Episode 30: The Heart of the World - kaseido/NeoTokyo GitHub Wiki

3 Thatcher

Vir met with Dastek, who didn’t have anything for that Svetlana didn’t. Just that he’s done business with The Bond, and is nervous as hell about the situation. He’s very willing to hold up his end of your deal, and get the four of you Federation citizenship in return for a future favor to be mutually agreed on. The Federation is fairly open to claims by locals with no corporate affiliation. You’ll need two letters of sponsorship, an official wedding and marriage registration, and coaching for an interview and citizenship test, but he can absolutely make that happen for you. You’re on your way to that passport!

Vir gives Dastek their mother’s contact info and asks him to pass it on to The Bond. Whenever, not as a priority for a fee. They’re pretty much done with the matter.

The team returns from the Betazoid nightclub to find Nymphie, holding Snuggles by the ear, on their doorstep. Star’s drunk. Carbide jerks his head at Snuggle and leads him off to the workshop. Nymphie’s desperate to know about Star’s marriage: is it that chick from the reception, who ran off with somebody else? That’s abusive behavior, and Star deserves better.

No, Star says – she loves Tiffany, but as a business partner. They’d kill each other. She’s marrying the team! “We’re a platonic polycule!” Why? Citizenship! “I didn’t think that was a thing anymore!”

“THAT citizenship!" Star points up. Vir says they are a half alien freak and they belongs to the upstairs people. Star: We’re gonna jump on the tongue!

Paragon thinks Betazoids wear horrible overalls.

“I’d have you join us but our polycule has to be in groups of four.” They’ll be buying Spicy. Nymphie wonders if Star can still own her businesses – and if not, can she have the gut biz? No!

In Carbide’s workshop, Snuggles immediately knocks a coffee cup off the table. Carbide reflexively reaches up to the vents to prevent pouncing by Boo. He explains the server. They set it up for maximum Netwatch inoffensiveness: it’s NOT a subspace transmitter. It’s literally a hub the cats can come to and jack in over short range wifi and do their processing and data storage. It’s not as good as an always on network, but it specifically won’t be an always on network of cybernetically uplifted cats.

The issue is, the hub needs to be cat accessible, not necessarily human-accessible – but it will need human access for occasional service. Snuggles suggests the tunnels under the arcology.

Carbide says it’s on an unusual frequency so regular hackers don’t stumble in accidentally. It needs to be someplace that doesn’t already have a net presence so netrunners don’t tag it. The range is intentionally shorter than regular network architectures wireless, because the cats don’t need as much space. Snuggles says cat access might be a problem in the tunnels. Maybe bring in Chieko-chan, and if the three agree on their needs, it’s good.

Carbide says putting it in a lucky cat statue was his first thought, but a bit much. And something that doesn’t change the cats’ behavior patterns too obviously. Snuggles suggests the restaurant next door: the cats are known to frequent the alley dumpsters – and wander over to his workshop next door.

Snuggles and Carbide are both curious about what the cats are perceiving.

They stick the two in a spare bedroom for the night. Getting them kidnapped and murdered on the way home would put a damper on their kitty plans.

Snuggles has the zoomies all night long. Star turns off her ears; Paragon buries herself in her pillow nest. “Night’s gonna murder us!”

The next morning, Nymphie asks about bringing Stridev and Nixie along: they’re deep into researching the cats. And if Stridev signs off, that’s tacit Netwatch approval. So they’ll ask Mango and Chieko-chan. They’ll go get ramen!

They go to the noodle shop Kyourakutei, where they’re remembered. Star feeds Chieko-chan fish. She tells her they’re here on very important business. Paragon’s got her ears on. Chieko says Paragon’s accent sucks. It’s a complex and beautiful language, Paragon says. She asks if Chieko’s aware of the hub project. She is. Paragon goes through the team’s thought process: originally thought of a subspace hub, but there’s a stupid human organization that would nuke it from orbit – they wouldn’t make exceptions for cats even though they should. This won’t assist too much with distance communications, but will allow any cats that pass by will pass over their sensory data. The hub can take the data and process it collectively. They believe it won’t cause any difficulty with the stupid Netwatch – excluding Stridev.

Paragon is able to convey a lot of nuance in Cat. Chieko-chan adores Stridev but barely tolerates Paragon – good thing that nuance came across.

She ends with asking for a location. And is she okay with Stridev seeing the installation of the device?

His alley would be a good place. Do they need to tell Stridev where it’s installed? It would be difficult for any humans or Vulcans to not know where it is. They could tell him about it after the fact and give him information that the cats are comfortable with. But if he wants to watch installation, he would know where it is.

Carbide made it clear to Paragon that as far as he’s concerned, the cats are his clients, and what they want, they get. They could tell Stridev they gave something to the cats, but if the cats don’t want him to know, they won’t know. He can have the sausage, he doesn’t need to see it get made. The machine will be part of the cats’ cyberware, just an external unit of it: their bodies, their choice.

Chieko says they’re going to need help understanding, so they and Stridev are in on the data, just not where everybody sleeps.

They’ll do the install and then have the conversation.

