...***redifined***...checking for newer versions...failed...
...establishing gateway...id...Joe...unrecognised...id...Waiqumbo...recognised...uploading data....
This is LH~Mantis here speaking trough the comm:
All right folks guess 'tis 'bout time I got here. It was no easy task, and I like it just more this way. Tracing this signal may lead you to some remote operating console, on some Middle-of-Nowhere-Trans-Ship. I must made this for my own safety.
Ah such is the price when you are using some Syn-Marijuana smokers ship as gateway.
Now back to the original story:
I was born on Planet-Damn-Erie, high-life, full luxury ways. My parents were respectable employees of the Holo-Trid-Pennsylvania-Neuro-Net&co (furthermore HTPNN.co). I had everything I could dream of, fast rides, hot gals, and the cleanest stuff if I wanted some. I really had no problems in my life, and I chose to follow my parents' way.
Graduated in Holo-Trid-Engineering and Light-Data-Encryp/Decryp. I got my job at HTPNN.co, and it was a plum one. I really lived a high-style-life, most of my problems were sniffing stuff from luxury-whores a**. The kind of way, my parents lived. Life could not have been more easy. The problems, however came fast, and throw me down...really down.
I worked as Senior H-T Engineer, thus my work was like making godlike-figures out of simple genetically modificated reporters.So that Average Joe goes home, and when hes turning the NN on, he can see a demigod. -lest thats what I made the reps look like-. My troubles started like this:
One day, I got home way much earlier, just to see a bunch of uniform goons rummaging trough my luxury apartement. When I stepped forward to see whats happening, and asked for an admission, or the offical ID codes, their -let me guess- Lt. shocked me off with a neuro staff.
Woke up in a 2x2 frigid cell, within the company of a tube of synthetic paste - I HATE I HATE I HATE IT - and a glass of cool water. My head felt like a nest of wild animals, and I had that cold taste insde my mouth. A cunningly-hidden door opened, and a real bad-ass costume-crook came in. He wore luxury tweeds, and a pair of im-so-serious-sunglasses. I gave him the name "Agent Nobody", he looked like exactly one from an average saturday-night-agent-H-T.
I started to think that this whole mess-up was just a well-planned joke of my fellows back at the office. But when Agent Nobody started to ask his questions, I knew I'm in a whole lot of trouble:
"When did you contact terrorists?" "How much of the IC work I've uncovered and who are my crime associates?" "Did I know that the average prison time sentenced for such crimes is 675.000 years on a remote prison-station?"
And things like that...
...at first I got no clue, but then suddenly it all came in my mind: See, I really had a boring time in the office, so to busy myself I started to encrypt some coded lines I found in the NN NCCN lines. I always looked at it as some joke coming from the "higher ranks" of the HTPNN, a prank made by one of my successors, to keep us bugs busy. Well, it was no joke: IC made sub-low hum, wich would increase the time Average Joe will spend watching HTPNN, and also increasing Joe's willingness to spend his hard-earned creds on something "valuable" shipped-in by -who else- than IC.
Now I was in a whole lot of mess. My life ruined, my cred card surely downed to 0credits, and -DAMN!- I'm probably en route to Philadelphia station, as a prisoner -according to my sucker outfit...yes, yes, the orange one -. I really had no option, but one thing:
I knocked out Agent Nobody -wow! adrenaline still works if nothing else, panic gave me real strength to do it- , stuffed his wallet-8500creds, man these guys ARE underpaid-, took his ID and his clothes - Hi-Tech Sunglasses, I still wear them, tough I ha to remove 18 different nanite bugs from it -. According to the ID he was a "Chief-Enforcer" of IC. I made my way to the docking hangar, and boarded a freighter carrying water to-and-from the transport and Planet Erie.
