Return to Sender
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Date: 11/18/2018 |
The Digital Web
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Cast: Storyteller: | |
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The last few times Aster had to dive into VR, it took at least the full day and exhausted her. She's tweaked since then, with some upgrades to her headset and new hand controllers, the better to control herself in that other realm. To the rest of the world, it looks as if she's just lying back in bed... ...but her perception slides from material to digital. The new interpretation program makes routes appear like electric freeways, servers light up the sky, and traffic flashes through the night. Aster herself comes into being as a crystalline icon, the shape suggestive of humanity while remaining faceless -- a representation of her new masking protocols, just in case. With one hand she pulls up a window, remote control of her desktop, ready to begin the sync. When Aster begins the sync the wonders of digital space open up around her, the neon lights, the tron like glow, data zipping this way and that as packets enter and exit the server. Her packet sniffer is waiting for her, a crystalline bloodhound not unlike Aster's own Avatar. It has picked up the 'scent' of the email's data trail and begins zipping off down one of the data streams towards another server node using jet propulsion not unlike Megaman's Rush companion. Aster follows behind. No jets in her icon, but around these parts, gravity is optional; she glides behind the hound with no visible mechanism. Though her icon doesn't appear to have eyes, she still 'keeps an eye' on where she is and where she's going. Don't want any fuckin' pop-ups to come aggravate her unexpectedly. One just can't escape pop-ups no matter where they go even in the Digital Web several pop up along the way causing Aster to take evasive action. In the digital web though they're not simple images on the screen but fully rendered objects, and so it is that Aster finds herself deftly evading the deluge of Russian Mail Order Brides, Male Enhancement Models, something called the Shirt Life Project, and a plethora of overly endowed mobile game mascots. However in the end they pose little threat and she makes it through unscathed. At least in this realm, 'dealing with them' is more fun than running a popup blocker or clicking an X. She barrel-rolls away from one, and a sweep of her arm sends out rays which blast the rest, the destructive sounds forming a nice, electronica melody. All while she keeps following the hound, not letting it get too far away from her. At the other end is another Server Node. This one however, is much much larger, like a skyscraper stretching up into the limitless sky with a wall made out of fire surrounding. The wall of fire is also patrolled by a series of rather menacing program bots making rounds of the perimeter. An giant glowing AT&T logo plastered across the node/building suggests this is probably the regional hub for the greater Detroit Area. Oh, goody gum drops. At least she found the server, no effort wasted tracking it down in this metaphysical space. She follows the hound the last little distance, to at least find which /part/ to focus on in this sprawling complex... and she watches the traffic allowed to pass naturally, an ear out to sniff for credentials she can use. Yes, I can mix my sense metaphors; it's not like any of those normal senses are even at work here. Aster's crystalline form twists and blends, all but merging with the background, concealing her traffic. If she wants to get the information she needs, she has to break this egg -- or, even better, slip in through the shell without a single crack. She can't do that; she doesn't have the credentials, doesn't have the key to open that door. But they do. In that almost-invisible state, she watches user after user, access after access, with Fido following particularly juicy traffic to develop more of a log. Her hope was just to figure out some way to slip in for a little while... but no. She reverse-engineers the full encryption key. Forget opening the door; she could practically have them roll out the red carpet. Indeed, in hindsight it seems obvious and foolish of AT&T to such a simple encryption algorithm, well simple to Aster anyway, most people not so much. With the key in hand however she can easily disguise herself as proprietary data and walk right in. Well hey, AT&T is AT&T. Their security is as potent as their network is reliable. In Aster goes. She hesitates at the entrance for just a second. Does she want a backdoor? She'll probably want a backdoor... but she'll leave it be for now. Information first. She seeks out Shadi's email inbox, and searches for that one message of such mysterious origin. It's Bigger On The Inside. The skyscraper that already seemed to stretch up into infinite sky is on the inside a vast warehouse of mailboxes sprawling into the distance in all directions. Automated robot forklifts and small carrier drones zip here and there moving incoming packets to their proper boxes and dispensing outgoing information back into the digital ecosystem beyond. It's