Infinity, progress from Arasaka

Internal Cyber ​​Security Section under the Security Department.

drop.

The automatic door opened, "Manager Vera." The Arasaka hacker bowed when he saw Vera.

"Yes, security repeater." Vera nodded, then found a seat to sit down as if she was familiar with the place and waved.

The customer service representative who was not wearing black was lying in the data cabin. The employee who was an administrative staff of Arasaka hackers smiled bitterly and said, "Supervisor, you... Hey, take it easy." Then he handed Vera a repeater that looked like a tablet computer.

This thing is equivalent to a layer of protection. Compared with directly plugging in a personal connection line, even if a hacker follows the clues to find your location and someone uploads a puppet attack virus to counter it, it is only the repeater that will be burned instead of the user's brain.

Arasaka wears shoes, so naturally he has this kind of thing.

Vera wouldn't be like a fool and connect her brain-computer directly to external objects.

Concave lines appeared on her fair skin. Vera pulled out the personal connection line from the end of her palm, connected it to the security repeater, leaned against the sofa, and closed her eyes.

"Connect to the old network. Wake me up at 12 a.m."

"Yes."

From Vera's perspective, after the spreading darkness, a faint light appeared. In the dark space, blue and white data fluid floated, densely packed and arranged in a neat matrix, faintly arranging a straight path forward.

In the endless distance, there is a dim and flickering glare.

There--

It's cyberspace.

"Then, let's start 'exercise'."

------

PS: Has been recommended for the next issue.

Thank you again for your support and votingφ(゜▽゜*)?

Chapter 009 Cyberspace and Wei-style "exercise"

Cyberspace.

Simply put, it can be regarded as the Internet space that was once open source.

Why do I say once? Because it was blown up.

This is why cyberspace is also called the old web.

A data matrix of numerous fluorescent green, blue-white, and deep red gradient 1s and 0s formed a place that looked like a visible space. Using this as the foothold of digitized consciousness, Vera gazed at the dim data world outside the Arasaka security network program.

Chaotic and disorderly, deformed and chaotic.

Here, Vera could even see the boundaries that separated the major network domains, the company LAN firewalls of Arasaka, Junke, and Kanto, as well as... the wall that separated the old network.

A red and black wall built with astronomical solidified information density, security defense procedures, and intrusion countermeasure units.

The "black wall" established by Internet monitoring agencies.

Compared to the "black wall" and the old network that blocked it, the Night City LAN that Arasaka spent decades building is nothing compared to it.

Prosthetics are external manifestations, and cyberspace is the true inner world of the cyber world.

"Humph, Lucky Bartmos, you're such a good-hearted bastard."

After cursing the instigator of the Internet "big crash" incident more than 50 years ago, Vera skillfully lowered the speed of her own thinking data calculations, allowing her data flow to gradually become smoother from chaos.

Lucky Batmos.

A legendary figure in the Internet field more than 50 years ago, the most awesome hacker, the best of the best, was hailed by some deep hacking enthusiasts as the hacker god who has never been defeated on the Internet.

Before his death, he released Rabids, a super virus that destroyed the Internet, which was already in tatters due to the Fourth Corporate War.

The old network fell apart, dissolving like ice cream on a fire.

It was called the "Great Internet Crash".

The Dow Jones Index fell hundreds of points in just one hour. The stock market collapsed in an instant. The whole world was wailing. CEOs of major companies even committed suicide. Internet surveillance and major companies including Arasaka tried their best but could only salvage a few fragments.

At the same time, a large number of AIs are out of control, and malicious AIs are proliferating and spreading. In order to prevent everyone's brains from getting burned out as soon as they go online, the Internet Procuratorate has created a "black wall" to isolate and completely cut off the Internet.

Nowadays, Night City is a local area network, and Arasaka and Military Science also use their own local area networks.

Before Bartmos's "Internet Crash," the world was covered with the Internet, and everything from unencrypted public documents to the most sophisticated encrypted corporate secrets could be sent and stored on the Internet.

After the "Great Internet Crash", the Internet became an isolated island of algorithms and codes, separated and controlled by different companies, governments, and gangs.

'Bartmos, you son of a bitch!'

Perhaps at first, the public was happy to see the Internet crash, because they could see the rich and powerful people suffering from the disaster, and most people praised the God of Hackers.

But when the initial chaos passed, the consequences of the disappearance of the Internet made the public realize that if they want to go online now, they can only rely on companies and accept the control of the companies, without the power or ability to choose.

Naturally, more and more people cursed Bartmos, except for the most senior marginal walkers.

As for Vera, as a company dog, curse her!

...

Soon, a data-mimicking image of a tall and well-proportioned woman stabilized and was projected into Arasaka's cyberspace.

It is much like a specialized cyber hacker who, after using deep-diving equipment, transforms into a supercomputer and accesses cyberspace like data projected by a computer.

Deep-diving equipment refers to cyber plug-ins and a series of maintenance devices designed to access the network as deeply as possible and obtain higher data transmission rates.

The biggest difference is that Vera Ximing did not connect herself, she entered through transit.

It is the type most despised by old-school netizens and street hackers.

Also because of "outsourcing", Vera's data transmission efficiency is low, but it doesn't matter. If the efficiency is not enough, the top-notch products can make up for it.

As long as you use high-end products, it is not difficult to outpower those poor people on the street.

With the support of Arasaka's almost top-notch supporting facilities, and assisted by a dedicated channel that was programmed and stabilized by countless skilled Arasaka networkers in the process of collecting data from the deep web over the years, Vera easily reached the deepest part of cyberspace that normal humans can currently reach safely.

