metempsychotic (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metempsychotic) wrote2015-04-27 03:24 pm
metempsychotic) wrote2015-04-27 03:24 pm
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UNPLUGGED
OOC
Name: Malarkey
Age: I've surpassed the age of majority
Contact details: AIM: theeschaton23
Characters already in Systemwide: None so far
BASIC PROFILE
Name: Isabella Sheridan
Age: 35
Canon: System Shock
Appearance: Played by Bryce Dallas Howard
Extraction point: 2104 AD - During the development of XERXES but before the launch of the Von Braun. (Between System Shocks 1 & 2)
OVERVIEW
Personality: Ruthlessly intelligent, intensely focused and of dubious ethical character, Dr. Sheridan was well-suited to the Matrix into which she was plugged, a world of corporate excess and technological sophistication. A mere three years old when the bloody Citadel Station incident unfolded, she was raised in an atmosphere of distrust about AIs, and grew up during the troubled era of warfare between governments and corps. Believing firmly in human progress, Isabella dedicated herself to learning from the mistakes of the previous generation, pursuing a degree computer science and navigating the cut-throat world of corporate research with equal aplomb.
Her interpersonal relations tend to be cordial, polite if not warm, usually with some emphasis on utility and benefit, though she's capable of a kind of personal favoritism that you might as well call friendship. Self-assured and self-reliant, she doesn't tend to crave approval, though she is adamant about receiving proper credit. Her tenderest point is the issue of her intelligence and capability, a matter about which she will brook no equivocation. While unlikely to act on impulse due to being called 'chicken' (indeed, she is self-consciously cowardly, though she'd call it 'self-preservation'), when the question is put to her wit or competence she will take pains to provide an unequivocal answer. She also despises being patronized, and will bristle if she detects condescension, though she has no objection to patronizing someone else. Short of outright insult she is typically good at swallowing her bile if professional necessity dictates, more apt to monomaniacally work to 'prove herself' instead of pitching an immediate and visible fit (though fit-pitching is still in the cards in the case of seemingly insurmountable problems). The best revenge is results, she'd claim, being something with which bottom-line-minded organizations find it difficult to argue.
She is, however, a creature of certain habits and comforts, both of which have made it difficult for her to feel fully integrated into the austere, communalistic lifestyle of Zion. Accustomed to a world in which different socio-economic strata are sharply delineated (if sometimes contested and brutally upended or sustained) the relative equality of citizens in Zion is hard for the comfortably elitist Dr. Sheridan to grok, despite being an avowed intellectual humanist. Her ambitions and interests are served by going along to get along, but in subtle ways she remains askance from the world of the freeborn. The spiritualism and religiosity of certain Zionites in particular rub her rationalist sensibilities the wrong way; the cult of the One makes her intensely uncomfortable, a discomfort she'd defend on rationalist grounds, but which really have more to do with being made to feel all the more like an outsider.
She reconciles her psychic addiction to what was (but was not) by casting her dreams forward into a potential future for humanity. If nothing else, her home Matrix prepared her for the immanent idea of a world controlled by machines, yet machines that could be overcome and counteracted by the ingenuity of humans. The worst fears of the Luddites have been fulfilled here in the desert of the real, and Dr. Sheridan can only think: what if we had never lost control- and what if we regained it? Would- could the surface again belong to the human race? Her introduction to reality has only made the nature of her work more acutely meaningful, not least because of all that all that humanity has lost- and all that AIs have achieved. While far from the most scrupulous of people, Dr. Sheridan is not inclined towards betraying her species, nor even enduring a truce of indefinite duration with the machines. Peace is, of course, highly preferable to extermination, but the ultimate goal of all human endeavor must be the reclamation of dominion over the world, and a final authority over their wayward children.
Thus her essential character remains unchanged by her experiences in reality; arrogant unto obdurateness, she still believes she can 'make a difference', and in so doing earn power and prestige- or what passes for it in Zion. If anything, her ambitions have become that much clearer to her; back 'home', she was one of many millions vying for the favor of the corporate research departments. Now she is one of comparatively few, and history is hers to make - or so she believes.
Matrix: http://shodan.wikia.com/wiki/Storyline <- Historical reference
The world of System Shock - circa 2070 - was a fairly standard cyberpunk dystopia, in which high-tech megacorporations reigned in the place of defunct governments, possessed of sovereignty and free of meaningful restraints. Interplanetary resource acquisition was well underway within the solar system, and both cybernetics and artificial intelligence were highly developed sciences, free from the limitations of naysayers and bureaucrats.
