Ahava Writing

[lonelyahava]

I got a bit.... inspired shall we say? Not necessary to be used for anything..

“Remember what’s Real!” The call ran over and over again, bouncing off the neurons and searing into the nodes around her. Ginger tried to ignore it, she had done fairly well so far. Darting her way through the nodes around Harvale, she managed to find the information she was looking for, but the loop repeated itself.

“Remember what’s Real!”

Over and over and over, no matter the node she was on, or what she was trying to do, the words rang through her jackpoint and somewhere into the real world, through her brain. The longer she stayed here the stronger the signal got. The walls began to become plastered with the images of the Minister. And his never ending speeches to the masses soon took the place of the usual lines of virtual bricks. Ginger wasn’t finished yet! She still had more to do, more to find out. But the walls around her felt as though they were crashing down, pressing forward.

Whoever was in charge there, he was good.

Ginger finished up her last bits of trace that she wanted to lay down and turned in this virtual world to get the hell out. But behind her rather plain jane avatar was another, a plastic mask with a smile etched into it, eerily too large, and astoundingly protective at the same time. Nervously, her red-haired too thin with unrealistic curves girl stood there, trying to think of a response, or to think of anything at all. The mask shook its head and advanced towards her, and though the smile never left the white plastic, the act was menacing enough.

Ginger took the other turn, and tried to get the hell out of there, she’d stayed too long, but each turn she took, she was met with the text of the Minister’s speech, pushing the walls closer to her, all the lines running together to the very last, repeating, repeating, repeating as she stumbled and became stuck into a box of words, the code closing in around her. The words of the Minister closing in.
“Remember what’s Real! Remember what’s Real! Remember what’s Real!”

And the mask appeared above her now, every smiling as Ginger realized that she was trapped. This guy, was really really good. “Do you remember what’s Real, Ginger?” The voice of the avatar was cold, stoic, and yet so caring, as though he really wanted to know. In the middle of her hysteria, Ginger looked up at the Mask and then the walls closing in around her. With a desperate scream she raised her hands for help.

“Yes! I Remember what’s Real!”

“Too late, Ginger. It’s not real anymore for you.”

It was with those last words that the box around Ginger closed, the words pressed downwards, and for a brief moment in the meatspace, Ginger remembered what it was like to feel.

And then, Nothing.

[lonelyahava]

Cheshire shook her head. Or what would have been her head had she been in the Real and not a giant grin. But, she was a giant grin. At least here. One pearly white tooth next to another stacked atop another. And none of that fancy fake sharpened canines, no this was a comical grin, a grin that knew everything and you were pretty sure had caused most of the problems. And that she was sitting on the solutions all along.

Cheshire had shown up on the Grid almost before the Grid was even there. She knew the ins and the outs and she could get around probably better than most. She was careful of the Black Ice and knew just how far to push her luck. One didn’t survive this long without some sort of skill, but luck was often just as important. A few flash keystrokes and Cheshire slipped through the trunks of the grid, bouncing off the Geovista node and into the vibrant streaks of the Grid. She had some duties to check up on.

[lonelyahava]

Harvale Industries

Harvale Industries. Cheshire’s grin grew even bigger, as if that was possible. A nice system, nothing too clunky or unnecessary cluttered the streets here. The hippies, or former hippies, or future hippies who used this as their base seemed to like clean things. And helpful things. Sure, some might call these corporations Titans of Industry. The Worst of the Worst. But really, their intentions had all started out good. Cheshire made her way down the streets, past the glowing, pulsating, vivid ‘fronts’ of these groups. Node by node she travelled, picking her way through whatever data she could find.

Red Circle, the aid organization. They had been around for years, centuries might even be more accurate. Oh sure, they had in their archives all kinds of fun data, the sort of things that people would look back on and shake their head. Cross, Star, Sickle, Crescent. The organization had lots of different looks in the past, eventually they got tired of all the bickering and just made themselves into a filled in red dot. Sure, at first some people took offense, but you can’t please everybody. Cheshire didn’t like to pick on their stocks too much. They fought and scraped and begged for every scrap they could get their hands on, and it all went to fairly important uses. That didn’t, of course, stop her from scooping up whatever info they left laying around. Even if it were herring, it might be worth something to somebody.

Cikitsaka had once been a part of the Red Circle, but they spun off a few decades ago, not wanting to get lost in the noise and whatever missions the Circle was running that Cikitsaka, known as ‘Ciki’ for those not well adapted to Hindi or too lazy to type it all the way out, played no part in. They were a fairly middle sized organization made up of medical professionals who took their oaths seriously. To the point of offering free care to anybody that needed it. That’s not to say that the organization didn’t have their own cheats and scoundrels. But Cheshire did what she could to make sure those stayed few and far between. She and a few others had been responsible for that audit a few years back. Not that anybody would admit to it. She wondered whatever had happened to Ginger...