not the most efficient system, but nobody ever accused AT&T of that. Somewhere in here is Shadi's mailbox, the question is where. Aster transmits the key through Fido as well, letting the packet sniffing hound in beside her. And through a complex array of commands and filters, she does the equivalent of say: "You got the scent of that email, boy? Find the email! There's a good boy!" Sniffing that packet is, after all, what got them to the skyscraper to begin with. Fido sniffs at the air and bolts off in a direction for a few seconds before stopping and sniffing again. He then bolts off again before stopping yet again. This repeats several times before he just wants in a circles and lies down on the floor. The sheer multitude of trails seems to have overloaded his senses and he has lost the trail. Aster... well, she would palm her face, but her icon has neither palms /nor/ a face. She instead sets about finding her own solution: again, she pulls up that remote window into her desktop. What this needs is a fresh trail: she composes a new email, something designed with what will likely look like random nonsense in actual text, but which would form a distinctive, colourful lattice in the form carried by these drones and forklifts. It doesn't take long, split seconds really after Aster hits the send button and the email is away one of the drones can be seen bringing it in for processing. It is unfortunately not as distinctive or colorful as Aster might have liked and is quickly being whisked away into the infinite depths of the structure. Fido perks up a bit and starts moving slowly in one direction. He continues on for awhile through the maze of stacks and mailboxes, though he eventually comes to a stop at a crossroads seemingly unsure of where to go from there. Though it doesn't seem that he's quite given up. That puppy isn't going anywhere fast. The blink-and-you-miss-it of that email going past just isn't enough for normal computer techniques to track. Fortunately, Aster has various /ab/normal techniques to try. She withdraws slightly from the view of AT&T's innards, instead calling up several windows in the virtual space. In one, she brings up the same email she'd sent before. The more, the merrier. In another, she puts together that same array of byte valus, scanning for its presence in her computer... and from there, hooking it in to track not just where that information /is/, but where it /goes/. A third window serves to log the second, to act as the breadcrumbs rounding out the trail... and finally, she flicks the first window to send the email itself. There will be no fanfare, no shower of colourful sparks showing her where her composition has been; but she shouldn't need it. The tracert output scrolls through one of Aster's open window. Within the digital space a blinking red compass blip is added to Aster's display indicating where the target mailbox is off in the distance along with a faintly glowing trail representing the tracert function itself leading off through the seemingly endless labryinth towards that blinking dot and Shadi's email box. /There/ we go. In the digital space, movement speed isn't really a thing, so Aster zips on up to that particular box. And oh look, she at least already has the user's password /and/ the encryption key. This is Shadi's mailbox, so of course it is overflowing. The sheer volume is overwhelming at first, just how much does this kid text?! More messages coming and going every second it seems as Miss Quickfingers communicates with all manner of folks. If it /were/ represented as a filing cabinet, it would probably have comedically opened with a drawer larger than the entire room, even though this is a room of infinite space. Oh, filters, how Aster loves thee; source address may be an issue, but she scans through based on date of receipt and the text of the message. It's short and sweet... and besides, she has it written out in a tab on her desktop window anyway. Aster finds, well more than she bargained for. She does find the email she is looking for and while she is unable to figure out a way to undo the corruption of the address, she gets a pretty good idea of what the cause might have been. Her attention is drawn to a rapidly breaking down spatial phenomenon, what some vulgar mystics might term the remains of some sort of portal or gate. The trail of the corrupted email in question seems to lead straight back to it. It's no wonder parts of it got corrupted in transit, the 'portal' as it were seems to be composed of pure entropy, any code getting near it is rendered into twisted junk, luckily it is in the last stages of collapsing in on itself, nothing else is going to pass through and it will soon be gone of its own accord. Vulgar mystics? You don't have to be mystic to like portals. Just look at some of those shirts Emma wears! Aster follows the trail, moving as rapidly as her mind can keep up with... and she comes to a dead halt, almost running straight into the remnants. Oh, that could have been /bad/. She hovers near it, resisting the urge to poke. No, no, best not to. Instead, she observes the remnants closely as they fade, recording her observations in a voice memo all the way. | |
