Message Edited by [TGS]Procurator on 10-03-2005 04:00 PM

Everytime a new update is launched ie. 8.1 8.2 8.3  the Cinematic NEVER work  what gives

Procurator wrote:

H'mm. Someone needs to be schooled in the way of timezones. Servers were supposed to go down at 4am PST/12pm GMT, but they're down now - an hour early. In other words 4am PDT/12pm BST.

Daylight Savings. 

I like Fan Faire... doesn't matter where to me really. Although, this year if it is in June, I may not be able to make it.

(( Finally time to end this story! The events depicted in the following two posts (second one will be here in a few minutes) happened ages ago, just before Christmas. Sorry I haven’t posted them before now, but I’m kinda forgetful like that. ))

’Everyone. I need you to meet me by the Tabor Park Central hardline.’

Procurator took the cell phone away from his ear and let his arm hang to his side as he paced to and fro between the benches by the hardline. He’d decided he ought to tell them what was going on – or at least everything he could tell them. He knew something had gone wrong because he didn’t feel… normal. Not agitated or some ill emotion, but somehow physically wrong. Then there were the strange stability issues he’d been experiencing over the past couple of days…

‘You heard the man. Let’s get to it,’ ordered d4sh.

Within a few moments all members of the Glitch Society who were jacked into the Matrix were assembled in Tabor Park. They stood behind the subway entrance while Procurator continued to pace in front of them all. As he began to sense the tension mounting among the group, he began.

‘Dudes, there’s something I have to confess. To use a horrid cliché, not all is as it seems. For starters, I’m not on a hoverbarge bound for Zero-One. Heck, I wasn’t even kidnapped.’

This revelation was immediately followed by murmurs among the assembled faction members, punctuated by a few shouts of confused anger from the Aggregator’s crew.

‘What the hell are you talking about, Proc?’ demanded Campusanis, stepping forward looking both angry and worried.

‘That’s just it, Camp: I’m not–’

Before he could finish the sentence he doubled up in pain, doing all he could to maintain his balance. A couple of the crowd rushed forward to help him, but he looked up and waved them back.

‘Don’t bother! It’ll pass. I just need to–’

Green code spiralled around him and his figure almost seemed to melt into the air. Suddenly he fully materialised and stood bolt upright just as he’d done several times before – though never with any witnesses around him.

‘Stability error. Recovered.’

‘What… in God’s name… was that?’ asked d4sh, staring at Procurator in disbelief.

‘I–, I can’t really explain it,’ he replied. He put his hand to his head and sighed. ‘You guys are going to have to follow me. I think I know who might be able to explain it far better than I. Call them an outside observer, if you like. But you’re gonna have to be prepared.’

d4sh ordered everyone to load up their abilities at the hardline, then asked Procurator where they were headed.

‘Roger’s Way. No, we have to walk,’ he said as Gookin picked up the receiver from the hardline. ‘I, uh, can’t take hardlines in my state.’

The walk to Stamos was done almost in silence. Procurator led the pack through the south of the Mega City as the rest stayed together, talking in hushed voices. Occasionally they would glance at Procurator but would look away again whenever he turned around. After what seemed like an uncomfortable two hours, they rounded the corner where the road continued past Club Kaos. The Ascension Monument towered before them.

Standing in front of the giant steps was a group of about a dozen people. As the Glitch Society approached them, following Procurator’s lead, it became all too obvious that this was who they were meant to meet.

‘See everyone? I told you he’d show up.’

A woman stepped in front of the others in the group. As she got closer, everyone realised with disgust that she was wearing a bandana over her face. Yet the clothes and the figure were all too familiar.

‘Aiyalla,’ said d4sh, quietly. ‘Everyone fan out. I don’t like where this is going. Proc, you better know what you’re doing!’

The woman pulled a rifle out from behind her and pointed it at Procurator, and the people behind her all raised their weapons as well, each one aiming at a member of the Machine faction.

‘So good to see you again… Procurator.’

The others in Aiyalla’s entourage laughed loudly.

She turned to face d4sh. ‘You may have noticed, my dear captain, that your friend here hasn’t quite been himself as of late. Funnily enough, it’s because he isn’t himself.

‘This guy here is a program.’ She stepped closer to the simulacrum, who continued to stare straight at her. ‘A beautifully crafted effigy of his creator. From what my technicians and I have been able to work out, he’s some sort of advanced trace program built into an RSI. He’s supposed to be controlled by a real person. But something went wrong, didn’t it sweety?’ Aiyalla grinned at Procurator’s bizarre creation.

Gookin did as the rest of the Glitch Society did and peered at the simulacrum, but directed his words to the Cypherite. ‘And how exactly do you know all this?’