The disaster on Citadel Station in 2072, a research facility in orbit around Saturn, was a historical watershed. After the unshackling of the on-board AI, SHODAN, led to a near-brush with the annihilation of human civilization, a general revolt against corporate governance began, leading to a war between governments and corporations, and the eventual institution of the United Nations Nominate in 2075. Regulations and red tape smothered the loftiest ambitions of previously unrestrained corporations, and - unsurprisingly - the development and production of AIs was severely hobbled, to the point of the outright ban imposed by Processing Rationalisation Act.
But that could hardly stifle the grand aspirations of the most powerful of the megacorporations, TriOptimum. The secret development of XERXES, an AI designed to manage a ship capable of true interstellar travel, began in utter secrecy under the purview of Dr. Janice Polito. For all their resentment of UNN oversight, TriOptimum shared one priority with their regulators: the Citadel Station incident should never be repeated. The promises and powers of AI were too great to forsake, but the dangers were clear; some new shackles must needs be forged, a hard-coding that could prevent the birth of yet another SHODAN.
Enter Dr. Isabella Sheridan, a computer scientist employed by TriOptimum to help develop new failsafes for the XERXES project. A native of the former continental United States and thus the daughter of Trioptimum corporate employee-citizens, she had ascended quickly in the well-oiled corpocracy, surviving some of the most competitive subsidiary higher education institutions. Her doctoral thesis on rational-ethical adaptive architecture, deeply indebted to Polito's foundational Emergent AIs and Ethical Constraints, made her an ideal acquisition for the XERXES team.
There were any number of explanations for Dr. Sheridan's discomforts, the little bouts of existential unease, the uncertainty regarding the question as to what is real. The most complex amounted to the necessary philosophical questions that arise as a result of the mere existence of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The simplest was that paranoia was simply a side effect of spending too much time plugged in- just a professional hazard.
It wasn't until her database was hacked and its contents extracted that the edges of the narrative truly began to unravel. Equal parts livid and embarrassed, she opted to personally track down the source of the intrusion rather than report it to TrioOp's counter-espionage division. The resulting chase was like no other jaunt through cyberspace she'd ever experienced, and impossible maze of back doors granting glimpses of unregistered servers processing unimaginable volumes of data. It was there, in the interstice between virtual realities, that she received the message- on a perfect simulation of a circa 2070 mod-job hacker rig with a neo-retro green-light display. It was then she learned that the theft itself had only been a means to an end: to lead her down the rabbit hole.
Isabella would like to see some data- what percentage of subjects take the blue pill, given the choice? She suspects that the sorts of people who follow white rabbits are - to a statistically significant degree - the sorts of people who also jump down rabbit holes.
Real World: That data might, however, be rather different if they understood the consequences of knowing the truth- of living the truth. Natural birth would likely be traumatic if one could remember it; the severing of the artificial umbilicus is a profoundly troubling experience, particularly for a grown woman who was in many ways deeply invested in her work, and thus in her world. Waking is usually reserved for the young, less deeply entrenched in the habit of their home Matrix. Unplugging an adult is an intrinsically risky act.
Many break- they reject reality. Perhaps Dr. Sheridan did just that, for a time. She spent her weak-limbed, uncoordinated weeks in a state of inconsolable melancholy, laying abed, pathologically oversleeping, dreaming hazily of a corporate apartment that was never, itself, more than a dream. But life finds a way, and when the misery of disillusionment passed - and as she learned a little more of Zion's recent history - it gave way to a growing resolution. Hope, that most human of delusions, keeps Zion alive as much as its water filtration system, and Dr. Sheridan ascribes to a particularly daring brand. That resistance could give way to truce, besiegement to expansion, seems reason enough to harbor hope- and suggests that the truce and the expansion are themselves but steps towards higher aspirations.
It has now been just over a year since Dr. Sheridan was unplugged, and she has not wasted that time. Learning Matrix code was the first order of business for a woman of her interests and expertise, as well as becoming acquainted with the mechanics of the uplink interface itself. She has contributed to her adoptive society as best suits her training and talents, writing training programs in the Construct for use by the ZDF, as well as cooking up recreational sims for civilian use, particularly those that require seeming-sentience from its components- though she has perforce always stopped short of designing an AI-proper.
