Welcome to TRO - Teasers, rants and outtakes. In this chapter I will summarize stuff that has been floating around in my mind, for example the question of why Sasha thought her sacrifice was necessary and what circumstances might have led to that. I will start with a teaser for a different (side)story, which is mostly just something that I needed to write of my chest. It's a fun little teaser as to who Lisa will become :) Be aware that its just a teaser and is, as such, subject to change, though only in the minor details. Then I move on to my thoughts and theories on the circumstances of Sasha's willing demise, and after that there's an essay on hacking and breaching. Since I'm kind of un-game-ifying stuff, the breaching minigame has been bothering me, so I've sorted my thoughts on the matter and written things down and maybe you'll gain something from it. Or its just something interesting. After the essay on breaching there's an outtake from the scene at Vik's clinic where Lisa hacks her mom, as a tidbit on how things can look while they are unfinished.

I don't expect TRO's to be a common thing. I'll probably make one if there's enough miscellanious stuff piled up.

So, teaser/outlook/reveal for the endgame of tdafp and a second main character, a rant on Sasha's death, and an essay on un-game-ifying breaching/hacking featuring an outtake.

Enjoy :)

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Teaser for 'The disciples hero system' - The BD

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I made my way through the overcrowded docks of Los Angeles, pushing my way through the mass of refugees that I had fled from Night City with. Streaming of the large cargo liner into the jungle of shipping crates were thousands of people, young and old, well off and poor, all of them haggard and hunched, exhausted and numb. Destitute, with only the clothes on their bodies to their name, every hole and tear and smudge in the fabric illustrating the desperate scramble to escape the radioactive hellscape the free city had become. The three day journey from the ruins that were once Night City on the impromptu rescue vessel had been devastating. Ravaged families that lost everything fought with corporate drones who’s workplace had been erased from existence for the right to relieve themselves over the railing of the ship. There had been no provisions of either food or water, and still these people were among the lucky few that managed to escape. I didn’t want to think about how many people went overboard in the middle of the sea. The LAPD was ready and waiting, trying to organise the refugees, but they were woefully understaffed. Either they had been unaware of the true number of people that had been crammed onto, and into, the ship and its containers, or the police department was just as negligent as the one in Night City had been.

Finally, two days after arriving in Los Angeles and traveling further to Phoenix, I was able to find a place to stay. The rundown motel on the edge of town was a grimy shithole, but the bedbugs and mold infesting the sheets were of little import to me, my body offering them no purchase. Something that I had found disconcerting once this world became my reality, but I have learned to cope and thrive. At least until my girlfriend went nuclear. Or was she my girlfriend this time? This wasn’t the first time I had ended up here, in this very motel. Hopefully it would be the last time though. Oh, who am I kidding. I had yet to find a way to prevent the disaster that befell Night City in every attempt. By now its more of a time loop then me attempting to prevent disaster, isn’t it… A sad smile made its way across my face. Turning on the radio, I was confronted with a news report that I had heard oh so many times. I went into the bathroom to splash my face with some water. „… new information, that the assassination of Saburo and Yorinobu Arasaka was, in fact, not orchestrated by Millitech, as current investigations were suspecting, but was in fact performed by an independent third party, that had snuck into the suite at Konpeki plaza and ruthlessly executed the patriarch and heir of the Arasaka empire. This new development in the investigation is mostly thanks to a braindance that was recorded during the attack by the killer herself. The confirmed perpetrator of the tragedy is 18 year old terrorist Yusuki Murakami, who is also the criminal responsible for the catastrophe of night city, that…”. The cold liquid was clear, but that was no indication that it was clean. Either way, I spent some time relishing the cold water as my hands brought it to my face. I leaned on the side of the sink, staring into the mirror.

Short, blond hair, sharp cheekbones and chin, yellow eyes with black sclera stareing back at him, I looked like a wreck. The first time seeing my new face in the mirror had been a surreal experience. While this was all just an early alpha test, walking around as Genos had been fun, but once reality came crashing down it had been hard to accept. Imagine one day waking from a long dream and finding a different person in the mirror. Perhaps that is what coma patients experience.

Leaving the bathroom I turned off the radio. I sighed and fell heavily onto the bed, the frame creaking in protest at the sudden weight of my Mk IV cyborg body it is now saddled with. I didn’t pay it any heed, the bed frame’s problems irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. I sighed in exhaustion and rested my head in my hands. “… how many times has it been. How many times have I failed…” Maybe I was getting numb. Numb to this world and its injustice, numb to the blatant unfairness, to the misery and death that marred every day. No. I will not give up! I will not loose my humanity! I, the sole audience to my thoughts, couldn’t muster much of an emotional response to my mental outcry. I sighed again. “…Time to get it over with.”, I mumbled.

I pulled a shard out of my pocket. It was a tiny thing, not much larger than my fingernail, but capable of storing incredible amounts of information. It was unmarked, there was nothing that would hint at the disturbing contents within. It was a copy of the terrorist’s BD, of her BD. She made and released one every time and I acquired a copy every time. I sighed as I pulled a BD wraith out of my small backpack and began my small ritual before I would restart everything, once again. I let myself fall backward onto the bed, disturbing the dust and mold that formed an angry cloud that would have sent me into a violent coughing fit, if I still had normal lungs. I slotted the shard into the BD wraith and placed it on my head. Let’s see how you felt this time.

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The disconnect between the BD actor and myself was clear. It wasn’t tuned to immerse the viewer fully into the persona of the actor. It didn’t replace the actor with the viewers body, did not blur the identities. The line between the actor and the viewer was drawn clearly. The BD wasn’t meant to be entertainment, it was meant as a trophy. I did this, it was me and me alone. Witness me, that was the intension. A means to declare her achievements to the world. A means to declare what she had yet to do.

Her breathing was strained, but she was full of giddy excitement. The harsh sun of California beating down on the earth was loosing its intensity as it slowly descended over the Night City skyline. She turned around to admire the view, catching her breath. She let her eyes drift across the horizon, from the Oilfields in the north down to the Biotechnica flats in the south. All of Night City lay before her, soon to be bathed in the red glow of the setting sun. She looked downwards to the Highway that cut its way through the hills around Night City somewhere to her left, before turning back and continuing her hike, further and further upward. There was still some time until the sun would set and there was still ground to cover until then.

I was an observer, watching through her eyes, allowed to feel what she felt, the anticipation, the excitement. A few steps further up the hill, she blinked, and I found myself someplace else. An elevator, lined with sleek silvery metal and accents of wood. She was alone.

She glanced at the floor numbers slowly rising. The elevator was smooth and silent, calming music filling the otherwise quiet cabin. She had a clear purpose, a mission. She glanced to the mirrored wall on her right. A young woman in a black business suit stood there, black hair pulled into a ponytail. Her posture was impeccable and radiated purpose. Even though her face was covered by a white mask with a fox motive, one could tell she was young. From her right sleeve emerged the silvery hand of a chrome arm. A slight pink glow shimmered through the darkened lenses of her mask. She glanced back at the floor dial that slowly crept upward. Her anticipation rose with it.

It was impeccable work. The transition from one location to the other was seamless, the emotions transitioned smoothly. There was no confusion as the braindance did a jump cut to a different recording. In the blink of an eye, I was transported from the hills surrounding Night City to an elevator in Konpeki plaza. The hill she would climb would change every time. Sometimes she would hike to a location to the south, above westbrook, sometimes she would be overlooking Night City from the dam at Laguna bend, just above the enormous trash heaps that piled up behind it. Other times she would be driving a boat into the open sea, but the recording of Konpeki plaza was always the same.

