The Journal of Magnus Lasker
The loft is awash in the glow of evening colors, the tall Southern windows ushering in the last rays of the setting sun, tinted red from the city haze. Your eyes follow the glow down the walls to rest on a massive desk. Even from here, you can tell it's wood—actual wood—as the warm glow highlights the texture, betraying the spidery cracks of knots in the lacquered surface. A worn leather book sits in the center, a low monument rising above a mahogany plane. This is why you came. In it lies the life of a man, inscribed in ink and cotton. This is the journal of Magnus Lasker.
In which, I find my running legs again.
March, 2079
I should be thankful that my body is the only thing that is taking time to recover. My lead on Ellie paid off. Not only did she agree to do my legwork for jobs, but she connected me with an shadow organization she has worked with before. From what I can see, it's fertile ground.
In my inaugural run, I was paired with a charming woman who went by "Ashe". Apparently the run was intended to fly under the radar, as it was just we two. The Johnson was a rather elusive gnome who set up a convoluted meet in Everett. Surprisingly, the job parameters turned out quite straightforward: fly halfway across the globe, infiltrate a 13th century castle, steal a mysterious artifact, and then turn around and do the whole thing in reverse. As "sink or swim" scenarios go, I suppose I picked well.
Upon arriving at a remote shack in Poland, we were met with a gruff local who seemed as much a part of the wilderness as the forest. He was well-acquainted with the area, and connected us with the infiltration suits the Johnson had sent ahead. I'll admit, while I can't fault the craftsmanship, I think I'll stick with a well-tailored dinner jacket. Ashe, on the other hand, seemed to take to hers quite naturally. During our initial recon of the medieval fortress, she put it to good use evading drone patrols.
The occupying force at the castle seemed to have been there a while. Their encampment was well-supplied, and there were enough security devices to make most thieves think twice. Luckily, we were not most thieves. Taking down the motion sensors outside the camp was simple enough, and Ashe scaled the outer fortress wall to avoid detection. The cameras proved no trouble for the sprite-augmented winter stealth suit she had on, and she was inside without so much as a whisper. Inside was a bit, well, medieval, in both the ambience and security. We had a near miss with a pressure plate, and entrance to the main hall was via a rickety (and likely boobytrapped) bridge. I should note, in our original research, we made contact with another runner team that had attempted to hit the place six years back. In the main hall, we found the remains of most of them. Apparently only their rigger had made it out alive, and only then because he was never inside to begin with.
The target itself was held in the depths of the castle, in a dank, unlit room. The artifact, an arcane-touched rose with a dark past, was surprisingly unguarded. When Ashe lifted it from beneath its glass case, we (and the nearby guards) discovered why. The rose must have had a deep connection to the spirit of the castle's original owner, as the ghost of the mad king himself suddenly arose and possessed his decaying skeleton still seated upon his throne. Luckily for this pair of thieves, the king, in his mad rage, seemed more intent on driving out the obvious invaders than finding the lone operative who had awakened him. As he charged out the gates of his crumbling fortress, leaving bodies in his wake, Ashe picked quietly behind him.
On the battlements, the scene was a bit less quiet. A security patrol must have spotted her and began ascending up the elevator build onto the side of the castle walls, carrying a contingent of armed guards. Luckily, I managed to redirect the elevator back down the wall, removing three of them from the equation. The remainder, a troll of furious dedication, tore off the roof of the car and climbed back up to the top. Unfortunately for him, his cyberlegs made him a matrix marionette, and I let him hop himself right back off the side of the wall. Ashe made the climb down without trouble, but was spotted by a snowmobile patrol. After I failed a bit-too-ambitious hacking attempt, I fled from the host, leaving the woman to her own devices. Perhaps my long stay in stasis has made me jittery, but she took care of the pursuers with a single shot from her sprite-laden rifle, disabling the vehicle permanently.
With the camp in disarray, the rest of our visit to the snows of western Poland was uneventful. The delivery was in Berlin, and I must add: it was good to be back. I have not seen my birth home in years, and its liveliness still grips me. Apparently the Johnson was affiliated with the Romani, and I have heard I made something of an impression. I find this acceptable enough, and the payment...well, it is good to finally feel the flow of resources beneath my fingers again.
I'm back in the game.
In which, I discover the soul of the machine.
March, 2079
Our contact in the Zentralrat had arranged discreet transport back to Seattle, but the schedule gave me the better part of a week in Berlin. I can't say that I was disappointed. Berlin has a hum that permeates the city. It is a tension, at once oppressive and irrepressible. There have always be walls dividing the city, imposed by some higher power thinking to control and organize the chaos. Today they separate corporate spheres of influence, before that it cordoned off the anarchists, before that the communist East and the capitalist West, before that the walled Festung Berlin, and in its ancient past, even the river Spree divided the city. But through all of these, the soul of Berlin remains unfractured.
