Nation leaders and corporations based in Europe are asking for samurai support in forming a new European union; their plan with such a union is still unclear but will probably still lead to disaster.
— News broadcast issue 12 from Purple Truth
After my almost early departure from our mission, we decided it was best to spend so ti observing the cube so more. For this, we have taken so seats in a small cafe overlooking the cube. Yui has summoned up her tablet, or a digital copy of it, while we sit there drinking our over-priced digital coffee.
“Well, that explains the difficulty.” I say after a while. “Parking the cube in a PVP zone makes this more complicated.”
“Despite its na, the area 51 node is not a PVP zone. The cube creates a PVP zone around itself.”
“Wait, how is PVP designation given at the node? It is not sothing you can create in a specific area. That is not how sh code works. A lot of it is monetary, and this place does not look fancy enough to be able to afford the bigger node construct that would be required for PVP zones. You need a way bigger node construct if you want to designate different zones, and sorry, but this place does not look that fancy.”
“I guess you are right. Maybe they found a loophole?”
“That is possible. I wonder what it looks like, though. Let's take a look, shall we?”
“What do you an?” Yui asks, confused.
“Simple, we hack the area 51 node first. If they have sohow changed it to allow for PVP in so areas, we will find it there, and with a bit of luck, we can turn it off.” I say, while grabbing the order tablet and plugging it into her tablet.
“Right, that is smart.” Yui says with a nod. “So should I do it, or do you have sothing that can crack in?”
“You can do it. I an, you have been banned from multiple sh nodes and gas for hacking already, so you should have so experience.”
After that, we get to work, or Yui gets to work mostly. I'm still not used to that na, but practising it makes sense. It takes her about 10 minutes to get past most of the firewalls. The last one was especially challenging, so I decided to help. I am not the best sh coder, but I can at least help crack a firewall. I an, that is my day job.
The solution was mostly cracking into the little cafe's database and using their admin access to get through it. Having access to the node's tadata tells us a lot, but it is hard to figure out what it all ans, since I was right, and this node does not have the capability to designate different zones.
“I don't understand.” Yui says. “There are no zones, but also, the cube is not even registered as an object in the collision data set.”
“I an, if it does not have any collision, you could just walk straight through the walls to get inside. It would be kind of funny if that was the solution.” I say as I look through the change logs. And finding a distressing number of player kill notifications.
“It would be funny, but soone already drove one of the infantry vehicles into it, and there was a decent amount of collision.”
“So that rules out getting sothing fast. Guess this is going to take longer than anticipated.”
“Yeah, how much ti do we even have?”
“Well, we have not even crossed the Swiss border, so at least ten more hours.”
“Nice, so we do have so ti. Luckily, the cube is in a nicer place than before. Having to deal with the cold from the Antarctica node would have been hell.”
“Antarctica node? You telling this thing moves?”
“Yes, it does not do it often, but every now and then, it shifts spots.”
“Do you know when it ca here?” I say, getting excited.
“May 23, 2050. Why? Ooh, I get it. We just need to see what happened on that day.” Yui says, a sparkle in her eyes.
I nod as I start looking at the data. Unfortunately, there was an update on that day, so finding what they changed is going to be a bit harder than expected, but it is a good start. Then again, finding so public docuntation would be good.
“What are you doing?” Yui suddenly asks, when I am browsing the forums.
“Big updates like this usually announce the changes they are going to make, so I am looking at everything they promised and everything they put in, to seeing if there are extra things hidden in the update that were not promised.”
“And what did you find?”
“Beside racist dogma? Not much yet, but I found indication of most of the major changes, just looking for the smaller ones now.”
“Huh, I did not think of that.”
“Well, it was common practice for . When I made patches to general systems, I must also write down what I changed, and why.”
“That sounds like a pain.”
“Yeah, I had this guy working for my departnt for a while. He knew nothing about coding but could write nice and fancy; after a week, his coding work was split among six of us. In exchange, he would write the updates and reports. Sadly, soone in managent found out, and he got placed sowhere else. That was a real bumr.”
We spent the next bit cross-examining things until we only had a few basic systems left. At that point, we just decide to poke at said programs to see what they do, then spend any more ti searching online. It is at this point that Yui suddenly throws her paws in the air in excitent.
“I got it! it is the John McCarthy paynt system that is the culprit.” Yui says.
“Why do you think that?” I ask in amusent.
“Well, for sothing being called a paynt system, it has not been used for any paynts whatsoever.”
