((these piece-o-shite, two-bit, goddamn forums ate half of this. this is the part i had written already. ill get around to writing the rest when my anger wears off.))
The hovercraft Gosub touched down on a incline within an abandoned sewer some fifty miles from the Washington crater. The familiar shudder of the deck beneath Captain Fortran’s feet had only just subsided when Flick, the ship’s operator, radioed to the bridge where Fortran and his crew stood watching the proximity sensors.
“Captain, its gonna take a little more time to hack into this one,” Flick said. “The protocols are a little different.”
“We’ve got plenty of time, Flick,” Fortran responded. “Try using the older hacks first and work your way forward.”
“I still don’t understand, Captain. What’s different about this one?” Naso, the ship’s pilot, had been an operator for two years before he was promoted to pilot after Bat, who was now serving with Zion Control, took his place in the operator’s chair. “It’s like this isn’t even the Matrix or something.”
“It isn’t, really,” replied Fortran. “If your operator hadn’t skipped the history and application programs and gone straight to combat training, you would have heard about Smallburg.” Fortran slipped on a headset and pressed the transmit key. “All hands will meet on the broadcast deck in two minutes for instructions.”
Michael sat in the chair staring at the plastic contraption in the bubble-wrap lined box in his lap. It had come in the mail earlier that day before his parents came home from work, and he had hidden it in his closet until they went to bed. Now, by the light of his desk lamp, he felt a surge of excitement.
“The AppleCat modem… three-hundred baud rate,” he whispered to himself with reverence. Michael didn’t have a job or means to purchase this type of expensive equipment, but he did have the credit card number of one Irving J. Poppenstein.
He connected the modem to his Apple ][ and dialed an elite bulletin board service. Five minutes later, he was drinking deep from the wealth of information he had found.
“OK, this will be a routine extraction. A few things are different about Smallburg that you wont find in Mega City, though. It’s a much smaller simulation, with a much smaller population. Now, that’s good and bad. Good thing is that there are less blues to host agents. Bad thing is, it’ll be way easier to track us if we start making noise. So be careful in there. Also, Smallburg is used to beta-test programs like weather or automobiles, time moves much slower in there than out here. Five minutes in Smallburg is like an hour in the real. Flick will have the temporal displacement program running so comms will still work. Last thing is, well, you think that in the Matrix it is the year 1999, but in Smallburg, its closer to 1983. So no phones in public." Fortran glared at Flick. " And if my RSI jacks in wearing a pair of parachute pants and a zipper jacket, you'll be cleaning the protein machine for a month." Fortran's face morphed to a slight smile at his own rare joke, then back to serious. "OK, that’s it. Any questions?”
Wardialers were amazing. Michael had already dialed half of the numbers in the 459 exchange, and found three computer terminals connected to the Telco system. His eyes hurt a little from lack of sleep and staring at the black screen with the green letters, but he was wide awake. So he knew he wasn’t dreaming when his screen cleared and he saw a message at the top materialize:
The Matrix has you…
He’d been discovered. Someone out there at three in the morning in this tiny town has found me and knows what I am doing, he thought. Michael’s bowels turned to water and his heart began to race as he ripped the phone cord out of the wall, disconnected the modem, and stashed it under a pile of dirty clothes. He rubbed his eyes as a new message appeared:
Its too late. They already know.
Michael unplugged the computer from the wall and got in his bed, shaking in fear.
The hovercraft Gosub touched down on a incline within an abandoned sewer some fifty miles from the Washington crater. The familiar shudder of the deck beneath Captain Fortran’s feet had only just subsided when Flick, the ship’s operator, radioed to the bridge where Fortran and his crew stood watching the proximity sensors.
“Captain, its gonna take a little more time to hack into this one,” Flick said. “The protocols are a little different.”
“We’ve got plenty of time, Flick,” Fortran responded. “Try using the older hacks first and work your way forward.”
“I still don’t understand, Captain. What’s different about this one?” Naso, the ship’s pilot, had been an operator for two years before he was promoted to pilot after Bat, who was now serving with Zion Control, took his place in the operator’s chair. “It’s like this isn’t even the Matrix or something.”
“It isn’t, really,” replied Fortran. “If your operator hadn’t skipped the history and application programs and gone straight to combat training, you would have heard about Smallburg.” Fortran slipped on a headset and pressed the transmit key. “All hands will meet on the broadcast deck in two minutes for instructions.”
Michael sat in the chair staring at the plastic contraption in the bubble-wrap lined box in his lap. It had come in the mail earlier that day before his parents came home from work, and he had hidden it in his closet until they went to bed. Now, by the light of his desk lamp, he felt a surge of excitement.
“The AppleCat modem… three-hundred baud rate,” he whispered to himself with reverence. Michael didn’t have a job or means to purchase this type of expensive equipment, but he did have the credit card number of one Irving J. Poppenstein.
He connected the modem to his Apple ][ and dialed an elite bulletin board service. Five minutes later, he was drinking deep from the wealth of information he had found.
“OK, this will be a routine extraction. A few things are different about Smallburg that you wont find in Mega City, though. It’s a much smaller simulation, with a much smaller population. Now, that’s good and bad. Good thing is that there are less blues to host agents. Bad thing is, it’ll be way easier to track us if we start making noise. So be careful in there. Also, Smallburg is used to beta-test programs like weather or automobiles, time moves much slower in there than out here. Five minutes in Smallburg is like an hour in the real. Flick will have the temporal displacement program running so comms will still work. Last thing is, well, you think that in the Matrix it is the year 1999, but in Smallburg, its closer to 1983. So no phones in public." Fortran glared at Flick. " And if my RSI jacks in wearing a pair of parachute pants and a zipper jacket, you'll be cleaning the protein machine for a month." Fortran's face morphed to a slight smile at his own rare joke, then back to serious. "OK, that’s it. Any questions?”
Wardialers were amazing. Michael had already dialed half of the numbers in the 459 exchange, and found three computer terminals connected to the Telco system. His eyes hurt a little from lack of sleep and staring at the black screen with the green letters, but he was wide awake. So he knew he wasn’t dreaming when his screen cleared and he saw a message at the top materialize:
The Matrix has you…
He’d been discovered. Someone out there at three in the morning in this tiny town has found me and knows what I am doing, he thought. Michael’s bowels turned to water and his heart began to race as he ripped the phone cord out of the wall, disconnected the modem, and stashed it under a pile of dirty clothes. He rubbed his eyes as a new message appeared:
Its too late. They already know.
Michael unplugged the computer from the wall and got in his bed, shaking in fear.