With a quiet ding, the elevator arrived at the penthouse, the doors silently opening. With smooth grace she made her way out of the elevator and into the suite at the top of Konpeki plaza. She glanced around the large open room, taking in the expensive furniture and plant life that decorated the place. She wasted little time, she knew exactly where her quarry was. With large strides she made her way past the low table located in front of the large smart screen that went from the floor to the ceiling, hiding a small server room. The large king-sized bed she passed was messy, and the terminal on the bedside table probably contained juicy corporate secrets that would ruin its owner if revealed, but she had a different purpose. She strode to the far wall, just in front of the panorama glass that lined most of the exterior. The view from up here was breathtaking, all of Night City and the adjacent sea covered in a slight mist, skyscrapers standing like pillars that connected the hidden streets below with the grey overcast sky above, neon signs defiantly piercing through the gloom. Turning away from the view she made her way over to a specific spot on the floor. Even as she approached, the floor opened up and a safe rose up into view. She pulled her cable from her neck and jacked into the safe.

A short laugh escaped her lips as a moment later, the safe revealed its contents. A large silver case, containing the prize she was after. A grin blossomed behind her mask as she hefted the unwieldy suitcase out of its hiding place. But in the next moment the smile vanished, and she quickly made her way over to the back of the smartscreen and quickly ducked into the hidden maintenance room it contained. Her breathing quickened as she emerged behind the smartscreen, the whole penthouse and its elevator entrance visible, but her own form hidden from sight, the screen acting as a one-way mirror.

The Konpeki plaza mission from cyberpunk 2077. I knew it well. Cp2077 used to be one of my favorite games and had now become my reality. I still harboured hope that one day, I would find my way back. Konpeki plaza was the introductory mission for the story in the game. Get into the penthouse of Konpeki plaza to steal the relic from Yorinobu Arasaka and get out. A supposedly clean mission that went pear-shaped when Yorinobu’s father, Saburo, suddenly appears to chastise his rebellious son. I didn’t have to wait long until her true quarry appeared.

The elevator to the penthouse opened and out came a distressed Yorinobu. Her heartrate accelerated sharply as a grin once again made its way onto her face. She had expected this. The man was followed by his bodyguard, Adam Smasher, almost fully machine at this point. Night City legend and nearly a quarter ton of murderous steel and metal. Her eyes passed him over, as if the killing machine was nothing more then a service droid, as she focused her intense gaze on Yorinobu, who was pacing around the room, looking like a little boy that had been caught red handed. “Are they here yet?”, he asked. “They approach from the landing pad.”, the resident AI answered. Yorinobu winced and sat at the low table. He made an attempt to pour himself a drink from the expensive bottle of alcohol on the table, but thought better and simply folded his hands. Her eyes were drawn to the stairs that led to the roof. From the wooden steps came a suited bodyguard who could stand shoulder to shoulder with Adam Smasher. The terror that Adam Smasher instilled, his steel body, engineered for murder and slaughter, clear for the world to see, was mirrored by this man, but instead of a revving minigun, ready to rip and tear everything around him, the man coming down the stairs was a well oiled sword. Every step measured, eyes taking in every detail of the room, face expressionless, his immaculate suit hid his powerful frame built for violence from view with only his reinforced neck hinting at the extensive cybernetic upgrades he possessed. A vicious tiger with the singular purpose of protecting the person who followed him. Saburo Arasaka.

Her heart skipped a beat and her breathing became ragged. She was shivering with glee and had to clench her teeth to supress the bloodlust that rose violently within her. “Soon.”, she whispered. “Nearly there.” The emperor of Arasaka slowly made his made down the stairs, every step careful, his body hunched with age. The patriarch of Arasaka was nearly 160 years old, but eventually time caught up with everybody. His face was riddled with moles and his skin looked as brittle as old parchment, but his eyes were piercing. Slowly, the emperor made his way over to the table, were Yorinobu still sat, fretting over a data pad, acting like a little child in front of his imposing father. The tiger of a bodyguard scanned the room, a predator on the prowl for even the smallest hint of a threat to his ward. Lisa forcefully calmed her breathing and slowly lowered the now unimportant unwieldy suitcase silently to the floor. She grasped her shacking left hand with her chrome right hand. Her face was impassive, but her body was vibrating with barely contained anticipation. Yorinobu said something in japanese, but Lisa wasn’t listening. The bodyguard prowled in front of the smartscreen, eyes glowing red. Unknown to him, Lisa held his gaze. She quickly scanned him and felt admiration bubble up inside of her. The way he set each foot in front of the other, his careful poise, the purpose that burned in his eyes, they resonated deeply with her. But she wouldn’t be deterred. “Leave us.”, she whispered.

“(Leave us.)”, the grumbling voice of Saburo Arasaka commanded, its power radiating through the room despite his age. Lisa almost had to chuckle when the bodyguard turned to his master. “(Arasaka-sama, I still haven’t done a full sweep.)”, he said, but the emperor dismissed him with an impassionate tone. “(This is my son.)”. The bodyguard deferred quickly. “(Of course.)”, he said. “(Should I retrieve what we came here to…?)”, “(I will handle it. Go.)”, Saburo cut off his bodyguard, his voice carrying annoyance and allowing no more discussion. Awkwardly, the bodyguard, his back right in front of her with only the smartscreen as her shield, bowed and made his way to the elevator. He gave Adam Smasher some berth as he passed him, throwing a glance at the metal monster in what she thought looked like disgust. Both bodyguards entered the elevator and vanished from sight. “The guard dogs have left, time for the main show…”, she whispered, a grin now growing on her face.

There was little difference to how the scene played out in the game. The major difference was that she was alone. Usually Jackie, the best friend of the main character, would accompany the player, who would be positioned at exactly the same spot as she was now. I watched with blank detachment as Saburo chastised his son for wanting to sell their top-secret technology and Yorinobu criticized his father for his arrogance and selfishness. The first time I had seen this BD I was carried along with the actors excitement, her anticipation and eagerness, and outraged afterward, at her blatant disregard for life and willingness to kill, but the Arasakas, while not scum of the earth, weren’t good samaritans either. I had long since made my peace, their lives not something I should loose sleep over.

“(I knew this day would come. That sooner or later your impudence would cross the line.)” Saburo slowly made his way forward into the space between the low table and the smartscreen she was hiding behind. The emperors words were tinged with sadness, but also steel. “(There is much for which I could forgive you, but treason – no.)” He stood as imposing as an old man could, his arms folded behind him. Yorinobu was pacing around the room, the chastised son finally coming to rest in front of his father. “(I’m just glad your mother didn’t live to see this.)” The emperors words cut deeply into his son, who’s face trembled in anger. “(The heart should break but once.)” Hate spilled forth from Yorinobu as he sprung forward, his hand reaching toward his father’s neck. With power that his father in his advanced age could not match, Yorinobu pinned his the emperor against the smartscreen, the impact leaving a small crack. It took inhuman effort to hold the mad cackle that threatened to spill from her lips. Instead, as Yorinobu snapped out of his anger and realized what he was doing, she slipped a hand into a pocket and produced a shard that she quickly slotted in her neck.

