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"We can only hope your auto-assessment is within valid parameters", says Historia-7, while sending a telepathic answer to Kiv: "Ms. Ilsia Kivula, the implant remains unseen unless you activate it, making for a good way to confirm your identity as a Starfinder or see if the person you are interacting with is one or not. I agree with its use."
Leaning over to let Neroo take the selfie, though she does not smile for it, simply remaining unreadable, Historia-7 then pursues: " Further instructions are that I just discovered someone recently hacked into Bluerise Tower’s computer systems and stole a large amount of sensitive data from the resident corporations. I wish to be privy to this information. I managed to trace the hacker’s location through many proxies and erased the trail so that station and corporate security should be delayed in their pursuit. This deception will not fool them for long, so you must move quickly to retrieve the data before they can recover it. I will leave you to decide what to do with the hacker afterward, but should it be feasible, I believe that person would be an asset to the Society.”
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What Neroo remembers reading about Bluerise Tower is that the Absalom Station government is decidedly laissez-faire toward the businesses operating on the station, yet even this minimal oversight is too much for some corporations.
In Bluerise Tower, various corporations have arranged for nearly complete sovereignty over the tower levels they own, with even the Stewards having a difficult time obtaining permission to enter. Exactly why these corporations require so much privacy is anyone’s guess, but official inquiries have always shown tower residents to be living in a self-described anarcho-capitalist utopia. If any tenants disagree, their complaints have never made it past their employers’ private security.
Bluerise Tower is a private office structure maintained by multiple corporations and legally protected to the point that even the station’s Stewards have difficulty entering. Why these corporations need such absolute sovereignty over their own affairs is a question of great interest to many people.
Seeing you talk about this, Historia-7 explains that: "I believe the companies know more than they let on, and that the Society needs to stay informed in its vulnerable state".
Checking the address she gave you for the hacker, you see it is in Drifter’s End, a district in the station’s Ring known for providing cheap housing to vagabonds of all sorts.
You know that the Ring is made up of corridors and spires between the protruding docks of the Arms, and the cosmopolitan Eye - the Eye being the big glass dome.
The Ring is the most residential, middle-class section of Absalom Station, yet it also contains campuses for corporations and other organizations that don’t need the traffic of the Arms or the prestige of the Eye.
The Lorespire of the Starfinders is in the Ring, just like the Bluerise Towers is.
Drifter's End actually surrounds the Lorespire Complex, and the district earns its name by catering to alien ambassadors from newly discovered worlds, explorers, long-haul cargo crews, and spacefaring vagabonds of all sorts.
Housing is cheap and temporary, bars are noisy and full of stories, and patrons looking to hire experienced scouts and first-contact specialists clog notorious “Drifter” hangouts such as the Hard Burn, Kristo ’s, and the Last Good Run.
The exact address seems to point to a flat in Drifter’s End, a part of the station’s Ring known for providing cheap housing to vagabonds of all sorts.
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Fritz leads the way to the flat in Drifter's end
"Move it, come on, we have three other faction leaders to see today! Who of you is good at talking? I am not!" he hesitates for a moment "Well, I am good at talking, but people normally do not pay attention to what I say or do what I want them to do..."
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Psst, Thewan. Zoey reacts to Neroo, now is probably a good time to turn your camera off.
What a story Zoeys says emphatically, makes sure Fritz is somewhat out of earshot, and then hums a tune
Tried to abort it all
Ignore it all
Delete the memory,
escape it all
But I just couldn't erase you
My heart hacked my soul - Yeah
Should I retry again?
Fail again?
Control my drive
And be refreshed again
Home again?
Will we forever be a recap?
Locked?
Can we shift and put a new page up?
Love, in the end
Is just a hack to the soul now
Access the root
Let us figure the code out
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Fritz exits the Lorespire Complex, trotting along on his short legs, while the rest of you follow in a yellow and black robo-taxi with Zoey singing.