Moving on though, past the Circle and Ciki, Cheshire stopped by to check out her usual info drop at Ysgol. Ysgol Institute. One of the few remaining places of higher learning in the Real. With so much information so readily available to those who only had to plug themselves in to find it, who needed schools? Kids were jacked in from the time they were able to sit up on their own, Cheshire had been jacked in since almost conception, but her parents had been a bit on the weird side. Cheshire liked Ysgol, the facade in the grid looked so much grander than the one in the Real. Stone columns, marble walks, everything that you had learned in your searching through the Records. For those few that wanted to sit and be lectured, to actually learn things the old fashioned way, Ysgol was there. Professors checked in via the Grid, but they still checked in. They insisted that not everything needed to be learned through direct neural exposure. Cheshire liked that. Finding her info dump there had been filled up by one of her Kittens, Cheshire had one more stop to make before ducking out of Harvale. For now.

The brilliant lights were painful in the Grid. When most everything else was typically dull, dingy, a mirror reflection of everything that was Real, NorgestiCorp decided to go the other way. They wanted their Grid presence to be inviting, happy, and bright. And it was certainly that. Cheshire hated coming here, but at times it was necessary. NorgestiCorp, better living through science and medicine. If it doesn’t kill you, they’ll figure out what makes you so special. Of course, you’ll probably die in the process, but your life just saved millions. At least, that’s what the pamphlets said. They did Bioengineering research. Curing Cancer, Ending Polio, that kind of thing. A few years back, they had even found a way to make it so that you could choose your own baby’s gender. That had been controversial. Finding nothing of interest new here, Cheshire closed her eyes, a few strokes of the keys, and she was off again, back into the trunks and onto her next stop.

[lonelyahava]

Pepper Park

Cheshire hated coming here. There was never anything good for her that Fly hadn’t already found and sent to her through other channels. But Fly hadn’t been around for a few several cycles and that had Cheshire a bit concerned. It was unusual, Fly tended to try and hide out if something big was going down, or if she had maybe gotten a bit lucky in the Real. But that was tricky enough in the Grid, Real Sex was just plain dangerous.

On the surface, that was what Pepper Park was. The answer to all your wants and needs and everything in between. From the voyeuristic pleasures of the Prettiest Princess Parlour of dancing women, to the glitter and glamour and illusion of Matahari, there was no doubt that vice was king and Queen here in Pepper Park. Cheshire did her best to avoid those two places, as the gyrating avatars of women on their last shreds of anything resembling personality made her nauseous, and the girls far too pretty to be girls at Matahari were even worse.
No, what she was looking for, like everything on the Grid, lay deeper into the Park. The bright neon flashing signs of Ecco’s Seafood beckoned you in, promising you a night of food born pleasure that your grandparents were lucky to taste. Most of the edible fish from the Real Oceans had long since died out, Seafood was a myth, a notion kept alive by farmers of fishy flesh. But here in the Park, the food was as decadent as the old holobooks made it look. And you could gorge yourself until your avatar groaned with delight, and the synapses in your head threatened to pop with the pleasures that real food once offered.

But look closer, stop scarfing down the lobster napoleon in front of you and turn your head. Those guys, the big ones with the beefy shoulders and the heavy firepower, they’re not here for the Crab Normandy. And neither is their Boss. Sitting in the shadows of this establishment, don’t pay too much attention, go back to your Sea Bass with asparagus and white truffles. Nothing to see here.

Cheshire shuddered as she left the table, her contact here still having not shown herself. A trip to Parshia, the end result of a night in the park, drowning yourself in the decadence of food, and the temptations of pleasure. At Parshia, you could get everything your fevered mind could come up with by that point. And probably more than that. The whores were cheap, the sex was safe, and the end result typical. Half sated bodies littered the facade of couches and beds, patrons dangled from whatever contraptions they had created to please themselves, and the whores were washing up for whoever was next, handing over the cash to a grinning Pimp, whose eyes never stop watching, and land on Cheshire only briefly before moving on to the next customer.

Cheshire hears a whisper of her name and follows it, darting through the electronics and waves until she ends up at the Court. Gentian Court, the last resort for almost any who come to the Park. Stolen goods, stolen info, fast highs and reliable slows, all in one place. Cheshire gets nervous around here, but the voice had been her Fly’s and that was always good to hear. Within a few flashes the small avatar was darting around, flickering from place to place, blending in with the scenery as she knew best how to do, and the information was passed along.

Black Ice, Lots of it. Time to move. The Government was closing in.