Tales from the Hard Side
Season 2 Augmented new year
Episode 5 | MailMonger
Cast of Charakters:
- Geronimo Gasper, grumpy attitude, cosy eyes, dangerous life
Prologue: There was a time when life was perfect. Geronimo Gasper a cop turned private eye was well on his way up. He gained attention of the media, he became a people's darling and he earned the enmity of a dangerous few. On the peak of his career - five years ago - instead of big money flowing into his pockets, he had his 200 best friends around and leeching his money away. And then came the cute reporter, a very attractive and attentive female journalist called Wendy Valentine. She promised a documentary about famous PI Gasper, and her promise she kept. It was a 1 hour-film about corruption, decadence and conspiracy. Crime syndicates behind companies and companies behind men like Geronimo. It is needless to say that this was a sharp turning point on Diethry Offshore for PI Gasper. Customers faded away and before the year was over, Geronimo had no friends left worth mentioning. Even his long-time-success buddy Drycon Gold went away back to Earth, looking for other opportunities in his "Familia". Success, fame, pride, stardom and then notoriety and break-down, Geronimo had seen it all and once again turned his back on life.
Since he was out of luck in Diethry Mars, he packed things and took transit to Diethry Earth. There he only kept his most precious goods and lived an unassuming life the next 5 years. And then he slowly felt it again: the longing for adventure, his old die-hard reflexes, contacts asking for advice. And he felt ready for the next step. In the year 2070 he once again activated his private investigator license, began to update his contact book, visited his long-time secretary Rose and invested all his fortune into 60 square-meters bureau space. At last he was back: PI Gasper, man with attitude, connections and agenda.
Storyboard: It was one of those rainy days when Geronimo sat in his office and updated his contact book. After the great Matrix crash in 2064 it was hell of a work to pick up the pieces of his old buddy-network. He was surprised that it was an old buddy, Bob Kayne, who came by himself and offered an assignment. Bob Kayne was one of this guys who had climbed up the latter slowly and carefully. Always a smile on his lips, ever the nice guy, never to back someone up if it could mean trouble. His offer sounded good enough. Gasper was supposed to help his old police colleague with one of his cases where he was stuck. A 14-year old boy and a 40-year old orcish cleaning-woman had been convicted of terrorism and bombing. There was evidence enough that they had made professional bombs and planted them in astounding military precision. The problem was that it made absolutely no sense how such indivuals could be able to do that or what they could gain off it. At last laywers of the convicted even began to threaten Lone Star with the media. And in came private eye Gasper and his famous instincts. He was a last ressort chance for his Detective Lieutenant Kayne and he was worth his money.
It became more than Kayne or anyone else would have bargained for though. Gasper found traces of the military A.I. MailMonger who was biohacking into brains of suitable candidates over an anonymous node in the Matrix. It downloaded a client A.I. into their brains and was able to take victims over and making so called 'zombies' out of them. To keep situation under control and the public eyes averted, Lone Star pulled in the UCAS army who admitted a security breach and helped to contain the virus from spreading. Geronimo on the other hand had his own share of fun when he realized that Rose, in helping him decipher the virus, infected herself with a MailMonger client. Before she could shoot him, he had to break her beautiful nose and put her out of her misery. A rigger friend of Geronimo, TechTony, pulled some strings with Streetdocs and helped wiping out the traces of MailMonger in Rose.
In the end Geronimo Gasper had made a good impression on Lone Star Captain of the Champaign district, earned good money and was back in business. Everything was fine at last and 28 people of Chicago went missing only to mysteriously turn up again and kept talking about beeing abducted by aliens.
Implications: There are things out there man was not meant to know. Much can be said about the dangers in the world, but it all sums up to these wise words for the government. UCAS army was supposed to had some serious research about automated hacking algorithms who could self-reliantly crack into the electronic systems of a nation and begin to disrupt public order and executive efficiency by various terroristic acts of violence as a precursor to actual invasion. This secret research project became public 15 years ago. Since then all has gone quiet about cyber-warfare. It is sufficient to say that 15 years can be a long time of research and that hacking into electronic systems nowadays means also being possible to hack into the minds of people. Welcome to MailMonger and the world of tomorrow.
Gained:
- 4 Karma points
- good rep at Lone Star Chicago
- attention of the UCAS army cyber-warfare departement (whatever that could mean...)
Director:
- BelniFore
Trivia:
- Revision proof: Since public outcry against Lone Star violence and their covert usage of Shadowrunners and professionel mercenaries, the company has become very careful with their official contracts. Therefore the dawn of official consultants and private investigators has began who help Lone Star with their expertise and their connections. They can get jobs done, information gathered and can by themself contract mercenaries without ever putting dirt on Lone Star.
- The Diethry Utopia: It was a spotless vision once where the United Nations under guidance of the old USA began colonization of Mars. The project was called Diethry Citystate Network or DCN, and it was conceived that in the starting phase citizens in a Diethry Town could easily transfer to another town without much fuzz. The project was planned for all habitable planets around earth but did stop at Mars. When the financial troubles came, a big consortium - the later known AKKON mega-company - stepped in and literally bought into the whole project. They then used Diethry Mars or Diethry Offshore as it was also called as fiscal oasis and created their company seat over there. Diethry Earth was the companies link to the Earth market and cheap labour force. Five years ago the company wars began in Diethry Offshore and, besides other mega-holdings, AKKON was nearly wiped out. Now Diethry Offshore is now longer in connection to Diethry Earth. Diethry Offshore is now seat to another mega-conglomerate, Diethry Earth has been swallowed by Chicago Megacity and is now a district.