“Ahh, let see what it is doing then?” I say, while pulling up the data. “Okay, that is a lot more clever than I expected.”
“Ooh, you found sothing?”
“It is not extrely useful, but it is interesting, so basically, it is pretty powerful and VPN. But Instead of telling people you are sowhere else, it is telling everyone that the cube is here. The cube’s original node has PVP, so even though it is not set up in this node, because that area is not considered part of the area 51 node, but of the cube's node, the rules don’t apply.”
“You can just do that? That sounds unrealistic.” Yui says, looking at sceptically.
“That is because the frawork is not made by a normal human. It is not even in one of the normal coding languages, but I have seen this before in old samurai tech.”
“So it is made by a samurai? Fuck, I guess that is why it is so well-defended.”
“That, or soone with access to samurai code, but yeah. Does not help us get in, though.”
“What do you an?”
“Well, it is a system displaying sothing from a different node, not sothing generating a PVP zone, so If I turn this off, the black cube disappears, which does not help us get in.”
“Can’t you lift the IP of the program so that we can go to the real node of the black cube?”
“I can, but it is still in a PVP zone, so we still have to find sothing for the weapons.”
“What if we use the VPN to tell it that we are inside the cube.”
“That… That... It is not how that works, but with the program they have, I can do basically that. Yeah, that is actually a plan.”
Yui jumps up. “Wait, does that an that we are in?”
“Maybe the question is where we will land; for all we know, we would go directly into a kill box and get shot to death.”
Yui deflates and sits back down. ”Well, can you make us turret-proof, then?”
“There are enough hacks that counteract different weapons in PVP, so it is possible. The question is, what kind of system they use?” I say, while looking at all the options.
“And how do we check what system they are using?”
“We pay soone to get shot and see what happens.”
Yui's eyes go wide. “And how do we do that?”
I look around, spotting a bored teenage boy. “Watch this,” I say as I walk up and approach him. “Hey there, you look bored.”
“Hey yeah, my parents love this kind of shit, but h, rather be at ho watching the dia feed. What about you?”
“The more I read about these theories, the less I believe they were made with the best intentions, but I'm not really here for that anyway.”
“Then why are you here?”
I point at the black cube. “Because of that, my friend and I are trying to get in there.”
His eyes go wide as he looks back at . “You are a hacker? What do you need with ?”
“Well, we want to know how the turrets work, and we are looking for soone who is willing to get shot.” I say, smiling at him.
He steps away, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey miss, I know I said that I was bored, but getting shot sounds rather unpleasant."
“Ooh, I understand, and it would not be for free. I will pay you two million credits, a million now and a million after you get shot. Sound fair?” I say, while smiling at him with what I hope is a nice smile.
“Are you for real?” he says, so excitent in his tone, then he stops and collects himself “5 million and I do it.”
“Sure.” I say, as I transfer two and a half million credits to his account. “Did you get them?”
The next few monts go by quite fast. After Eric, the teen boy, has collected his jaw off the ground, we tell him to download so monitoring software that we can use to check what is happening to him. Then we sent him off to get shot. He runs at the building, full of confidence, and so hidden compartnts slide open and start shooting him. After a few of the bullets hit him, he disappears, having been disconnected upon death. I transfer him the rest of the money and examine the data.
“Well, that is sothing.” Yui says, next to . “His hp did not go down completely when he died. How does that work?”
“Insta-kill hacks.” I say with a shrug.
“No, insta-kill stuff would just have an insane damage output instead. This is different. You see how his CPU and RAM take up more resources every ti he gets hit?”
I close in, looking over her shoulder at what she is doing. “You're right. So, every bullet loads up a fork bomb, utilising the buffer overflow to attack the process limiter, until the gear overheats and activates its safety shutdown. How do you get the death ssage, then?”
“People that disconnect during PVP are considered killed. It's to stop people from disconnecting when they are about to lose.”
“Huh, so how do we stopping them from loading up programs?” I ask.
“We shut down and delete the software that is running the program?” Yui asks in an unsure tone.
“It's an option depending on where they are uploading the programs into, but I still think creating a firewall to stop these processes would be better.”
So rummaging later, and we find it's mostly uploading stuff to the add manifest, adding a bunch of cookies or giving your avatar endless amounts of polygons. We try our best to make programs against that, but we can't be sure if that is all. Then, we give ourselves extended health and invulnerability and run our VPN; we should definitely find a better na for the program. And we disappear.
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