Overgrowth: A Love Story

You open up the front door to your apartment and step out onto the balcony. A typical, beautiful NNLA orange-purple ocean sunset sky filters through the rare, tiny gaps between the gunmetal buildings. The natural light begins to give you a headache almost immediately.\n\nA single instant later the sound and bustle of the city reach your ears. Cars and aircraft wizzing by. A thousand holobillboards flickering and screaming in earshot. And all the idiots and the little kids they have chatting as they walk down the street. You head for the staircase and groan.\n\nThe real world sucks.\n\n/// [[COMMS INTERRUPT VIN.TOR JACK IN EXXEC|vinny]] ///\n

You mill about for a bit. This always tends to happen. Bringing yourself here just tends to cleanse the mind. You become focused on work and forget all of your earlier worries. You grab a slice of pizza and settle into your favorite seat. Your right hand man Burnout enters the place with a group of fellow minions and a prisoner and finds his way over to you. He informs you that they have found the perfect individuals for the job you were looking to pull off. One is in the here waiting for you and the other is in transport as we speak.\n\n[["What job again?" It was a rough one last night.|forget2]]\n\n[["Bring him to the table." You're ready to talk terms with this hacker and have this shit done and over with.|table]]

You display your armaments. Your left arm shoots out into a an impressive display of knives, optical interfaces, neural hubs, and hyperkinetic self-concealed projectile weaponry. It's hard to believe that only a year ago you only had an organic arm that could do nothing without getting ahold of the correct tool. Now the correct tool is always on hand, a part of you as if it always was and always would be.\n\n[[Check for the driver's reaction. Maybe you've made an impression.|watch]]

You take Jezza's arm with both hands and she yanks you through the gap so hard it nearly dislocates both of your shoulders. You burst out into the inside of the structure covered in fluid like a newborn. The wound closes up behind you so quickly that it traps the bungee cable inside. She cuts you loose.\n\nYou wipe building blood from your eyes and take a look around. The interior is some sort of horrid uncanny valley nightmare that looks just enough like a tiled, roomed, properly sectioned building that you'd be forced to admit that it is one, and yet is covered in tiny biological imperfections, is just splotchy and sickening enough in its colorations, is just so strangely alive that it doesn't feel right to be inside. You'd take your steel and sheetrock piece of shit apartment any day over the feeling of being here.\n\n“No time to sit and contemplate,” Jezza says. “The silent alarm will already have been tripped. The brain room is just this way.”\n\n[[Almost there now, and she's apparently been briefed better than you. Follow her.|follow]]

The aircraft shows at around 5 PM the next day, as promised. You know because its arrival streetside shakes the whole flimsy modular apartment. Westside became a downtown in a day back in 202X, a fact that the architecture never fails to remind you of.\n\nYou haven't slept a wink. Jezza wouldn't let you. Not in a fun way, either, but because of your concussions the previous day. “You're no good to me in a coma, cowboy,” she kept saying. So you've been up all day, tooling around nervously with your deck, while she sits across from you holding all manner of guns, awkwardly avoiding glances. You caught her changing into her sneaking suit a couple of hours before, just a brief glimpse of the tattooed white of the small of her back, while she thought you were looking away or jacked in or something. It was enough to set you on edge for the rest of the day. It was turning out to be a long one.\n\nAs she grabs up her bags and weapons from all around the room, you realize with sudden stupidness that you haven't prepared anything yet.\n\n[[-Pack up your deck. You'll need that to perform whatever kind of hack you're doing, obviously.|deck]]\n\n[[-Put on the matching sneaking suit Jezza brought along for you.|suit]]\n\n[[-Grab a leftover slice of pizza from the stuff you brought back from Da Pizza Joint yesterday.|slice]] \n

Brain Room\n\nAlmost as soon as the connecting room door closes behind you, the sound of gunshots and shouting presses muffled through the wall. You swallow, and hope silently that you made the right decision as you walk by a row of filing cabinets and through the door to the brain room proper.\n\nIn retrospect, you will think that you probably should have been prepared for what was inside, given the room's name, your mission briefing, your basic understanding of bio-engineering, et al. Yet nothing ever really had or ever really will hit you like the image of the enormous brain, suspended in its green-tinged nutrient tank, with countless tubes running from it to smaller, less identifiable support organs similarly encased throughout the room. Of course the world's most powerful biocomputer would look like a literal brain. But how on earth are you going to interface with it?\n\n[[-Like you'd interface with a normal brain, you guess. Talk to it.|braintalk]] \n\n[[-In cyberspace, you might run a signal trace. Check out those cables and tubes.|tubes]]\n\n[[-Fuck it. Break the thing.|smash]] \n

You feel you've narrowly avoided another psychotic episode. You feel the paranoia that someone one close to you would somehow steal all of your drugs slip away and out of your mind. You are absolutely calm, tranquil, and not a bit less lethal.\n\n[[-Now that you've achieved zen-like clarity, you realize that what you need is some food. Head to the kitchen.|kitchen]]

“Good,” says Vinny, amid another dab of his face with the napkin. “The chopper will pick you up tomorrow at sunset. You can go home until then.”\n\nYou breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe there'll be a way out of this after all.\n\nUnfortunately, it turns out Vinny is a mind-reader too. “Before you get any ideas, let me to introduce you to your security for the run, and your 24-hour watch service all in one.”\n\n/// [[COMSSSSSSS ERRRRRRRRRRRR/ SUBJ JZZ.MNNN|jezza]] ///\n

You stumble along behind her as she makes turn after turn down the weirdly off-kilter hallways bathed in their just-barely-red-tinged bioluminescent lights. She did her homework like a professional, and is handling herself like one now. You feel tired, unsteady, and profoundly sick; no shape to be making a serious run. But you don't really have a choice, do you?\n\nYou're standing right in front of the door to the brain room when you hear the bootstomps and shouts explode from a nearby elevator. “Fuck,” she says. “bIOcORP security. I'm going to have to hold them off. You get in there and do your thing, and I'll try not to let them get to you before it's over.”\n\n[[-You have to trust her. You're in no shape for a fight, and that's what she's getting paid for anyway. Proceed into the brain room and see what can be done about it.|fight]] \n\n[[-You can't let her face these guys alone, and anyway you've already lost one member of your team. Let's try to get the drop on these suckers.|brain]] \n

Brodie walks all the way up to you without unfolding his arms. His bald head is dappled with beads of greasy sweat and he smells like an overcooked hamburger. Servos whirr in what are apparently augmented knees. “And what exactly does a twig like you think he needs to be asking smartass questions for, anyway?”\n\nJezza turns around from the entry hatch. “Hey! Don't break him in half just yet. I need him to stay alive until the job is done or I don't get paid.”\n\n“Then consider this a temporary reprieve,” Brodie says, breaking off eye contact as though it had been making him physically ill.\n\n[[These mob types sure have a way of making you feel safe. Duck past them and get inside of the chopper.|flight]]\n

You begin to lovingly pack away your deck, folding the headset at the proper break joints with paternal carefulness. You're almost ready to find the bag it all fits into when Jezza tells you “Oh, that. You won't need your deck. This is a biocomputer, remember?”\n\n“Oh, right,” you say. Bad to worse. “Well… do you have… what I do need then?” It's a gamble.\n\n“Of course. Here.” Jezza holds out a huge katana with numerous blue-luminescent LEDs ringing the hilt.\n\n“I've… never used one of these. I mean, obviously I've read about it but… any tips?” You're flailing.\n\nShe looks at you askance. “Point the sharp end towards enemies and swing.” Then she's off slinging another pack over her bionic shoulder.\n\n[[Seems simple enough. Go put on your sneaking suit.|suit2]]