Yorinobu, gripped with hesitation, let off of his father, who reached out lovingly for his son, perhaps realizing he had pushed his estranged heir to far, in hope of reconciliation. “(You…)” Yorinobu’s voice trembled, “(You shall never have to forgive me for anything again!)” His resolve hardened. She licked her lips as she started listening to a song, the gasping of Saburo a stark contrast against the subdued beats of the intro. She studied Yorinobus face, saw the hasty resolve forged in blind anger, Saburo struggling weakly in his hands. The excitement and anticipation dropped away in an instant, replaced with calm readiness. Her breathing accelerated as the intro of the song built up, just as Saburo was slowly sliding down the smartglass right in front of her, his life slowly wrung out of him by his own flesh and blood. As Saburo finally hit the floor, dead, and Yorinobu stood above his father, his face morphing into horror and despair as he realized what he had done, the song started. (Welcome to the wild, no heroes and villains).

I frowned as I recognized the song. Rise, made for the once popular game ‘League of legends’. At the time, I knew the song because of one of the bands that participated in its production, ‘The world alive’. It was one of the many songs that I had brought over to this world, one of my favourites actually. Of course here, it was a different band that had written and played it and the lead singer sounded slightly different, but it was the same song.

(Welcome to the war, we’ve only begun) She watched as Yorinobu turned and paced around the room. (So, pick up your weapon and face it) He took deep breaths, trying to calm his breathing as he grappled with the reality he had formed with his own hands. He collapsed onto the low table, his eyes turned away from the body of his father. She began whispering the lyrics. “There’s blood on the crown, go and take it” Yorinobu stared toward the ceiling, his face twitching between remorse and resolve, disbelief and detachment. Slowly he turned toward his dead father, his expression settling on grief. “You get on shot to make it out alive” The new emperor of Arasaka made his way over to Saburo with staggering steps. “So, higher and higher you chase it” He kneeled down and extended a shaking hand to touch his father. She pulled a Kenshin from its holster on her thigh. She eyed the iron in her shaking left hand and passed it into her metal hand. The chrome arm had no trouble keeping the weapon steady. She glanced at the engraving. Ira rubrum luscus deamonia. “It’s deep in your bones, go and take it” Yorinobu stumbled backwards, falling onto his bottom, he leaned backward on his arms. She took aim, looking through her reflection in the smartglass. Red eyes glowing in the eye sockets of the white fox mask. “This is your moment, now is your time, so…” Yorinobu stood back up, looking upon his dead father with grief. He started addressing the resident AI “I wish to…”, “Prove yourself and…” She fired. “RISE!” The lifeless form of Yorinobu hit the floor next to his father, a fresh bullet hole in his temple.

The impeccable timing stunned me every time. A moment later and Yorinobu would have alerted security and put the whole building into lockdown, making escape incredibly difficult. But with a bullet in his head any authority he might have had vanished. I had no idea how deep she managed to get into the building’s security, but that the resident AI wouldn’t alert anybody of the tussle between father and son, let alone a gunshot, always struck me as weird. She never did tell me if she did this mission solo or had a netrunner watching her back. Or even that she did the gig. The way I found out she was the one to kill the emperor and his son was the first time I watched this BD.

Her breathing hitched in her throat, but she continued mouthing the lyrics. “Make’em remember you, RISE!” She picked up the briefcase, gun still in hand, and turned to exit the cramped maintenance chamber. The chorus cheered her on as she strode around the smartscreen column to inspect the two bodies. (Push through hell and, RISE!) She squashed the spark of satisfaction as she stood over the two powerful men, now mere lifeless bodies. She kept her focus in the here and now as she planted more bullets into the bodies, one for each heart and one for Saburos head. The refrain ended and she slowly lowered her gun and placed it back into its holster. She blinked.

Slowly and out of breath she reached the summit of the hill she was scaling. (Welcome to the climb up, reach for the summit) Finally she was at the top. Behind her the seemingly endless expanses of the Californian desert, in front of her the breathtaking sight of the Night City skyline, the sun hanging low in the horizon. (Visions pray that one false step lead the end) She looked around for a place to sit and rest. Quickly her gaze fell on a rock that had a relatively flat top large enough for her to lie down on. She sat with her legs dangling, leaning back on her hands, simply enjoying the moment. Squinting against the sun, she could see a rocket slowly lifting itself off of the offshore launchpad and into the sky. (So, higher and higher you chase it. It’s deep in your blood, go and take it) She smiled and blinked. (This is your moment, take to the skies) Slowly she circled around the now dead father and son, committing every detail to memory. Yorinobu’s slack expression, the glasses that had slipped from Saburo’s nose during his fall, the crack in the smartscreen from were Saburo’s head had impacted and the hole her bullet had torn through the screen. (Go, prove yourself and, RISE!)

She huffed and finally allowed satisfaction to flood her mind. She took one last glance at the fallen emperor and his wayward son before snatching Yorinobu’s tablet from the low table and making her way toward the elevator. (Push through hell and, RISE!) The elevator opened without fanfare and she commanded it to carry her down to the garage. (They will remember you, RISE!) She blinked.

She was leaning back on the warm stone as the song mellowed out. The sun had sunken halfway into the horizon. She sat up abruptly and plunged her hand into her left pocket, her eyes catching the engraving in the Kenshin on her thigh. Ira rubrum luscus deamonia. A moment later she had procured a small remote with two switches. Scrutinizing it, she took out a battery and inserted it into the remote. A red LED turned on. She smirked and started bobbing her head in tune with the music. (And as you fight among the death beneath the dirt) Anticipation once again rose up her chest. (Do you know yet? Do you want it?) She started to sing along, voice clear and laden with emotion. “And when the giants call to ask you what you’re worth” Her voice was a stark contrast to the distant sound of the city. She plucked a pair of very dark sunglasses from her hair and put them on. The world was plunged into darkness as the shades blocked out every last bit of light. Her eyes adjusted and the outline of the sun became visible again, the skyline carving dark shadows into the half circle. “Do you know if” She lifted the remote. Her voice grew hoarse. “Win or die” She flipped the first switch. “You’ll prove yourself and” A second sun erupted in the skyline. “RISE! RISE!” Moving with the beat, she could feel tears grow in her eyes. Her heart was pounding in her chest, raw elation washing through her. “Make’em remember you, RISE!” She cleared her nose as the second sun slowly faded. Suddenly an earth-shattering crack, accompanied by a shockwave crashed into her. The earth rumbled and she quickly took of the glasses and wiped her tears on her sleeve before putting the shades back on. Her voice now quivered slightly as she joined the chorus, breathing and singing freely. She flipped the second switch. “Push through hell and, RISE! RISE!”  Six more suns erupted among the Night City skyline. “They will remember you, RISE!” She held the outcry as her voice cracked. The combined might of six shockwaves slammed into her, nearly forcing the wind out of her lungs, catching herself from falling backward onto the stone with her hands.

The world was ringing, and she could feel a trickle of blood run down her left ear, but the song was still clear and crisp, slowly coming to a close, the instrumental background falling away. (Prove yourself and, RISE!) She was breathing heavily as the air started smelling of ozone. Every ounce of gleeful anticipation and madness had been spent, carried away with her singing. Slowly she saw the new suns fade. She reached up to remove the glasses. The Night City skyline was shrouded in dark clouds of debris, the setting sun completely blocked by the opaque, red-glowing smog of seven mushroom clouds slowly growing into the dark night sky. While the music slowly petered out, she silently studied her handywork. She lifted her metal hand before her face. She began giggling. She clenched her hand as her giggling advanced to laughter. She couldn’t hear her own voice, but she didn’t need to, the blaring tinnitus blanketing the world in white noise. Laughter shook her body as the mushroom clouds rose higher and higher, slowly dispersing allowing glimpses of the setting sun to shine through. The Night City skyline was gone. A while later her unheard laughter petered out. With a satisfied hum she fell back on the stone, facing the darkening sky. Blaring white noise was all that was left of the world.

