Prologue: E-mails

[Rezantis]

To: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
From: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Subject: Re: Uh-Oh.

"I won't break anything"?  I've heard that before, usually out of me.  :P

I do have a question, though, if Ayame left you notes.

Brian Randall . . . I asked her to look around for any information on him.  Did she find anyting more?

And did she know that the safe house she organized happened to be Brian's old house?  o_O;

--N

[Brian]

From: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
To: Lord Pinkie ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Re: Who?

Nope, she didn't leave any notes on him specifically.  She just found the house as being on the way, and cheap enough that it could be bought by pulling invisible strings on the internet.  This box is funky.  Looks kind of like the notes she left for me....

The password's gotta be a funky one.  I'll work on it for a bit.

Is it okay if I copy all of the database off the uplink?  It should only take about 18 hours or so with a good satellite connection....

[Rezantis]

To: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
From: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Subject: Gah.

Feel free.  You can probably go through it better than I can; you're in the same user group as I am on the laptop, so you can access most everything.

Root the box if'n you like, but if I catch any evidence of it you're going to get smacked.  :)

It looks like the same kind of thing as we had last time - the password to that was the 'My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings' quote - but I have no real idea as to where to start there.

And I'm not 'Lord Pinkie'.  Where the hell'd you get that?  ><;

--N

[Brian]

From: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
To: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Re: Gah

Does reading your IRC logs count as evidence?

[Rezantis]

From: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
To: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Subject: Well, in that case . . .

. . . you also realize just how dead you're going to be when I get my hands on you.  o_o

[Brian]

From: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
To: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Subject:  I thought you loved me....

But I found some useful stuff there.  I know about your friends, now.

Well, a little, anyway.  I know something she didn't, which is who the friend she missed was.  Parthipan needs a fake ID too, right?

I still have her contact, so I can have one sent to you.

Hmm.  We need to get you a credit card or something.  Then I can E-bay all of Ayame's Everquest 2 characters and paypal you some cash.  That might come in handy....

I'll do that now!

[Rezantis]

From:Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')
To:  Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')

Subject: Re: I thought you loved me....

. . .

. . . EVERQUEST?  o_o;;

Please, -please- tell me you're kidding.

[Brian]

From: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
To: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Subject: Imaginary people making real money?

Well, no.  That's where most of the quick cash comes from.  The real money is from investments in the other MMORPGS, though.

She wanted to set up something mostly legitimate, since it's a lot easier than hacking a bank or something.  Well, it's actually way boring compared to hacking a bank.

But you don't get in trouble if you make really good scripts to play the games for you.  And people spend real money on what basically only costs patience ... my hardware aside. :P

[Rezantis]

From: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')
To: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')

Re: Get right quick!

That is exceptionally ludicrious, but it also makes a disturbing amount of sense.  

Well, I knew those markets were thriving, and all but . . . O_o

The scary thing is I think I actually believe you.

OK.  Serious question: How much scrutiny are the Ryan McGrail et al IDs good for?

[Brian]

From: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
To: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Re: Get right quick!

Scrutiny?  Should be perfect.  They're legitimate, after all.

You know that trick, from way back in the day, where they used to have a way for you to make a fake ID really easily?  It used to be you just needed to find someone who was born on the same day as you, but died when they were born.  Then, you go and apply for an ID with their name, using a filled out change-of-name form.

You get issued a new ID with the name of someone else.

Nowadays it's more complex.  The long and short of it is that Ryan McGrail is a real person.  Well, he was, but he lived in Silicon Valley.  Since he's been gone for some years, his accounts have all been idle.  A lot of things from the Moffet Incident are still unresolved -- all the names on your IDs belong to people who were last known as being in the San Jose area.  They all vanished, of course.  Not everyone who had their deaths actually recorded died.

There was an episode of 60 minutes about people who pretended they died in the explosion, and then just went out to try and form new lives free of their old history or credit, or whatever.  Ayame took that idea, edited a few histories to make everything more believable, and then reissued the IDs before they were about to expire, with the new addresses.  So theoretically, you're just people who wandered around for some years without feeling the need to report that you were alive.  Technically legal, as long as you don't have any obvious terrorist connections.

And don't worry, she picked people who didn't have any surviving family, so you won't get on the wrong side of that.

The only hacking that was done was to the images on the cards, before they were printed, and that process isn't really something they pay too much attention to, so it should be golden.  Unless your pictures look funny, or something.

Your residences are all real, too.  The realtors were contacted (this was actually really hard) paid, and told to leave the doors unlocked, and the keys inside.  The places are all real, though, since we've only ever looked at them from the digital side of things, we have no idea what's in them.

Your place was furnished, and called a 'fixer-upper'.  I think that means it's suck-tastic, but, well, it's better than sleeping in a car, I guess.

