Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Digital Bath ❯ Prologue
[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]
By: Vinyl-Koneko 
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Sci-fi / Fantasy / Cyberpunk / Adventure / Action | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 10.14.2002 | Updated On: 10.23.2002 | Pages: 1 | Words: 1.6K | Visits: 486 | Status: Completed
Anime/Manga: Gundam Wing Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Supernatural / Sci-fi / Fantasy / Cyberpunk / Adventure / Action | Type: Alternate Universe | Uploaded On: 10.14.2002 | Updated On: 10.23.2002 | Pages: 1 | Words: 1.6K | Visits: 486 | Status: Completed
+Title: Digital Bath - Part 1
+Author: Vinyl Koneko (Emily), roguegirl@att.net
+Rating: R
+Pairings: 1x2, 3x4
+Warnings: AU, yaoi, cyberpunk, possible lime in a later part
+Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing because if I did I'd get rich auctioning it off on eBay... LOL, just kidding. I'd keep them for myself to make videos and become the real Sabintha. ^_~
+Notes: //Thought//, *emphasis*. Some ideas may seem similar to "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson, "The Matrix", and "Digimon", but I swear that isn't what I'm going for. "Digital Bath" is a song by The Deftones.
*~**~*
Computers are easier to get along with than humans. This is a simple fact that needs little or no explanation. Computers are, essentially, all programmed to be the same; each one doesn't have its own particular needs to be seen after. Computers don't care whether you love them or not; they just mindlessly serve, performing function after function after function until they die.
That's not to say humans *should* behave that way; it would just be easier. Then there wouldn't be so many green users walking around in the LSOS, trying to be like everyone else, trying to look "in with it". As far as I'm concerned, they're all just a bunch of brats trying to fit in where they don't belong. Teeny boppers in a hackers' paradise.
The LSOS, short for Life Simulating Operating System, is huge, each in-port spaced 256 kilometers apart, subdivided into 256 more ports one kilometer apart. That's a lot of ways for another user to enter the system, and a lot of ways for them to leave. Why 256 only hackers can understand; it's the power of 2^8, and even that 8 is the power of 2^3, so when you get down to it, that's a lot of 2s.
But the newbies don't understand. They don't understand that they're walking around as a pixilated avatar because the real world isn't habitable anymore. Humans drove their once green, lush planet to near extinction, a sulfuric mass of volcanoes and ash. The surface area of Earth was severely reduced, forcing mankind to adapt by creating suits that projected their likeness into a digital world where there's plenty of space, fresh air, and food. Everything's electronic. Understanding the LSOS is the very difference between extinction and survival. You understand how to manipulate the program, and you can become rich.
If you know how, you can alter your own avatar. In the real world, our bodies are put in bodysuits that scan every detail, feeding it into the LSOS to project into the system. Your brain waves control your actions while these suits control your appearance. I know this because I can get through the system, learning what is really going on. I didn't alter my avatar, but there didn't seem to be a purpose. When I learned that the LSOS wasn't the real world, I, as the metaphor goes, had bigger fish to fry.
That's where the hackers came in.
Those of us that wanted to know the truth stuck around, while those who could care less went off, altering their avatars and making themselves millionaires off of programming homes, cars, puppies - you name it, they make it. We can't get in trouble because nobody cares. It's called being successful.
The Pit was the first establishment for hackers, and only those who helped in writing it are granted access. The teenyboppers gather around outside, begging and pleading to gain admittance, but they all just get shoved aside or passed right through. They have their own nightclubs; it's ridiculous how much people want to be a exception to a rule. Give them a law and everyone will want to break it.
One male, I'd guess around seventeen, is standing directly in front of the entrance, cigarette held between his fingers and puffing away like some damned chimney. Almost everyone smokes nowadays. When we lived outside, smoking was considered unhealthy; it actually killed people. Now it's just making his brain smell the burning paper and taste the tar and nicotine, creating an illusion that, no matter how real it seems, isn't turning his lungs to black dust the way it used to.
If it weren't for the fact that our brains can only run for so long before dying, we'd almost be immortal.
"Hey, Heero!"
I turn my head, nodding briefly in greeting as Quatre hurries over. Quatre's a decent enough programmer. He was in the group of four that started things out around here. He just took advantage of it more than I did. Quatre hangs around for the hacking and the profit. He'd program anything the consumers could dream of. He soon got more and more programmers working for him, and now, Quatre never has to do any of the programming himself because there are so many people under his digital payroll.
"Trowa and Wufei are out back."
The aforementioned are the other two members of our little group. Trowa manages The Pit, making sure only those allowed in actually get in. Quatre brings in enough money to support the two of them for a hundred lifetimes. I think he likes it on some level, knowing to those kids outside he clarifies the difference between heaven and hell, but they don't see it to that extreme. They just feel left out of something bigger than their understanding.
