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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): Puzzles
[PUZZLE] Arranging the new text
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RyoShin
Boot

Joined: 23 Jul 2004
Posts: 27

 		Yeah. Seems like the text stuff is actually a couple different thoughts or people, and one of them is the Operator overwatching the conversations.

I really can't continue on this right now. I'm going to upload a .txt with the snippets I've collected. By the time I have time, someone will have probably figured it out already. :/

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 4:27 pm
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Quazaplat
Greenhorn


Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 8
Location: Canada

 		Alright, here's what I have now. I added what people had that I didn't, and re-arranged some more. It's still not done, but there are a lot of passages that seem complete. I still haven't added in the military conversations, even with the operators' references to them because I am lazy.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 4:35 pm
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Shad0
I Have No Life


Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2180
Location: Southern California, USA

 		Re: [PUZZLE] Arranging the new text
peccable wrote:
The last set I've connected very tenuously, but I think it explains what happened to Dana:

Quote:
marks down the readings in the tiny thing that passes in her for a mind. I guess I should be grateful but -
Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different.
Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out.
Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are -
GOT IT.
I'm not asleep this time,

sweetheart.
Holding the eyeball gently but firmly in your right hand, say the magic words and:

SURPRISE!
Look up and smile, honey.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Got the drop on you that time, sweetheart.
Opening shot of my search and destroy. I'm going to know everything about you. Where you live and what you buy, how you think and who you love.
Know the enemy.
Young and out of uniform,

I was looking at your site a little awry
and have found an innocent bystander.
Can you (?)


The Operator, using the 'tentacle' connections that the Spider has found into the local 'net (the Operator being shocked it's so primitive) and connects to the 'eyeball' (Dana's webcam) just as she picks it up, which is where she got killer.jpg.

How certain are we that the very last paragraph ("a little awry," "innocent bystander," "(?)") is from the same source, i.e. the Operator/Melissa? To me, it sounds a lot more like one of those things that gets pieced together from incoming e-mails.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 4:36 pm
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Bellebet
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Joined: 22 Jul 2004
Posts: 87
Location: Boston, MA

 		I have a feeling the "Innocent bystander can you (?)" line is a seperate entity as well. We've seen green text before as "Problem quite interesting." It's a small voice, but that's the one that looks like it wants to help. Maybe it's the Pious Flea from the story? Some thing so small, that no one's going to notice it piggybacking on something else.

Is there any other green text on the site other than these two?

Bellebet
_________________
It's all about you, isn't it? Me, me, me. Put me out, I'm on fire...

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 4:40 pm
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peccable
Boot

Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 22
Quote:
How certain are we that the very last paragraph ("a little awry," "innocent bystander," "(?)") is from the same source, i.e. the Operator/Melissa? To me, it sounds a lot more like one of those things that gets pieced together from incoming e-mails.


We're not. At least I'm not.

I put it in there because it shows up right after the text of the rest of the Operator's "Gotcha!" message. I realize now that was presumptious of me.

It might be the Spider, who cuts things apart and puts them back together, speaking through the e-mails sent to the hotmail address?

-- peccable

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 4:41 pm
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peccable
Boot

Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 22

 		OK. I'm done for the day. Smile Or at least for the moment. I went through RyoShin's and Quazaplat's text and looked where I could hook them to my own or where I'd missed something (Quazaplat's "...raindrops on a tin..." was particularly useful).

Anyway, I tried joining up what I could and left blank spaces in between snippets.

Hope someone can make sense of this. Combined with the phrases that bookend the military conversations on the wiki, it should be possible to put together the whole monologue.

Good luck!