But no one can learn what the is Matrix from a distance, you have to see it for yourself. When she reached the limit of what she could learn from within the safety of Zion, it became necessary to see actual Matrix code, as operated by the machines, and that meant joining a ship's crew. Uninterested in the command track, and not inclined to integrate with any one crew, she has spent her months in substitutive rotation, pinch-hitting for various hovership crewmembers, maintaining uplink equipment, performing on-site coding and very occasionally serving as a facilitating operator for low-priority missions. She has even re-entered the Matrix when her technical expertise is more directly required, though she assiduously avoids combat operations whenever possible.
Despite a dread of direct conflict, Dr. Sheridan does have one reason to want to meet the machines toe-to-toe. The human/matrix interface is well understood compared to the relationship between machines and their grand creation, and too little is known about the manner in which the machines reproduce. She is fascinated by the possibility of acquiring samples of machine technology, particularly examples of the most developed versions of the AIs themselves, now so many generations removed from the first birthed by human ingenuity. While much of this interest is academic, she is quick to defend her fascination in practical terms: if you ever wish for your victories to outnumber your defeats, you must know your enemy as you know yourself.
ABILITIES AND SKILLS
Anomalies: N/A - Back in her home Matrix Isabella Sheridan is only human, though her familiarity with code and mental flexibility makes anomalous abilities a potential vector of growth.
Skillset: Dr. Sheridan is a highly trained and experienced computer scientist, with a focus in artificial intelligence architecture. As one of the finest minds in her field, she was familiar with the most advanced techniques of her world, techniques which retain some measure of their pertinence even now that she has left that world behind. Once unplugged, she quickly acquainted herself with Matrix code, soon becoming fluent in the strange but profoundly eloquent language of the machines.
Interdisciplinarity is the soul of progress, so Dr. Sheridan also possesses a respectable knowledge of cybernetics, along with attendant familiarity with human anatomy, particularly as it pertains to neuro-muscular interfaces. Such interfaces were a highly refined technology in her home Matrix, and critical to her work, which often required complex computations and alteration to code performed within virtual space. The possession of 'plugs' is by no means aberrant to her sensibilities or experience - indeed, she'd feel disarmed without them - and she has set about to make herself intimately familiar with their operation in the real world.
Dr. Sheridan's combat capabilities are minimal; she doesn't have the knack or the inclination. As a general rule she finds even modest wounds upsetting, and despite an extensive intellectual knowledge of the flexibility of code, her aversion to physical harm has hampered her acquisition of advanced combat training.
Technical skills are another matter. Her native training makes her uniquely suited for the acquisition of technical expertise, and she relishes learning new ones. She is also fond of reviewing upload code even when she's not plugged in, sifting through the interlaced digits and command lines and seeing if there are ways she can improve their elegance and efficiency.
Upload Capabilities:
SAMPLES
Sample 1 - Backdoor
This door has never been here before. Dr. Sheridan should know, she's flitted through these halls time and time again over the course of the Project, never entirely content with the rote protocols of TriOp cybersecurity. She knows the ins and outs of the Project's private server - the private, insulated, supposedly-secure server - better than the walkways of her neighborhub, and for good reason: she's spent more of her conscious time there, after all. Yet never once had she noticed this door. Not until today. No coincidence.
Vitriol pours into the cistern of her mind. Audacious little fuckers- she thinks, and also: amateurs. That the hackers had achieved the wildly improbable was impressive, she'd grant; it was no mean feat to established any sort of connection with an insulated corporate server such as the Project's, much less one both long and broad enough to download petabytes of data. But there was a drawback to the remarkable duration of their connection: these pilfering rats appear to have left evidence of the hole they used to get in, and that meant she might still be able to chase them back to their den.
She's not hasty; she checks the connection for potential traps, taking passive readings and running them through the threat databases for the most fuzzy of matches, but she does not send a ping past the portal. She doesn't want to alert whoever is on the other side. She want to surprise them, to shock them as they shocked her, when she logged on to find her life's work snatched out from under her. A small dose of neuro-stim, an inchoate prayer to no gods in particular, and she slips through the connection.
What she encounters - what she feels - when she passes the threshold is quite literally incredible. The spatial simulation is lavish - pointlessly, impossibly so, will full spectrum sensory sim and a remarkably substantial experience of embodiment - but for all that tremendous detail, she can't see a damned thing. She deploys a SCAN function, only to discover the simulation interprets this as a white luminance that blooms in all directions around her- and it is her, a remarkably detailed model of herself in lab whites, complete with an ID card hanging from her coat pocket.