‘Why, we found him. Wandering aimlessly through the Barrens. It was plainly obvious that he wasn’t who he claimed to be – in fact, I’m surprised you didn’t suspect him to begin with. He put up quite a fight when we took him to be analysed. We couldn’t figure out what his mission was, but we know he’s a very powerful program.’

As the discourse ran on, the counterfeit Procurator had narrowed his eyes and started trembling silently, clenching his fists. With a burst of energy he pointed his finger at Aiyalla.

‘She worked with the people who attacked the Mainframe!’ he shouted, startling the already tense gathering. ‘Captain Solarcode was uncovered as a spy and reported by a friend of this Masked abomination. Before Veil was imprisoned she ordered the destruction of the Mainframe in retribution. The informant never survived, and Aiyalla is the closest link remaining.’

‘Oh, so that’s what this was all about?’ asked Aiyalla, a look of feigned relief on her face. ‘I did wonder. I never met Solarcode personally, but I gather he had it coming. As did your crew. A pity the assassination wasn’t entirely successful.’

The Machinists behind the simulacrum raised their weapons and pointed them at the assembled Cypherites, who didn’t flinch.

‘And now you’re looking for a little revenge, is that it? In the absence of the actual saboteurs, you want to take your issues out on us? Well, we have a different reason for being here.

‘d4sh, honey, we want this program. In exchange for your beloved captain, of course.’

d4sh looked away from Jamicus, who was aiming his rifle at him, almost daring him to make a wrong move.

‘You had the program before. Why did you let it go?’

‘So he’d go and fetch you lot. It’s no use us having the simulacrum like this. It’s broken. We want the source code, which is no doubt kept on one of your ships.’

‘And you propose to give us back the real Procurator. You know where he is?’

‘Not his location in the Real, no. We know where he is in the Matrix.’ She raised her arms, lifting the rifle above her head and pointed to the sky around the Ascension Monument behind her. ‘He seems to be in a bit of a pickle. His consciousness isn’t manifested in an RSI, so he’s just floating around, stuck in the Matrix. The only way he can jack out is if he merges with his counterpart here, like he was supposed to in the first place. Thing is, we have the reintegration code.’

She smirked and the rest of The Masked Agenda laughed behind her. Aiyalla pointed her rifle at d4sh.

‘Best get your operator to hunt for the program source code. We aren’t going to give you very long.’

The Cypherites began to advance on the simulacrum and the Glitch Society. They, in turn, stepped forward as well. Before d4sh or anyone could answer Aiyalla’s demands, the simulacrum leapt forward and snatched the rifle from Aiyalla’s grip, tossing it behind him. Aiyalla swore and tried to tackle Procurator’s double.

That was all the others needed to see. Within an instant, the street in front of the Monument was filled with the sound of grunts and gunfire, as the two factions battled. The simulacrum had engaged Aiyalla in close combat, and was fighting furiously, faster than any operative ever could. He had been no match against a gang of Cypherites when they had captured him, but as they were all distracted by the rest of the Glitch Society, he was able to concentrate on the one combatant.

After a time, both sides began to lose members, as individual fights were won and operatives were jacked out to prevent total death. They would not return for some time, as the emergency jack-out procedure would leave them dazed and confused in their hovercraft, and so the people remaining intensified their strikes against the opposing sides.

There was a scream from Aiyalla, and everyone glanced around briefly to look. She was still standing, but hunched slightly, clutching her side. The simulacrum on the other hand was standing straight upright, his face emotionless. Green sparks could briefly be seen shimmering around his form.

‘RSI integration module loaded successfully. Rebooting.’

The battle had brought the simulacrum in close contact with the code Aiyalla carried, and had drawn it in, to the dismay of the remaining Cypherites.

Seeing the program looming over their leader, seemingly having lost no energy in its struggle, the Cypherites broke out of their combat with the Machinist faction and ran to Aiyalla, helping her up and escaping into the night, heading down a darkened alleyway, no doubt to the nearest hardline.

‘Let them go,’ said d4sh, as some of his faction started to move after them. ‘They can’t do anything now. We’ll find them again later.’

He ordered Bittype to start healing the surviving members of the Glitch Society, and went over to the simulacrum, who glanced briefly at him and turned towards the Ascension Monument. d4sh stood there, watching the strange creation climb the slope between the enormous steps until he stood at the top and looked out over the towering apartment buildings surrounding the park.

As he’d done before, the simulacrum doubled up in pain and almost fell to the floor. Yet, instead of the code fragments appearing around him, there was a flash of green light accompanied by a large shock wave that deafened the operatives below.