Finally getting Fritz to be sensible and climb in, you take the short drive to the coordinates: it seems like an abandoned electric-generator, a just a big block of cement.
Someone has obviously turned the cement cube into a simple home, with a barren porch outside.
Barren but for a few dozen plastic barrels filled with green stalks.
Also, you see boxes of nutrient broth, gardening tools, and various cultural knickknacks clutter the floor of the porch.
A young man is shooting a spray gun at the green stalks.
The young man looks up at you and smiles.
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Tirith takes in the sights of the station on the trip down to drifters end. All new experiences are more knowledge, so Torith tries his best to pay attention to everything going on around him.
I knew that people must be growing plants on the station but i didn't think i'd find anything growing in a location like this.
"Good day young man. How are you today? Are you free to talk right now? You seem to be busy with these plants and i wouldn't like to interrupt if you're doing something that is time critical."
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Zoey know nothing about tomatoes, except that they're red, and on the can they usually look round. The green stalks look like neither, so they're not tomatoes. Case closed.
She moves on the young man, trying to mellow his heart with winks and smiles, and once she's inside, she finally puts on a sugar-sweet voice and says Mister....
before leaving a moment of silence to stare at the young man with doey eyes mister, do you know anything about 'puters?
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The young man goes as red as a tomato, and his face is as round as one.
"Yes, I do. Puters are so cool. I love them. I am the boss of puters. Want me to show you mine? I mean, well, show you one that I own? It's sleeping right now, but it's a nice puter. Do you have a boyfriend?"
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Inside the place, you see it is a windowless cement cube, that has been whitewashed and cleaned up nicely.
A couple mats in a corner as beds, some basic furniture, and a nice kitchen place, where a wizened old woman in a blue-and-white abaya is boiling jars to sterilize them.
One wall shows rows of jars filled with red semi-liquid on shelves.
The woman looks up at you and smiles.
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Neroo does not see anything in the place that could be used for hacking or such, it is super low tech.
The old lady in the blue-and-white abaya smiles: "I am Ceren, and that's my grandson, Jubair. I have no idea about hackers or slackers, or anything of the sort. Do you want to purchase tomato sauce?".
She seems a bit tired by her work and brushes her hair back to wipe the perspiration from her brow.
You see half a dozen high-tech, though out of date, datajacks and ports, all down the side of her neck.
"We have spicy and non-spicy."
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"Spicy tomato sauce sounds very nice to me. How much is it?"
Torith waits for a lull in the tomato sauce conversation before changing the subject.
"Do you mind if i ask you something. It's a little personal so feel free to tell me to mind my own business. I just notice those implant things on the side of your neck there. I'm not familiar with technology myself so i was wondering what they are."
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As Ceren starts pulling some tomato jars down, ones with pale blue labels, Jubair whispers: "Grand'ma, no, the spicy ones have the red labels...".
'Oh, silly me, must've forgotten," she says, and takes the red labelled ones, bringing them over and selling you what you want for a few credits.
On the changed subject, she smiles, and rubs her hand down the side of her head: "Those are just the last remnants of an old lady's past. Didn't always live here you know, I used to go places and do things and get in to many things. But all that's over for years". She smiles.
Jubair seems keen on hearing more, but shrugs when she stops.
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"My young days are of no interest to anyone!", says Ceren.
"Yes they ARE!", says Jubair.
Ceren shrugs: "Well, I used to like to explore. To check out people's... computer files and intranets and such. And I'd hate to bother them. So I'd... do it on my own, without people knowing."
"Grand'ma, you were a hacker?!", says Jubair.
Ceren shrugs: "Well, kind of, I guess, I... well, I liked cracking the hardest I.C.E.s and firewalls I could find". Looking back at you all: "But that was a long time ago. So, how many pots of spicy sauce?"
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Intrigued but the old women past, Nerro says Miss, I fear your old ways wasn't so old after all. We know for sure that someone hacked into the Bluerise Tower Network. If we - Starfinders- know, someone else in the tower must know too!