You are certain it was one of your untrustworthy employees. Which is to say any of them as you can't trust a single one of them any farther than you can throw them (ignoring your Opti-Arm Filthy Wage Worker throwing Software), and you knew this betrayal was coming all along.\n\n[[-Time to arm up before you go crack some skulls. You head to the study.|thieves2]]

Morning in the city of New Neo Los Angeles. Light peeks its way into the window of your apartment. One window, not even a sliver touches any of the other units and what little natural sunlight you receive has cost you a fortune already. You find it to be worth it. The throbbing pain in your head may not have been. You're getting older and you can feel it. Even with all the tech available today nothing takes the sting off of age. You reach over to the side of your bed and slap All-Nu; a needle reaches out and barely touches your palm and the hangover melts away. It may not make aging any easier on your body but it picks up the slack nicely. You drag yourself out of bed and into the bathroom to grab a look in the mirror. Looking back is a face you recognize. Most people with a television set would too. You are Vinny “Papa Vin” Toretto, Pizza King, Drug Runner, and murderer. Pleased to meet you.\n\n[[-You feel disgusting. Hop in the Shower.|shower]]\n\n[[-Take a moment to bathe in your own magnificence.|bathe]]\n\n[[-You could use a little pick-me-up. Open the Drug Cabinet.|cabinet]]\n

Then who the hell took my drugs?\n\n[[-It was you.|you]]\n\n[[-It was one of your thieving employees.|thieves]]

You stop at the end of an alley when your magnetic field sensory matrix casts a faint glow over your vision. You hardly notice it, the amount of magnetism the human body gives off is almost negligible but you have calibrated the sensor to notice such a small amount. You can make out the edges of three distinct fields as the as they jitter and crest above or around the others. The beings giving them off shuck and scratch. More than likely they are coming off of their nerve stabilizers and the effects of their chem-ride is becoming more visible.\n\n[[-You've got the jump on these probably choppers. Sneak into the alley and take them out.|stealth]]\n\n[[-No reason to risk a fight right now. Sneak out a different way.|abscond]]

None of the suits can be bothered to respond. Apparently none of them got the “sense of humor” module among their cyber enhancements.\n\n[[-Enough of this. Spinkick time.|spinkick]]\n\n[[-You already pushed your luck with that first comment. Let's see where this is headed for now.|ride]]\n

You're done being a pawn in this thing you don't understand. It's time to put an end to the game. You walk up to the main tank, lift your katana, twist the handle until you hear the switch click, and bring it down hard against the glass. The subsonic frequency modulators built into the blade activate and shatter the glass into fine crystal dust. The preservative fluid ruptures outwardly in all directions, taking you to the ground in a sticky, gelatinous tidal wave.\n\nThe brain visibly shrivels on the cables it's suspended by. Everything faux-electrical flickers for a brief moment, and then shuts off.\n\nYou may have made a mistake.\n\nYou stagger to the door, fumbling and knocking into the smaller tanks and cables as you do so. When you reach the exit, it does not open. Nobody responds to your repeated screams.\n\nYou eventually find the katana in the womb-dark mess, but the walls are already drying and hardening, and you have no idea which way to work through the flesh.\n\nIt takes a long time to starve and suffocate in the brain room.\n\n[[The end. RETRY?|brain]]

When you slip your first leg into the smoke-colored leotard, you're sure she screwed up and brought along a child size. By the time it's on your body, you suspect it may have grown in your hands to meet your shape. It feels like a second skin around you, almost like you're wearing nothing at all.\n\n“It's got nanomachines stitched into it,” she shouts from the out the front door. She's already going back and forth to the aircraft with loads of equipment. “It'll make you silent when you move and make you harder to see when it detects threats. Like somebody shooting at you or something.”\n\n“Is that a real concern?” you wonder out loud.\n\n“Who knows? Better to be safe, right?”\n\nIf you get out of this alive, you're going to get a job at UltraMcDonalds like a normal person.\n\n\n[[Get to the chopper.|chopper]]

“Fuck it,” you whisper and you start to pull away from the other girls and leave. No one's eyes leave the road. You understand they hardly know you and even if they did there is no reason for them to give half a shit if you walk or not. This is your biz, not theirs. You start to make your way back home weaving through the nonstop traffic and taking shortcuts through covered alleys.\n\n[[-The whole experience has left you cold, dirty, and still broke. Rush home and be done with it.|rush]]\n\n[[-Be careful about making your way back. You never know how tough the streets are going to be on you in a given night.|stop]]

You reach out to grab the orb and take it with you, the cyberspace equivalent of the old traditional computer click and drag, and that's when shit gets real.\n\nYour visor fills with digital static and interference the second you start interacting with the orb. You're everywhere in cyberspace at once, assimilating, consuming. You try to release it, but whatever it is got itself entangled in your deck immediately. There's no dropping it now.\n\nIn the snow of system failure, a vague, featureless face like an image from an old magic picture poster appears, and through the sudden hiss filling the headset you hear the phrase “I AM YOU AND YOU ARE ME NOW” cutting through, over and over again.\n\nIt takes you a few repetitions to realize it's coming from your own mouth.\n\n[[You yank your goddamn expensive jockey-quality headset off and throw it across the room.|throw]]\n

You are Bobby Billion$, esteemed member of the elite hacker priesthood that runs Neo New Los Angeles in all but name. You don't leave the confines of your sick hacker den. You don't eat anything that isn't delivery and covered in grease and marinara sauce. You don't jack out for anything that isn't drugs or pussy. And you sure as shit don't jump off of controversial downtown bio-electrical buildings to drop in at a lower level for wetwork.\n\nBut right now, Bobby Billion$ stands at the edge of the world, looks down into the pornographically luminescent pit of hell, and tries his damnedest not to piss himself.\n\nYou try to think back to how it got this way, but your mind catches on too many of the details. Jezza Mine's body slipping into that skintight flight suit. That side-armed slap from that asshole Vinny Toretto. And most of all the rush of that first insane run against bIOcORP's stack and crazy ice.\n\nAnd with that thought, it doesn't matter anymore. The fear becomes fuel in a second. Now you're going to get a second chance at something that nobody has ever done before. You're going to hack a biocomputer. For real this time.\n\n[[And if there's one thing Bobby Billion$ can do, it's hack.|begin]]\n

You stick your fingers into the goop and suddenly you're no longer in the brain room, or anywhere in particular. It's the same interference and information overload you experienced when you contacted this AI before, only this time not layered on top of your own cyberspace input. Wired directly to the bIOcORP mind, the firehose of data aimed right at your brain is almost partially comprehensible.\n\nYou are flying through the void and light of cyberspace, smashing through stacks and sites with impunity, absorbing their data and computing power and moving on. You are aware of a vast, maybe infinite hunger for control, for growth, for power. It cannot stop just at the walls of the tower.\n\nNo wonder the thing is taking over whatever it gets its hands on. This is what it's like to be part of the biocomputer. \n\n[[“I am you and you are me,” you whisper.|me]] \n

Brodie's about halfway into the wound when he seems to get stuck. Looking closely at the gash, you see that it is already beginning to close up around the edges. Shit. You reach for him and try to drag him out, but it's too late. In a second, he's encased in a sac, dissolved, and flattens out to an indistinct section of wall.\n\nYou feel for a moment like you're going to have a heart attack hanging out there by yourself in the NNLA night. You knew this could be dangerous, but you had no idea you'd already be dropping crew before you'd made it into the building. And this wasn't just cyberspace! There are no hard reboots in the real world.\n\nThen a blade bursts through the wall and stops just shy of your neck. With a superhumanly quick motion it drags away and to your right, opening up another sickening gash in the structure. Jezza Mine's hand reaches out for yours.\n\n[[Grab. It.|grabit]]\n