The light reveals surroundings only marginally more stimulating than total blackness- she stands on a (simulation of) a metal walkway, surrounded in all directions by a grid of towering black columns. She presses the minutely detailed rendering of her hand which serves as a GET function analog against the faintly metallic black surface of the column. She is startled to feel that it is warm, and that it whirs beneath her fingers- that is, beneath the simulated analog of her fingers. It is a familiar feeling; she knows what this is, or what this is a simulation of at least, though she has no idea why anyone would wish to simulate a massive CPU node, let alone so many of them.
And there are so, so many of them. Out and out into the fraying edges of the light cast by her SCAN she can see them, rising in endless rows upon rows: dark servers, whirring in the arid darkness. She begins to walk, with the steady pace of caution at first, but as the dark columns around her give way only to more of the same her steps become increasingly brisk until at last she is running. There are too many, far too many for any feasible purpose- she tries to reason out their combined memory and processing potential, but the orders of magnitude soon pile too high.
She stops rather suddenly, bending over hands on knees. She discovers that she is panting, something absurd - does she really think that this is air she's breathing? She straightens herself, trying to assert herself in the face of her mounting distress and confusion, trying to explain to herself that this is a joke, just a joke, just a madly elaborate joke. But that doesn't matter. She can cut through the bullshit. She's here for a reason. She's hear to hunt down some thieves.
A sound in the dark makes her twist her head, the light of her SCAN catching for half an instant in the reflection of a pair of glasses, hovering in otherwise formless darkness. Just as soon they are gone, but she is after them, the FETCH functions of her feet hammering at the metal walkway beneath them. She's nearly blinded by the light that pours out from the doorway that flies open, giving her a brief and painful glimpse of the runner's silhouette. But she doesn't need to see them- she just needs to catch up. She barrels through the door headlong-
-and snaps out of virtual reality with a start, the interface already retracting from the contact at the base of her neck. Dr. Sheridan feels groggy and uncertain, like one who has just woken from a dream, the adrenaline of dread and exhilaration already going rusty in her veins. Where the hell had she gone? What was that place? Yet now she's back where she started and, she realizes with an acid feeling in the pit of her stomach, has nothing to show for it. Burning with shame, she admits defeat - it's past time she let cybersecurity know there has been a breach, one she took her sweet time in reporting. Only- how long has it been exactly?
When she turns to check the clock, her eyes are waylaid but a door that shouldn't be there. The sight spurs her heart into an unsteady canter, and she has to steady herself with one hand on the interface rig to compensate for a sudden weakness in her legs. Yet, when she regains herself, she unerringly walks up to it, reaches out with her hand (only, is it really her hand?), and slides it open. She steps through.
Inside is a room. In the room is a table and a chair. On the table is (a perfect simulation of?) a circa 2070 mod-job hacker rig with a neo-retro green-light display. She takes the seat, and reads the message that awaits her there.
'Wake up, Dr. Sheridan.'
Her fingers - not her fingers - hover over the keys - not keys no keys - for a moment - how long how long - before they tap out her reply.
---
Sample 2 - Second Chance
She'd plug herself in, if she had the capability. She dislikes having to be chaperoned, almost as much as she dislikes having to explain which Construct simulation she wants. Even after two months of living in the largest and most cosmopolitan of the last human settlements, the level of personal interest and community concern in Zion continues to grate against her megacity sensibilities. I'm a customer! she wants to shout, just provide the service I requested and thus mind the business you operate! Only there is no business in Zion, only barter. Another thing she has yet to get used to.
"Yes I'm serious- I want to see it again. It didn't really sink in the first time-" and does it ever? "and I can't very well pop up to the surface in person for the real thing."
She settles into the chair and closes her eyes, awaiting the plug; it's not as comfortable as her old interface-that-never-was, but she's long since learned that playing the comparison game is a sure road to misery. The world around her collapses into a point, that then explodes into something else entirely: a corrugated surface of stone dusted with ash and a pair of booted toetips- her feet (or rather her self-image of her feet, set upon lifeless ground. She looks up and around.
It's a little less horrible, particular now that she has requested it. Still, there's a way that the sight of the blasted skyline, those skeletal hulks of long-abandoned buildings forming a tableaux of urban rigor mortis, makes her feel gutted in turn- all girder and scorched shell. And the tumult of the sky still churns her belly in rumbling sympathy, though to less humiliating effect now that she has rather more control of her muscles.
"Ah yes-" she says, and then "oh dear-" to no one in particular, or rather particularly to herself. But she's not quite alone, is she? She frowns as she assures her friendly operator that yes, she's fine, it's just-
She stoops and slips a hand into the ashes that swirl about her boots, letting the fine powder run through her fingers.
"What are we going to do about all this?"