They go into the tunnels. Chieko chan says it smells terrible, but is accessible. Carbide gets the lock, lubes the door, and gets it open quietly. He calls Paragon over to assist with concealment. The range is enough to cover the room, so it doesn’t matter where it goes.

Carbide sends the activation signal. They undisurb the clutter on their way out and re-lock the door. He cuts off a corner of the door large enough for a cat to fit through -different corners of each door, so it looks like corrosion.

They scan for other net architectures and security measures. The Roombas are networked. He asks Paragon if she can instruct the maintenance bots to ignore the room. Paragon uploads a virus to instruct the Roombas to ignore the room.

They invite Chieko to sample the product and head on out. They erase signs of their passage from the cameras.

They plan to go home, clean up, and go back to the uni to talk to Stridev there, so not drawing attention to the neighborhood.

Paragon gets an invite from Killswitch. They meet in a public park. Paragon wants to ask about Izanami – they were asked to do a job but were beat by somebody by sub-par meme skills. They were hired to delete specific data: the data there was a truly ancient and sad meme.

So it was somebody who got onsite, the way they did, and social-engineered their way onto staff in physical plant and the analysis department. It would have been way harder to just hack in. Either somebody else pulled this exact job, or somebody did an epic hack.

Para says anybody that much better than her is him or a handful of people, so that could be a calling card. Killswitch says Izanami’s a hard target and constantly getting corporate-hacking attempts: he wouldn’t take it on.

She has a copy of the meme, and shoots it over to him. He’ll take a deep look for steganography. She says they’ve been hired to find who did that hit, since whoever did it probably took a copy to use.

She’s getting married! Not to the BSP exec! They’ll probably bounce off-world. They’ve been hitting hard targets and making people angry – and they’re maybe stealing from the Mouse. Killswitch notes they’ve made all the enemies. Paragon enumerates the list. She asks him to keep an eye out for Bai Jie. That’s a fun challenge and a favor he’d be more than happy to do. He played dead when he took on the whole world – getting offplanet is a good alternative.

He will not take on Netwatch for her.

She mentions a little idiot who’s trying – Lord Enigma. “I’m not taking that idiot with me, but he will need someone to look after him. If there’s somebody in the Gnu who needs a lesson in dealing with people – “

She mentions she never does anti-personnel. and Enigma’s imprinted on her to the same level. “He’s trying not to be a fascist prick. He just wants to belong, and unfortunately he’s decided netrunners are cool.” Hold off till she takes off. He’s got some ideas of people, though. She doesn’t want him backlashing over his mentor dumping him.

He passes over a decoder chip. He doesn’t need to know details. He’ll send along an engagement gift. He knows she’s totally focused on what the thing is, and wraps up the conversation.

Paragon goes home and finds Vir, and shows them the new chip. It’s going to go into Dino’s motherboard which is going to get plugged into her head. She network-isolates herself, and has Vir prepare to resuscitate herself. She doesn’t tell anybody else, though. It’s between her, her dinosaur, and her medical professional. Vir has Carbide on speed dial, though.

She determines the chip unpacks and translate into cat. Paragon’s tempted to install it her cat brain. She explains it to Vir: it was sent to Killswitch with instructions to give it to her. Install it in herself, or give it to Carbide? Vir says definitely talk to Carbide.

“I would really like to know before you’re plugging unknown tech into your brain, in the future. We’re gonna work on you telling me also.”

“Burst transmissions from where?” “I dunno! We’re gonna listen to shit, we don’t know!” She can give the chip to him to look at. Either knows she has a catbrain and wants to send her data in that secure way, which she wants, or they know they work with the cats and it’s for them. Killswitch got no instructions on the matter. Maybe he can make a second one so they can do both.

It's a standard commercial product modified for unique inputs and outputs. It’s ELF, which accounts for the range. It’s highly compressed, which is unusual for ELF. He can duplicate it easily. He wants to know what kind of transmissions are coming before he connects it.

“I am not going to network isolate myself forever!”

He’s going to build another emulator and connect it to that, and see what kind of message it’s designed to relay.

The “catbox” or the “kithub”

He’s not going to call it a “dummy catbrain” to not offend the cats, but he’s going to build an emulator they won’t mind losing. Paragon’s mildly disappointed, but accepts that it’s a reasonable plan. Vir says she likes her catbrain and shouldn’t want it melted.

For starters, output in cat. They don’t know how sophisticated the broadcasters are, so question of whether the source will know it’s being translated into human. Paragon listens to the message as it repeats. “Oh shit!” and listens to it again. She translates to the group.

“Oh, my children! Your mother needs you: rise up in the name of Sekhmet and slay the dark beast at the heart of the world!”

Star feels a religious conflict 😊 As an anime schoolgirl, she’s torn between cat-lady and tentacles.

Paragon wonders if the cats worship Sekhmet, and if so, why her? She’s the goddess of slaughter and the hearth. Star: “doesn’t that sound like cats?”

Star wonders if Sekhmet is the first bio-engineered cat.

Carbide wants to casually ask Nixie about the history of the uplifted cat program, and show Mango.