In other words, the company is at the forefront of the state of the art in safely exploring cyberspace.

After swimming out of the network security zone built by Arasaka, Vera continued to sneak in, and the "black wall" did not respond.

When she approached the "black wall", she could already see the post-nuclear doomsday data wasteland outside the wall.

A place where many precious relics and secrets of the old cyber world are buried.

Arasaka and all the companies in the world suffered heavy losses in the collapse of the old network. Countless valuable data were lost and technology regressed. For deep dives like this, lone wolf hackers from street gangs mostly do it for excitement, while corporate hackers infiltrate to discover and rescue assets.

The kind that also grabs the assets of peers.

Cyberarchaeology.

As far as Vera knew, there were many institutions in Arasaka that accepted volunteers, selected social orphans, and trained them to become deep-dive hackers.

Once they reach a certain hacker level, they will be forced to mine old network data. It is not uncommon for them to be attacked and killed by brutal roaming AI in the process.

Vera has read many sealed case files of the company. Among them, there was a training institution that was killed by the "supply hacker" it trained due to lax management. This incident was studied as a typical case of management loopholes and used as a warning.

Vera sneaked in along the route of her last 'exercise' and soon saw a stream of scarlet data flowing in disorder.

A roaming AI.

[Warning: Out-of-control artificial intelligence is approaching, hostility is at the highest level, it is recommended to evade immediately. ]

"Yo, here we come."

Vera showed an expression as if she had seen the big baby.

"Zizzizi..."

The moment the scarlet data ball sensed Vera, it began to wriggle violently like a flowing thick watercolor painting. It was a robot, a mixture of animals, a sex doll, and an indescribable deformed tentacle...

It seemed as if it was twisting and roaring silently. The next moment, it transformed into a huge red and black wave formed by a huge amount of chaotic data, covering Vera's data mimicry image.

Corrupted data flow and network virus intrusion.

"Zizzizi..."

In the chaotic data storage chain of AI, it vaguely remembers having done this many times.

Every time this happens, these humans who are not of the same species... Huh? Why do I know they are called humans? Never mind, it doesn't matter. At this time, they will either howl, melt, explode, or disappear and flee in the blink of an eye...

Huh? Why didn't this person run away or explode?

The unstable intelligence of the roaming AI creates doubts.

"The strength is poor, the power is not enough."

In the red and black data storm of 0s and 1s, Vera smiled and waved gently to the wandering AI.

The roaming AI continued to run wild instinctively, wanting to destroy, crush, and assimilate the human data mimicry in front of it, but——

"Zi-"

A sharp feeling of incapacity came over it.

It found that it could not control the data in front of it. There was a dark hole flashing deep in the human data mimicry. It had no idea what cold or heat was, but it felt that an incomparably cold entity was pulling at its intelligence, corroding and eroding it, crushing and assimilating all its components.

The roving AI collapsed.

Vera opened her eyes, and an indescribable emotion surged into her heart, a filling pleasure, excitement from the spirit, joy from the soul, and panic or excitement of consciousness.

"I think I'm still a human being."

Vera whispered.

I think it’s okay.

When a person is killed, he or she will die. In reality, if she is shot in the head, she will definitely die, so, she is still a human being.

Vera is well aware that she is lucky, not invincible.

For her, the "black wall" outside which is difficult for ordinary people to survive and must be entered with great caution is a treasure land.

But it cannot be said that it has no impact.

She is nothing more than a mortal with a strength and resistance far superior to that of ordinary people in abstract concepts such as thinking, consciousness, and soul. The potential brought by the "God's gift" of time travel cannot be realized and is ultimately just potential.

One must be cautious in seeking fulfillment and transformation, and the process of diving into cyberspace and digging deep into the old network is the most suitable means of "training" that Vera has found. The protection of the security repeater allows her to have no worries about her life and property.

"If we want to devour the entire old network... well, we should not aim too high, but take it one step at a time."

Vera turned her attention back and looked at the ruins of the old network data in front of her with great interest. Just like controlling a game character to find a hostile NPC, she greedily but restrainedly considered the issue of killing the AI ​​and competing with the AI ​​in data stream attacks to gain "experience points".

...

Cyberspace, outside the "black wall".

In the data wasteland filled with damaged electronic warfare units and wandering AI, a woman slowly appeared, outlined, and shaped in the form of scarlet data of 0s and 1s. It was an image of a naked woman with long hair, and it looked in the direction of Vera.

Search for...Compare...

"Arasaka..."

...

2074/5/28，00/00。

Arasaka Tower, Internal Network Security Section of the Security Department.

The vision is restored to brightness and captures the colors and light of the real world.

Vera felt clear-headed, but as if to act tired, she rubbed her brows and stood up from the sofa. The connection terminal between her personal line and the security repeater was connected, and the polite and formal voice of the Arasaka administrative hacker came to her ears.

"Director Vera, the dive time is over."

"Yeah. Thank you."

Vera responded politely, rubbing the root of her nose and turning her head away. She looked at the hacker who was holding the hot repeater with emotion and smiled calmly, "It seems that my skills have improved significantly. This time, it didn't get burned."

"...It's very dangerous outside the Black Wall, Director Vera. The repeater was burned by the roving AI attack. Even with the protection of the security program, the pressure on the brain nerves is still huge."

The hacker leader stressed in a responsible manner.

Vera was well aware of this.

Even if the Arasaka hackers who sneaked into the old network to dig are protected by security programs, when they are awakened by the attack of the roaming AI, they are mostly in a daze, bleeding from the mouth and nose, and need to rest and recuperate for a period of time before they can recover.