Wufei, like myself, earns a living the way the rest of society does: a real job. Real jobs in LSOS are, I'd imagine, the same as they were before we destroyed our planet. Teenagers and the unskilled working at fast food chains and retail stores, low income, low liability jobs that would give them enough money for maybe two meals a day and a full tank of gas every three weeks or so, less if their car had shitty fuel economy. Those that are more advanced climb to the top, managers or specialists of some sort. Wufei's a teacher. I commend his courage in dealing with the green users on a constant basis.
I prefer jobs with more privacy and free time to complete all my hacking, currently placed as night watch at a bank. It's boring as all hell and the hours take you some time to get used to, but I altered my avatar to never require sleep to function. The hours give me a lot of free time to break into the programming systems of LSOS undetected. Using a government Internet jack is the best way for whoever is watching to think that you are supposed to be allowed in.
"The damn teeny boppers are clogging the streets, as usual." Wufei's irritability bore a strong contrast to Trowa's mild countenance. The Chinese man seems quick to anger to those who don't understand, but Quatre coined another word for it. Passionate.
"They won't be a problem to us much longer," Quatre pointed out, and all of a sudden I felt like I had missed something.
"Why are they no longer a problem?"
Quatre smiled as his eyes seemed to be saying I-can't-believe-you-of-all-people-don't-know. "A new hacker has appeared in the system, one we haven't heard of before. It seems that he has perfected a program that kills avatars, going back through their IP addresses so the user can never return."
I blinked. There was no way a new hacker could pass by my attention. I know the signature marks of every single hacker we have registered, and no new signatures came up when I was researching finished projects. I should notice - especially if it was causing avatars to end up dead. "What's wrong with that?" It's hard to look at the pixilated forms I see and understand that back on Earth they are real humans like myself. There's a difference between knowing it and seeing it.
"It isn't good for business. Users won't come out of their homes if they think someone is going to kill them. Earth used to have murder and disease, but the only thing killing us here is age. It'll cause a panic."
"I still don't see the problem. If he found a way to program murder we should be able to beat him at his own game."
"That may be so, but the users will be afraid." Trowa looked up at me, expression unchanging. "It's inevitable, no matter how quickly we act. Fear leads to more problems; the system is unstable as it is. A riot could cause a system shut down, locking up our brains and destroying us all."
"Or maybe it'll wake us all up and we can heal the Earth back to the way things were before." I frowned. "How do you know about him, anyway? I haven't noticed any glitches yet."
"He told us himself," Wufei's face was turning red. "He came in and told us."
"What do you mean he came in? New hackers need to add the permission code to their avatars before they're able to enter The Pit!"
"Heero," Quatre was rubbing his temples, "this guy is good. He was able to find the code and place it in his avatar; you know how securely hidden that fragment is because you encoded it yourself!"
I was sporadically clenching and unclenching my fists under the table. This hacker was trying to undermine me by accomplishing everything most hackers deemed impossible. I'm known as the best and now someone else is trying to take that title away from me. "What's his name?"
Quatre's mouth was set in a grim line. "He calls himself the God of Death."
*~**~*
End Part 1
+Author: Vinyl Koneko (Emily), roguegirl@att.net
+Rating: R
+Pairings: 1x2, 3x4
+Warnings: AU, yaoi, cyberpunk, possible lime in a later part
+Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing because if I did I'd get rich auctioning it off on eBay... LOL, just kidding. I'd keep them for myself to make videos and become the real Sabintha. ^_~
+Notes: //Thought//, *emphasis*. Some ideas may seem similar to "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson, "The Matrix", and "Digimon", but I swear that isn't what I'm going for. "Digital Bath" is a song by The Deftones.
*~**~*
Computers are easier to get along with than humans. This is a simple fact that needs little or no explanation. Computers are, essentially, all programmed to be the same; each one doesn't have its own particular needs to be seen after. Computers don't care whether you love them or not; they just mindlessly serve, performing function after function after function until they die.
That's not to say humans *should* behave that way; it would just be easier. Then there wouldn't be so many green users walking around in the LSOS, trying to be like everyone else, trying to look "in with it". As far as I'm concerned, they're all just a bunch of brats trying to fit in where they don't belong. Teeny boppers in a hackers' paradise.
The LSOS, short for Life Simulating Operating System, is huge, each in-port spaced 256 kilometers apart, subdivided into 256 more ports one kilometer apart. That's a lot of ways for another user to enter the system, and a lot of ways for them to leave. Why 256 only hackers can understand; it's the power of 2^8, and even that 8 is the power of 2^3, so when you get down to it, that's a lot of 2s.
But the newbies don't understand. They don't understand that they're walking around as a pixilated avatar because the real world isn't habitable anymore. Humans drove their once green, lush planet to near extinction, a sulfuric mass of volcanoes and ash. The surface area of Earth was severely reduced, forcing mankind to adapt by creating suits that projected their likeness into a digital world where there's plenty of space, fresh air, and food. Everything's electronic. Understanding the LSOS is the very difference between extinction and survival. You understand how to manipulate the program, and you can become rich.
If you know how, you can alter your own avatar. In the real world, our bodies are put in bodysuits that scan every detail, feeding it into the LSOS to project into the system. Your brain waves control your actions while these suits control your appearance. I know this because I can get through the system, learning what is really going on. I didn't alter my avatar, but there didn't seem to be a purpose. When I learned that the LSOS wasn't the real world, I, as the metaphor goes, had bigger fish to fry.
