Maniac’s Mayhem: A guide to being a corporate slave

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 some time observing the cube some more. For this, we have taken some 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 name, 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 something you can create in a specific area. That is not how mesh 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 mean?” Yui asks, confused.

“Simple, we hack the area 51 node first. If they have somehow changed it to allow for PVP in some 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 something that can crack in?”

“You can do it. I mean, you have been banned from multiple mesh nodes and games for hacking already, so you should have some experience.”

After that, we get to work, or Yui gets to work mostly. I'm still not used to that name, 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 mesh coder, but I can at least help crack a firewall. I mean, 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 metadata tells us a lot, but it is hard to figure out what it all means, 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 mean, 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 someone already drove one of the infantry vehicles into it, and there was a decent amount of collision.”

“So that rules out getting something fast. Guess this is going to take longer than anticipated.”

“Yeah, how much time do we even have?”

“Well, we have not even crossed the Swiss border, so at least ten more hours.”

“Nice, so we do have some time. 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 me this thing moves?”

“Yes, it does not do it often, but every now and then, it shifts spots.”

“Do you know when it came 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 some public documentation 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 me. 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 department 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, someone in management found out, and he got placed somewhere else. That was a real bummer.”

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 time searching online. It is at this point that Yui suddenly throws her paws in the air in excitement.

“I got it! it is the John McCarthy payment system that is the culprit.” Yui says.

“Why do you think that?” I ask in amusement.

“Well, for something being called a payment system, it has not been used for any payments whatsoever.”

“Ahh, let me 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 something?”

“It is not extremely useful, but it is interesting, so basically, it is pretty powerful and VPN. But Instead of telling people you are somewhere 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 me sceptically.

“That is because the framework 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 someone with access to samurai code, but yeah. Does not help us get in, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it is a system displaying something from a different node, not something 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 something 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 mean 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 someone 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 meh, rather be at home watching the media 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 me. “You are a hacker? What do you need with me?”

“Well, we want to know how the turrets work, and we are looking for someone 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, some excitement 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 moments go by quite fast. After Eric, the teen boy, has collected his jaw off the ground, we tell him to download some 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 some hidden compartments 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 something.” Yui says, next to me. “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 time 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 message, 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.”

Some 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 name for the program. And we disappear.