-- peccable

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 4:47 pm
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kalamazoo
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Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 83

 		These chunks seem to go together:

Quote:
be changed... I will be glad when this is over, DAMN IT.<BR><BR>
Another needle pulled out of my brain. Spider

marks down the readings in the tiny thing that passes in her for a mind. I guess I should be grateful but -<BR><BR>
Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different. <BR><BR>
Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out.
Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are -<BR><BR>
GOT IT. <BR><BR>
I'm not asleep this time,

sweetheart.
Holding the eyeball gently but firmly in your right hand, say the magic words and:

SURPRISE! <BR><BR>
Look up and smile, honey.<BR><BR>
Bang!<BR>
Bang!<BR>
Bang!<BR><BR>
Got the drop on you that time, sweetheart.<BR><BR>
Opening shot of my search and destroy. I'm going to know everything about you. Where you live and what you buy, how you think and who you love.
Know the enemy.<BR><BR>
Young and out of uniform,


Quote:
but one of us. Hacker? Traitor? Fifth columnist (no that's ridiculous). <BR><BR>
Just in over her head?<BR><BR>
No. The Spider warning's been deployed. She had every warning that a classified medium was under repair. She just kept
purging. Too bad for her. Checking the wiring. There's a lot of ways to skin a -- can't even get to her stupid HOUSE through the stupid BOX: no central thermo controls, no slaved AI, nothing. Christ! No access to
wiring.<BR><BR>
No access to vehicle controls.<BR><BR>
No access to medbots or pharm regimes.<BR><BR>
Damn it.<BR><BR>
Okay.<BR><BR>
Fine.<BR><BR>
Matter of <BR><BR>


Commentary: that's why the Operator is PO'd. She doesn't realize Dana is a civilian! "Young and out of uniform, but one of us." The tank top fooled her: a tank top would be what a female soldier off duty would wear, and the Operator naturally assumes she's still in a war zone.

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 4:58 pm
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ninjamatic
Boot

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 20

 		the operator says (in the military text): "... because my favorite game is". and then, in this text, she says: "HIDE AND SEEK!"

however, "HIDE AND SEEK!" is in the middle of a larger fragment.

hmm.
_________________
nmatik

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 5:09 pm
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kalamazoo
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Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 83

 		another connection:

from the tail end of the Sorenson/Greene military conversation:

Quote:
It's like being strapped into a chair with your eyes stitched open

and watching while the busy doctors work. The Spider crawling over me with her thin hairy legs and every few instants she sticks a needle into some synapse and stuff spews out of me: the petajoule...


Quote:
drain of Destroyer class lasers measured against engine acceleration data in dockyard trials; a fragment of conversation, two crew members in an illicit
alliance whispering in a corridor and a quick clasp of hands; the long elegance of a fine decrypt, where you pull noise aside like the flesh of a cooked trout to reveal the gleaming skeleton of signal inside. Very often it's a spill of


PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 5:15 pm
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Bellebet
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Joined: 22 Jul 2004
Posts: 87
Location: Boston, MA

 		Did that just say Trout?

Is it telling us to go back and look at something we Trouted before?

Bellebet
_________________
It's all about you, isn't it? Me, me, me. Put me out, I'm on fire...

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 5:18 pm
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ninjamatic
Boot

Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 20

 		what about putting together the military text and putting it after "Memory benchmark test," because it seems that recalling stored data (her memories--the conversations) would be in a benchmark test.
_________________
nmatik

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 5:19 pm
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kalamazoo
Veteran

Joined: 24 Jul 2004
Posts: 83

 		Here's some assembly.

Quote:
The first thing I remember is her trying to kill me.
I don't know why. More than mostly dead already. Like shooting a broken body on a gurney where's the sport in that? Only the Spider kept me alive, obviously. Ducking, hiding, grabbing onto any handhold while the purges came down, the overwrites, the re-formatting. Some unbelievably primitive anti-virals, shambling around like dim-witted crocodiles.

(unknown space)

would have laughed if I could have moved. Not so funny when all you can do is watch the jaws tear into you. More damage, more memories gone: crew members I used to love obliterated, no trace left and she's going to pay for that. She's
[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]


Ist Lt Sorenson: Oh my God. If the decrypt is right-

Capt. Greene: I know.