Once the sky had grown completely dark, she pulled up a bucket list onto her hud. A few points were already crossed out. ‘Kill Yorinobu’ and ‘Kill Saburo’ were already marked. Quickly ‘Revenge on the TC’ joined with its own mark. With a smirk she also marked ‘Revenge on NC Arasaka’. She basked in the satisfaction of crossing things off of her to-do-list, before turning to the things she had yet to finish. ‘Destroy Arasaka’ had a long list of sub-points. ‘Tokyo’, ‘Taipai’, ‘Hong Kong’, every city in which Arasaka had an office was marked. She grinned madly, unable to hear her own words but feeling them in her chest. “Frisch ans werk.”

I let out a heavy breath as the BD ended. For a while I could only lie on the crappy bed, letting the foreign feelings and impressions fade. I sighed. “Goddamit, Lisa…” My voice was hollow. It had taken me countless loops to understand her past. Her reasoning, her motivation, her goals. By now I can understand her actions, but I can’t relate. I sighed again. How do I stop her descent into madness… I had seen her fall countless times. Her new fusion technology that allowed her to build tiny fusion bombs wasn’t the only way she could wreck havoc. I had seen her unleash deadly viruses, a nanophage and causing the second datakrash with the legacy of Rache Bartmoss, throwing humanity back into the stone age. Haphazardly tossing nukes around was Lisa being tame.

“What should I try this time…” I was a bit lost for options. I took a deep breath. “I guess I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it.” I resolved myself and pulled up the remnant of the system I could still access. The escape screen greeted me with its garbled errors that used to be the ‘Exit game’ and ‘Options’ menu. The only parts still functional were ‘Set/Reload checkpoint’ and ‘Restart’. “Man, the early grind always sucks…”, I grumbled. I stared at the ceiling for a while, doubt clouding my mind. Should I really restart now? So much time thrown away, wasted. Perhaps it was time to admit defeat. I huffed. “Fuck it.” I hit restart.

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Go to youtube and find the video “Cyberpunk 2077 – Yorinobu Kill His Father Saburo” by calloftreyarch and start playing ‘Rise’ at 5:15 for the song to line up 😊 The start of the lyrics doesn’t fit with Saburo hitting the floor like in the BD, but I took some creative liberty for more impact.

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Author Ramblings - Sasha's death

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So, Sasha sacrifices herself to reveal the horrible misconduct of Biotechnica, by sending a study on the side effects of a painkiller, which they plan to sweep under the rug in favour of profit, to the tipline of a news network, overextending the time her jammer can keep security off of her back, completing her impromptu revenge and potentially saving millions from the horrors of neural degeneration.

Problem is, the whole premise just seems... dumb. Which very well may be because of a severe lack of background information on the gig itself and the actual difficulty of the data heist, but I can't help but wonder if somebody who can infiltrate the HQ of a major corporation solo (maybe alot of preperation was necessary and maybe the rest of the crew wasn't just lazing around in the afterlife, but was providing some sort of distraction elsewhere) can't be level headed enough to find the data and just... come again later. Was there a time limit on that information? Doubtful. The neuraldegenerating painkiller seemed to have been on the market for years already (judging by her flashback, where Sasha is a small child), if they were going to expunge the data they would have done so long ago. Only if the sideeffect had only recently been discovered would it make sense to expect them to delete all data, making the knee-jerk reaction of self-sacrifice necessary. Which leads to the next point: wether it took alot of effort to break in or not, why are they not taking as much data as they can? You know, while you're there, might as well? Some kind of restriction from the fixer wouldn't make sense, the fixer would want to maximise his profits, ergo get as much out of the gig as he can. Maybe the crew didn’t want to draw more heat than they can handle? In that case, the fixer would still want all of the info and find himself a different crew of edgerunners who are willing to do it anyway. Plenty of bodys willing to throw themselves at the problem. Probably. This doesn’t work if Main’s crew had some sort of skill that was required and difficult to source.

So let’s sort through some questions:

The fixer, what does he want. What kind of restrictions arise from whoever his client is? Is his client from a different corp and wants to do some industrial espionage and so they want very specific data? In this case, the crew is sourcing most of the legwork. Maybe the client has an access key or some other knick-knack to make the job easier, but the planning of the heist itself is still part of the crews job. The fixer only cares that his client gets what he wants, but so long as the client doesn’t require biotechnica to be completely in the dark about the data theft, the fixer might as well take a leap of faith and invest some of his own money to expand the gig and then sell whatever information the client wanted to him. He could then sell whatever Main’s crew found to the highest bidder, basically selling corporate espionage. Maybe he finds juicy office gossip, maybe he finds heaps of internal emails with loads of leads on more vulnerabilities that the fixer can leverage in a later gig. And maybe he also finds the internal report on the side effects of medications, allowing him to set up a short sell on stocks before he releases the information to the public.

So why wouldn’t the fixer do this? Most likely, drawing to much heat would be a downside. Which wouldn’t be a problem if he got himself some protection from a corporation with whatever information he finds, basically becoming the corps’ counter intelligence and covert operations with the added benefit of plausible denyability.

Maybe the client required that biotechnica was completely in the dark. But stealing as much as you can carry, which, with a direct connection to the net, is everything, comes with the benefit of obscuring the actual target of the theft. Does the client need biotechnica to have absolutely no reaction to the theft? Then take what’s needed and scim the rest. File names, emails, dm’s, anything surface level, nothing that needs the full bandwidth of a news network tipline to send.

So the fixer, in every case, would try to maximise his gains. Assuming he has balls.

If the fixer does not have balls, Main’s crew, who are taking the actual risk to their life, would want to get as much as they can out of the ordeal. Did the heist take weeks, maybe months of planning? They would want their moneys worth and why say no to a little bit extra that might prove to be juicy in exchange for a bit more effort. Main is already sending his netrunner alone into the HQ of a large corp, spend a bit more time planning the distraction or getting a better jammer (assuming main wasn’t just waiting in a car at the front door for her) and anything they pull out goes to them. And obviously, personal vindication, especially the unexpected kind, can be very satisfying.

Now all of this is maybe giving Main to much credit. Perhaps the gig with Sasha was during his early days. I can’t find Sasha’s age, but Main, according to the fandom wiki, dies in his late 30s. Kiwi joins after Sasha and the wiki only states that she has been part of Main’s “(…)crew much longer than a year” (Kiwi’s biography in the cyberpunk fandom wiki). So the infiltration of Biotechnica could have been one of his first gigs, making him one of the cheap bodies looking for glory instead of an experienced and savy merc looking out for himself.