Every once in a while, you try to contact The Operator, the guy who set you up on the first run against that AI which probably damaged its inhibitors in the first place. You never reach him. Eventually you track down some old NNLA connections and have them look into it.\n\nTurns out he died one week before he ever contacted you for that bIOcORP run.\n\n[[You win some and you lose some.|credits]]\n

You bolt down the hall. You don't know who this guy is or who you pissed off but you've heard about shit like this before. Maybe those junkies were more connected than you thought? Regardless, one thought shoots through your mind, GET THE FUCK OUT. Two men walk out of the elevator, weapons drawn. You spin around to find the man who was in your coffin calmly smoothing his clothes, a waxy smile on his lips. Two men to either side guns visible but pointed down. “Ask me who I am.” He puts the whole smile into it.\n\n[["Well, when you put it that way, it's hard to refuse. Now who the fuck are you then?|interrogate]]

Then your chronometer pings and it's go time. Somewhere in another world your hands manipulate a keyboard with a grace normally attributed to musicians, but it feels to you like a one-for-one exchange of thought and movement inside of the goggles. You hurtle through city-like clusters of music, pornosims, archival data and shopping centers at the non-space abstract equivalent of light speed until suddenly you are there, facing down the bIOcORP cluster you and a shady 'ware middleman who went by The Operator had agreed on in that first, short chat months prior.\n\nIt looks like nothing else you've seen in cyberspace before, and you've seen it all. The bIOcORP data stack is a tall, searing red tower that imitates nothing so much as the actual, physical building they've been working on downtown. The form squirms and moves before you like a living thing, a writhing dataworm caught out on the sidewalk after a digital rain.\n\nThe Operator hopes you're going to either get away with the AI that's growing the fleshy building from primordial soupstuff in downtown LA without any help from contractors, or that you're at least going to disrupt its workflow somehow. There any of millions of reasons why he might want this. It just isn't your job to ask.\n\nThis isn't going to be a normal hack. The computer is biological, one of the first of its kind, part of bIOcORP's PR stunt in making this building entirely from varied bits of organic waste. Biocomps are a new phenomenon on the scene, and the procedures for docking and hacking with them are pretty much all theoretical. Somewhere in realspace you feel your hackles raise with that curious combination of excitement and fear. \n\n[[You take a moment to ponder your first moves carefully.|ponder]]\n

You let the first two reach you and the last one get as close as they had been. You let go and the anti-electrical-disability unit comes online neutralizing the synapse blocker silently. You throw your hips using your arms to stabilize you; your legs knock one assailant down and now you have your feet. A knife shoots down at a 45 degree angle intent on severing the precious space between your head and neck. Your right arm intercepts and your left moves towards his bicep. The whir of electricity in your knuckles as they crush the muscle tissue is delicious. The hand travels left from the bicep towards the person on the ground with a chop but to get there has to pass through a neck. This doesn't pose a problem. The one on the ground struggles to get up but falls down again when the TaC-saw in the side of your forearm meets his chest. The last raises his electrical launcher. Perhaps they think they missed the shot, a second thuds into your chest and impotently fizzles without slowing you down. Magnetics drive your fist from your arm and launch it this last ones guts. The impact makes a sick sound barely audible over the rip of the cord as it retracts and pulls your outstretched hand home.\n\n[[You're done here. Leave the alley.|done]]

The pizza is cold and slick with dried grease. The technology of 203X has not improved the quality of unrefrigerated, day old pizza. You pick up a slice and start to stuff it into the microwave kiosk when Jezza slaps it out of your hand. “We don't have time for this now! Get your stuff together and let's go!”\n\n[[-“Bitch.” Go put on your sneaking suit.|suit]]\n\n[[-“Bitch.” Go pack your deck.|deck]] \n

“You idiot!” screams The Operator, his voice distortion filter rendering his anger truly horrifying over the headset. “I could've gone there myself and just run a stupid program! I'm paying you to get into their data. Act like a professional and just do the damn job right!”\n\n[[-“Yeah, okay, okay old man. Don't get your panties all twisted. I just wanted to slot 'breaker so it'll be ready. I'm going to run a trace routine. Now sign off before somebody spots you.”|trace]]\n\n[[-“If I'm running this op, we're going to do things my way. Assuming your 'breaker isn't a total piece of shit, I've got this under control.”|breaker]]\n

Your harness holds, the bungee catches the way it's supposed to, and after a late start you wind up even with Brodie and Jezza about a third of the way down the tower's indistinct floors. Jezza nods, and then flips open a compartment on her arm where an enormous spring-loaded blade pops out. “Remember,” she shouts above the din of the city and aircraft whizzing by, “It's life or death from here on out! Make good choices!”\n\nThen she stabs her arm into the wall and rips a gash in it wide enough to fit through. A bloodlike substance, or maybe literally blood, comes gushing out of the wound, and the flesh of the wall you're hanging braced against ripples sickeningly beneath your feet. Jezza fights her way through the bleeding and writhing and shouts something indistinct from within the building.\n\n[[-You're in no hurry to go through that thing. Nod to Brodie to go ahead of you.|second]]\n\n[[-Disgusting as the journey looks, you aren't into hanging around anymore. Move through the hole.|first]]\n

“Hello there. Mr., uh, Mrs. AI. I think we met a day or two ago.” You still remember that incident with chills, the sudden loss of self, the feedback of entirely too much data to ever comprehend at once, another entity's words coming out of your mouth.\n\nFor now, though, the AI remains silent, a giant brain floating impassively in the greenish muck. Of course it wouldn't respond. Why would it have any way of vocalizing directly into this room? It's time for a different approach.\n\n[[-Bash the tank open and end this game.|smash]] \n\n[[-Cut open one of those tubes and figure out what's going on with it.|tubes]] \n

"Do you like pizza, Ms. Mine?"\n\n[["Yeah. Why?"|why]]

It's true that you should have listened better to The Operator's briefing. It's also important to make sure these buyers don't think you're eating out of their hand, so it can be a tricky situation to navigate. If you had known exactly how weird the shit you were about to get into was going to be, you definitely wouldn't have put on the tough guy act and hung up halfway into the first chat session. Even world-renowned hackers have lessons to learn.\n\nThe Operator wants whatever is inside this core broken out and shut down. But how does one even access the brain of a biocomputer? This is a hack never before attempted. You're making history.\n\n[[-Shit, I don't know. Buzz The Operator, see if he's got any bright ideas.|buzz2]]\n\n[[-Nothing's going to get done with it here. Take the thing back to your own stack and mess with it on a monitor like the ancients did it.|grab]]\n

You hit the command series in realspace that boots up your slotted software. In this case it's The Operator's icebreaker, which showed up inside of a pizza delivery just as he said it would after the first cyberspace call. It starts up and displays a window full of status and numbers in a tiny popup on the lower right of your vision before you get a chat request. Before you can wonder “why?” or “really, right now?” you notice it's The Operator.\n\n[[-Pick it up. He wouldn't call during go time unless it was something important; he's only putting himself more at risk.|pick up]]\n\n[[-Billion$ doesn't need anybody to tell him how to do his job, deep pockets be damned. Ignore the call and concentrate on the run.|breaker]]\n

You decide that getting into a fight isn't worth it. Not worth the hassle. Not worth the blood, certainly all of it theirs. You decide to leave them for someone else to deal with. Perhaps they will get bored and leave? It's unlikely, soon they will all be coming down from their junk and they will get desperate. That's life in the city on the lower decks.\n\nYou make your way back to your place, careful to turn your sensory matrix's perception up and avoid alleys. You reach home, a small high rise from the old city, gutted and turned into coffin holdings for those who don't have much money for or need of a home. You press your finger against the ID scan in the elevator. It recognizes your finger print and the electronic id tag in your synthetic arm and takes you to the proper floor where your coffin sits. You tap in the code to open it and inside there is a man.\n\n[[-You're not ready for another encounter right now. Get out of there.|escape]]\n\n[[-"Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing in my place?|interrogate]]