Please, try to remember anything unusual it could help you and your grandson.
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Torith is a little surprised to hear this kind old lady used to be a hacker in days gone by.
I too will grow old and maybe one day i too can retire. I wonder what I'll do to pass the time in my twilight years...
Torith stops daydreaming and joins Neroo in trying to convince the lady to help them. "It's certainly sounds too close to our investigation for this to only be a coincidence. Even the smallest detail could help."
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Kiv does not spot anything out of the ordinary: some vehicles go by, mainly truck-like flyers carrying various stuff ; and a couple people going home...
Inside, Ceren is adamant: she has not used her implants in years. She is sure the wireless set up would not even work anymore.
As you press her some more, she gets a little upset, and, to prove her point, moves to show you the memory banks are empty and wiped and--"Oh?" she says.
Looking at you, a bit embarrassed: "That's very odd: it's chockablock filled with data! How'd that get there? The Blue Towers? What's that? Who might coming? What did I do?"
Jubair looks up: "Told you you forget stuff, granny..."
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Ceren lost memory was more a liability to her and her grandson than a good addition to thé Starfinder. But Neroo can't let a granny and her harmless grandson be in danger after what she's done.
She says Quick! We must get out of here and get you to safety before anyone else finds you. Your best chance is to come with us to the Starfinder Society HQ.
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"Actually, we may need to hurry this up. Mind if I take a look?" Kiv barely waits for the chair to be empty before she starts in on the files. She downloads all the data from the Bluerise Tower Network. She also look for any other recent activity that Ceren may have unknowingly gotten into. Believing that wiping the whole system down would be suspicious, Kiv tries to leave all the mundane files intact. She also looks for any viruses, trojans, signs of remote access or some piece of technology that would allow Ceren's system to be used without her knowledge. Fingers clacking away, "I'm going as fast as I can. Give me a bit and I can tell you how much time I will actually need."
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Ceren steps back, and puts a hand on her data-jacks when Kiv comes close: "Wait a minute, wait a minute! I have to check what's in there first. And if you're right... wow! Okay, I do confess that not only was I a hacker in my earlier years—one of the best of the best in my field they said. However, old age brought on a degenerative brain disease, which forced me into retirement. Augmentations in my brain halted the damage and keep me functional, but I still have large lapses in memory and am no longer as capable as I once was."
Jubair nods: "See! I knew it!"
Ceren concludes that: "I must have slipped into a younger mindset, performed the hack, and forgotten about it. Since I cannot recall the circumstances, I am happy to go along with your idea and give you the files in exchange for you aid. But, this is waht I want. Since I am guilty of stealing from Bluerise Tower, it is only a matter of time before corporate security hunts me down. I have no realistic hope of evading agents in my current state. Even by hiding with the Starfinders. No, what I propose is that you help fake my death to get me out of the hot water I have landed myself in, and that you place Jubair under Society protection."
Then she smiles, and pumps her arms: "This is just like my younger days!"
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Kiv rests her hand on her hip, just above her pistol, for the slightest moment. Well, now that we know where the data is, we don't really need to 'fake' her death...Still, she may be a valuable asset until her time runs out.
"I don't suppose you have plan? This sounds like something your former self would have planned out."
Then a thought occurs to her! She whirls on Neroo "You're not live streaming this are you?
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Dead?! We can't ki... Oh!? Wait! May be we can erase you from the matrice? Find corpses to match more or less your body, falsify the DNA matches.
That could be fun!
Turning to Kiv, Neroo says with a genuine smile Oups...
Then with a bigger smile she adds Ney, don't worry, I've shut down the livestream since we meet with Historia-7. When in a mission I only record.
To her comrades she adds I know some Ysoki in the grounds where they put corpses to help the garden grows. We could asks them for two corpses.
Kiv and I could uses our computer skills to falsify the DNA records, and we could rig the place and burn it down to make like an accident?
That's sooooooooo like into an episode of SCIS Absalom!