So perhaps I am trying to give Main more credit than he can legitimately have at that point (let’s not go down the rabbithole of if he should have that credit during the happenings of Edgerunners)

So Main and his whole crew is, at the time of the gig, young, naïve and inexperienced, aged anywhere from their teens up to their early/mid thirties (measured from Main’s supposed age. Rebecca appears in at the start of the scene, but her dwarfism makes it hard to use her height or visual age to gauge time, she could be younger then 10, tagging along to the afterlife) and all carry the edgerunner paycheck-to-paycheck mentality. Feeling the crushing need to escape the system, but unwilling, conscious or otherwise, to forge their own destiny and instead follow the orders of others (read: fullfill the objectives of a gig to the letter). Otherwise their modus operandi would include more contingencies. Although, they are edgerunners, it’s not suprising that they would lack foresight, more used doing things by the seat of their pants.

Anyway, during the heist itself, why does Sasha have the overpowering need to upload the report to the news network tipline right now. Let’s assume securicine has been on the market for years. If the sideeffects have been studied, those studies would have been conducted much earlier. But this is cyberpunk, so the cursory preliminary studies probably did not show any severe sideeffects and no further questions were asked. Otherwise there would be no urgency to reveal the information right then and there. If it has been lying in wait for years (judged, again, by the apparent age difference between flashback-child Sasha and edgerunner Sasha, coupled with needing to aquire at least some amount of competency to be able to run as a netrunner of a crew), then it can wait a few day longer.

Much more likely is, that reports of unknown sideeffects of the painkiller have lead to civil lawsuits that, after years of court sessions, have forced biotechnica to conduct a more thourough study. This study has quickly revealed the neural degeneracy issue and now there are internal discussions and preliminary reports beings sent between the higher ups to discuss the issue. They decide to sweep the report under the rug and probably docktor the study, maybe ruling out any connections as ‘inconclusive’. And it is one such preliminary report that Sasha stumbles upon. Because the next steps are to write the falsified study afterwhich the preliminary and internal reports would be transferred somewhere more secure and all internal discussion purged, leaving the only evidence out of reach.

If the side effect had been discovered when the medication had been first introduced to the market years ago, then Biotechnica needs to seriously overthink their security measures and Sasha is an impatient hothead.

Or, the report had infact been secured in some data vault and had been retrieved for some contrived reason at exactly this convenient time for Sasha to stumble upon, and would soon be put back into secure archives. Either way, the need to steal the report on the sideeffects now has been achieved.

So the next question. How do you steal it? Sasha was at that moment in the office hooked up to a computer, watching a black box doing something, supposedly retrieve the required data. Is it downloading and saving it? Is it sending it straight into the net? Who knows, but Sasha finds the report while sitting next to a device capable of apparently stealing large amounts of data. How long has she been sitting there, watching the download? Who knows. Maybe for hours, depends on the ‘jammer’ mentioned in the scene, but she finds and decides to take the report right when the arbitrary ‘time for the jammer’ is about to run out. We have already established why the theft has to happen now, all that is left is the how.

Why isn’t she using the black box that has been sucking bits and bytes out of the system? Some sort of restriction? Is the box actually a device from the client and the crew had the job of simply bringing it into the office and plugging it in? Is the client or somebody not on the crew responsible for the download? All of this requires the black box to not just be a storage device. Otherwise it should be simple to just push the report onto it. Except if Sasha only has viewing rights and doesn’t have permission to cope it, for one reason or another, requiring her to breach deeper into the system. This also neatly demands her presence remain in the office. Since the black box with the internet connection into biotechnicas systems needs to leave with her and can’t be discovered on site. Which it would be anyway should Sasha be not alive enough to carry it out with her. But she does blow up the office, potentially destroying the device, so that might be her also covering her tracks.

Actually, that’s the only reason I can think of that requires Sasha stay and fight, the file needing more breaching to retrieve. Which makes the fact that she is actively fighting and hacking during that quite impressive. Or the fighting and hacking invalidates that line of thought, because it makes no sense Sasha’s RAM and attention can be split like that. It would mean a level of skill that stands in contrast to Main’s supposed lack of experience. On the other hand, an edgerunner crew being a moshpit of talent and little else would make sense. Or perhaps Sasha has some sort of automatic ICE breaker, that is also some kind of chrome or to valuable to leave behind, allowing her to focus on the fight.

The more stupid reason she needs to stay is, that the news network tipline has pitifully low upload speed. Something that shouldn’t be ruled out in a cyberpunk universe. But then again, she could upload the report to any other place with more bandwidth and then, once she has left the building, upload it to the tipline.

Why is Sasha not looking for people who, once the small timewindow has closed, can retrieve the report, so she can perhaps pressure them to do so later? Why is she not looking for the researchers responsible? Heck, there should be some sort of snipping tool, just take screenshots of the most important parts and upload those. A graph with numbers, the names of some scientists and the internal discussion should be enough to force Biotechnica to reveal the rest on their own. Get the names of the people who signed of on hiding the malpractice and go after them next for even more revenge.

But alas, Sasha succumbs to the cyberpunk mindset, that the little man can only achieve so much, and the edgerunner in her has latched onto a purpose for her otherwise aimless and hopeless life. She saw a chance to make a difference, to make history, even if she herself would be forgotten, and went for it. Which makes her dancing through the streets with a smile on her face on her way to Biotechnica HQ in the ending even more sad.

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So I’ve just rewatched the whole scene and found that she was apparently there to steal data on a new immunosuppressant prototype, searching through confidential files, before stumbling on the securicine file, which needs a higher access level then the prototype in development. Which is a weird way to prioritise things but whatever. Maybe it’s sorted by potential damage to the company if discovered. She cracks the security and reads the file and promptly decides to upload it to the news network. Issue here is: The file for the immunosuppressant prototype should be a lot larger then the report for the undiscovered side effect and the planned course of action of Biotechnica, if it’s supposed to be worth breaking into the local corp headquarters. I assume the gig is a form of corporate espionage, meaning every testlog, every protocol and every little diary entry of the scientist developing the prototype would be of interest. You wouldn’t need the development log of securicine (potentially a stupid amount of data for a drug that has been in circulation for years), only the most recent report on undiscovered side effects. Regardless of if there is a timewindow, the stealing of the report should not take long. Granted, there aren’t any depictions of the potential needed time and effort for the immunosuppressant download, and whatever the blackbox she has in her bag does, it is not connected during the upload to the news network. Conclusion: Sasha conveniently forgot to bring any form of data storage (very unlikely as a netrunner) or the file has some form of download protection (wich doesn’t make sense if she can upload it to the net instead) and/or the upload speed to the news tipline really is shit. Or maybe there would be little difference between stealing and uploading the file time wise, making the upload the preferred choice, so long as she doesn’t need to focus on it while fighting of security robots. Which she does, meaning the amount of effort on her part for the upload is marginal with the connection itself being more important. Another probable conclusion is that Sasha has potential suicidal thoughts, if the need to upload the file right then and there outweighed the possibility of storing it temporarily and then uploading it from a secure location. Again, she found a cause that dwarfed the percieved value of her own life and took the chance to make her life have meaning, choosing to leave behind the broken cyberpunk world with a sense of accomplishment.

In the end, this is all just speculation. Sasha is a story depicting the horrors of the cyberpunk genre, the mindset of the people and the power of corporations, providing background to the crew in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Regardless of how many holes I try to poke into the premise and regardless of how many I try to mend, there just isn’t enough information to go on.

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Author Ramblings - Hacking and Breaching

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Imagine you are trying to gain access to a system, but that system does not accept any connections; it has all or its ports closed. In out world, you are tough out of luck. In cp2077 you say ‘haha, cute’ and breach the system, in essence making it do as you say anyway, even if it wasn’t listening to what an outsider might send it. Its as if everybody had telepathy and even if you close yourself off, somebody can come along and force their thoughts into you anyway. This is where Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics (ICE) come in.