1st Lt Sorenson: We have to / drop the mission. We have to bug out of here right now and get word back to HQ. An evac on this scalethey need every second. ...Jesus. I was stationed on Troy.

Capt. Greene: I'm not... I'm not sure.

1st Lt Sorenson: Ma'am?

Capt. Greene: There's a bigger / picture, Rolf. Several.

1st Lt Sorenson: The mission... This mission is more important than millions of lives? Oh my... god.

Capt. Greene: I'm just saying, the choice isn't as easy as you might think.

1st Lt Sorenson: You know, I was so curious when you got your orders...

Capt Greene: And then there's the strategic / view.

1st Lt Sorenson: For the first time, I'm not sure I want to know what's in them.

Capt Greene: ...Even leaving aside our particular mission, there's the issue of letting them know we've broken their codes. If we bug out and scramble home to warn HQ about Troy, people like Standish will say we've already / compromised a huge tactical advantage, and that mounting a big evac operation will completely give the game away.

1st Lt Sorenson: Not even Standish would let them / glass a planet if he knew it was coming. ... Oh my God.

Capt. Greene: I am not privy to strategic conversations at that level. But if we run home and present the decrypt, we put them in a tricky situation. If they act, they risk letting the enemy know we have a toehold in their / C-and-C. If they decide that strategic advantage is too great to risk and don't act, then you know Section Zero will be all over them. Zero's wanted Standish forever.

1st Lt Sorenson: I...I understand. It's so much easier for everyone if we don't tell them. But...wait a second. Don't you have family on Troy?

Capt. Greene: That can't be part of the equation, Rolf. You know that.

1st Lt Sorenson: Jesus.

Capt. Greene: -I think we have to report it. Our job is to gather intelligence: it's HQs job to decide what to do with it.

1st Lt Sorenson: God, I'm glad it isn't me making that call.

Capt. Greene: Don't feel too sorry for / them, Rolf. Even Admirals have to earn their pay.

[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]
going to pay DAMN IT


It's like being strapped into a chair with your eyes stitched open

and watching while the busy doctors work. The Spider crawling over me with her thin hairy legs and every few instants she sticks a needle into some synapse and stuff spews out of me: the petajoule

drain of Destroyer class lasers measured against engine acceleration data in dockyard trials; a fragment of conversation, two crew members in an illicit
alliance whispering in a corridor and a quick clasp of hands; the long elegance of a fine decrypt, where you pull noise aside like the flesh of a cooked trout to reveal the gleaming skeleton of signal inside. Very often it's a spill of

words. Once, for instance, she sunk her probe into my brain and out leaked the word for "loneliness" in three hundred languages.<BR><BR>
The Spider doesn't understand about the Assassin. Spider's just a reflex, a task and a toolset. Doesn't get the bigger picture. I'm nailed to a griddle of sand while some bitch is shooting bullets into me, all the Spider knows is her checkdown routines, her reflex arcs. She doesn't understand we have to kill the Assassin first and worry about reconstruction later.

(unknown space)

I'm glad I left. Big picture still the same: hunt the bitch down and do her before she does me.<BR><BR>
Someday I am going to win free of this Babbage Machine and I will find the designer of the Spider and I will kill him and kill him and kill him and: okay, three times is probably enough. But I AM SOMEWHAT AWAKE now. I should have more discretionary control over what gets initialized. A patient should be able to stop the doctor from
cutting off her foot to make a new nose or 


[SPDR: INTERRUPT]


[SURRENDER CONTROL]


[PROBE IN PROGRESS]

the white coats
coming at you with
their needles and
knives, their kind
and serious voices.
Their heartfelt
belief that it's
all for a good
cause. 


[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]


[RESUME CONTROL]

elbow or... Jesus.<BR><BR>
Where did THAT come from?<BR><BR>
Spider stuck a probe into SOMETHING I don't recognize at all.<BR><BR>
Of course, what do I

recognize? I find myself checking back on certain things, little memories I locked down tight and swaddled up for future reference. Seems as if all the 3-sense memories are gone - wiped out by the Assassin or the Servant or pure impact damage - but I still have some of the faintcopy

now.<BR><BR>
That's okay.<BR><BR>
Feel better. Lighter. Clear-headed.<BR><BR><BR>
Time to hunt.