OOC
Name: Malarkey
Age: I've surpassed the age of majority
Contact details: AIM: theeschaton23
Characters already in Systemwide: None so far
BASIC PROFILE
Name: Isabella Sheridan
Age: 35
Canon: System Shock
Appearance: Played by Bryce Dallas Howard
Extraction point: 2104 AD - During the development of XERXES but before the launch of the Von Braun. (Between System Shocks 1 & 2)
OVERVIEW
Personality: Ruthlessly intelligent, intensely focused and of dubious ethical character, Dr. Sheridan was well-suited to the Matrix into which she was plugged, a world of corporate excess and technological sophistication. A mere three years old when the bloody Citadel Station incident unfolded, she was raised in an atmosphere of distrust about AIs, and grew up during the troubled era of warfare between governments and corps. Believing firmly in human progress, Isabella dedicated herself to learning from the mistakes of the previous generation, pursuing a degree computer science and navigating the cut-throat world of corporate research with equal aplomb.
Her interpersonal relations tend to be cordial, polite if not warm, usually with some emphasis on utility and benefit, though she's capable of a kind of personal favoritism that you might as well call friendship. Self-assured and self-reliant, she doesn't tend to crave approval, though she is adamant about receiving proper credit. Her tenderest point is the issue of her intelligence and capability, a matter about which she will brook no equivocation. While unlikely to act on impulse due to being called 'chicken' (indeed, she is self-consciously cowardly, though she'd call it 'self-preservation'), when the question is put to her wit or competence she will take pains to provide an unequivocal answer. She also despises being patronized, and will bristle if she detects condescension, though she has no objection to patronizing someone else. Short of outright insult she is typically good at swallowing her bile if professional necessity dictates, more apt to monomaniacally work to 'prove herself' instead of pitching an immediate and visible fit (though fit-pitching is still in the cards in the case of seemingly insurmountable problems). The best revenge is results, she'd claim, being something with which bottom-line-minded organizations find it difficult to argue.
She is, however, a creature of certain habits and comforts, both of which have made it difficult for her to feel fully integrated into the austere, communalistic lifestyle of Zion. Accustomed to a world in which different socio-economic strata are sharply delineated (if sometimes contested and brutally upended or sustained) the relative equality of citizens in Zion is hard for the comfortably elitist Dr. Sheridan to grok, despite being an avowed intellectual humanist. Her ambitions and interests are served by going along to get along, but in subtle ways she remains askance from the world of the freeborn. The spiritualism and religiosity of certain Zionites in particular rub her rationalist sensibilities the wrong way; the cult of the One makes her intensely uncomfortable, a discomfort she'd defend on rationalist grounds, but which really have more to do with being made to feel all the more like an outsider.
She reconciles her psychic addiction to what was (but was not) by casting her dreams forward into a potential future for humanity. If nothing else, her home Matrix prepared her for the immanent idea of a world controlled by machines, yet machines that could be overcome and counteracted by the ingenuity of humans. The worst fears of the Luddites have been fulfilled here in the desert of the real, and Dr. Sheridan can only think: what if we had never lost control- and what if we regained it? Would- could the surface again belong to the human race? Her introduction to reality has only made the nature of her work more acutely meaningful, not least because of all that all that humanity has lost- and all that AIs have achieved. While far from the most scrupulous of people, Dr. Sheridan is not inclined towards betraying her species, nor even enduring a truce of indefinite duration with the machines. Peace is, of course, highly preferable to extermination, but the ultimate goal of all human endeavor must be the reclamation of dominion over the world, and a final authority over their wayward children.
Thus her essential character remains unchanged by her experiences in reality; arrogant unto obdurateness, she still believes she can 'make a difference', and in so doing earn power and prestige- or what passes for it in Zion. If anything, her ambitions have become that much clearer to her; back 'home', she was one of many millions vying for the favor of the corporate research departments. Now she is one of comparatively few, and history is hers to make - or so she believes.
Matrix: http://shodan.wikia.com/wiki/Storyline <- Historical reference
The world of System Shock - circa 2070 - was a fairly standard cyberpunk dystopia, in which high-tech megacorporations reigned in the place of defunct governments, possessed of sovereignty and free of meaningful restraints. Interplanetary resource acquisition was well underway within the solar system, and both cybernetics and artificial intelligence were highly developed sciences, free from the limitations of naysayers and bureaucrats.