I spent several days simply floating in the din of the city. I let my mind wander through the idle devices and busy traffic hubs. It was in this digital fugue that I found myself at Schönfeld, watching the air traffic come and go. It many places, airports are an ugly affair. The algorithms are rigid, and traffic moves in spasmodic fits. But Schönfeld was something else entirely. The ATC moved like a dancer, data flowing rapidly in tight channels and never skipping a beat. The movements would accelerate to a frenetic pace, only to subside again into a calm, steady pulse.
I have no idea how many hours I was adrift in the hypnotizing rhythm of the hub, but I remember the exact moment when I noticed the anomaly. It was subtle, of course---it was only after hours of acclimating to the patterns that I even noticed it---but it was undeniable: the system was working hard to sustain an order far beyond what was necessary to keep Schönfeld in motion. Using a crude statistical model for the comings and goings of flights and people and a bit of information theory that the tutors of my youth would have been appalled by, I confirmed my suspicion: massive of amounts of excess information were being exchanged here. But with who? Or what?
My curiosity in complete control, I set about examining the host with a detective's deliberate eye, picking apart every algorithm and file that I encountered. I discovered secondary control programs pumping data deeper into the system and vast archives which dutifully cloned their records to some unknown location. Each system was meticulously constructed to serve two purposes, each elegantly intertwined with the other. This was the work of a skilled mind, but why a designer would devote such care to this task was beyond me.
At last, deep within the interior of the system, I found the riddle inside my enigma: a rift in the Matrix. I had heard of their existence, but it always seemed a snipe hunt to actually track them down. And yet here I stood, staring into the void. It was only a nick in the fabric, but it was enough that my gaze could pierce the veil and tempt me with what was on the other side. This was the source of the anomaly; or rather, it was the sink: information was gushing through like water from a cracked dike, but it was flowing into the rift, not out.
So, I did as Alice would do. I followed the rabbit hole to see where it led.
The experience of crossing was unlike anything I have ever experienced. Time was merely a spectator, and I am not entirely certain whether I was in control of my mind or not. I found myself in a maze, passages stretching out in every direction, some seemingly unbound by normal axioms of geometry. Each route returned me, by and by, to the same room, staring at the same possibilities. And then I saw myself---my persona---wandering the prior routes I had taken. I saw my past decisions superimposed on the present. My mind must have seized upon some latent pattern in the maze, because as abruptly as I appeared, I was expelled from the labyrinth and cast into darkness. The door was unlocked.
My sight---or whatever signals were feeding my virtual perception---soon began to acclimate to the gloom, and I found myself surrounded by millions of tiny pieces of data, as if I was standing in falling snow. As my gaze followed the packets as they drifted down from above, they began to swirl and twist around what seemed to be faintly glowing patches on the surface on which I stood. The light pulsed erratically, and as I crept closer, I recognized a familiar pattern at its center. This was a sprite. Not mine, not to my knowledge, anyone's. A free sprite.
Like a nebula giving rise to stars, this place must have afforded just the right conditions for their formation. Nascent sprites were bathed with billions of coordinating commands, the data providing training stimuli for yet-untuned parameters. Code fragments processed data streaming from the rift, reinforcing stable behavior and inhibiting faults. As I stood, marveling at the process unfolding below, it slowly dawned on me that I was witness to an impossibility. This was spontaneous compilation; genesis at the hand of the Resonance alone.
But in my wonder, I could not help but ask: why here? Surely a rift forming under the beating heart of Berlin's airport could not be an accident. So what made this place unique? And then it struck me: I knew these patterns. I recognized them because I saw them every day. These were embryonic machine sprites. The pieces began to fall into place. How could an entity with such an innate understanding of the electronic world form outside of it? This place did not follow the rules of the real world, so how could a machine sprite learn such control over physical hardware? Data. Exabytes of data, cascading down from the outputs of the operational algorithms being run above us. The anomaly which had enticed me here in the first place, the massive extraneous computation, it was all to nurture these sprites, to teach them the rules of the electronic world they would eventually roam.
As my mind was grappling with the ramifications, I suddenly felt that I was not alone. There was a presence in the void, an unseen entity that was studying my every motion. I scanned my surroundings, but I could spot no trace. I shouted, called out to it, desperately trying to ask it who it was, but the only response was the soft whisper of information swirling around my feet.
Then, at once, something changed. Like a switch being flipped, all of the rules governing the space I was in shifted. The surface beneath me vanished and I felt pulled sharply downwards. Data rushed and twisted around me, a vortex draining into an unknown pit below. Struggle as I could, there was no escape---something wanted me out, and I had no power over that place. As I felt myself slipping through the gap, I stole one last glance upwards, back towards the creche. I cannot be certain of what I experienced in that moment, but I will never forget the piercing gaze that looked back at me. Stern, but not cruel. Intense, but thoughtful. Who or what was behind that visage will remain a mystery, but of this I am certain: there is much more to this world than I knew.