That's where the hackers came in.
Those of us that wanted to know the truth stuck around, while those who could care less went off, altering their avatars and making themselves millionaires off of programming homes, cars, puppies - you name it, they make it. We can't get in trouble because nobody cares. It's called being successful.
The Pit was the first establishment for hackers, and only those who helped in writing it are granted access. The teenyboppers gather around outside, begging and pleading to gain admittance, but they all just get shoved aside or passed right through. They have their own nightclubs; it's ridiculous how much people want to be a exception to a rule. Give them a law and everyone will want to break it.
One male, I'd guess around seventeen, is standing directly in front of the entrance, cigarette held between his fingers and puffing away like some damned chimney. Almost everyone smokes nowadays. When we lived outside, smoking was considered unhealthy; it actually killed people. Now it's just making his brain smell the burning paper and taste the tar and nicotine, creating an illusion that, no matter how real it seems, isn't turning his lungs to black dust the way it used to.
If it weren't for the fact that our brains can only run for so long before dying, we'd almost be immortal.
"Hey, Heero!"
I turn my head, nodding briefly in greeting as Quatre hurries over. Quatre's a decent enough programmer. He was in the group of four that started things out around here. He just took advantage of it more than I did. Quatre hangs around for the hacking and the profit. He'd program anything the consumers could dream of. He soon got more and more programmers working for him, and now, Quatre never has to do any of the programming himself because there are so many people under his digital payroll.
"Trowa and Wufei are out back."
The aforementioned are the other two members of our little group. Trowa manages The Pit, making sure only those allowed in actually get in. Quatre brings in enough money to support the two of them for a hundred lifetimes. I think he likes it on some level, knowing to those kids outside he clarifies the difference between heaven and hell, but they don't see it to that extreme. They just feel left out of something bigger than their understanding.
Wufei, like myself, earns a living the way the rest of society does: a real job. Real jobs in LSOS are, I'd imagine, the same as they were before we destroyed our planet. Teenagers and the unskilled working at fast food chains and retail stores, low income, low liability jobs that would give them enough money for maybe two meals a day and a full tank of gas every three weeks or so, less if their car had shitty fuel economy. Those that are more advanced climb to the top, managers or specialists of some sort. Wufei's a teacher. I commend his courage in dealing with the green users on a constant basis.
I prefer jobs with more privacy and free time to complete all my hacking, currently placed as night watch at a bank. It's boring as all hell and the hours take you some time to get used to, but I altered my avatar to never require sleep to function. The hours give me a lot of free time to break into the programming systems of LSOS undetected. Using a government Internet jack is the best way for whoever is watching to think that you are supposed to be allowed in.
"The damn teeny boppers are clogging the streets, as usual." Wufei's irritability bore a strong contrast to Trowa's mild countenance. The Chinese man seems quick to anger to those who don't understand, but Quatre coined another word for it. Passionate.
"They won't be a problem to us much longer," Quatre pointed out, and all of a sudden I felt like I had missed something.
"Why are they no longer a problem?"
Quatre smiled as his eyes seemed to be saying I-can't-believe-you-of-all-people-don't-know. "A new hacker has appeared in the system, one we haven't heard of before. It seems that he has perfected a program that kills avatars, going back through their IP addresses so the user can never return."
I blinked. There was no way a new hacker could pass by my attention. I know the signature marks of every single hacker we have registered, and no new signatures came up when I was researching finished projects. I should notice - especially if it was causing avatars to end up dead. "What's wrong with that?" It's hard to look at the pixilated forms I see and understand that back on Earth they are real humans like myself. There's a difference between knowing it and seeing it.
"It isn't good for business. Users won't come out of their homes if they think someone is going to kill them. Earth used to have murder and disease, but the only thing killing us here is age. It'll cause a panic."
"I still don't see the problem. If he found a way to program murder we should be able to beat him at his own game."
"That may be so, but the users will be afraid." Trowa looked up at me, expression unchanging. "It's inevitable, no matter how quickly we act. Fear leads to more problems; the system is unstable as it is. A riot could cause a system shut down, locking up our brains and destroying us all."
"Or maybe it'll wake us all up and we can heal the Earth back to the way things were before." I frowned. "How do you know about him, anyway? I haven't noticed any glitches yet."
"He told us himself," Wufei's face was turning red. "He came in and told us."
"What do you mean he came in? New hackers need to add the permission code to their avatars before they're able to enter The Pit!"
"Heero," Quatre was rubbing his temples, "this guy is good. He was able to find the code and place it in his avatar; you know how securely hidden that fragment is because you encoded it yourself!"
I was sporadically clenching and unclenching my fists under the table. This hacker was trying to undermine me by accomplishing everything most hackers deemed impossible. I'm known as the best and now someone else is trying to take that title away from me. "What's his name?"
Quatre's mouth was set in a grim line. "He calls himself the God of Death."
*~**~*
End Part 1