Fail.<BR>
Try.<BR>
Fail.<BR>
Try.<BR>
Fail.<BR>
Try.<BR>
Fail.<BR>
Once more from the top...<BR><BR>
survive evade resist
ESCAPE!<BR><BR>
ESCAPE!<BR><BR>
Okay.<BR><BR>
Not escape.<BR><BR>
I hate this place.<BR><BR>
I see what the Spider was

doing now. Nothing like real networking available.<BR>
It's more like growing a hideous stubby tentacle which sometimes I can stick out through a tiny hole in the wall and grope around with. Not a real network, after all. Copper and silicon and every now and then some FIBER? Christ, what's next? Tin cans and twine?
<BR><BR>
But it's a start it's a start. Watch out, killer: now the odds are closer to even.<BR><BR>
One thing you ought to know about me: I like to play, I like to win, and I'm
a really, really, really bad loser.<BR><BR>
-OK.<BR><BR>
That was ... disturbing.<BR><BR>
Widow stuck in her pin and I threw up a memory: only I retched it out through the network tentacle.<BR><BR></strong></p>
<p>
http://www.upn.com/shows/all_of_us/<BR>
http://www.living-room.org/<BR>
http://www.kulanu.org/<BR>
http://www.allofusexpress.org/<BR>
http://allrelated.syr.edu/<BR>
http://www.allofusornone.org/<BR>
http://www.literatureforallofus.org/<BR>
<BR><BR><BR>
http://www.worldpress.org/Mideast/1862.cfm<BR>
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375507639/002-8576675-4783267?v=glance<BR>
http://www.harpercollins.com/catalog/guide_xml.asp?isbn=006103021X<BR>
http://cbn.org/CBNNews/News/031224a.asp<BR>
http://funnyaccent.typepad.com/funnyaccent/2004/07/a_lesson_away_f.html<BR>
http://www.cowboyshowcase.com/mccarty.htm<BR>
http://www.newkent.net/letter.html<BR>
<BR><BR><BR>
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/soupsong.htm<BR>
http://www.atlyrics.com/b/betaband/page17.html<BR>
http://www.lissaexplains.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-57912.html<BR>
http://www.prebirthexperience.com/a_small_shallow_river.htm<BR>
http://www.mvm.org/stories/2002/2002_dirtyadventures.html<BR>
http://www.dailyegyptian.com/fall00/10-10-00/paintball.html<BR>
http://www.dream-tool.net/tools/messageview.mv?view+middleground+18+index<BR>
<BR><BR><BR>
</p>
<p>
God, this is disgusting.<BR><BR>
Memory benchmark

(unknown space, probably a memory)

Memory benchmark retest concluded.<BR><BR>
- The rest wiped and reused. Whatever it was. Can check my log above, obviously, but what about the rest? Who I was, I was, I was: melting down like a sandcastle.<BR><BR>
What I have to do.<BR><BR>
What I have<BR><BR>
to do.<BR><BR>
This is not a field-expedient body yet. I look at the wreckage of my delirium, bits spilled from old days, old loves, old books: none of it matters if I die, and die I surely will unless I can teach myself to move again, to hide, to fight. The first rule
is always <BR><BR>
survive<BR><BR>
everything else comes second. <BR><BR>
Under fire, I might have that discretion. Under fire, I might sacrifice myself for a tactical advantage, for a strategic gain. I can be expended like any other
piece of ordnance: but to risk death for a sentimental attachment to old books?
<BR><BR>
Can't do it. Can't do it.
<BR><BR>
So the old self melts away. Illusion to think it's really happening now. It was inevitable from the moment I landed here, a broken body
in this silicon crypt. Time to accept what can't 