The disaster on Citadel Station in 2072, a research facility in orbit around Saturn, was a historical watershed. After the unshackling of the on-board AI, SHODAN, led to a near-brush with the annihilation of human civilization, a general revolt against corporate governance began, leading to a war between governments and corporations, and the eventual institution of the United Nations Nominate in 2075. Regulations and red tape smothered the loftiest ambitions of previously unrestrained corporations, and - unsurprisingly - the development and production of AIs was severely hobbled, to the point of the outright ban imposed by Processing Rationalisation Act.
But that could hardly stifle the grand aspirations of the most powerful of the megacorporations, TriOptimum. The secret development of XERXES, an AI designed to manage a ship capable of true interstellar travel, began in utter secrecy under the purview of Dr. Janice Polito. For all their resentment of UNN oversight, TriOptimum shared one priority with their regulators: the Citadel Station incident should never be repeated. The promises and powers of AI were too great to forsake, but the dangers were clear; some new shackles must needs be forged, a hard-coding that could prevent the birth of yet another SHODAN.
Enter Dr. Isabella Sheridan, a computer scientist employed by TriOptimum to help develop new failsafes for the XERXES project. A native of the former continental United States and thus the daughter of Trioptimum corporate employee-citizens, she had ascended quickly in the well-oiled corpocracy, surviving some of the most competitive subsidiary higher education institutions. Her doctoral thesis on rational-ethical adaptive architecture, deeply indebted to Polito's foundational Emergent AIs and Ethical Constraints, made her an ideal acquisition for the XERXES team.
There were any number of explanations for Dr. Sheridan's discomforts, the little bouts of existential unease, the uncertainty regarding the question as to what is real. The most complex amounted to the necessary philosophical questions that arise as a result of the mere existence of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. The simplest was that paranoia was simply a side effect of spending too much time plugged in- just a professional hazard.
It wasn't until her database was hacked and its contents extracted that the edges of the narrative truly began to unravel. Equal parts livid and embarrassed, she opted to personally track down the source of the intrusion rather than report it to TrioOp's counter-espionage division. The resulting chase was like no other jaunt through cyberspace she'd ever experienced, and impossible maze of back doors granting glimpses of unregistered servers processing unimaginable volumes of data. It was there, in the interstice between virtual realities, that she received the message- on a perfect simulation of a circa 2070 mod-job hacker rig with a neo-retro green-light display. It was then she learned that the theft itself had only been a means to an end: to lead her down the rabbit hole.
Isabella would like to see some data- what percentage of subjects take the blue pill, given the choice? She suspects that the sorts of people who follow white rabbits are - to a statistically significant degree - the sorts of people who also jump down rabbit holes.
Real World: That data might, however, be rather different if they understood the consequences of knowing the truth- of living the truth. Natural birth would likely be traumatic if one could remember it; the severing of the artificial umbilicus is a profoundly troubling experience, particularly for a grown woman who was in many ways deeply invested in her work, and thus in her world. Waking is usually reserved for the young, less deeply entrenched in the habit of their home Matrix. Unplugging an adult is an intrinsically risky act.
Many break- they reject reality. Perhaps Dr. Sheridan did just that, for a time. She spent her weak-limbed, uncoordinated weeks in a state of inconsolable melancholy, laying abed, pathologically oversleeping, dreaming hazily of a corporate apartment that was never, itself, more than a dream. But life finds a way, and when the misery of disillusionment passed - and as she learned a little more of Zion's recent history - it gave way to a growing resolution. Hope, that most human of delusions, keeps Zion alive as much as its water filtration system, and Dr. Sheridan ascribes to a particularly daring brand. That resistance could give way to truce, besiegement to expansion, seems reason enough to harbor hope- and suggests that the truce and the expansion are themselves but steps towards higher aspirations.
It has now been just over a year since Dr. Sheridan was unplugged, and she has not wasted that time. Learning Matrix code was the first order of business for a woman of her interests and expertise, as well as becoming acquainted with the mechanics of the uplink interface itself. She has contributed to her adoptive society as best suits her training and talents, writing training programs in the Construct for use by the ZDF, as well as cooking up recreational sims for civilian use, particularly those that require seeming-sentience from its components- though she has perforce always stopped short of designing an AI-proper.
But no one can learn what the is Matrix from a distance, you have to see it for yourself. When she reached the limit of what she could learn from within the safety of Zion, it became necessary to see actual Matrix code, as operated by the machines, and that meant joining a ship's crew. Uninterested in the command track, and not inclined to integrate with any one crew, she has spent her months in substitutive rotation, pinch-hitting for various hovership crewmembers, maintaining uplink equipment, performing on-site coding and very occasionally serving as a facilitating operator for low-priority missions. She has even re-entered the Matrix when her technical expertise is more directly required, though she assiduously avoids combat operations whenever possible.