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Ihara-Grubb (IG) Transformation algorithms and ICE

So in cyberpunk, you can enter the net, meaning you plug a direct connection to the digital world into your mind. To make this more intuitive, the convenient IG transformation algorithms exist, making the digital world look and feel and act similar to the real world, even if everything is made from 1s and 0s. In essence, they make everything look like a game that is close to real life, making shit more intuitive. How is this relevant? It means I can choose any example to explain shit by and say its just how those algorithms make things look to brains, ignoring how stuff might actually work and do analogies to approximate things. So lets say you are in cp2077 and of course have a cyberdeck. To stop anybody from easily breaching you, you could, say, encrypt your system.

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Getting mathematical: starting with matrices and transformations

I won’t actually get into math, but lets say your system runs on an arbitrary bit number: everyone has a 1024 bit operating system, and just because I say so, let’s make that a 1024x1024 bit operating system, so I can say your system is a 2D-matrix. And every entry of your 1024x1024 system is labeled with {1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc.} (denoting {row.collum}). Using this, encrypting your system would mean to shuffle the entries in this matrix. Your system could start with {1.3, 1.1, 1.2, etc.} instead. Now, if somebody wants to breach you, they need to make themselves an interface that transforms their matrix, that is unshuffled, to yours. Let’s call this interface an operator. They need to make themselves an operator, that links their own system to your encrypted one. Now, going with the matrix analogy, you have a certain amount of possible transformations (limited by the size of the matrix), that shuffle one position to another without putting two bits into the same spot. For example, something that results in {1.1+1.2, 0, 1.3, etc.} is forbidden. In math terms, you need a bilinear transformation. A transformation that can be perfectly reversed. This is similar to a rubrics cube (I’ll get back to that example later). You can turn and shuffle a rubrics cube however much you want, but it will always be solvable. Using this analogy you can start and shuffle your 1024x1024 system with as many operations as you want.

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Alright, this is nice and all, but how does ICE work?

Using the breaching minigame in cp2077 as a starting point, ICE would apply certain transformations on your system on its own, in an attempt to stop a breach. In the minigame, this would be a combination of the timer and the length of the symbol-chain you can input. Since the minigame ends if you exceed either, in cp2077 you complete a breach before ICE can do anything and loose once it does. After either so much time, or when receiving a certain amount of data, your ICE would apply an arbitrary number of transformations, forcing whoever is breaching you to adapt. If your ICE can shuffle your system with an infinity number of operations in an infinitely small timeframe, you have perfect ICE.

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Adding limiting factors

Of course, we can’t have perfect ICE. In the ‘real world’ your cyberdeck has certain specs and your ICE has a certain quality. Your cyberdeck runs your system and let’s say the grade of your cyberdeck can only handle a certain amount of encryption before it gives up. This would put an upper limit on the complexity of your matrix and the amount of shuffles you can apply at any given time. Coming back to the rubrics cube, your own cyberdeck can only handle an amount of shuffling that would take x-amounts of moves to reverse. For example, let’s say a shitty commercial grade cyberdeck can maybe handle a complexity of three, meaning you can apply three shuffling’s (i.e. exchange two bits with each other three times) to your 1024x1024 matrix, before your cyberdeck can handle no more and anyone wanting to breach would need to find these three to breach you. This is quite shitty. Now let’s say you have ICE. When the breacher identifies the first and second shuffle, your ICE changes the first shuffle, setting the breacher back. How quickly your ICE does this would be dependant on its grade.

Now let’s add another layer of complexity and talk more about those grades of ICE. Note that I have specified ‘shuffles’ and not ‘operators’. Shuffling means you exchange two bits with each other. This would significantly increase the time needed to increase the complexity of your matrix in comparison to using an operator. Explaining things with math again, however many times you exchange two positions in a matrix, the transformation from the origin can be described by a single operator. Explaining things with a rubrics cube… instead of describing the change with a series of steps like {top one to the left, middle one to the right, front one clockwise, etc.} you would instead describe the resulting colors on the each of the cubes faces, because you only need to know how the rubrics cube looks now, you don’t need to know how the rubrics cube got into this position.

Now the thing with matrices is, is that you can separate one large matrix into many smaller ones. For example cutting a 4x4 into four 2x2. And of course, every increase in order (the size of the matrix) means more possible shuffles ending in unique configurations (each unique configuration reachable using exactly one operator), means more complexity. So let’s grade your ICE with an arbitrary grade three. This could mean, that from your entire 1024x1024 matrix that is your system, your ICE could affect any 3x3 part with any possible 3x3 operator. It can apply an infinite amount of shuffles on any 3x3 of your system. Of course, this is then limited again by your cyberdeck. With your shitty grade three cyberdeck your ICE can only use operators that result in changes that need only three moves to reverse (a move here meaning trading two positions in the matrix, a shuffle). Still pretty shitty BUT! Now, if somebody breaches you and solves shuffle one and shuffle two of the three shuffles your cyberdeck can handle, your ICE can change all three shuffles at once with a single operation, completely resetting any progress of the breacher.

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So, to breach and do anything I need to solve an entire 1024x1024 encryption? Solve a 1024x1024 rubrics cube? Excuse me?

With the limits set by the cyberdeck in how complex (the amount of shuffles) of an encryption it can handle and the limits set by the ICE in how quickly the encryption (the position of encryption in the matrix, not the complexity) can change, there are ways to simplify the problem. Any part of the 1024x1024 that is not changed can simply be ignored. With low grade ICE there are only a few positions that can change. Coming back to cp2077 and the breaching minigame, the matrix (grid on the left) where you choose your symbols only gets so large. Assuming they have 1024x1024 systems, this means that the transformation problem can be reduced to a 5x5 grid (or 6x6, or larger, size being a measure for difficulty in game), essentially being a representation of the area the victims ICE can protect at once. This is also where I’m going to throw around those IG transformation algorithms that cut away anything unnecessary. So, no, you would not need to solve the whole system, only the relevant parts protected by ICE, as dictated by the cyberdecks of the attacker and defender and the defending ICE.

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Putting the ‘quick’ back into quickhacking

As the breacher, you of course have supporting software (ICE-breakers), meaning you do not need to breach everything manually, but can instead sick an algorithm on the victim that solves your victims ICE for you, the grade of which would be, you guessed it, limited by your cyberdeck. So, you could be an incredibly skilled netrunner with a shitty cyberdeck and deploy your quickhacks faster by doing things manually, then a newby relying on a high grade cyberdeck and supporting software. This is also where power differences between the attackers and defenders cyberware and skill differences would play a role. A skilled netrunner might be great at defending himself even with a low grade cyberdeck, outperforming regular ICE by defending manually.

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Putting the grades back into the quickhacks

Maybe completely solving the victims matrix and doing a complete breach of their system isn’t necessary to complete your objective of deploying a quickhack. Let’s say you have a high grade version of a ‘ping’ quickhack and compare that to a low grade version. The grade of the hack could determine how much of the matrix you need to solve. Of the, let’s say, 5x5 grid that the victims ICE can protect, the high grade version would only need a 2x2 to be solved to be deployed successfully. The shitty low grade version would need you to solve the complete grid. Talking in rubrics cubes again, you only need to solve the top left corner of the front face to make a hole large enough to push the high grade hack past the defences. A low grade hack would require solving a larger area.