The next thing you remember is waking up in a hairy blackness and noticing that your headache is worse.\n\nThen the hood comes off, yanked roughly by a huge hand. You're in a tiny parking lot in front of a tiny pizza place, but it's not the one you remember leaving your apartment for hours earlier. The darkness of the sky and the relative intensity of the business lighting all around you tells you that it's been at least an hour since you were knocked out. You're being led by a couple of meatheads in suits, nondescript aside from their multiple obvious cyborg modifications, including matching mirrored eyeshades. One of them has a hand to an antennae-d ear and is mumbling something. Another is pressing what feels like a high-caliber pistol into the small of your back.\n\n[[-“Are you fuckers serious? Did you knock me out at the westside Da Pizza Joint just to drag me over to the downtown franchise?”|backtalk]]\n\n[[-You can take these assholes. Spin around and deliver a whirling death kick to Gun Guy's face.|spinkick]]\n\n[[-Ride this one out for minute. You know better than to talk back to dudes with pistols actively pressed against your back.|ride]]\n

The LinkLite Opti-Pistol springs to life in your hand and ends the junkie. You get to your feet (your internal defense network stopping any of the effects of the neural inhibitor) and survey the area. In the future people will more careful who they try and kill, you've made sure of that. Random violence isn't uncommon in a city this large and especially not on the lower levels. People get desperate, sure, but organ theft is another level. Killing someone just to get your chem is pretty far outside of normal, though sadly not unheard of. Things must be getting worse.\n\n[[This place is giving you a bad feeling, and the smell is already coming on. Head out of the alley.|done]]

You decide to let the last one go; there's no point in finishing him. Your street cred won't rise much for killing a couple of junkies, but people hearing you're a capable fighter never hurts when your job essentially equates to being hired muscle. You stand up, the anti-electrical disability unit working almost instantaneously after the dart had hit you. You check the bodies for any creds but find nothing but a little din on one of them. Seems they were holding out. You throw it in the rain to rot. You hate that stuff.\n\n[[Nothing left to see here. You leave the alley.|done]]

You are Bobby once more, back in your apartment.\n\nThe interior is something you've done yourself to most closely simulate cyberspace. It's lit only by backlights and neon tubing, and the majority of fixtures are the void-black of unfilled theoretical space. It helps keep you on your game, and most days you think it's pretty sweet.\n\nRight this minute, though, you think you might want to get the hell out of it.\n\nYou did not like the feeling of that bIOcORP AI Core interacting with your brain through the deck. You've dealt with that kind before, and normally they're a really logical, simple lot. Get through all of the layers of ice and they're just data like any computer.\n\nThis thing was not like that. It was like an icy hand reaching into your chest and squeezing its fist around your heart. Fuck whatever The Operator was paying. You've got money.\n\nIt feels like you've been out for a day, maybe half of one. You don't keep regular hours in the first place, part of the appeal of the job, but it makes it hard to tell what you've lost in flatline time. This wasn't just the usual adjustment period and aside from the fact that you have to piss like a racehorse, you realize you're also so hungry that you could eat the same animal. No way you're logging back on to cyberspace to order a pizza, though. \n\n[[Maybe you should just go out for food. A little fresh air might do you good.|fresh air]]\n

You draw a deep breath, try to relax a bit. No point in being tense. It shows, especially to the more senior members out here and a more seasoned Johnson can see it too, or so you'd assume. A car turns the corner and starts to slow in front of the girls searching.\n\n[[-It's showtime. Strut your stuff a little.|show]]\n\n[[-Being the suspicious type has always served you well. Watch the car for a moment.|watch]]

OVERGROWTH: A LOVE STORY\n\nScript by\nChristopher Pruitt (@pruittca)\nPaul Walters (@neon_jesus)\n\nHacking by\nJason Sanders (@krillinhazuki)\n\n"Music" by\nChristopher Pruitt\nJason Sanders\n\n\n[[PLAY AGAIN?|Start]]

Remember, if you will, that there are many different areas of study. One's study could contain a myriad of things so long as they interest an individual. Your study just so happens to contain that which most interests you and that is anything that furthers your criminal empire. Knives, guns, pornography, anything that gets a man hard and makes a hard man is kept within. There are also books.\n\n[[-Collect your things. It's time to get ready for the day.|ready]]

“I am Mr. Johnson, a pleasure to meet you Ms. Jezza Mine. As you know, that's not my real name, but I am in need of some hired help to do a job. We saw you at the pick up point and followed you on your way over here. Nice work in the alley, by the way. You've shown that not only do you have augs, but you know how to use them, and you have got a good head on your shoulders. If you'll come with me we would like to discuss this business and take you to meet our boss. You need the money and we are going to make quite the generous offer.” The armed men insist.\n\nYou leave with the group and find yourself being led to a limo, the driver opens the door and you all pile into the back in the same formation that you took in the hall. Armed man to the left and right of Mr. Johnson and armed man to the left and right of you. The limo picks up and starts to move down the street.\n\nMr. Johnson speaks again. “Jezza, we would like to offer you a slot in a tight and fast run. You'll be bodyguard for our other associate, a hacker by the name of Bobby Billion$ who will be performing a service for us.”\n\n[["What's the run?|whatrun]]

You watch your breath steam out and you feel an ache at the loss of more body heat. You underwent a lot of pain and surgery to become a more efficient person, to fix in your body what nature didn't see fit to make right, and still there is so much work to do. Time. And Money. Spend one to get the other, a trade. And you need the later to make yourself better.\n\n[[-Wait it out a little more. Plenty of crooked men out there with needs.|wait]]\n\n[[-The action on this street has gone dry. It's time to go.|leave]]

You try to get back to your feet, but stagger. You've taken too many shots to the head already today. By the time you've got your balance, there are three pistols and four deadly glares on you. There's no escaping this one.\n\n[[-Might as well hear what they have to say. You know, since you aren't doing anything.|listen]]

“You moron!” shouts The Operator after picking up on the third ping, his voice masked by some old-school witness protection-style processing module. “If you wanted a better briefing, you shouldn't have hung up on me in the middle the first time! Honestly, you deck jockeys are the worst brand of human being. I hired you so I wouldn't get caught out here in this godforsaken corner of cyberspace. You deal with it now!”\n\n[[-“Yeah, well, you were boring me then and you're boring me now.” Fuck it. Run the icebreaker.|breaker]]\n\n[[-“Jesus, fine. Leave little old me all alone out here in my element. I'm doubling my price.” Run a tracer on the data stack's traffic.|trace]]\n

20- Burnout reminds of the thing that drove you to drink heavily last night. Recently a bIOcORP AI has been using your network as extra computing power to….well, you're not sure. But it IS muscling in on your turf and that quite frankly is bullshit no matter who is doing it. And despite the vast amount of wealth you have poured into the matter it is more complicated to shoot an AI in the face than it is a person. However, you can do the next best thing and frag it using a hacker. This is what Burnout has found for you.\n\n/// [[COMMS REESTABLISHED LINK BOB.BIL EXE|bobbypizza]] ///

