| From: | Jeffrey Mach <mach@****.CALTECH.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Fw: Newbie92739434 |
| Date: | Thu, 19 Feb 1998 13:20:30 -0800 |
> Sorry, I'm fairly new here and I didn't see anything like that so I thought it
> might be interesting to run..
> if it's overdone I'm sure he's in enough crap already it'd be fairly easy to
> wipe him out.
Sorry. May be it was a little before you got here. Several months back,
when the ill-named "otaku" popped up in _Threats_ (or was it another
sourcebook?) there seemed to be a steady stream of little kids popping up
on ShadowLand calling for help in one form or another. A few of us
started grumbling about how they were getting to be a dime a dozen,
showing up with skills superior to characters that we had presupposed to
have spent much of their life training to work in the matrix.
> >And he's inside the Ares arcoplex. And he's been "monitored" as a
"pet
> >project" by Ares matrix security.
> Pet project I guess was too strong a word to use. An experimental project
> perhaps.. "What happens when we give this kid a jack and put him online before
> he knows how to speak?" My thoughts on this are the first few years would
> have been heavily supervised/monitored.. now it's been a few and they're
> introducing him to the real world and watching how he reacts.
Hmmm. Again smacks of "otaku" but they were even more munchkin. (BTW,
Jaimie, don't remember if I ever answered you on that, but AFAIK, the term
is a double entendre refering to the sweet little guys from _The Wizard of
Oz_, much like the name "Little John" although size has little to do with
it, as well as the annoying capacity of such characters to absolutely
"munch" any other characters they come up against.)
> a) How big is mail order in 205x? Is it reasonable to assume they'd go through
> every package addressed to his household? To his neighbors? I'm sure they
> have some idea that he's got one, but I don't think they realize just what
> he's done to it yet.
> b) If he doesn't let the thing out of his sight and is constantly modifying
> it, it could be tough to bug.
> c) I was thinking that access to the matrix, especially from a school, would
> be quite high. Various libraries, film documentaries, etc. His mod'd deck
> doesn't raise their flag that says Project 64A-23c or whatever so it just
> slides by.
Yeah, okay. This isn't even one of the more agregious examples, but I
find, in general that corporate security isn't given very much respect,
unless it is meant to be completely overwelming. A pet peeve.
> It wasn't my intention to create a munchkin or an unoriginal type.. but if
> I have, I'll be most happy to write him out of the story.
He's already in. I say leave him, and allow the story to develop, but try
to keep it within reason, okay? If he is meant to croak, and that is what
the story dictates, because that makes the most sense, so be it and
farewell.
--My two yen
Jeff