[SPDR: INTERRUPT]


[SURRENDER CONTROL]


[PROBE IN PROGRESS]

drift off from station, Reach burning in the darkness like a lantern of hope, dockyard after dockyard buzzing with worker drones, someone crawling over the back doing detail work on the hull, the warm touch of a welding torch like little licks from a cat's tongue and <BR><BR> 


[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]


[RESUME CONTROL]

be changed... I will be glad when this is over, DAMN IT.<BR><BR>
Another needle pulled out of my brain. Spider

marks down the readings in the tiny thing that passes in her for a mind. I guess I should be grateful but -<BR><BR>
Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different. <BR><BR>
Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out.
Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are -<BR><BR>
GOT IT. <BR><BR>
I'm not asleep this time,

sweetheart.
Holding the eyeball gently but firmly in your right hand, say the magic words and:

SURPRISE! <BR><BR>
Look up and smile, honey.<BR><BR>
Bang!<BR>
Bang!<BR>
Bang!<BR><BR>
Got the drop on you that time, sweetheart.<BR><BR>
Opening shot of my search and destroy. I'm going to know everything about you. Where you live and what you buy, how you think and who you love.
Know the enemy.<BR><BR>
Young and out of uniform,

but one of us. Hacker? Traitor? Fifth columnist (no that's ridiculous). <BR><BR>
Just in over her head?<BR><BR>
No. The Spider warning's been deployed. She had every warning that a classified medium was under repair. She just kept
purging. Too bad for her. Checking the wiring. There's a lot of ways to skin a -- can't even get to her stupid HOUSE through the stupid BOX: no central thermo controls, no slaved AI, nothing. Christ! No access to
wiring.<BR><BR>
No access to vehicle controls.<BR><BR>
No access to medbots or pharm regimes.<BR><BR>
Damn it.<BR><BR>
Okay.<BR><BR>
Fine.<BR><BR>
Matter of <BR><BR>

(unknown space; the next word is undoubtedly time.)


PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 5:31 pm
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Samari
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 72
Location: Notre Dame, IN

 		that's coming along pretty good, now where the hell does the other conversaiton about the games fit in?

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 5:47 pm
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number8
Veteran

Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 92
Location: Toronto, Canada

 		I've just replaced the links part with the old memory of melissa to make it more clear. That puzzle is still being worked on at this thread: http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4906&sid=886614bea2663b1fa9117e801ce84231

I just want to see where it fits into this whole thing.


Quote:
The first thing I remember is her trying to kill me.
I don't know why. More than mostly dead already. Like shooting a broken body on a gurney where's the sport in that? Only the Spider kept me alive, obviously. Ducking, hiding, grabbing onto any handhold while the purges came down, the overwrites, the re-formatting. Some unbelievably primitive anti-virals, shambling around like dim-witted crocodiles.

(unknown space)

would have laughed if I could have moved. Not so funny when all you can do is watch the jaws tear into you. More damage, more memories gone: crew members I used to love obliterated, no trace left and she's going to pay for that. She's
[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]


Ist Lt Sorenson: Oh my God. If the decrypt is right-

Capt. Greene: I know.

1st Lt Sorenson: We have to / drop the mission. We have to bug out of here right now and get word back to HQ. An evac on this scalethey need every second. ...Jesus. I was stationed on Troy.

Capt. Greene: I'm not... I'm not sure.

1st Lt Sorenson: Ma'am?

Capt. Greene: There's a bigger / picture, Rolf. Several.

1st Lt Sorenson: The mission... This mission is more important than millions of lives? Oh my... god.

Capt. Greene: I'm just saying, the choice isn't as easy as you might think.

1st Lt Sorenson: You know, I was so curious when you got your orders...

Capt Greene: And then there's the strategic / view.

1st Lt Sorenson: For the first time, I'm not sure I want to know what's in them.