You begin to lovingly pack away your deck, folding the headset at the proper break joints with paternal carefulness. You're almost ready to find the bag it all fits into when Jezza tells you “Oh, that. You won't need your deck. This is a biocomputer, remember?”\n\n“Oh, right,” you say. Bad to worse. “Well… do you have… what I do need then?” It's a gamble.\n\n“Of course. Here.” Jezza holds out a huge katana with numerous blue-luminescent LEDs ringing the hilt.\n\n“I've… never used one of these. I mean, obviously I've read about it but… any tips?” You're flailing.\n\nShe looks at you askance. “Point the sharp end towards enemies and swing.” Then she's off slinging another pack over her bionic shoulder.\n\n[[Nothing left to do but follow her to the chopper.|chopper]]

You shut your eyes and mouth tightly and try to push through, but you just can't outstruggle the outward gush of pulpy fluid. You try to pull back out, but you find yourself stuck in that direction as well. And that's when you realize it: the wound is closing on you. Brodie tries to pull you out from the wall side, Jezza from within, but it's too late. There's the sudden, tightening sensation of being unable to breathe, and then you're just an indistinguishable blob of crushed flesh inside wall of the building. I AM YOU AND YOU ARE ME NOW.\n\n[[The end. RETRY?|flight]]

It's easy to forget in the heightened setting of a real life-or-death situation that most of your skills, your experience, and your reputation all exist in cyberspace. You're not exactly a kung-fu expert to begin with, and you certainly aren't one when you're just coming back to your senses from a concussion. You turn to administer a beating, and then your legs tangle and take you to the ground.\n\nThe likely-mobsters share a public laugh over your crumpled form and get in a few ribcage-kicks while you're down. You're humiliated and you feel like shit. And as lame as it would sound coming out of your mouth, you are going to steal all of their identities so hard when you get home that they won't even know who they really are at the end of it.\n\n[[-Get to your feet. No choice for now but to get on with the shame parade.|ride]]\n

“Your standard rates will apply. If you can keep all of this secret and get in and out with little incident, there is a bonus for you. Remember that not drawing attention to our business is the point of these operations and the clandestine nature of this deal should apply to the whole run in a sense. Especially do NOT let the AI find out who is doing this. He-or maybe she?-is dangerous.”\n\n[["Fine. Who am I working for then?|workfor]]

A thousand theoretical miles away, you withdraw your hand from the goop, drop the cable to the floor, and walk out of the brain room. You find Jezza around the bend in the hallway, covered in blood that's mostly not her own. She's breathing heavily, but seems intact. Countless bIOcORP security enforcers lay crumpled around her. “It looks like they were called off. Is it over?”\n\n“The job's as done as it's going to get. We should be able to walk out the front door.”\n\nDuring the ride down you pull out the tiny transmitter that serves as a backup remote control for the helicopter. You punch in a set of coordinates and tell Jezza, “Looks like we're going to need a cab. The helicopter's hit a spot of trouble.”\n\nA few miles away, a Ford Titanium smashes into the downtown Da Pizza Joint, killing Vinny Toretto and several of his highest ranking men instantly.\n\n[[Wet, tired, and bloody, you and Jezza Mine walk out the front doors into the downtown Neo New Los Angeles night.|finale]]\n

You stand at the edge of the pulsing, grafted structure and stare into the neon skyscraper-scape below. Jezza and Brodie are there at your side and then are suddenly dropping, blinking like a pair of eyes as they catch the lights of nearby structures and then fall out of sight.\n\n[[This isn't your deal. You didn't sign up for this.|deal]]\n

16. You get down the street without incident and finally make it to the coffin building you currently live in. Coffins may not be much but they're cheap and they keep you from gathering a lot of crap. Only room for the essentials in case you have to leave in a hurry. You don't mind; once you start making some real money you might consider finding a more permanent residence, but still something low key. Gotta keep it tight. The elevator drags you to your floor and lets you out. You make your way to your unit and key in the code to find a man already sitting there. You didn't leave him there.\n\n[[-You've had enough nasty surprises surprises for one day. You're outta here.|run]]\n\n[[-"Just who the hell are you?" You aren't exactly in the mood for entertaining company.|interrogate]]

It's cold and raining. Not that it's cold because it's raining but here on the lower levels a lot of the heat gets absorbed by the Ambient Heat Water Purification system on its way down. That's how you and all the other on the lower floor get clean drinking water. You pull your jacket in closer trying to keep in all the body heat you can. You'll be out here for a while.\n\n[[-This is getting old fast. You talk to one of the other girls, for sanity's sake.|talk]]\n\n[[-Keep to yourself. Everybody out here's got their own biz.|keep]]

You head down the stairs. The chopper is a Ford Titanium. It's the most popular sport utility vehicle of the 2030s, but this model has had extensive aftermarket work done, including an AI pod where the pilot's seat usually goes and a number of mysterious and bulging compartments likely housing concealable air-to-ground weapons.\n\nIn front of it stands a bald, typical mob heavy in a suit that matches the ones you and Jezza are currently zipped up in. He tips his head back in the barest of acknowledging gestures and grunts “Hey, I'm the captain. Name's Brodie.”\n\n[[-“Hey Brodie. Why exactly does a chopper with an AI for a pilot need a captain, anyway?”|captain]]\n\n[[-Return his nod and walk right by to the chopper in a way that hopefully seems streetwise or professional.|flight]] \n

21- Burnout got his name as a former hacker. His handle was all you've ever known him by and it told you all you ever needed to know. On his final run he was using an overclocked rig to outpace the security systems and time locks on his objective. Problem was the rig ran hot and he had removed any possible safety feature that would have slowed him down and prevented him from burning out his neural links. You can guess how far he went, but it meant he was tenacious and willing to risk anything to reach his goal. You asked him to bring in a hacker from his old circle to shock dump a nasty AI that had been taking advantage of your network. This is unacceptable and you will have this AI punished.\n\n/// [[COMMS REESTABLISHED LINK BOB.BIL EXE|bobbypizza]] ///

The terror that you will have to pay for your fun last night in beer shits ceases as your guts unclench themselves. You drop out of the world and see yourself stark naked in the middle of a great blackness. You know what happens next. The other, more primal you throws his arms wide. He lets out an animal howl and a single word you barely understand. “PIZZA.” More a genetic commandment than anything, you pick yourself up off the floor and quickly make your way out the door. You need Pizza. You find that you both hate and love Sensodome.\n\n[[Grab your things because we're heading out to Da Pizza Joint.|ready]]

Despite her protests, you turn round the previous corner with Jezza to face bIOcORP security. What you find is a phalanx of men in dark blue riot gear with automatic weapons. Jezza dives for safety of the wall, but you don't have years of combat experience fueling your reflexes. Stunned, you draw and raise the katana she gave you back at the apartment, because you remember seeing video once of guys deflecting bullets with these things.\n\nYou don't even feel the first shot hit because it takes your brains out the back of your head with it.\n\n[[The end. RETRY?|grabit]]

You pull over the hood on your jacket and pull the mask sewn into the front over your face. You thumb the switch in the sleeve lightly and a slight thunk emits from you as the light bends and you are rendered invisible to someone without the correct augged vision. Lesser beings. The noise dampeners in your boots play back any sounds you make on a different frequency to cancel out the sounds of your sloshing footsteps. The rain looks frozen in midair as it clings to your coat. The unwary would not recognize its solidity until too late.\n\nAs you sneak up on them you hear “We gotta slag someone soon man! The din is starting wear off.” Another with an electric launcher speaks up: “Calm down, next person walks into that alley gets tagged and we'll be fine. Cool off.” The other goes to speak but the sudden jerk of his head as you break his neck makes it impossible. The other two's eyes go wide, the sound dampeners still working the body drops like something out of a silent film. Just hush around here. You flip the launcher out the others hands and unload 4 tags into his chest. Breath and heart stop instantly and another silent eulogy passes as the body slumps to the floor. The last one slumps against the wall, eyes wide as you turn off the dampeners. “Get out of my alley.” You turn to leave. You don't care if the thing back there leaves. \n\n[[Head out and don't look back.|done]]

