Participants:
| Scene Title | Can Haz Your Cheeseburger And Eat It Too |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Logan's first foray into the Internet turns into a social occasion. |
| Date | December 14, 2010 |
The Internet
There's a whole separate world that flows river-like through this one. The Welsh might have identified it as similar to the Otherworld, the one that overlays this one, but this one doesn't contain any fey folk unless they're drawn on tablets and uploaded to DeviantArt. Or Logan, possibly, arguably, and there is certainly a sporadic, butterfly-like motion to the way he 'surfs' the Internet. One moment he had been lying facedown in his Staten Island Rookery hide-away from home, nursing a glass of gin and tonic. Only barely aware of the taste of it in his mouth.
'Casey' had said, the city. He's beginning to get a sense that his range is somewhat bigger than that.
It's busy, out here. Information knifes past him as if he were stranded in the middle of two hundred heavily trafficked highways, words reduced to keening whines until he can think to divide them out. Snag onto names like gripping onto a speeding car and seeing where it yanks him. Remnants of data are comparable to streams caught in the wind, pulled along for the ride unknowingly, a fledgling technopath with far too much skill than he knows what to do with.
Chesterfield's transfers— surveill— the Ferrym— on't engage or
With all the finesse of a downed plane, something that resembles Wireless rips through the Internet in the vague direction of the wireless capable Village Renaissance security system.
Somewhere else on the same network, D.Crypt looks over her catch for the evening. Information on Apollo. The incoming 'downed plane' that 'resembles' K.Apila is noticed, and earns the digital equivlant of a raised eyebrow as she muses to herself something along the lines of 'told you not to do that…' as the erratic technopath sets off several alarm programs that were strung out like tripwires, before crashing head first into a very active firewall.
D.Crypt would wince, if she knew how to make the data of herself do so. She sighs, and wanders just past the edge of the firewall as if it wasn't there. You okay?
In real life, a glass of gin and tonic is toppled onto carpet, soaks alcohol through cheap carpets, but the man who was holding it doesn't appear to notice.
Somewhere within the city without really being in any city at all, John Logan's only name is John Logan. Maybe J.Logan. The firewall is not exactly new but it's the first time he's apparently encountered it head on, and confusion can mostly be inferred by the unresponsive stillness this digital entity has taken on, until he realises that the data being transmitted towards him is a voice. To him. The digital equivelant of audio feedback seems to burble up in response, until he can rein himself in, form words—
Who the fuck are you?
No one told him about anyone else with this power. Claw-like attempts at data retrieval dig into the firewall, almost feline in its audacity, but there is no effect, no breaking in of security. What the fuck is this?
If D.Crypt could sigh, she would. That, Logan, is called 'firewall' The voice actually manages a trace sound of amusement at his attempts to dig into it. Think of it… Fencing.
Fencing is something he can understand. Bars, maybe, locked doors. Mute comprehension doesn't register as words fed back to Alia as he 'feels' along this new barricade, as if already trying to figure out how one goes about breaking such things. But then, then D.Crypt will be able to sense some scrutiny on her, slow and dawning. You know my name, he articulates, readily abandoning any notions of maybe trying to lie — what's the point?
The idea that maybe it's 'Casey' is picked up and discarded again, and in the time it takes to think, D.Crypt is looked at as if she were just another piece of data to be downloaded and kept, a sudden reaching, an attempt to grab and pin her down as uneventful as a cursor de-clicking an icon, as violent and paranoid in act as physical hands.
HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME.
Capslock emphasis.
D.Crypt responds rather adeptly to the 'reaching', by simply moving back behind the 'active' firewall… which as she passes, becomes the rather equivlant to ELECTRIFIED fencing from a command from her. Small community. We hear when things happen. It's a simple awnser. Call me D.Crypt.
If a digital 'zap' occurs, it's difficult to tell, although a periodic silence may be telling enough. Then, eventually, she gets a slightly slurry: That's a stupid name. There's not attempting to disable the fence, no touching it, just simply a kind of lurking wait. If they were in the flesh, Logan would be occupying himself lighting a cigarette to give himself some time to think. Instead, he contemplatively plucks something out of the more available ether and leafs through it casually.
Discards it, tossed over his shoulder, a BitTorrent file of Amateur Black Teens sent back to being downloaded by the anxious teenager a block away. I don't subscribe to Nerds'R'Us, D.Crypt. Small community or not, my name is my currency. Who sold it?
Information is mine. My Employer did. Now that's a vauge enough statement isn't it? Doing better then thought you would be. The praise is grudging, at best.
I see.
He can see why one might want to be vague, anyway, and if he could actually remember how he got here, he might be able to know better. Logan hovers uncertainly outside the firewall, and the attraction to try and peer through it is almost enough to make him want to leave, but this is the first other technopath he's encountered. Whether it's a friend or a foe is difficult to discern. Process of elimination, of course, dictates this into 100%% certainty.