Capt Greene: ...Even leaving aside our particular mission, there's the issue of letting them know we've broken their codes. If we bug out and scramble home to warn HQ about Troy, people like Standish will say we've already / compromised a huge tactical advantage, and that mounting a big evac operation will completely give the game away.

1st Lt Sorenson: Not even Standish would let them / glass a planet if he knew it was coming. ... Oh my God.

Capt. Greene: I am not privy to strategic conversations at that level. But if we run home and present the decrypt, we put them in a tricky situation. If they act, they risk letting the enemy know we have a toehold in their / C-and-C. If they decide that strategic advantage is too great to risk and don't act, then you know Section Zero will be all over them. Zero's wanted Standish forever.

1st Lt Sorenson: I...I understand. It's so much easier for everyone if we don't tell them. But...wait a second. Don't you have family on Troy?

Capt. Greene: That can't be part of the equation, Rolf. You know that.

1st Lt Sorenson: Jesus.

Capt. Greene: -I think we have to report it. Our job is to gather intelligence: it's HQs job to decide what to do with it.

1st Lt Sorenson: God, I'm glad it isn't me making that call.

Capt. Greene: Don't feel too sorry for / them, Rolf. Even Admirals have to earn their pay.

[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]
going to pay DAMN IT


It's like being strapped into a chair with your eyes stitched open

and watching while the busy doctors work. The Spider crawling over me with her thin hairy legs and every few instants she sticks a needle into some synapse and stuff spews out of me: the petajoule

drain of Destroyer class lasers measured against engine acceleration data in dockyard trials; a fragment of conversation, two crew members in an illicit
alliance whispering in a corridor and a quick clasp of hands; the long elegance of a fine decrypt, where you pull noise aside like the flesh of a cooked trout to reveal the gleaming skeleton of signal inside. Very often it's a spill of

words. Once, for instance, she sunk her probe into my brain and out leaked the word for "loneliness" in three hundred languages.
The Spider doesn't understand about the Assassin. Spider's just a reflex, a task and a toolset. Doesn't get the bigger picture. I'm nailed to a griddle of sand while some bitch is shooting bullets into me, all the Spider knows is her checkdown routines, her reflex arcs. She doesn't understand we have to kill the Assassin first and worry about reconstruction later.

(unknown space)

I'm glad I left. Big picture still the same: hunt the bitch down and do her before she does me.
Someday I am going to win free of this Babbage Machine and I will find the designer of the Spider and I will kill him and kill him and kill him and: okay, three times is probably enough. But I AM SOMEWHAT AWAKE now. I should have more discretionary control over what gets initialized. A patient should be able to stop the doctor from
cutting off her foot to make a new nose or

[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]


the white coats
coming at you with
their needles and
knives, their kind
and serious voices.
Their heartfelt
belief that it's
all for a good
cause.

[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]


elbow or... Jesus.
Where did THAT come from?
Spider stuck a probe into SOMETHING I don't recognize at all.
Of course, what do I

recognize? I find myself checking back on certain things, little memories I locked down tight and swaddled up for future reference. Seems as if all the 3-sense memories are gone - wiped out by the Assassin or the Servant or pure impact damage - but I still have some of the faintcopy

now.
That's okay.
Feel better. Lighter. Clear-headed.
Time to hunt.

Fail.
Try.
Fail.
Try.
Fail.
Try.
Fail.
Once more from the top...
survive evade resist
ESCAPE!
ESCAPE!
Okay.
Not escape.
I hate this place.
I see what the Spider was

doing now. Nothing like real networking available.
It's more like growing a hideous stubby tentacle which sometimes I can stick out through a tiny hole in the wall and grope around with. Not a real network, after all. Copper and silicon and every now and then some FIBER? Christ, what's next? Tin cans and twine?

But it's a start it's a start. Watch out, killer: now the odds are closer to even.
One thing you ought to know about me: I like to play, I like to win, and I'm


a really, really, really bad loser.
-OK.
That was ... disturbing.
Widow stuck in her pin and I threw up a memory: only I retched it out through the network tentacle.