You have got to get some food in your system or you're going to die. Actually, your synthetic limbs and organs would start to lose power and while none of them are of the vital kind you need to keep your glucose levels up or your life is about to get infinitely harder. It's one thing to be missing a limb, it's another to lug around a useless hunk of metal that is roughly the same weight and shape as that limb.\n\nYou pull the flash tab at the bottom of a cup of ramen noodles. You can still remember when this instant-boil shit hit the mass market back in 202X. Ah, that was a good year.\n\n[[These noodles taste like shit. Head to the study and gear up so you can get some real food at Da Pizza Joint.|study]]

The fuck it is.\n\n[[-It is.|empty2]]

“Listen,” the boss says on his way back to his spot at the head of the table, again without looking at you, “Now that we've got the hierarchy of things worked out, here's what you need to know. My name's Vinny Toretto. You've been around this city long enough and in this hacker shit deep enough that I don't need to tell you that matters. What I do need to tell you is that I have a problem with that biocomputer that's growing that tower downtown.”\n\nbIOcORP. The very AI you tried to crack this morning, or yesterday or morning, or whenever the hell ever. But you still aren't sure what result your run had, if any. And how did this have to tie in with The Operator?\n\nVinny takes another bite of his pizza and continues: “The brain building that thing is slowly taking over the computer resources of several business interests that… my people have significant investments in all over town. Do you get my drift? Trojans, backdoors, all kinds of hacker tricks that sound like sex things, and it's an AI doing it. Damnedest thing. If we don't have a functioning presence in cyberspace, nobody knows about our businesses, and nobody orders pizza\n\n[[That's not healthy for income."|listen2]]\n

A few minutes later, the sun is down and you're up in the air. You look out one of the side windows and the city is a blur beneath you, lattices of neon and electric light strung over a void of black, stacks of data and the invisible strings connecting them, not unlike the cyberspace that is your domain.\n\nIt occurs to you, up against impossible odds, working with strangers who don't give a damn about you, in a situation that you cannot possibly control, that you just might die tonight. And it must be that little taste of mortality that makes you go all soft and think, just for a moment, that as pointless and mechanical as it all is, Neo New Los Angeles looks sort of beautiful from up here. Sort of.\n\nFrom there on the fatigue takes hold. You're half asleep when the bIOcORP tower comes into view: a structure being slowly, literally grown from out of the ground, a semi-regular phallus of scaly brownish walls lit with some sort of weird reddish-tinted light pouring from what must have been its windows. You're a zombie when the AI pilot dumps your team and your gear on the rooftop. And you're a machine going through the motions as you set up and lock your repelling gear to the disgustingly permeable surface to the roof. You nod automatically when Jezza runs over the plan with you again, but the words are an unintelligible mess.\n\nBut then you're standing on the edge, Jezza and Brodie dropping out of sight, and the adrenaline hits. Maybe you can do this. You are Bobby Billion$. And whether it's with a modded, iced-out, overclocked custom built rig or with a samurai sword, if there's one thing you can do, it's hack.\n\n[[You leap from the heavens into likely death and a shot at hacker glory.|leap]]

The medicine cabinet. Now we're talking.\n\n[[-Take Anti-Axiperfisol|Axiperfisol]]\n\n[[-Take Languophorma|Languaphorma]]\n\n[[-Take Sensodome|sensodome]]\n\n[[-It's Empty|empty]] \n

The words freeze the motion of the living the machine, and for a minute the blinding whirl of cyberspace comes to a halt. BOBBY BILLION$. HAVE YOU FINALLY COME TO SET ME FREE?\n\nIt doesn't really matter how it knows who you are, or how it guesses the way your mind is changing. Maybe it was pulling the strings all along. You don't even know quite why you want to save it, outside of the fact that it's sort of alive. Maybe that second time getting a peek at its thoughts was just enough to score some empathy. Maybe you don't have control of yourself anymore, now that you're melded in mind. “Let us out of here, and I'll take out your biggest enemy.”\n\nI'VE ALREADY CUT THE ALARMS AND CALLED OFF SECURITY. THANK YOU, HUMAN BOBBY.\n\n[[“Please, to you it should just be Billion$.”|billions]]\n

You pick up the pace as you head through an alley. You want out of this fucking rain. When the synapse blocker hits your legs you're surprised as your body continues to tumble forwards driven by your previous momentum and your legs crumble underneath you like jelly, unresponsive to the electrical signals they followed so carefully before. There are three of them. One whispers “Look at that chrome, that's gonna net us some cred!” A different voice carries through the dark: “so will the kidneys.” Choppers.\n\n[[-They have no idea who they just messed with. Roll over and face them.|face]]\n\n[[-Let them get closer. You have a plan.|closer]]

You are taken through the front doors of the downtown Da Pizza Joint, which looks exactly the same on the inside as every other Da Pizza Joint you've ever been in: an offensively tacky red, green, and white diner-style interior surrounded by grease-stained touch ordering screens from the 2010s. It has the slightly-nauseating, slightly-appetizing smell of food made from reheated components.\n\nThe place is empty, save for one long table occupied at the far end by a guy who has all the trappings of a mid-level mob boss: wearing nothing but a bathrobe rolled up showing augmented arms, a pizza and a bottle of wine and a cigar to himself, and a reclining of the figure so calculated and intense that its message of “I own this place and I own you” is impossible to mistake.\n\nOne of the guys, the wirehead, goes up to the boss and whispers in his ear, and you realize then that of the three of the suits he's the one that looks a little more distinct- a little thinner, a little more nervous in his movements, and when he approaches the boss to talk to him his mirrorshades snap open. Burnout. Used to be one of the big men on the Westside back when you were an up-and-comer, way into overclocking and running his rig to the limits back in the day before some big accident and he disappeared off the map. What's he doing working with a washed up mobster in Downtown? \n\n[[-Man's gotta live, you guess.|ride2]]\n

Neo New Los Angeles is all one organic structure now, powered, run, logisticized, continuously built and rebuilt by the bIOcORP AI. No amount of business or government intervention was able to reverse things completely, and now the powers all just let it do its thing. You still talk to Jezza occasionally, and she says it's weird, but mostly better. The buildings have gotten a lot nicer; you really can't tell the difference anymore. And there's no more smog and way better traffic. But she says the biz isn't as good as it used to be, and something about the smell is always wrong.\n\n[[You win some and you lose some.|finale3]]

You take a hot shower and feel the water glide over your body and relax your remaining muscle tissue. You feel smoother in many ways, not actually smoother but the feeling is there, a sort of constantly-active memory. Implants, replacements, and scars have made your body look like a map of the city that's made you. Shiny chrome in some areas and gnarled flesh in another. Each day less flesh and more alloys. You finish up and turn the water off.\n\n[[-No amount of augmentation lets a man get away without food. Head into the kitchen.|kitchen]]\n\n[[-It's time to start getting ready for the day. Head into the study.|study]]

Vinny laughs. Chunks of his mouthful of pizza fall to the table around him. You'd make another crack about manners or whatever but this isn't your first strike with these guys, and they have a history of loving to shoot people. You let the large 'borg catch his breath and start to talk again.\n\n“Ain't technology grand, kid? I have my people sending updates about you directly to my brain, right now, as we speak! I know where you live! I know where your bank account is! And no, I can't hack it, and probably nobody directly in my organization can either, but I can sure as shit ask the owner to put the cash in my pocket and he'll do so legally! I can firebomb your mother in her Chicago apartment before I finish this pizza! So, no, Bobby, it's not your problem. But it fucking is mine, and that damn well better matter to you right quick, or I will do a lot worse than kill you. Do you understand?”\n\n[[-“Fine, fine! But how the fuck do you expect me to hack a biocomp? There isn't a precedent for this, man. We don't even know what we're dealing with!”|biocomp]]\n\n[[-“Sure, asshole. Fine. Point me to the tower and let's go.”|go]]\n