Still. You're wrong. I don't know what I'm doing. I just do.
Yup. She agrees, but with what, might be a bit more confusing. Let's see…redirect where you are to place less likely to fry you. She quips, as the 'face' of the firewall ripples, and out pops a little chunk of data… an address for somewhere else to visit it seems. What the hell is 'icanhazcheezburger'?
Good question.
Relatedly, impulse control might be something Logan will also have to learn.
Something shiny to a magpie, or jingly to a cat, the fledgling technopath considers this data before impulsively prying and with too much unknown exuberance made manifest by the sheer scale of what Wireless was capable of. The link almost acts like vacuum in the way that as soon as he considers it, that entire mess of digital entity is simply vanished out of D.Crypt's range, with a sort of hhnnn—! before there's only silence.
D.Crypt would laugh… as she follows the link herself after preparing a personal firewall for her travels. She's not silly enough to give him a second chance to strangle digitally.
dontz rekkomend u go n start drawin on yer kittehs, we has 2 admire dis lil' art projekt. We had neber notised before da 546 votes shae this LOL with friends <a href="icanhascheezburger.com/2010/12/14/funny-pictures-kitty-teddy-bear-paws/"><img title="Funny Pictures - Kitty Teddy Bear Paws" 2010 kumz 2 a cloze, we will tayk a lewk bak at teh major eventz of teh yeer. Stay chuned awl week fer posts recapping teh yeer dat waz featuring lolz boff new n old. Today's topic: Teh Yeer in Mewvies. We has a lol fer s from batcache in 0.004 seconds
expires in 279 seconds
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<title>Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has alt="Funny Pictures - Kitty Teddy Bear Paws" width="484px" height="600px" /></a><br />see more">Lolcats and funny pic
Augh.
D.Crypt can feel it like a furnace by the time she's caught up. Apparently, Logan's natural response to the onslaught of unwanted data he finds himself in is to destroy it — jpgs and gifs and pngs go up as unretrievable as embering ashes, code ripped apart with the sort of tenacity and ferociousness of a pitbull, except that she can get the distinct impression that he's not actually trying that hard, almost casual in his corrupting of the information being downloaded by however many computers around the city and/or world.
Here, he offers, upon noticing her arrival, and though it's blocked by her own personal protection, she has the option of receiving an image of a cat riding an invisible bicycle. Spared his wrath.
John Logan is killing kittens. He is killing lolkittens.
Alia would sigh as she saves the pictures, and starts trying to reassemble some of the torn apart content. I see… parsing difficulty of 'standard' data. No filtering capability? It's more of a thought outloud then a real comment.
What?
Logan doesn't fight over destroyed images — some of the data is gone even outside of D.Crypt's talents for retrieval, and the data she does manage to save, he isn't about to wrestle out of her grasp. Mellowly, he observes the flotsam and jetsam of the website, mostly confused about what the hell is even going on and why people spend their time here.
The data that is D.Crypt would shrug if it could. She sets aside what she could put back together, and will let the backups that people keep do the rest later. Was seeing if you could parse webpage properly. Obviously, no. She idly considers the fun of tossing him into 4chan, or YouTube, but apparently, has the decency to not overwhelm the obviously out of his league 'novice' technopath.
Spitefully, vaguely prideful, a jpg in her periphery crumbles into nothing. Pew. Logan starts feeling around for the way out, of which he has many options, considering the amount of connects such a website might get — even when it's acting strange as hell right now. The urge to leave, tear his way out of the website with all the drama from which he'd slammed into Alias' firewalls, is there.
Well it looks different. From this side.
There is a brief pause before D.Crypt responds. Hmm. she reshapes the remaining HTML, into a more organized form, white space breaking up areas of it so it is more readable, without actually inserting any <BR>s so the resulting page would be the same. Better? Worse? She sounds like an eye doctor.
Irrelevant.
Which may be worse, in some books, or maybe Logan doesn't care — for all that he did wait to see what she was doing, feeling the shift around of information like a change in the wind. What it results in is less a clusterfuck of crawling code and cramped text, but he's never been much of a reader. With what the digital equivelant of a snarl might be, Logan leaves, seemingly crashing straight through her carefully assembled code without real respect paid to direction.
He doesn't want to be followed, and where he ends up, she can't. Logan doesn't actually own a computer.
Bull. China shop D.Crypt remarks to herself, as there's nobody there to listen. She heads home herself after sending a single text message.
Meanwhile.
There's a thunk as his knees connect with gin-soaked carpet, severing his tie with the Internet with a gasp, dizzied when the material world around him slams back into reality for him. Logan's shoulder hits a coffee table in a kind of drugged weaving motion, breath hissing in and out passed his teeth. Takes a few moments. The pill bottle is grabbed, lid twisted and wrenched away and scattering negation pills across the surface of the table.
All two of them.