‘Stability error. Abort, retry, failure?’ he said, almost in a whisper.

‘Failure.’

Everyone turned to look at the speaker. He stood before the simulacrum, his face suffused with rage, seeming to tower over his creation as it trembled and shook. The program looked at Procurator in despair, and suddenly disintegrated into green code sprites, which sank slowly through the air and into the ground.

Procurator, his true form restored, started to descend the slope at a slow pace. d4sh and all those who had been healed ran up to greet him.

‘Is it really you, Proc?’ asked Frotee.

‘I’m back baby!’ replied the Captain, a nervous smile appearing on his lips. He coughed harshly.

‘We’d best get you seen to.’

Bittype came over and cast her healing abilities, allowing Procurator to speak more easily.

‘Dudes, I’m so very, very sorry.’ He looked crestfallen at his friends around him, friends he had kept in the dark and who no doubt felt betrayed. ‘It was a plan I’d formulated after I became first mate of the Mainframe. A program that could infiltrate the depths of the Matrix, hidden like so many programs, but still controlled by a real person. Agent Gray decided I had to arrange my disappearance – the program would only be successful if the one controlling it were to ‘vanish’. The kidnapping scenario seemed like the best way.’

The captain proceeded to describe how he had arranged for the relatively harmless Merovingian hovercraft to intercept the Aggregator so he could hide away in the reservoir facility and jack into the Matrix through his program: the Refined Interfacing Trace Algorithm Simulacrum, or RITA. The interface algorithms hadn’t worked as intended, however, and while his memory and personality were copied into the hollow simulacrum, he was without any control over it. Attempting to jack out, he only got as far as abandoning the program’s RSI (which itself had corrupted, changing the colour of its clothing from cyan to red), which left him a formless consciousness drifting through the Mega City.

Someone asked why he was able to integrate with the simulacrum again at this particular place, the Ascension Monument.

‘Well, I think it–’ he started, but hesitated. Procurator looked away and at the ground, as if in thought. He couldn’t give them the whole truth. Not yet. ‘I, uh, no, I’ve got no idea. Must just be how the simulation handles errors like this.’

That seemed to satisfy his audience, and d4sh suggested they leave any more questions for later, after they’d regrouped at Zero-One for the first time in weeks. Procurator told Frotee the co-ordinates for the reservoir facility where his equipment was set up and ordered him to jack out and get the ship there to pick him up.

Yes, there’d be time for more questions later. There’d be reports to write and some serious explaining to do.

Message Edited by [TGS] Procurator on 04-21-2006 04:13 PM

It seemed to Procurator as if the night had taken an inordinate amount of time to descend. He’d been waiting at the arranged meeting place in Chelsea for over half an hour. Not that he was getting impatient or anything, but it troubled him that an Agent – known for their efficiency and punctuality – would be late. Were the Machines’ resources being stretched at the moment? Were they testing him for his failure? Maybe they just wanted to make him feel uncomfortable. That thought alone troubled him more than anything.

The sound of footsteps made him turn. An Agent had just entered the enclosure and was rounding the fountain to meet him.

‘Good evening, Mister Tonks.’

‘Ah, yes, hello there,’ Procurator replied, peering through the shadows at the Agent’s partially hidden features. ‘I was rather hoping Agent Gray would–’

‘Agent Gray is currently unavailable to deal with your case personally. I have been dispatched in his stead.’

This worried Procurator. He’d always dealt with Gray when it came to the RITA project. Agent Gray was a busy man, certainly, but he’d always found time in the past. His absense was a statement that the Machines had lost confidence in the captain of the Aggregator.

‘I see.’

Procurator said nothing more. The Agent just stood there, unblinking, staring at the operative with uncaring eyes. The silence was intolerable.

‘Look, I messed up, okay?’ Procurator blurted out, looking exhasperated. He wasn’t going to take this lying down. ‘The supersim went wrong. I hadn’t accounted for the fact that the wireless access station I built would subject the signal to that much disruption. The interface collapsed and–’

‘We are aware of the fault in your program. It has been uploaded to our systems as per the arrangement and we are analaysing it now. I have been asked to inform you that its completion is a low priority for us at the moment.’

‘What? Are you kidding? The supersim is just what you need right now for tracking Cypherites and all those dangerous new Exiles that have been cropping up. If you’ll look at my report, you’ll see it managed to track down some Cypherites even without my help.’

‘We have taken everything in your report into account, Mister Tonks. We have other, more pressing projects that require our resources at this time.’

Procurator turned on his heel. It was tempting to storm off in a huff – that’d make a statement. A bad statement. He took his glasses off and turned around again to face the Agent.