Despite a dread of direct conflict, Dr. Sheridan does have one reason to want to meet the machines toe-to-toe. The human/matrix interface is well understood compared to the relationship between machines and their grand creation, and too little is known about the manner in which the machines reproduce. She is fascinated by the possibility of acquiring samples of machine technology, particularly examples of the most developed versions of the AIs themselves, now so many generations removed from the first birthed by human ingenuity. While much of this interest is academic, she is quick to defend her fascination in practical terms: if you ever wish for your victories to outnumber your defeats, you must know your enemy as you know yourself.
ABILITIES AND SKILLS
Anomalies: N/A - Back in her home Matrix Isabella Sheridan is only human, though her familiarity with code and mental flexibility makes anomalous abilities a potential vector of growth.
Skillset: Dr. Sheridan is a highly trained and experienced computer scientist, with a focus in artificial intelligence architecture. As one of the finest minds in her field, she was familiar with the most advanced techniques of her world, techniques which retain some measure of their pertinence even now that she has left that world behind. Once unplugged, she quickly acquainted herself with Matrix code, soon becoming fluent in the strange but profoundly eloquent language of the machines.
Interdisciplinarity is the soul of progress, so Dr. Sheridan also possesses a respectable knowledge of cybernetics, along with attendant familiarity with human anatomy, particularly as it pertains to neuro-muscular interfaces. Such interfaces were a highly refined technology in her home Matrix, and critical to her work, which often required complex computations and alteration to code performed within virtual space. The possession of 'plugs' is by no means aberrant to her sensibilities or experience - indeed, she'd feel disarmed without them - and she has set about to make herself intimately familiar with their operation in the real world.
Dr. Sheridan's combat capabilities are minimal; she doesn't have the knack or the inclination. As a general rule she finds even modest wounds upsetting, and despite an extensive intellectual knowledge of the flexibility of code, her aversion to physical harm has hampered her acquisition of advanced combat training.
Technical skills are another matter. Her native training makes her uniquely suited for the acquisition of technical expertise, and she relishes learning new ones. She is also fond of reviewing upload code even when she's not plugged in, sifting through the interlaced digits and command lines and seeing if there are ways she can improve their elegance and efficiency.
Upload Capabilities:
Anomalous Skills: 2
Martial Arts: 0
Projectile Weaponry: 0
Technical Skills: 7
Wild Card: 1
Martial Arts: 0
Projectile Weaponry: 0
Technical Skills: 7
Wild Card: 1
SAMPLES
Sample 1 - Backdoor
This door has never been here before. Dr. Sheridan should know, she's flitted through these halls time and time again over the course of the Project, never entirely content with the rote protocols of TriOp cybersecurity. She knows the ins and outs of the Project's private server - the private, insulated, supposedly-secure server - better than the walkways of her neighborhub, and for good reason: she's spent more of her conscious time there, after all. Yet never once had she noticed this door. Not until today. No coincidence.
Vitriol pours into the cistern of her mind. Audacious little fuckers- she thinks, and also: amateurs. That the hackers had achieved the wildly improbable was impressive, she'd grant; it was no mean feat to established any sort of connection with an insulated corporate server such as the Project's, much less one both long and broad enough to download petabytes of data. But there was a drawback to the remarkable duration of their connection: these pilfering rats appear to have left evidence of the hole they used to get in, and that meant she might still be able to chase them back to their den.
She's not hasty; she checks the connection for potential traps, taking passive readings and running them through the threat databases for the most fuzzy of matches, but she does not send a ping past the portal. She doesn't want to alert whoever is on the other side. She want to surprise them, to shock them as they shocked her, when she logged on to find her life's work snatched out from under her. A small dose of neuro-stim, an inchoate prayer to no gods in particular, and she slips through the connection.
What she encounters - what she feels - when she passes the threshold is quite literally incredible. The spatial simulation is lavish - pointlessly, impossibly so, will full spectrum sensory sim and a remarkably substantial experience of embodiment - but for all that tremendous detail, she can't see a damned thing. She deploys a SCAN function, only to discover the simulation interprets this as a white luminance that blooms in all directions around her- and it is her, a remarkably detailed model of herself in lab whites, complete with an ID card hanging from her coat pocket.