Anyway.  More string pulling was involved in collecting the IDs and having them sent to you at the place in Ripon (which is where you might be now?), but it got done.

Of course, none of you have the paperwork for accessing your theoretical bank acounts, and you're all technically unemployed.  But alive!

Speaking of which, how many people do you have with you now?  Did the Workshop thing work out?

[Rezantis]

From: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')
To: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')

Subject: Re: Get Right Quick!

That was meant to be 'Get Rich Quick', but it's too early in the morning.  And that sounds like some pretty nice work, I'm impressed.  :)

The workshop thing sort of worked out.

Some people claiming to be Pax Arcana operatives helped us to get in - one of them being someone called 'Caber', one being someone called 'Patricia McGovern'.

We got Bjorn out.  Shade died . . . stupidly.  He mouthed off to a vampire, then refused to apologize, and .  . . yeah.

We got most of the imprisoned metahumans out, they split by themselves before we left.  I'm not sure how to get in touch with them, Bjorn may.  

Paul Durant, Unseen . . . we found in the house when we got back.  And he seems to be on the level.  At least, Drac's convinced . . . hm.  Drac got his eyes ripped out of his head and replaced with someone else's, and now he can apparently see magic and is a telepath.  Or something.  I don't quite get it.

Basically, overall status:  We have me, Drac, Unseen, Bjorn, and Ginrai.  Shade is dead, Victor (the vampire) took his body . . . he also told us to meet him and Ezmereth at Drake's point on the new moon, which is the 19th.

After busting out the metahumans, we raided the computer room - killing Flint and wrecking Manos' the core processing piece of the facility, I think.  After that we went downstairs, obliterated the network room, and stole that server.  Er, and a couple of routers (they looked nifty), but who's counting.

I'm sorry I couldn't get to Manos in time.

. . . and right now, we're sitting aroudn trying to figure uot exactly what we know about these organizations we're mixed up with.

--N

[Brian]

From: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
To: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Re: Carnage!

Rez-baby, you do me proud.

And I read CNN for the reports on the event.  It's pretty cool -- numerous injuries, but the papers say that only people in the site of the explosion got killed.  Probably on account of almost no one living in SF, and most of the rest of the people there living in houses that were still sturdy after the quakes from 2005.

Anyway, as far as the Manos thing goes, if he was Rasputin, as Ayame remembered him, he got in the way of one of the Brothers of Morpheus.

I think they like us, because we originated from Greece, even though we we followed Apollo, and they, uh, slept all day.  But they showed up as soon as Rasputin's connection with the waking world was severed.

Too bad Ayame didn't ask him for more help before he left....

[Rezantis]

From: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')
To: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')

Subject: Morpheus?

Scary thing was, that explosion was one pissed off metahuman.  Ashnod, I think he was rated at E-16.  The fact that nobody except those at the site makes me feel a fair bit better, thanks.  I wasn't really game to check CNN.

Yah, Manos was Rasputin.  Manos was his codename, as I recall, just like Cassandra was apparently hers and Ceran is the Pax Arcana AI.

I don't know if she had the chance . . . or even the capacity, at that point.  :/

Still.  Know anything else about the Brothers of Morpheus?  I gotta admit I'm curious.  ^^

--N

[Brian]

From: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')
To: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')

Re: Follow the white rabbit!

Just one guy?  Yikes!

Well, Cassandra isn't my code name.  It's my real name.  Or, well, it was, the first time I was alive.  You know, the whole 'Apollo takes Cassandra as his lover, makes her the oracle of Delphi' thing.  ...I think.  Huh.

I knew Ceran and Manos.  I guess, WE did, really.  Occasionally I'd act as an intermediate for the two of them.  While PA and SC are opposed, they usually don't like to directly conflict.  They even work together once in a while.

And, yeah, tons!  The Brothers of Morpheus originally followed the Dream Lord, when he still walked the earth.  They spent their days sleeping, and their nights discussing the meaning of the dreams they had.  Eventually, they all died, because, well, you can't live if all you do is dream.

Or, well, kind of.  See, they actually just left their bodies behind, and learned to live in the dream world permanently.  So, they're kind of dream cops, I guess, and crack down on people who do bad things in dreams.

They probably would have helped Ayame out if she'd asked.  I don't remember why she didn't. :/

[Rezantis]

From: Rez ('terrestrial_star@hotmail.com')
To: Relm ('tyrean_@samiam.org')

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: What were we talking about, again?

The first time you were alive?

How's that work, exactly?  I mean, the Oracle was around for a -damn- long time before the Seventh Cabal stuck it's nose in . . . I think.

Caber said that you were originally the AI for a third faction, the Order of Symmetry.  How'd that work?

I don't know why she didn't ask . . . but . . . do you think Ceran, or Pax Arcana, know you exist?  Or would they think Ayame was dead?  <_<

--N