"Turn off the TV and start digging around for information
that's not from a corporation trying to make money."
- Iris Dement
Cold and Lonely - Not With Me (http://"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d18YaDfkGqY")
(http://m100group.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/cyberspace2.jpg) | The Matrix is an alien entity inside your head. Sometimes it feels so cold and lonely that you can't stand it, and other times you're surrounding by friends like in those old images of happy holiday family dinners. Filled with wanna-bes, rock stars, intelligencia, and dangers that would give anyone pause, it's a dangerous utopia.
You can be anyone you want, in the Matrix. Style your icon, build up a rep, be whoever you want to be.
Contacts are good, but they won't make a reputation for you. Datahavens are better- elite hackers rubbing elbows, swapping tricks of the trade, maybe willing to share a tidbit or a program to give you an edge. But you have to have something to share to get in- a nugget of information, something everyone wants. You offer that up, you get access. Access brings friends and notoriety, and pretty soon you'll be all Moriarty on the Matrix like a Great Dragon. At least, that's the hope. |
Every once in a great while, you appreciate the college education and UCAS history that was drilled into you during your school years. Not often does it prove itself useful in the shadows, but very occasionally it gives up a useful tidbit.
For instance, you just heard a rumor that Trojan-Satop Green Energy is looking for a build site in Denver to make clean energy and a mllion jobs. At least, that's what the politico buzz is; the name rings a big fat wedding bell in your head, and that's because your pricey education made you listen to the story of the Shiawase subsidiary Trojan-Satop built a nuclear powerplant that melted down in 2013. Despite fines and regulations and overwatch, the place was largely abandoned, and turned into a place that the locals call Glow City. That last tidbit was the one piece of shadowtalk that you know about it.
If Trojan-Satop Green Energy is looking for a build site and is trying to manage their public image in the best corporate sense, they'll have a dig team in the city and be looking at sites. That's the sort of paydata that would get you in with a bunch of eco-conscious hackers, and maybe make major money with the right Eco-policlub.
The question is, how bad do you want it?