Subject: <<Untitled>> Ideas anyone?
Date: 22 Nov 1994 01:10:40 GMT

   1.

   He looked out over the darkening city, just now coming to life and
beginning its crescendo, clutching the necklace he had worn for twenty two
years in his fist, grieving quietly over his life as it ended with the
day; he could not turn back...

   J'Kon strode up the dim stairwell for what he knew was the last time,
almost sadly, quietly moving to his friend's apartment door. When he got
to the door, he hesitated, just a second, but long enough. Too long.
   He rapped loudly on the old wooden door, waiting silently for his
friend's reply.
   Marc stood slowly, taking one final look out the window. He looked down
into his hand, once more looking at the delicate jade Bhudda, and dropping
it to the floor, next to his boot, taking one step and crushing it. 
   He walked to his dresser, picked up the black duffle bag there an
amorphous blob, and strode out of the quickly darkening room. He stepped
to the door, put his hand on the door handle and paused, a moment of
regret plunging him into indecision. 
   J'Kon's second loud rapping snapped him into action, however, and his
face contorted strangely as he turned the knob, opening the door, once
again hissing unnaturally at his lifelong friend's appearance.
   "Nice to see you too, Marc," J'Kon said, a leering grin on his face,
one Marc knew all to well.
   Marc tried to laugh it off, tried to hide his indecision, but it came
out more like a strangled moan.
   J'Kon nodded slowly, trying to show Marc that he understood.
   "Let's do it man, Dg's got the data term all set for facin at 5:30.
That's 10 minutes," J'Kon said, hurrying Marc down the awkwardly narrow
and dark staircase.
   "Alright, I'm comin'."
   The two seemed to stagger down the nearly dark stairwell, out into the
night lit street.
   "Let's mooove it, mark!" J'Kon hissed, pulling Marc violently up beside him. 
   Marc cringed slightly at the slander, but obediently stumbled along in
the near darkness, J'Kon leading him perfectly through the darkness. 
   Marc knew J'Kon could see everything around him and more. He knew that
J'Kon's first cyberware had been implanted in his eyes. Or lack of them.
   J'Kon, born Jonathan Kristopher Salsbury, had been born without eyes, a
genetic defect of his mother's use of designer drugs while she was
pregnant with him. He had never forgiven his mother, or his father for
that matter, for doing that to him. And so he had ended up where he was
now, on the Street.
   J'Kon masterfully maneuvered the two of them through dark alleys and
across vacant streets, no doubt following some internal map or another,
until they reached the bay side of the of the blocks facing into the city.
   When they reached the busy sidewalks of the Bayside, they abruptly
slowed their pace, this too nearly throwing Marc off his feet, and walked
calmly towards the data term on the corner, next to the vid-phone. 
   After a quick look up the sidewalk for suspicious characters such as
themselves, J'Kon raised the sleeve of his jacket, revealing the intricate
network of wires and cyberwork. J'Kon tugged lightly on one of the wires
which revealed the Net face, and jammed it into the out port of the data
term. 
   "We're gonna have to stay on dead reckoning Marc, so I hope you know
the address. We can't very well poll NetCom to give us the address of your
account, if we're gonna wipe you now can we?"
   "Uh..." Marc faltered. He hadn't looked at this as a subverted,
marginally illegal operation. But J'Kon was right. He had to stay under
the flags that NetCom had around its sensitive information blocks, so
asking them for directions was out.
   "Um, yeah," Marc said nervously. "Go to national.com.org."
   "Jesus, you would have to have a fucking federal account wouldn't you?"
J'Kon said, his arm making a small jerk up as the first flux of the data
stream hit his inputs. "Okay, we're in national. What's you account?" 
Marc was standing just behind J'Kon, watching the screen scroll by at a
furious rate. He felt that kick again, remembering why he was doing this.