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What about layered ICE?

If you have a system that can take a high number of shuffles (high amount of encryption), but don’t have high grade ICE to capitalize, you might just toss multiple low grade ICE behind each other to increase the encryption and achieve the same effect. This would be worse then having one high grade ICE, because you would be using more resources to run multiple separate instances of ICE or maybe need exponentially more processing power, but hey, maybe you work with what you have. Or maybe processor power is just way more advanced then ICE development, making the highest grade ICE available trivial to run, making layered ICE just an investment in the amount processing power you’re willing to dedicate to it.

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Black ICE?

Basically just ICE that activates an ICE breaker to return the attack and, when the counter attack is successful, deploys some nasty effect, like liquify the attackers brain.

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Why are you regurgitating this?

To explain the scene where Lisa gains significant skill in breaching of course. No, actually, I’m writing this beforehand to define how I could imagine hacking and breaching would work and could be explained, if cyberpunk where real, and how the cp2077 minigame (that is also used in edgerunners, see Lucy hacking the flying robot) factors into that. The idea started with Lisa breaching her mom in Vic’s clinic as a test run of the effects the speed learning has on Lisas brain without revealing anything about the results to Vic. She would use the in game interface, just that the required chain of symbols would be longer then the symbols she has available (the symbol limit in game before the breach fails would be less then needed), meaning the required symbol chain would change, resetting her progress (Why is breaching and hacking her mom so much harder then the homeless bum who wolf whistled her in chapter 1? Because Barb is actively defending herself. And, you knows, updates her shit). She would know already that the chain of symbols only changes in certain patterns and at that point the doll chip would grant her enlightenment and the IG transformation algorithms would peel back a layer, revealing that the required chain of symbols is actually a chain of 2x2 matrices and that the grid she is using to solve the symbol chain is actually a grid of 2x2 matrices, meaning she has one more degree of freedom. Instead of just moving along the rows and collums, she can now also rotate and manipulate the 2x2 matrix in each position to easily and quickly match the symbol chain required. This would make Barb frown and up the effort she needs to defend. Until Lisa peels back another layer, noticing that she isn’t actually moving along a grid containing 2x2 matrices, but she is manipulating a cube, each side with its own grid with 2x2 matrices that she can change and move along separately, essentially, now having 6 grids she can move independently on to choose the correct symbol chain. These 6 grids, since they are part of the same cube, would be connected, every face of the cube mirroring any changes she makes on the other sides in some way. This would again accelerate her solving Barbaras ICE by an order of magnitude at which point the 2x2 matrices turn into 3x3 and then her cube turns four dimensional, giving her 36 grids to work with and continue exponential breaching-skill-gain until either Barbaras ICE can’t keep up or Vic aborts the test. So that is why I went on a ramble. Because I felt I should probably nail down some specifics about how I think the mechanics in breaching and hacking and defending could work and how they would make sense without leaving any plotholes or inconsistencies. I’m explaining my headcanon. To describe how an increase in skill base on comprehension might look.

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Hacking and breaching Mk II

Alright let’s say the connections to the outside world from and to your cyberdeck are divided into going outward and going inward. And both these connections have the ability to be encrypted. The protection on the inward connection would be called ICE and the encryption on both these connections would look like a rubrics cube. But not just a regular rubrics cube. The faces of the rubrics cube would be matrices that, to change them, you apply operators to them, and applying an operator to one side would also change the other sides. Depending on settings, using an operator on one side would use a different operator on another, so the change in the cube wouldn’t be uniform, but the level of encryption would be the same. The operator would be transformed, before being used on the other sides. To add another level of security, the transformation applied to the operators between sides could also be changed on the fly. To breach somebody, you would change the encryption on the cube governing your outgoing connection to match the cube protecting the entryway of your victim, or at least match one side to the extent necessary for you to sneak in your hack. In essence, a skilled netrunner could be playing 6 cp2077 breaching minigames at once, where each move in one grid would affect the others in ways that I don’t care to go into detail for, because this is fiction and I don’t need and don’t care for the exact mechanics. Yet. Another level of skill would maybe be the netrunner modulating his outgoing cube in much the same ways as ICE would, applying operators to its sides and changing the transformation on these operators between sides. The skill level of netrunners would start out with the basic cyberpunk minigame, mixing and matching symbols. The next level could be actually matching your own grid to one face of the defending cube; matching one side of your cube to another. At this point, rising skill level would mean working with more faces of the cube at once, shuffling multiple grids to try and match them with sides of the defending cube; maybe trying to match them to different sides, or trying to match all of them to one. Once a netrunner can work with all six sides simultaneously you start getting into esotheric abilities, modulating your cube in the same way ICE does, trying to get a match.

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Wet ICE

Is this a thing in canon? It’s something I found in ‘Ghost in the City’ and it fits very well into cyberpunk vernacular, so here it is. Using this … I guess ‘breaching theory’, wet ICE, or ICE that is already solved, would mean that the ICE applying operators to a cube protecting a connection is predictable. The operators and how these operators are transformed for the other sides and the conditions for when one operator is used over the other are known, meaning you can write an ICE-breaker specifically for this ICE. The ICE has been successfully reverse engineered.

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Giving somebody a certain level of access to a system/subnet

Basically giving somebody a partial key to their ICE. Something that let’s them solve, say, a 3x3 part of one side of the cube. For a subnet, basically a W-LAN key.

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Scanning

To engage in breaching and quickhacking the game has you pull up an overlay. When this function is introduced, the main character gets a pair of high quality cybernetic eyes and an inbuilt search function for the Night City Police Department (NCPD) database. In game, this overlay can be used to check the identity and designate targets for quickhacking. To un-game-ify this, I’m going to fall back on those sweet, sweet Ihara-Grubb Transformation algorithms. Since they are designed to give cyberspace a structure that mirrors real-space, they turn the abstract network between servers into a comprehendible three dimensional space. Two servers separated by three building floors would also be separated by the same distance in cyberspace. Scanning could then be expressed as the reverse process of this. Look at what you want to access/breach/hack, use the IG algorithms to look for an equivalent in cyberspace, using the relative positions (hacker/target) in the real world, as the cyberspace equivalent will be in the same location, to find the correct device to access. So, scanning would be a process where you dip into cyberspace and locate your target with your real world relative positions.

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Scanning speed?

How fast can you locate the correct connection, how quickly can you backtrack through the cyber space? This could be dependant on the specs of your cyberwear. Optics could be limiting in determining the relative positions, the cyberdeck could be limiting in how quickly it backtracks using the algorithms. So yeah. Ungameified breaching and hacking. What, netrunning? Full-on diving into cyberspace? Maybe some other time…

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tdafp - outtake

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Anyway, here’s an outtake of Lisa’s process of learning breaching on her mom. It got very technical and went into a lot of detail and I thought it felt more like bloat. It’s an attempt at how enlightenment-based breaching-skill increase could look like. Or looked like before I cut it. It’s not spell-checked or polished or anything. Have fun.

