Procurator’s Journal
28.07.05-19.33 MCT – A Close Call
Good Lord, what an eventful last few days I’ve had. There’s good news, but a far greater helping of bad news, I’m afraid. First of all, I’m happy to announce my promotion to captain of my hovercraft, though the circumstances surrounding this appointement are steeped in sorrow. Shortly after I had submitted my last journal entry on my terminal and it was uploaded into the Matrix and onto this site, our pilot announced he’d uncovered a number of fluctuations in the Mainframe’s hoverpads. We tried to trace the source of the error, but it seemed it must have stemmed from physical damage to the pads. This was impossible, as we hadn’t entered the sewer network for a few days, opting to take the clearer, outside route back to Zero-One. Under normal circumstances we would have simply stopped the craft to take a look, but we were flying over water and had quite a distance to go. Captain Solarcode was jacked into the Matrix at the time on an important mission, so it was left to me to order our flight engineer to climb outside and take a look. That was the last time I saw her.
We shut down the affected hoverpads and switched to the weaker back-ups while she had a look at them, the Mainframe getting closer and closer to the water’s surface with every minute. Suddenly a number of things happened at once. Our operator put Solarcode on the speaker system so we could hear him, while the ship started to rock sideways ever more violently. He was ranting and raving on about an undercover mission for the Cypherites, and was warning us to get to land as soon as possible. The signal cut out and there was an explosion outside the ship. Our pilot started screaming about a crash-landing. My crewmates dashed to their defensive posts, and I started yelling at the operator to pull the captain out.
But it was too late. With a final violent shudder, the Mainframe plunged headfirst into the water, only to crash into the seabed a few meters below. It flung its nose upwards along the ground and I was thrown backwards onto the ship’s core. I clung to the supporting structure for dear life, all sense of time gone, unable to work out how long it was taking for the ship to come to a halt on dry land. Once the shaking finally stopped, I warily got to my feat. Our operator was alive, but unconscious in his seat. I shouted for everyone to answer me, and got a muffled groan from Frotee. He had fallen into one of the jacking-in seats and was fine. I told him to check the pilot, while I ran to the medical bay where all the crew members with abscedosis were being treated. To my horror I found that this was where the explosion had done the most damage. There was a vast hole in the hull spanning not only the floor I was on but the one above as well. Two crew members lay on the floor by their beds, dead – but not everybody was there. Frotee came in and surveyed the scene, telling me with a dumbfounded look on his face how the pilot was dead as well. He had managed activate the distress beacon first, it seemed, as within an hour sentinels arrived with the HvCFT Algorithm.
I went back into the broadcast bay, knowing full well what I would find there. Solarcode was lying serenely in his seat, all impulses to and from his brain lost. Some operatives from the Algorithm entered and helped the operator and myself to their medical bay, while the sentinels scanned the area and the stretch of sea into which we’d initially crashed. Soon Campusanis joined me in the medical bay, and told me how he had been flung out of the ship into the water after the explosion, only to be rescued by sentinels. We were taken back to Zero-One to recuperate a short while later.
On 27.07.05 MCT we were told that the Mainframe had been salvaged and brought to Zero-One as well. It was very heavily damaged, but Machine technicians had managed to repair it. Campusanis, Frotee and myself boarded it as soon as we were all awake, and had a look around it in silence. Our operator joined us shortly afterwards, and I assembled everyone in the broadcast bay. I toasted to our dead comrades, and announced that the ship would be rechristened the HvCFT Aggregator. It couldn’t be the Mainframe without it’s captain.
Despite the Machines finding no evidence in the wreckage, it is obvious to me that the hoverpads’ instability and subsequent detonation were the direct result of sabotage by the Cypherites. No doubt someone among their ranks had identified Solarcode as a spy, and had tracked down his ship while it was in the sewer system, days before our crash. A remote control would have activated a device causing the hoverpads to become unstable… and you know the rest.
We have lost a fine crew and a fine captain. I shall do my best to serve the Machines and my faction as well as he did.
23.07.05-20.12 MCT – Silent but Deadly
Hey dudes, sorry for the delay – you’ll get used to it, believe me. All sorts of stuff has been happening in recent weeks, not least of which is my promotion to first mate of my hovercraft, the HvCFT Mainframe. This has a lot to do with the decrease in active operatives aboard the ship and the others in the faction. A lot of crew members have come down with a disease I’m dubbing ‘abscedosis’, which is preventing them from jacking into the Matrix and performing their duties. I hope for their full recovery at some point, but until then there’s the promise of some new faction members moving over to this ship from the Algorithm, which is the ship that goes out to pick up the new recruits. Captain of the Algorithm acts as leader of the faction, and due to internal machinations d4sh has succeeded Olink as leader. I gather the latter has a slight touch of abscedosis himself, hence the change.