J'Kon could see' the space around' him, Mark could only see numbers and
requests from the various data posts. "What d'ya see?"
   "Account, mark. You'll see it soon enough."
   J'Kon reached up to his face, putting on what appeared to be sun
glasses. Marc passed his hand in front of his friend's face and then he
realized what they were. His eyes were cybered. If he blocked off the
outside, all he would see is the Net. 
   "Find the 2ac3f datasocket."
   "Looking..." J'Kon said, his mouth making strange shapes, moving open
and closed. "Got it."
   "It's listed under my parents name, mine is a dependent account."
   There was a strange moment of silence as J'Kon hammered away within his
seemingly personal network, then he let out a tense hiss.
   "Damnit, this is iced all to hell! Christ, they've got Scythe drone
running ProTat."
   "Do what!?" Marc hissed back.
   "Scythes are RSA encrypted drones that poll users for ids so that
NetCom knows who is accessing what. They're very hard to break. Hold on, I
need to snag something from my accounts."
   There was another long pause as J'Kon's hands twitched and he moved
elsewhere.
   "Hmm. I don't think we can do this anon, Marc. You'll have to do it."
   J'Kon pulled out from his input port, turning up the glasses and
turning to Marc.
   "Use a retinal id scan. It's the only way. If they see me in there,
we're toast."
   Just then, J'Kon beeped, or rather, the terminal on his arm beeped. 
   "You know where to dump the credits. Do it."
   J'Kon moved off to the side of the data term, turning away from Marc in
order to take the message he had received. Marc turned nervously to the
data term, now smiling happily at him and awaiting him to jack in and log
onto his bank account.
   Marc moved unsteadily up to the terminal, and the machine immediately
responded, "Welcome to DataNet! Please enter your request from the general
terms on the main screen list."
   Marc scanned the list and found what he wanted, "Banking Accounts."
   Marc touched the keys, entering his command. The machine hummed for
several seconds and then prompted him for his account. Marc unsteadily
entered the account name for what he saw as the last time. He followed the
standard id check methods and finally had direct access to his banking
account. Sixteen thousand credits, enough to last him awhile. Though maybe
not. J'Kon had mentioned something about his particular cyberwork being
quite expensive. 
   Marc looked at the account, his three year old picture displayed next
to it. He entered his next request, Money Transfer, and was similarly
prompted for an id check and confirmation that this was what he wanted. He
passed easily as what he was doing was perfectly legal, so far. 
   He was next presented with the destination point of the money transfer.
He pulled the small slip of paper out of his slacks and looked at the
account for the first time. hybrid-net.jules.com. He knew it was a front
dummy account providing just enough information to convince the data term
that it was a legitimate account. It would deposit the funds in the real
destination after a 72 hour wait and "deduction" time span. The account
would appear to be in use by some other place polling it for money
transfer for this coat and that computer and this car. After the 72 hour
wait it would be transferred to a dump site that opens for only
nano-seconds on nearly random basis for single transfers. Very
sophisticated stuff.
   Marc fulfilled all the requests and terminated his account. They won't
notice for a month, he thought to himself. Plenty of time to cease to
exist.
   Just as Marc finished up his business and convinced the data term that
he did not need another car or computer, he turned to see J'Kon turning
back to him.
   "72 hours and counting."
   J'Kon nodded and directed Marc onward, across the nearly empty street
and down a stairwell.
   When the reached the bottom, J'Kon knocked loudly on the steel door and
turned to Marc. 
   "You are no longer Marc Starks. Until you are old differently by me or
this guy we're gonna meet, you are Vil."
   Marc, Vil, nodded his ascent and waited for the door to be answered.