And so I awoke in my hotel room, cold beads of sweat on my forehead. I knew I would never return to that place, but as I stared at my hands---convincing myself that I was, in fact, back in the physical world---I could still feel the pulse of it beating in them. I looked over to the desk where my fly-spy sat recharging, and for the first time in my life, I understood it. I don't mean the code segments for interpreting sensor data or the algorithms responsible for flight stability, those I'd known since before the crash. No, I mean I understood what it meant to be that code, how it felt when the avoidance subroutines triggered or when the feedback circuits registered wind resistance. Somehow, I was a part of it. I looked down at my outstretched palms and curled my fingers one by one. As I did, I felt each articulated servo in the tiny surveillance drone activate in turn.
I don't fully understand my connection to the Resonance, but after that day, I know it to be more than it was before. Something deeper, more profound. And I know that a long path awaits me still.
In which, I am reminded of the smallness of man.
March, 2079
Still reveling the afterglow of my jaunt to the Old Country, I was contacted for a second run in less than a week. Apparently Ellie had a regular she now trusted me with. In hindsight, perhaps I should be the one passing stricter judgement on my employment opportunities. Regardless, I was warned: Ellie was clear that the Johnson was either a madman or a sociopath. Still, victory clouds the mind, and I took the job and was directed to an obscure restaurant with little more than a time and place.
As I was making my way, I couldn't help but wonder whether conducting illicit business in mediocre Mexican restaurants was the Haven's modus operandi. As they say, one is a fluke, two is a coincidence, and three is a trend. Upon arriving, however, my musings were harshly corrected. The maître d' spoke only in Aztlan spanish, which, alas, I've not spent the time to pick up. It seemed that the rest of my associates had already bumbled their way into the establishment, however, as the gentleman quickly directed me to the back. Imagine my irritation when the Johnson refused to speak anything else, despite apparently having no inability to do so. The negotiations were less than fluid, and I get the feeling that we were working on an incomplete picture from the outset.
The job was no better: a vague escort task in a heavily guarded Ares facility in the middle of downtown. The Johnson, an insider, provided extensive information on the facility itself, but no actual mechanism for carrying out the task. I still wonder whether the whole operation was a farce or feint. A man with the connections and resources apparently available to our Johnson hardly seems to need to call upon outside mercenaries to take care of inside jobs, and the selected team did not seem entirely appropriate for the task.
But I had---perhaps nonverbally---agreed, and so we began preparation. The runners were a strange crew, a far cry from the quiet professionalism of Ashe, but seemingly potent in their own right. Kris, a wired-up rigger, came with a wide variety of drones and vehicles (which I admit to feeling jealous of). Hurricane, a professional boxer of some repute, brought an abundance of what a brawler brings. And Firebug, a protean pyromaniac, lent her astral powers.
The job was daunting ab initio. Our team lacked any sort of stealth or social charm, so designing an infiltration strategy for the complex was challenging. Eventually, we decided upon a multi-pronged approach, wherein Kris would pilot an Ares drone containing both immobilizing explosives and a lilliputian mage into the facility under the cover of a bribed maintenance worker on the designated floor, Hurricane would be invited into the facility via a contact of his, and I would lock down the exterior under the guise of a window-cleaning crew. For the last purpose, I leased an Ares mule from an associate in Bellevue. As I write this now, I am cursing my decision to do so. Experience is a hard teacher; she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.
The first sign of trouble came as the maintenance drone was entering the facility. Apparently, no provision was given to chemically sealing the explosives, and their odor tipped off a sensor in the lobby. Security quickly dismantled the hapless drone, along with all semblance of Plan A. In the ensuing shuffle, our mage managed to slip passed the guards. Flustered at the close call, she melted her way through several floors of the building in a dash towards our target. At some point, surveillance must have caught the damage, as the entire complex quickly went into lockdown. And so, with a half an hour left before the designated event was even supposed to start, our team was disorganized at best. Our rigger was completely cut off from the building, his only resource lying in literal pieces. Our mage was incommunicado, shapeshifted as a spider and setting up a magical bomb after triggering security. And our adept was wandering somewhere inside a facility on high alert.
Things only got worse quickly. Exterior drone patrols issued a cease and desist to my ill-fated cleaning drone, hanging precariously on a balcony. Luckily, through a bit exaggerated drone manipulation, I convinced controller that my drone was unsafe to go back upwards. They allowed it to continue its job, under the condition that it left the premises when it reached the bottom---something I had no intention of doing. Shortly after, a patrolling spirit noticed a high-force spell being woven inside the target room, and investigated. Already spooked by the close call at the front door, Firebug panicked and fled the building, leaving the now-discovered alchemical bomb in place. At the time, however, none of us were aware of the incident. Apparently unable or unwilling to communicate the discovery, it was only much later did the details come out.