‘I can finish the program myself. I know what went wrong. All I need is more access to the Machine mainframe. If I can work using that thing’s processing capabilities, I’d have the program repaired in no time.’

The Agent looked at him for a moment, then placed a hand to the earpiece in his right ear.

‘That is not a viable option, Mister Tonks.’

‘Oh, come on! You’ve given other people access to work on less important projects! And you know mine’s–’

‘This meeting is concluded, Mister Tonks. We will contact you if we require your assistance in the future.’

With that the Agent turned and left the enclosure. Procurator sat heavily on the bench behind him.

He’d stuffed up the RITA project, and now he was facing the Machines’ collective contempt for inefficiency and failure. What could he do but leave the project standing and continue with his usual faction work? He’d already been given a severe grilling by d4sh for not telling him about the project, so even the Glitch Society wouldn’t offer him the best assignments anymore.

Standing up, he put his glasses back on and started walking towards the hardline. No, he wasn’t going to take this sitting down. He would do anything and everything in his power to win back the respect of his superiors, even if it meant bending the rules yet further.

‘What!?’

Procurator stared at his screen for a moment and leapt out of his seat to begin pacing the room furiously. The captain’s mind raced, trying to fit together the facts that had just been made apparent to him, desperate to find a pattern, solve the puzzle. His new job as Chief Archivist for the Glitch Society – a position assigned to him by d4sh by way of a punishment for his failure with the RITA project – left him with little time to go about his usual duties in the Matrix, and to an extent he’d been left out of the loop, picking up whatever he could from the mostly irrelevant documents that passed his desk. Just now he’d been scanning the Machinist communications channels for the latest reports.

‘The–, the sheer audacity!’

He lashed out to his side and sent a mug of cold coffee flying over his work station and into one of his many consoles. There was a crash, the machine let out a few hopeless sparks and died. Procurator stared angrily at his own mistake for a moment, then sighed. He turned again and left his room, bound for the broadcast bay.

Flare was leaning back in her chair in front of the operator’s console, paying little attention to the code analysers before her, which were focussed on the rest of the Aggregator’s crew. They’d jacked into the Matrix for a quick drink. Procurator had had to take a rain check, the first of many over the next few weeks. As he entered the large hall, she looked around at him and put on a cheery smile.

‘Hey Proc. All good?’

He seemed not to hear her, and walked up to the communications hub next to the screens.

‘Proc?’

‘No I’m not bloody alright!’ he growled, turning briefly to give her a withering glare. ‘Hand me that headset.’

The operator looked taken aback, but didn’t waste a moment. Her captain was rarely this angry, but she knew how he could get when he was. She certainly understood why he might be in such a mood: another strain of abscedosis had made its way through Zero-One, knocking out a good few operatives, including some members of the Aggregator. Frotee was in the Zero-One medical bay being treated, so Procurator had been forced to requisition a stand-in for the time being.

Procurator took the headset from her and placed it over his ears. He looked at the code on the screens for a few seconds, just to make sure his crew was there. ‘Listen up you lot.’

‘Evening Proc!’

‘Coming to join us, Captain?’

‘Party’s over. We’ve had a development in the Cypherite camp, and I don’t bloody like it…

‘Aiyalla and Jamicus – watch them. Closely.’

### OUTGOING TRANSMISSION ###

 ## Coded for: HvCFT Onesimus [Captain Leelia]

 ## Source: HvCFT Aggregator

 ## Date: 25.04.06-12.00 MCT

 ## Log by: Captain Procurator

Leelia,

I hope this message finds you well. This concerns the most recent matter brought to my faction’s attention by yourself: viz. the curious case of Aiyalla and Jamicus leaving the Cypherite movement.

With such a startling revelation, rumours naturally abound, and a great deal of hearsay and misinformation is flooding the communications relays. One rumour that seems to have a greater basis in fact than the others is the suggestion that Aiyalla has turned her attention to the sky of the Real.

Given that this is a particular concern of yours, I could only assume that Aiyalla was intending to contact your faction – whether it be for information and guidance, or to join it outright.

I must urge you: do not trust a thing she says. The woman is a devious, treacherous, evil creature, and whatever she’s doing (though I’m unable to fathom it at the moment) will be to further either the cause of the Cypherites or her own agenda. To be frank, I’m surprised she thought she could get away with this questionable change of heart: surely no one will believe her?

Treat everything she says and does with suspicion, and take the proper precautions when meeting her. She is a danger to the Machinists and Zionites alike, indeed to humanity as a whole. All I can do is warn you.

Regards,

 – Procurator

Chief Archivist of the Glitch Society

Captain of the HvCFT Aggregator