To celebrate my promotion I went out and got myself some new threads: check them out on the photos page, which along with the events and event photos pages has been drastically updated!
In other news, a number of new organisations are making appearances. The Masked Men have chosen to name themselves the Cypherites, and one of their senior members, Veil, has been captured after her murder of Vashuo, a member of the Novalis II, while another member, Enmascarado, has apparently died at the hands of the Assassin. That should teach him to try to use Morpheus’ killer as a tool! What’s more, mysterious black-clad Redpills have been seen wandering around the Westview and Downtown districts. While this alone shouldn’t come as a surprise given the, uh, unique nature of Redpills’ fashion senses, what is a little worrying is their attitude towards those who try to talk to them. Their behaviour is very odd indeed, and warrants further investigation.
29.06.05-22.10 MCT – Thank God for Humanity
Zionists enjoy it while you can: you won’t be seeing a journal headline like that again any time soon. The reason I title it as such is because I’m most pleased with how Zion dealt with the delicate situation of Neurophyte and the killcode. When I received the report that they had opted to save her life and restore her to active duty rather than extract the precious code and thereby kill her, I let out an audible sigh. Thankfully no one noticed it because they were all sighing themselves.
I don’t know what the Machines would have done were we successful in our attempt to gain Neurophyte’s trust, and frankly I don’t very much care. Whilst I don’t particularly want to see a person die (especially not one who could have become a valuable member of our ranks), I do appreciate the concept of making sacrifices for the ‘greater good’. The killcode could have been a useful tool in our quest for balance, but I don’t think its absence will do any harm in the long run. However, the concept of such a tool in the hands of Zion operatives did disturb me, so I am thankful they chose in a very… human manner.
The site has been updated today with a summary of everything I was able to gather about the Neurophyte incident (which has been dubbed by many as ‘Choice and Consequence’), along with some photos I had taken of my (limited) personal involvement. I have been somewhat busy as of late with the great project I mentioned in my last entry. For the moment I shall just add that it is going smoothly, and looks set to run in good time.
15.06.05-23.02 MCT – Online
I created this Web site to go onto the Matrix’s ‘Internet’ information superhighway. It’s kinda cool to think that humanity had this at its disposal at the turn of the millenium. Perhaps if the free exchange of views on it had not suffered its eventual demise thanks to the megacorporations and political powers of the time, the general population wouldn’t have grown so stubborn and brought about the War. I thought it would be nice to have my own Web site to keep people apprised as to my actions in the Matrix; partly out of vanity, I suppose, but I do hope I could perhaps persuade Redpills working for organisations other than the Machine civilisation to join us in our noble cause. I’ll be updating the site every now again with reports on major events and images captured throughout the virtual world.
Most recently my fellow Machinists and I were tasked with finding and helping a lost crew member of the hovercraft Novalis II, the first hovercraft Zion has been able to build since its hoverbarges took to the broadcast lanes. The confused operative, Neurophyte, had somehow gained possession of a ‘killcode’ from Zero-One but had then endured some form of bodily harm, locking her into the Matrix but leaving her residual self-image flickering in and out of existence. We were there to help her when she re-appeared on top of one of Kalt Chemical’s Kedemoth towers, but she was whisked away from us to a completely different area, allowing a number of Zionists time to get to her and persuade her to let them help her instead of us. Now Zion could hold this mysterious killcode in their hands (should they choose to sacrifice her life to get it), and who knows how effective that might be against us and the Machines? Which of the human traits of compassion or greed will prevail here, I wonder. We shall have to see.
My captain, Solarcode, stole the show that same day by successfully revealing the identity of one of the Masked Men, our most recent antagonists. Going by the name Verborgen, this man could have been responsible for a great number of attacks in the Matrix, and is almost undoubtedly linked to the recent destruction of an entire hoverbarge! A Zion hoverbarge, granted, but I don’t particularly want to see vast numbers of people killed, whatever their affiliation.
I’d also like to note that there’s something stirring in the Redpill community at the moment, something that could hopefully be big! I can’t reveal anything more right now, but as I will have some personal involvement in it you can rest assured I will keep you posted.