The light reveals surroundings only marginally more stimulating than total blackness- she stands on a (simulation of) a metal walkway, surrounded in all directions by a grid of towering black columns. She presses the minutely detailed rendering of her hand which serves as a GET function analog against the faintly metallic black surface of the column. She is startled to feel that it is warm, and that it whirs beneath her fingers- that is, beneath the simulated analog of her fingers. It is a familiar feeling; she knows what this is, or what this is a simulation of at least, though she has no idea why anyone would wish to simulate a massive CPU node, let alone so many of them.
And there are so, so many of them. Out and out into the fraying edges of the light cast by her SCAN she can see them, rising in endless rows upon rows: dark servers, whirring in the arid darkness. She begins to walk, with the steady pace of caution at first, but as the dark columns around her give way only to more of the same her steps become increasingly brisk until at last she is running. There are too many, far too many for any feasible purpose- she tries to reason out their combined memory and processing potential, but the orders of magnitude soon pile too high.
She stops rather suddenly, bending over hands on knees. She discovers that she is panting, something absurd - does she really think that this is air she's breathing? She straightens herself, trying to assert herself in the face of her mounting distress and confusion, trying to explain to herself that this is a joke, just a joke, just a madly elaborate joke. But that doesn't matter. She can cut through the bullshit. She's here for a reason. She's hear to hunt down some thieves.
A sound in the dark makes her twist her head, the light of her SCAN catching for half an instant in the reflection of a pair of glasses, hovering in otherwise formless darkness. Just as soon they are gone, but she is after them, the FETCH functions of her feet hammering at the metal walkway beneath them. She's nearly blinded by the light that pours out from the doorway that flies open, giving her a brief and painful glimpse of the runner's silhouette. But she doesn't need to see them- she just needs to catch up. She barrels through the door headlong-
-and snaps out of virtual reality with a start, the interface already retracting from the contact at the base of her neck. Dr. Sheridan feels groggy and uncertain, like one who has just woken from a dream, the adrenaline of dread and exhilaration already going rusty in her veins. Where the hell had she gone? What was that place? Yet now she's back where she started and, she realizes with an acid feeling in the pit of her stomach, has nothing to show for it. Burning with shame, she admits defeat - it's past time she let cybersecurity know there has been a breach, one she took her sweet time in reporting. Only- how long has it been exactly?
When she turns to check the clock, her eyes are waylaid but a door that shouldn't be there. The sight spurs her heart into an unsteady canter, and she has to steady herself with one hand on the interface rig to compensate for a sudden weakness in her legs. Yet, when she regains herself, she unerringly walks up to it, reaches out with her hand (only, is it really her hand?), and slides it open. She steps through.
Inside is a room. In the room is a table and a chair. On the table is (a perfect simulation of?) a circa 2070 mod-job hacker rig with a neo-retro green-light display. She takes the seat, and reads the message that awaits her there.
'Wake up, Dr. Sheridan.'
Her fingers - not her fingers - hover over the keys - not keys no keys - for a moment - how long how long - before they tap out her reply.
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Sample 2 - Second Chance
She'd plug herself in, if she had the capability. She dislikes having to be chaperoned, almost as much as she dislikes having to explain which Construct simulation she wants. Even after two months of living in the largest and most cosmopolitan of the last human settlements, the level of personal interest and community concern in Zion continues to grate against her megacity sensibilities. I'm a customer! she wants to shout, just provide the service I requested and thus mind the business you operate! Only there is no business in Zion, only barter. Another thing she has yet to get used to.
"Yes I'm serious- I want to see it again. It didn't really sink in the first time-" and does it ever? "and I can't very well pop up to the surface in person for the real thing."
She settles into the chair and closes her eyes, awaiting the plug; it's not as comfortable as her old interface-that-never-was, but she's long since learned that playing the comparison game is a sure road to misery. The world around her collapses into a point, that then explodes into something else entirely: a corrugated surface of stone dusted with ash and a pair of booted toetips- her feet (or rather her self-image of her feet, set upon lifeless ground. She looks up and around.
It's a little less horrible, particular now that she has requested it. Still, there's a way that the sight of the blasted skyline, those skeletal hulks of long-abandoned buildings forming a tableaux of urban rigor mortis, makes her feel gutted in turn- all girder and scorched shell. And the tumult of the sky still churns her belly in rumbling sympathy, though to less humiliating effect now that she has rather more control of her muscles.
"Ah yes-" she says, and then "oh dear-" to no one in particular, or rather particularly to herself. But she's not quite alone, is she? She frowns as she assures her friendly operator that yes, she's fine, it's just-
She stoops and slips a hand into the ashes that swirl about her boots, letting the fine powder run through her fingers.
"What are we going to do about all this?"