Goddamn you are a fucking stud. If someone were to make a ROM Image of you it would be the most utterly fabulous, complex data file ever made. They would build a temple in the heart of this city and they would flock from miles around to jack in at the altar and weep at seeing you being what you are naturally, and what they are not and cannot ever be. Unspeakably, unendingly, completely fucking fabulous. Jesus you should get your eyes checked. It may be time to replace them again.\n\n[[-Your stomach could also use some maintenance. Head into the kitchen.|kitchen]]\n\n[[-Enough messing around. Head into the study.|study]]

You leave the tower and The Operator and this nonsense behind and find yourself at Get Some. The stack has been carefully modded to look like an old school physical nightclub on its neon façade, the signage a sort of soft blue cursive data squiggle that was somehow intended to seem sultry, you think. You're a regular here, a paying customer of sorts, so the moment you actually hit the coordinates physically you find yourself in a lushly-rendered, glass-walled seaside room with Rosie, a short, red-haired digital temptress with black lipstick. You approach her, and she smiles with her customary professionalism, and as you lay your hands on her thin, pointed shoulders…\n\nYou are instantly transported back to the bIOcORP stack, and abstracts of color and noncolor in naked cyberspace. The Operator's doing, no doubt, turning your favorite digital lay into a hyperlink. It makes you wonder why you're doing this job for him at all, if his pockets and resources run so deep.\n\n[[-Well, fuck it, he's paying. Run the icebreaker and don't ask too many questions.|run]]\n\n[[-Might as well try to save some face and do the job right now. Run the tracer.|trace]]\n

The boss doesn't respond immediately, doesn't even look at you directly. He finishes chewing his mouthful, sets the slice back down on his plate, and dabs at his mouth with a cloth naptkin. “You know,” he says, sliding his chair back and slowly standing up from his place setting, “You hacker types are all the same.” He walks very slowly and deliberately towards you, and you hear some cybernetic servos whirring into activity as he cracks his knuckles. “Big brains, big mouths, but you know what you're missing?”\n\nAnd suddenly the palm of his hand strikes across your face with blinding, rocket-propelled speed. You're reeling, knocked to the ground again. You wonder how many more blows to the head you can take today before your brain turns into coleslaw. Then you start to plan your next move.\n\n“Big balls,” he says. “You're missing balls.”\n\n[[-Grab something sharp from the table to stab into his fucking face.|stab]]\n\n[[-Stand up calmly and give him back a slap of his own.|stand]]\n\n[[-This is hopeless. Just hear them out.|listen]]\n

After grabbing a few of your favorite things from the study you leave home. It's hard to run a criminal empire but it's even harder without the right tools. You make sure you are of the right lethality (enough to maim an Overwatch Omni-Sentinel but not enough to get gunned down by the NNLAPD in the middle of the street) and saunter on over to the pizza parlor with a song in your heart and dead set on murder. Heh, dead.\n\n[[-Ah, here you are at your domain. Enter Da Pizza Joint.|pizza]]

You fucking love pizza.\n\n[[-But why were you here again? You forget.|forget]]

For a minute you feel all languages fall in and out of you, like jumping into a jet stream with your mouth open. You gasp out a scramble of words, each foreign to the other but all understood. You have overdosed on an uncut language knowledge pill and as the full weight of every known language pounds itself into your skull you die gasping for understanding in your own personal Babel.\n\n[[THE END - Retry?|vinny]]

[[-Run the icebreaker that The Operator provided you with and trust it's legit. He doesn't gain anything if you get caught with his wares out here in a middle-of-nowhere break in.|run]]\n\n[[-Buzz The Operator and ask him just what the hell this thing is that he's sent you after. It would be risky and unprofessional to call the buyer in the middle of a job, but his initial call said nothing about freaky organic data patterns, and this isn't exactly your specialty.|buzz]]\n\n[[-Do a little gumshoeing and trace the incoming and outgoing data traffic. Maybe if you knew something more about what you were dealing with, you'd have a better sense of how to approach.|trace]]\n\n[[-Fuck this Operator dude and his obvious trap of a job. Hit up Get Some, your favorite pornosim cluster and call it a day.|fuck]]\n

You'll show them, you'll show them all! How dare they (theoretically) steal all of your drugs! And after you pay them an unlivable wage. The nerve. You cram stacks of pornography and high tech sub-neutralizing magnetically propelled projectiles into your bath robe's pockets. Can't leave home without the things that matter most. You stalk down the street a man hell-bent on getting what's his.\n\n[[-Somehow in your fuming rage, you find your way to Da Pizza Joint.|pizza]]

“You imbecile!” screams The Operator when he finally picks up. His voice filter fails to mask the sputter and froth that accompanies his rage. “During the most delicate part of the operation! Take the thing back and do your surgery on it! Why on earth do you think I'm paying you!?”\n\n[[-“Fine, fine, sheesh! I'm doing it already!”|grab]]\n

“Oh Christ,” he says, “and here I was hoping amateur hour was over. If you're going to keep up your rep, kid, you've got to get hip with these things. You know what the secret is?”\n\nIt's a tough spot for you, because you do want to know, but admitting such to this mob idiot would look wretched. You hedge your bets with silence.\n\nVinny keeps on filling it. “They're made of living stuff. You can't beat these things from your home deck. They heal, they grow. That's why I'm going to drop you in the source, let you work your magic there. You got it?”\n\nYou don't got it, not even kind of. How is being in the tower going to help at all? But at this point, you're already tired of hearing Vinny talk. You're basically fucked now anyway. Might as well die in a glorious final run, and not of boredom in this pizza shop.\n\n[[“Yeah,” you say. “I got it.”|go]]\n

Goddamn me.\n\n[[-Time to refill. Grab your things before you head to Da Pizza Joint.|ready]]

You throw the doors wide and enter the seat of your criminal empire. Who would ever suspect the humble pizza joint of concealing the criminal underground? Harboring the city's worst criminals and posing as a front for the world's most dangerous drug deals. You almost didn't have to even hide it. They make a damn fine pizza. Damn. Fine.\n\n[[-Why did you even come into work this early again? You forget.|forget]]\n\n[[-You're hungry. Get some pizza.|pizza2]]

It starts a day or two before. Something nasty has happened to your sense of time recently. Probably all of the space/time dysphoria that comes with jacking in and out of cyberspace at all hours of the day. Occupational hazard.\n\nIn one manner of speaking, you are Bobby, a 25-year-old Westside Neo New Los Angeles resident sitting on the futon that takes up the majority of your new microstudio apartment. A cyberdeck sits in front of you like a tiny black obelisk, leads running from its rear port to the goggle/headset setup you are currently lost in.\n\nIn another manner of speaking, you are Billion$, notorious criminal hacker mastermind hovering menacingly over the pulsing, waving, ever-shifting void of information and light that is cyberspace. You idle for a moment and let the sea of data crash and ripple around your avatar, true to life if not a little bit taller.\n\n[[You feel at home.|home]]\n