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Another minute passed. Lisa got a bit faster, Barbara’s ICE a bit more ruthless. Lisa’s thoughts drifted as the buffer was in constant flux. The way the upload sequence changed gave her thought. That isn’t exactly random, is it… The way the characters were changing, alternating, it reminded her of a rotation. The rotations of a matrix. It’s not a string of random characters. The ICE has its own code matrix! Lisa wanted to laugh. The lines and lines of upload characters that ran down her vision now looked like a neat arrangement of two by two matrices. She had a mad grin on her face. It’s rotating them in specific patterns! Her speed accelerated. Massively. Where she was stuck at 20 before, she was now pushing towards 25. An increase that didn’t match the speed she had gained. Lisa frowned. I’m being limited. By my code matrix…? The way she had to move along the rows and columns of the matrix in turns placed a great restriction on the speed she could fill the buffer with. But it’s not exactly a problem of size…

Lisas frown continued for a few moments, before it eased again. Since the upload sequence is made from two by two’s, I’ll just have to make my matrix out of them as well. With a thought, she expanded her matrix into a nine by nine filled with two by two’s. 18x18 in total. [Haha! This is madness! Its so much fun!] Lisa had to concur. Now instead of selecting a single character, she was placing two by two’s into the buffer. She had expected to reach well into the 40s now, but she hit another limitation. There’s not enough variance in my code matrix anymore… She didn’t even have some of the 2x2 snippets of the upload sequence in her matrix. I… need more… depth? Change my code matrix, increase the variations. Every time she hit a 2x2 she couldn’t match, Lisa started to shuffle her own code matrix. How the shuffling of the matrix worked took her a while to work out. Shuffling the matrix also shuffled some parts of what she had already placed into the buffer. Maybe three minutes after she had recognized the 2x2’s in her mom’s ICE, Lisa understood how to manipulate her code matrix. Another increase in speed followed. She was flying through the upload sequence to gain full access to her mom’s system, the ICE that had been insurmountable before, barely managing to slow her down now. Haha, it’s melting under my touch! Lisa’s crazy grin was back as she and her mom stared at each other.

Her mom frowned, and her eyes gained a sharp glint. Suddenly, Lisa’s progress was rapidly set back. Lisa’s grin didn’t falter. [What just happened?! We almost blew through the whole sequence!] Mom’s defending manually. Lisa was now going up against an actual netrunner instead of just ICE. This is completely different… Where Lisa could predict how her mom’s ICE would change the upload sequence and could shuffle her own matrix and buffer accordingly, her mom would now brutally punish her, practically emptying her buffer every time Lisa shuffled her matrix. So more depth isn’t enough… I need more space! But just increasing the size of her matrix wouldn’t suffice. Longer rows and columns wouldn’t provide the variation she needed. Choosing along rows and columns is so limiting… but I don’t need a larger matrix, I need more choices... She needed more space to select characters for her buffer from. More code matrices!

Lisa set up another code matrix. [Wait, why stop at one?] Lisa paused. Right, might as well go all the way… But adding more code matrices wasn’t an easy task. Lisa paused her attack on her mom to find ways to integrate and add what she wanted. She settled on five more matrices. Somehow, the integration was easier with five more code matrices. Something to think about later… Once she could select her character from all six matrices, only moving in one at a time, she went back to breaching.

Six minutes after her first epiphany, she was gaining ground again. Instead of pre-emptively shuffling her code matrix to predict the ICE, which her mom had brutally punished before by resetting all her progress, she could now choose a matching sequence from a different code matrix. Her mom smirked and Lisa couldn’t help but grin too. They battled for another minute.

Her mom mockingly raised an eyebrow. “Is… that all?”, she said. [Oh, it’s ON!] Lisa snorted. How is she beating me back… The 2x2’s aren’t rotating and changing in ways that should be possible… Then it smacked Lisa in the face. Why would two by two be the limit? Looking at the upload sequence as three by three matrices, suddenly made more sense. And my matrices too… Wait, how would shuffling one code matrix affect the others?

The minutes passed. Lisa experimented with shuffling the matrices, trying to understand how they changed with each step and how she could take advantage of it. It turned out that no matter how she shuffled her six matrices her buffer now stayed the same, completely decoupled and no longer dependant on the code matrices, allowing Lisa to mix and match with abandon.

15 minutes after Lisa had started, she was gaining ground again. Slowly but surely she was overwhelming her mom’s defences. Selecting a matching 3x3 for the upload sequence from her matrices took time to prepare, sometimes requiring Lisa to shuffle multiple times to get the correct orientation. But with more experience came more speed, and her mom could no longer keep up. If Barbara didn’t step up her game, Lisa was going to win.

“Alright, I see what’s happening here…”, Victor interjected, interrupting Lisa’s learning rampage. He sighed and crossed his arms, brooding silently for a while. Lisa threw a glance at him before turning back to her mom. Barbara winked. “That was some good progress, Lisa. Not bad.” Amusement danced in her eyes. “Eh, still got ways to go…”, Lisa replied. She relieved the doll chip from its service. [That was so much progress! How long was that? Quarter of an hour?! And we went from being stopped by ICE to steamrolling mom? So cool! Half an hour more and we could actually ping-bomb arasaka tower!] Conny’s enthusiasm was infectious. The corners of Lisa’s mouth couldn’t help but turn up. But she didn’t let herself be swept up completely. Why did that go so well… That was way more progress compared to shooting. Are the learning curves for both just different or did I gain more during the shooting practice then I realise? Was the prompt just better suited? So many things to test.

Victor started mumbling. “Okay, so there is a spike in neural arborisation… but the myelination requires more amino acids than are available, slowly draining surrounding tissue…” He frowned and stared into space, his foot unconsciously tapping on the bare concrete floor. He shot Barbara a question. “How much progress would you say she made?” Barbara hummed. “Mh… she did have a bit of a breakthrough, but I would say maybe… something equivalent to three hours of usual training? It’s hard to say, Lisa hadn’t made much progress in a while…” [Ha! What complete bullshit. As if that was just two hours worth and as if you were training with your mom regularly.] Conny chuckled. Question is, is Vic gonna buy it or not… [How could he not buy it? Fuck, both of you could be paid actors…] It’s called corporate training, Conny. And whatever his screens told him could paint a different picture.

Vic went back to his brooding. A few tense moments passed, before he sighed. “It’s hard to say how new neuron connections convert to learning something new, but I’m guessing what happened in Lisa’s head equates to more then a few hours.” Oh-oh. Lisa fought to keep her lurching heart under control. Vic sighed and uncrossed his arms. “It’s weird that you’re able to gain anything from a broken doll chip.”, he said and shook his head. “I guess whatever you’re having it do, it’s not doing a very precise job. It's boosting neuron expansion by a lot, but if you’re not gaining that much comparatively, the boost in your comprehension seems more like a side effect.” He focused his gaze on Lisa. “You said you speed-learned shooting, how did that compare?” Lisa frowned. Urgh, how do I answer that… “Better, I guess? I did take three hours though. But…”, she trailed off, looking pensive.

Vic hummed. “Maybe it does better for different things?” He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “Well, doesn’t really matter. Let’s do another test, but with the beta blockers this time, see how those change things.” Lisa heaved a relieved internal sigh. Success…? [Aaaaanyway. Time to keep stomping on mom’s ICE!], Conny cackled. Lisa turned to her mom and raised a challenging eyebrow. Barbara leaned back a bit, raising her nose and eyebrows, looking down on Lisa with playful contempt.

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If you have made it this far, you have been very patient :) I hope you didn't find slogging through this too exhausting. Leave a comment or choose something from the poll, I'll try and be more active in answering.

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Edits/Corrections:

is 18 year old terrorist Yusuki (last name), -> is 18 year old terrorist Yusuki Murakami, (Really embarrassing, I know)