2.

   A rather hefty man finally answered the door. He stood staring out at
them for a moment and then broke a wide split-toothed grin a J'Kon,
awkwardly thrusting out his hand to him.
   J'Kon grinned back at the man, taking his hand and shaking it with four
short shakes. J'Kon nodded and said, "This is Vil, Steck. Vil, Steck,"
J'Kon said making the brief introduction and pushing his way past the
large man. 
   Steck made some sort of grunting noise, that sounded vaguely approving
and steeped aside so that Vil could walk into the dark smoke filled room.
   There was very little in the room, a desk in the corner covered with a
huge and ancient DEC station that looked as if it had been opened up so
many times it no longer wanted to close again. The same desk was also
populated by several stacks of some sort of printout and an occasional
transistor or other hardware component.
   The rest of the room was mostly empty, except for the side table and
couch against the opposite wall, both strewn with various chunks of
hardware.
   "So, what am I doin ya for?" Steck asked after an odd moment of silence.
   "We're cybering this one up Steck," J'Kon responded.
   Steck walked over to Vil, examining him front and back, up and down.
   "Yeah, alright. Who's payin?"
   "Hybrid, you fuck. How'd ya think?"
   Steck grinned stupidly and walked over to his beefed up DEC station and
booted into some sort of modeling program. He input various variables,
which Vil assumed were about him. The station made some rude whirs and
beeps and started spewing out the 3-D models to a rather nice color
printer.
   "No problem," Steck said, examining the first sheet as it came out.
"What's your net experience, kid?"
   Vil said nothing for a moment, trying to decide how to answer. "Only
from the text side of things. I can do it if it's there."
   Steck grinned again and looked at J'Kon, "Is he lyin'?"
   J'Kon shook his head, "No, he graduated top of his class. He's
brilliant, from the tech side. He has no net experience as you mean
though. Never even been in the cyberdecks over at Chiley's on Fourth and
Main." J'Kon looked over to Vil as he finished, smiling in a way that
somehow made Vil a little more comfortable.
   "Hmm," Steck said, scratching his three day scruff. "We're gonna have
to jack him in and pump his brains with lots of shit before we can do
this. Otherwise..."
   "He can't handle it?" J'Kon finished.
   Steck nodded. "Remember Tyberius? He went over the Edge in two weeks
after getting all cyber-fucked-up."
   Vil cringed internally. He knew Tyberius. They had gone to high-school
together. Alexander Tiberius, he had been a genius until he discovered the
InterNet, as it was called then. Jesus, that was only eight years ago.
   Vil finally spoke, on impulse to this thought, "How much different is
this net' than the InterNet?"
   Steck and J'Kon simultaneously turned to Vil and made strange faces.
   "Man, you are out there. Do you even know the history?"
   Vil shook his head. "I've been cooped up in labs for six years, getting
my doctorate in computer engineering. Haven't touched any net except MIT's
campus info net."
   "Sit down Vil, I'll tell you the story..."

   And so Steck's story began.
   Vil sat down on the cluttered couch and waited patiently as Steck
pulled up a chair and J'Kon leaned back against the wall, looking over the
pages that were slowly and silently being spewed out of the printer. Steck
lit a cigarette and took several long drags before beginning.
   "In early 1995," he began quietly, "a bill was passed in Congress
allowing the FBI to enforce legal eve dropping on all Net software and all
communications hardware. Though this may seem unconnected, it is
significant. After this was implemented, by about June of 95, a new bill
was placed in pending in Congress. It was called the InterNet Services
Bill' and was being lobbied by several huge communications companies.
Basically the bill was to allow in the instance of net service, a monopoly
of commercial services. It was passed in early 96. The company was called
DeckCom, but they bombed and went bankrupt in 8 months. Unsurprisingly,
another company was right on its heels to pick it up, DataNet InterNet
Communications Incorporated. It was soon discovered that this was solely
government funded and run. Once this was out in the open, the Net was
formed; DataNet. DeckCom sprung up in mid 97 and has since been banned
from the Net proper by DICI. Of course it is still up...you will get to
know it very well.
   "So our sole purpose since 97 has been in breaking down the
information barriers set up by DICI. The Freedom of Information Act is a
joke now, since snail mail has been abolished. One thing you'll also
notice, once we get all your real' accounts set up is that DataNet mail
is down alot, but the DataNet .gov sites are all up and running fine.
You'll get all this from experience.
   "So, there's the history of the Net in a few minutes time. Oh, also,
remember ftp and http? Dead. All anonymous ftp sites were long ago deemed
illegal on the basis that they propagated the illicit distribution of
pirated software and data. The WWW was taken over and you now can only
have government approved sites. So they think... With that like all things
there is a way around it."
   J'Kon strode over then, holding a small stack of printouts, and handed
them to Steck. 
   "Looks like a pretty simple procedure. Long, but simple enough."
   Steck nodded absently, looking over the documents.
   "We need to get him on ANG 260 for the next two days before I start the
procedure. His brain will fry if we don't," Steck said after several
silent tense moments.
   J'Kon nodded at Vil, Vil still clueless as to what it was they had
planned for him.
   "What is this ANG stuff?" Vil finally said.
   "ANG. A neurological drug which will give progressively stronger doses
over a two day period. It stimulates the parts of the brain we will tap
and lock into in a similar way the shunts will work your brain. This isn't
to say that you will still shit blue twinkies when we connect you up, but
it won't send you over the Edge. You won't sleep much. Some say it's like
tripping out, others say it's like insomnia. Never know though. We put one
little capsule under your arm here," Steck pointed to his armpit, "and it
releases stronger and stronger doses. And you'll definitely feel that."
   J'Kon looked intensely at Vil, trying to read him, trying to figure out
what was going on inside his head.


Comments VERY much wanted!

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