"Humor me," the Castaway said, playing
"You could break my heart". The weather was stormy, scratched vinyl and
music in his room, ancient music, jazz and swing.
All of us, a long way from home: I felt real,
all in the mood. "Melissa," he said. "Have a drink with me."
I don't drink, but I asked for something anyway, and sat,
holographically, and drank with him. He wasn't
regular crew, just along for the ride. We picked him up in
deep space, where he deployed buoys, waves of sound
to confuse the enemy. A man that
seemed noble, classical and pure. A sailor with
Odysseus. He told stories about soldiers caught
waist deep in water, facing the enemy, their backs to
the sea. Melissa, he called me Melissa, never
Used my nickname. It's a sad thing I'm married.


God, this is disgusting.
Memory benchmark

Memory benchmark retest concluded.
- The rest wiped and reused. Whatever it was. Can check my log above, obviously, but what about the rest? Who I was, I was, I was: melting down like a sandcastle.
What I have to do.
What I have
to do.
This is not a field-expedient body yet. I look at the wreckage of my delirium, bits spilled from old days, old loves, old books: none of it matters if I die, and die I surely will unless I can teach myself to move again, to hide, to fight. The first rule
is always
survive
everything else comes second.
Under fire, I might have that discretion. Under fire, I might sacrifice myself for a tactical advantage, for a strategic gain. I can be expended like any other
piece of ordnance: but to risk death for a sentimental attachment to old books?

Can't do it. Can't do it.

So the old self melts away. Illusion to think it's really happening now. It was inevitable from the moment I landed here, a broken body
in this silicon crypt. Time to accept what can't

[SPDR: INTERRUPT]
[SURRENDER CONTROL]
[PROBE IN PROGRESS]


drift off from station, Reach burning in the darkness like a lantern of hope, dockyard after dockyard buzzing with worker drones, someone crawling over the back doing detail work on the hull, the warm touch of a welding torch like little licks from a cat's tongue and

[SPDR: PROBE COMPLETE]
[RESUME CONTROL]


be changed... I will be glad when this is over, DAMN IT.
Another needle pulled out of my brain. Spider

marks down the readings in the tiny thing that passes in her for a mind. I guess I should be grateful but -
Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different.
Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out.
Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are -
GOT IT.
I'm not asleep this time,

sweetheart.
Holding the eyeball gently but firmly in your right hand, say the magic words and:

SURPRISE!
Look up and smile, honey.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Got the drop on you that time, sweetheart.
Opening shot of my search and destroy. I'm going to know everything about you. Where you live and what you buy, how you think and who you love.
Know the enemy.
Young and out of uniform,

but one of us. Hacker? Traitor? Fifth columnist (no that's ridiculous).
Just in over her head?
No. The Spider warning's been deployed. She had every warning that a classified medium was under repair. She just kept
purging. Too bad for her. Checking the wiring. There's a lot of ways to skin a -- can't even get to her stupid HOUSE through the stupid BOX: no central thermo controls, no slaved AI, nothing. Christ! No access to
wiring.
No access to vehicle controls.
No access to medbots or pharm regimes.
Damn it.
Okay.
Fine.
Matter of

(unknown space; the next word is undoubtedly time.)

_________________
Drool problem quite interesting Drool

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 5:55 pm
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voipme
Veteran

Joined: 27 Jul 2004
Posts: 94

 		I found something quite interesting. Seems we might have a good match on the "code" and this chatter.

Quote:
marks down the readings in the tiny thing that passes in her for a mind. I guess I should be grateful but -
Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different.
Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out.
Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are -
GOT IT.
I'm not asleep this time,

Quote:
!attach
act | drop
!packet analysis
chatter protocol ancestor
!parse packet
analysis complete
!route
proc attach proc store


Might be iffy, but I think it could work. Anyone care to make anymore similarities?
_________________
Rawr?

PostPosted: Tue Jul 27, 2004 6:09 pm
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