
ginger???
Dice: 8 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) [Doubling Tens] [WP]
Grace[Perception + Alertness, Diff = 9]
Dice: 5 d10 TN9 (4, 5, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 1 )
Grace[Intelligence + Computers, Diff 8 - 1 (Ability aptitude, Computers)]
Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
gingerGrace starts this work in early afternoon, late evening. Hard to tell what the light is doing without from inside the depths of the office, and certainly somewhere in the middle of all of this frenzied work she begins to lose: first nanoseconds, then seconds, minutes, not quite hours but -
- hell.
Seventeen hours, thirty-eight minutes, twenty-three seconds later the masterpiece is finished.
The Work and the work and the richochet between them; this complex, subtle program that in the end feels rather like a living, breathing incarnation of one of her own short stories given a sort of machine-life, a complex iteration of presence and absence, ebb and flow. Her bladder is aching and her throat is raw and she has reached that point of exhaustion where she is so hungry and thirsty and wired and tired that it is difficult to decide which one to tackle first and much, much easier to linger in virtual space watching and speculating about the threads of her complex new program. Convincing enough - imbued with her own magick - that she can well believe in it herself.
--
And just as she is leaving, exiting, pulling herself back out of that server, perhaps never to return. She notices: not unlike a certain girl named by a certain author: Alice -
- a strange little door she had not seen before. And has the sense: nay, the certainty, that behind it is a language she does not yet know.
GraceA strange little backdoor. A rootkit of surprising stealthiness, masquerading as a normal part of the server, and yet -- Grace knows servers. There's something not quite right about this.
It's enough to get her to forget her stomach and bladder and dire need for more caffeine.
What the hell is this? She's going to prod it, because why not? Server's compromised anyway and she knows it. Why not find out exactly what they did? Maybe it'll be useful. Maybe she can use this little rootkit to find out how to combat their techniques, or even...
Follow the door to where it leads.
Grace[Stamina! Can she make it?]
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
GraceAnd then, she has to sneeze. And she's pretty sure if she sneezes right now, the result would not be pleasant. She's already trying hard not to unleash her bladder all over her chair.
Okay. Breathe. Pinch the nose. Make it go away.
It's a good thing Kalen built her this office as a hermitage of sorts, with a mini bathroom and fridge and sleeping couch, no? Prescient that. Like he just knew that she would want to use it like that.
She gets up from her chair stiffly, because sitting in one spot for so long will do that to you. Wanders off to the bathroom to relieve herself and then, it's only a few efficient steps to the fridge for leftovers (miso udon) to shove in the microwave. So convenient! After that, it's not so easy to forego sleep either. It's a challenge to her tenacious nature, as she glances over at her bizarre rig. Hmm.
Mike made himself stay awake while hunting The Artist. He had a damn good reason, too. She doesn't really have such a reason, other than time. But then, they might discover her actions during the time needed for a nap...
She slinks over to the computer again, occasionally dipping back into the udon, prepping a program to mimic sleep -- just until she has done what she needs to do.
[Life 2, Mind 2 -- Sleep is For The Weak -- Diff 5 - 1 (taking time), -1 (personalized focus)]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 7) ( success x 2 )
Grace[Hacking a back door! Diff 10 - 3 (Chloe)]
Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 4 )
Grace[Moar Hacking!]
Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
Grace[Forgot to double tens... Should be 4 successes.]
Grace[And, one more time!]
Dice: 9 d10 TN7 (3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 3 ) [Doubling Tens]
hallux
??
Dice: 4 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 4, 9) ( success x 3 )
hallux??+
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
hallux??+++
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 2) ( botch x 2 )
hallux! .
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )
halluxAn hour passes. Two. The defenses here are rigid, sleek, impossible (not for her, never for her)Three hours and there is something that feels ridiculously fractal and elegant and elegaic about the code through which she is spinning, a thousand neat little fractals, too many dead ends to count, the strange symmetry that would be near-impossible to shatter were she not performing her calculations on some subatomic level, piggybacking her own work on that of Chloe's photosynthesis.
Four hours and -
- something - breaks/open. She can breathe in the connection humming through the otherside. No triggers yet that she sees except something in the access point itself seems to be starting to unravel. Some heretofore unseen programming now executing, an essential, entropic erosion of the rootkit itself, coming from within.
She's inside though - right? She's inside.
But the connection is already starting to collapse and she doesn't have much time...
Grace[Int + Research, diff 7!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
Grace[Wits + Enigmas, diff 6! Spending WP.]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) [WP]
GraceThe first thing she does (after finding out that what connection exists here is about to be shut down (of course, they would have automated protocols...) is look for Alex.
Nobody's been able to beat back their wards enough to tell what happened to him. She wants to know. Wants to be able to tell anyone looking to storm the castle what his condition might be. Hell, they may have moved him somewhere else. He may be dead now. It's all possible, right?
So, she starts searching. Quickly quickly through their fractal-laden servers she trawls. Have to be fast now -- she goes for the most likely candidates first. They aren't going to store this kind of thing on the same hard drives they store the office party pictures, after all...
halluxGrace finds a fragment of a file and an origination date and there are not NAMES as such but she can isolate his file based on the date (Sera says) he disappeared.
There: Subject 88123-123.
Standard Protocols. Primium-lined walls, bed, table, cup, sink. 2000 Cal a day diet. Library including an array of standard scientific works, from Darwin to Pasteur to Curie to Hawking and everything in between. Notations beside any that Subject 88123-123 has shown interest in. Once a day he is removed from the cell for counseling. There are records documenting one surgery: a knee reconstruction. Dry medical language describes the degree of damage done to the knee, and the Subect's recovery.
He is being kept in Ward 2, Room 7. There is, however, no map.
Grace[Wits + Research, Diff 7!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
halluxInteresting. While searching through the protocols regarding Subject 88123-123 Grace finds several hidden notes she deciphers as dates and times for what appear to be two separate scheduled emergency drills. Dayshift and nightshift. This is clearly interesting: she follows the thread and discovers that both day and nightshift will be subject to separate emergency preparedness drills in the next [xx] days.
hallux??
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (2, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
hallux??+
Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
GraceThere is precious little time. Still, when she finds Subject 88123-123, she sighs out a breath she didn't know she was holding, and reaches out to touch the pixels that prove his existence.
The library concerns her, as does the counseling. The knee reconstruction, well... Bodies heal easier than minds, sometimes. It sounds to her like they are trying to convert him, which... Well, it's Alex. Nobody's been able to convert him, even the ones not currently treating him like a lab rat.
Searching further results in hidden notes, and that is a thing to pass on to the castle-stormers, yes? A weak spot.
It's then that the first hint that someone's found her trickles into her consciousness. The connection she has is steadily disintegrating (and damn, that's a nice trick, will have to utilize it for Ginger 2.0) so there isn't much time anyway. Certainly not enough to fight this intrusion and also find more.
She pulls the wifi card out of her laptop with a swift yank, and then goes to fight them back. Nope, can't piggyback on that connection anymore, jackass.
[Arete, Diff 8! Countermagicking! Spending WPs.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
Grace[Again!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (1, 3, 6) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
halluxDice: 3 d10 TN4 (1, 4, 7) ( success x 2 )
Grace[One more time!]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (3, 5, 9) ( success x 2 ) [WP]
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