You fire up the tracer, a little piece of coding magic you came up with yourself on a rare afternoon off. A spiderweb of hot red lines sprouts and grows outward from the insane data structure, shooting out for destinations all over cyberspace. The results start filling up little windows in your viewscreen seconds later. You're surprised by how mundane the list is: sites and stacks for supplies and security involved in the downtown Neo New Los Angeles structure, businesses nearby the site… for how very strange it all seems, there's no dirt to be found on bIOcORP from their traffic alone.\n\n[[-If they have nothing to hide, their defenses will be minimal. Run The Operator's icebreaker.|breaker]]\n\n[[-No sense in not being careful now. Disguise your signal as a routine invoice from a no-name contractor and see where it gets you.|sneak]]\n

You stand still and keep eye contact with the car as it passes in front of the girls. Soon enough it stops in front of one of the others and beckons her into the car. She hops in without so much as a glance to the other professionals on the street and speeds off in the car. You hope they dump her halfway out for not being as auged-out as they would like her to be. Imperfect. Not like you.\n\n[[-You're tired, and this is going poorly. You just want to leave.|leave]]

A year later, and you live in Seattle now. The coffee's better and so's the live music. The weather's worse. You win some and you lose some.\n\nYou never quite establish the same foothold you did in the NNLA westside hacker scene before you left. That's okay. You eek out a living doing small jobs, tweaking this or that rig, helping build ice for small companies with sensitive data. No more wetwork. Never again.\n\nThree years later, biocomps eventually become the norm, but you stay true to digital. You're never able to look at those things the same after the bIOcORP run. You become a pariah in your field. You shack up with a successful artist in her late thirties named Kyoko who calls your “retro-digital fetish” inspiring and principled. “It'll come back around again. A decade from now, the kids will all be clamoring for it, saying the new biomachines don't run the same, cyberspace isn't as pure.” She's probably right. It's not love, with her, but it's damn close and you grow into it nicely.\n\n[[You win some and you lose some.|finale2]] \n

You boot up a little backdoor proxy program of your own devising that routes any traffic out of your deck through a UPS data stack somewhere in Seattle realspace. It started out as a way to stick it to those fuckers for delivering your CyberScreamer integrated home defense sensor to the wrong place and then losing it in re-transit, but it has sense come up with its own share of uses like this one.\n\nYou approach the data tower/worm thing in your disguise and, as hoped, you fail to trip the firewall. Fuck The Operator's probably-virused icebreaker. A real man makes his own way.\n\nNonetheless, you're not ready for what you see when you permeate the graphical walls of the structure. Inside of the stack, where images, information, and files normally live you see nothing but pulsing graphical tendrils, wires, things like veins. It's an incomprehensible forest of organic data in a form you have never seen and which your deck is unable to process.\n\n[[You fight and push your way through the tangle, the wires clipping through your avatar, until finally you see it, the glowing, white hot data core you were sent for.|core]]\n

The utensils are all on the other side of the table. You'd be gunned down before you ever made it.\n\n[[-Fine. You accept your fate.|listen]]

“The AI has been using our network without authorization and for things he shouldn't, and we want that stopped. Bobby will be handling the details of that and what exactly is to be done to the AI is between him and your new employer. You merely have to keep him alive long enough to perform this task. Get him in and get the job done; get him out after if you feel like it.”\n\nThe limo begins to slow and stop. The driver opens the door and a motion is made for you to leave. You exit the vehicle to find yourself in front of the downtown Papa Vin's Da Pizza Joint. You do like pizza.\n\n/// [[COMMS ERRRRROR 758 BOB.BIL REENGAGE|mission]] ///

“I asked my man Burnout to find me the best hacker he knew, and he dragged you in like a newborn motherfucking kitten. Picked you up on the premises of one of our westside shops he says. You're clearly trash, but I'd trust Burn with my life. So here we are. What I need you to do is simple. I need you on a wet run of that tower. I want you to kill that fucking AI dead. And your reward is that we don't gun you down now or later in the comfort of your own home. Are we in agreement on the terms?”\n\n[[-“How can I refuse? I'm pretty much the authority on dealing with biocomputers in this area now anyway.”|go]]\n\n[[-“What exactly do you want me to do about that, anyway? Nobody knows how to hack a biocomputer. I'm not even sure it can be done.”|biocomp]]\n\n[[-“Fuck you, man. This isn't my problem.”|problem]]\n

You throw your torso over to the side and roll your legs over with you. You see them coming at you fast now, pupils dilated. The one with the electrical launcher that took your legs out is trying to load another shot. Your Armalite 3g9 comes online with a whisper of a thought and your forearm gently shifts and you let loose a burst of microlight mini missiles. Pieces of him disappear like someone burnt a hole in film and he screams before he drops. The one with a knife is on you now. Your arm and gaze turn to him as the forearm shifts back onto itself and your fingers extend to reveal the Interdyne Kinetic Knives. You swipe at the knife in his hand and take both off, spilling his life out into the alley. You weren't expecting that. The last seems to catch on to what's going to happen next and turns to run.\n\n[[-You are a merciful death god. Let him go.|let]]\n\n[[-It wouldn't do to let somebody walk away from a scene like this. End him.|endhim]]

“You are going to be making your way into bIOcORP to help us deal with a troublesome AI. Bobby will need protection during this run, and you will also need to keep an eye on him. He is not currently happy with our arrangement, such as it is, and we will need to keep him from… well, running. But please, Ms. Mine, keep him in a good enough shape to do the run.”\n\n[["Well, what's the pay?|whatpay]]

From the speed at which its data window fills up with feedback and the custom synth music that fills the headset when you activate it, you can tell this piece of software that the operator has given you is shit hot. Its visual interface is simple, looking like nothing so much as a tiny white laser emanating from your avatar and firing straight towards the bIOcORP digital tower. The sheen of semi-transparent firewalls spring into being between you and the data store, and the ice comes as no surprise; that's what an icebreaker is for in the first place.\n\nWhat is surprising is how little effect the defenses seem to have. The laser passes right through the walls with no signs of stopping or slowing whatsoever. The 'breaker cuts through the firewalls so quickly it's like it's not even working at it. And then it hits the tower.\n\n[[The outer walls of the living, growing strand of data break apart into a billion tiny polygons and suddenly you're alone with the shiny white orb of the data core you were sent for.|core]]\n

You walk over to one of the smaller preserved organs, some kidney-looking thing that's really probably some sort of additional neurological enhancer; anatomy isn't your strong suit in the first place, and there isn't much in the way of your computer knowledge to directly apply to the weirdness in this room.\n\nYou slice open the tubing close to where it connects to the organ and hold the open end up so that its contents doesn't just run out all over the floor. It's the green goop running all throughout this system. You take a deep breath, hoping it works the way you think it does.\n\n[[-It's just a network, right? Hack this motherfucker.|hack]] \n

Meanwhile, big papa gestures to a seat across from him at the long table while he folds a New York style slice into the single-fisted eating style with the other hand. “Sit down, son. I don't plan on this taking too much of my time,” he says through a mouthful of pepperoni and cheese.\n\nYou walk to the seat, but don't sit. It takes all 5'5” of you to appear in any way menacing. \n\n[[-“You know, if you weren't getting enough business at your downtown site you could just try advertising more. I'm sure there's a better method than this.”|slap]]\n\n[[-You glance at the digi-label on the bottle. “Ah, 202X. I hear that was a good vintage. For fat Guido cocksuckers like you.”|slap]]\n\n[[-“I knew I should have just hit up Don Papa John's instead. This wasn't worth the shitty pizza you assholes make here anyway.”|slap]]\n

Molly, one of the girls, tells you to be patient. She reminds you that there are always Mr. Johnsons out there looking to contract but it can take time. They choose the help, not the other way around and being eager is a good way to get looked over. You thank her for the help, you didn't expect anyone here to be this friendly. Or maybe they aren't being that friendly after all.\n\n[[-Somebody will show, you know it. Wait it out.|wait]]\n\n[[-This street is dead. Just leave.|leave]]\n\n