Now down two runners and dealing with an alerted facility, I was not optimistic. At this point, Hurricane reported finally caught sight of the targets moving towards the trapped room. Unfortunately, the marks were immediately spooked by something in the room---the wayward alchemical preparation still clinging to the door. Hurricane was discovered by a patrol shortly after, so it's unclear what actually transpired, but as my cleaning drone reached the 13th floor again (after I made some "unscheduled firmware updates" to the mechanized gantry it was riding), we discovered that two of the targets had been forced into the room. The two were clearly distressed at what they now knew to be a trap.
Our cover blown, the mission barely hanging together and only half-completable at this point, I watched through silicon eyes at the room being filled with poisonous gas and flying blades. The two targets were surprisingly resilient, but the gas had them attacking walls to get free. At that moment, a drone---which I had apparently overlooked in my initial pass of the room---stood and dashed for the door, activating the still-deadly arcane bomb. The two targets, the room, the window, and my leased drone all exploded violently.
Had I not been suffering from the after effects of dumpshock, I'm sure the sight of a fiery ball of twisted metal sailing 13 stories onto the downtown pavement would have been strangely enjoyable. But the fate of my drone reflected the trajectory of the job all too closely. Our Johnson contacted us shortly afterwards and expressed his displeasure. For reasons I am still uncertain about, he made good on half the job's payment regardless. It only reinforces my questions about the legitimacy of the job in the first place.
And yet I live to run another day. The piercing headache has mostly subsided, and my bill has been settled with the drone lessor. The taste of failure is bitter, but without it, no success would be as sweet.
In which, my faith in professionalism and my doubt in humanity are both restored.
March, 2079
Failure has a way of calling things into question. Perspective becomes distorted, and fundamental principles can seem illusory. In these times of doubt, inaction is anathema; the only correct solution is a redoubling of one's dedication and ambition, despite the uncertainty.
And so, psyche still battered from my rout, I accepted a job from an orc who would make a BTL dealer feel virtuous. Once the usual pantomime of financial wrangling was out of the way, the job description was laid out plain. The Johnson had "acquired" a prenatal orc whom he wanted swapped with a genetically augmented fetus held in an upscale private hospital in Snohomish. While I have no qualms about manipulating the ignorant, this seemed a crude approach. But my task was not to evaluate the underlying strategy, I had a simple task ahead and more than enough time to prepare.
The team seemed to be a notch more experienced than my last, a smooth socialite and operator by the name of Waku, a cyborg warrior called Paz, and an edgy young elf with an abundance of magical energy who called herself Grimoire. We began quickly, untangling the skein of puppet strings that controlled the hospital through the matrix. To my delight, it soon became clear that we were dealing with quite the forward-thinking security organization. NeoPD has apparently been hard at work designing an advanced predictive threat analysis system, one which I admit to being somewhat jealous of. The system itself trawls through the ocean of incidental data and reconstructs a real-time picture of the operational security status of the organization it protects. By piecing together a constellation of seemingly unrelated clues, the system can identify threats well in advance of their reveal.
My initial analysis suggested that the system works and works fairly well. Clever, fascinating, and unfortunate for the mission in which I was engaged. But there are two sides to every coin. Predicting the future can be a tricky business. If you are right and act on it, then by definition you are wrong. Likewise, it is all too easy to predict one future and neglect the rest. And so our strategy was hatched: instead of trying to avoid the sight of this thousand-eyed beast, we would simply get it to look the other way. We would launch an alternate run at a different target, and in predicting this threat, the piercing gaze would be averted from our true target. So the team turned to a secretive man called "Janus". An expert in predictive algorithms, our new acquaintance revealed that this plan could indeed be put into motion, for a small fee, of course.
The hit itself was fairly clean. Waku turned out to be as invisible as he was charming, and with a bit of digital assistance as well as a sensor net distraction by our cyborg out in the nearby forest, he had no trouble getting to the target. Unfortunately, as usually happens, we discovered that the embryonic test subject was no longer in its designated location. The creature had apparently contracted some sort of infection and had been moved to a different location for treatment. Luckily, with a bit of matrix work and some smoke-and-mirrors with the attending physician, the false infant was inserted and the augmented one retrieved. Exfiltration went without issue, and our combatants causing a ruckus outside retreated to safety.
All in all, planning and professionalism led to a clean execution, and I can take some solace in the fact that my previous failure was not, in fact, a reflection of an absence of ability. My doubts have been muzzled, and I can feel the calm embrace of confidence returning. Perhaps it was good that I failed quickly and quietly. Overconfidence magnifies mistakes, and I have been thoroughly cleansed of that malady for the moment.