# TP4 - S3 - Sequences
40 Writing/Chasing The Rhino/TP4
Step Three
Fix and Hamelin shield Leon from the AI security with the assistance of Ms. Penumbra, who guides him through the restricted access. Leon’s glitches means he loses Princess during a fight and he takes a beating. When moving through a restricted area, he must give Ms. Penumbra total control of his mind to bypass security and the AI memory scan. He makes it through, but she now knows every secret. He also has serious reservations about his ability to maintain a connection to The Abstract.
Sequence One
Leon, Fix and Hamelin figure a way of using a rat to shield their biology from the AI, but he must be holding it. Leon hates rats. Leon, with Princess’s violent and chemical solutions, makes his way from the cells, although he struggles with his connection to The Real. His vision has a jade tint, and he sees memories that are not his own. Princess, with Ms. Penumbra’s encouragement, wants to cause some damage before she leaves, but Leon is focussed on making it to the inner chamber, where the expects to find him mother.
CDQ -
Will Leon make it to the inner chamber of ImpCorp to the machine that controls the connection to The Abstract?
Sequence Two
Leon moves through a building past thousands of workers, most of which access The Abstract. He passes a vial of Abstract fluid, and finds his conscious pulled to it. He loses sense of The Real and feels himself absorbed by it. When he returns to The Real, he is in a small room, with a security guard examining him, and the rat hidden in his clothes. By giving Princess control of his body, he is able to fight off the guard, but his fleeting connection means he takes a beating. He knows that he does not have much time before the unconscious guard wakes.
Sequence Three
Leon is confronted by a mind scanner at the inner chamber. He figures the only way to pass it is to exploit his intermittent fade outs from The Real and completely draw Ms. Penumbra into his mind, which will enable her complete access to his body and consciousness. He gains access, but Ms. Penumbra hesitates in leaving, asking him about his deceptions, his mother and his missing memories. He feels a great sense of vulnerability as he knows she will exploit what she has discovered.
CDQ Answer
Yes. He does get access to the chamber, but it has cost him dearly. Ms. Penumbra knows everything.
Character Arc
Leon goes from puzzled and hopeful once an apparent solution to being detected by AI security is found — to — feeling vulnerable, but resolved, in that the cost of his mind was worth entry to the chamber.
Moral Dilemma
Whether to let Ms. Penumbra into his mind in exchange for entry into the chamber. To let Ms. Penumbra to stoke Princess’s urges for destruction, and risking her being caught, to create a distraction that will draw security from him.
MS. Penumbra Sequence One
Sensing an opportunity to drive the illusionary Catholic plot against ImpCorp, Ms. Penumbra entices Princess to prepare to cause a disruption. She converses with Fix, Suunto and Jem about her transition problem, but they only have untested theories, using underworld tricker schemes. She can see how their ideas, conceptually, may work, but there is no practical solution as yet. On the closing of the call, she recieves notification that the first of the executions is underway.
CDQ -
Will Ms. Penumbra find a workable solution to avoid ImpCorp copying the sensitive information from her conscious as she transitions to The ImpVerse?
MS. Penumbra Sequence Two
Ms. Penumbra agrees to the team’s proposal and runs an algorithm that copies her secret memories and information to a Suunto controlled memory vault located in The Abstract. Somehow, the team will smuggle it to her in The ImpVerse. She also sets up a verbal trigger to painfully wipe the memories and information physically from her mind before her transition. She is vulnerable, exposed and must trust Suunto. She is angry and afraid, and lashes out, using Princess to attack the building. The building unexpectably shakes at its foundations, and she laughs.
CDQ Answer
Yes, but the solution involves trusting Suunto and her team to return her power to her after the transition. She has never had to trust so completely for decades, and it disturbs her.
Character Arc
Ms. Penumbra moves from energised and agitated — to — angry, afraid and carelessly blunt in her decisions.
Moral Dilemma
To trust Suunto and the team with the information and memories she uses to leverage power, when she has no guarantee, apart from Suunto’s word, that she will return it to her.
leon two WIth Ms. Penumbra’s help, Leon is able to move through ImpCorp, now past most of security. The building, although packed with employees, few are connected to The Real. The Abstract invades the Real again, and he completely loses his connection for a period: he is immersed in thick, mottled liquid, with little sense of his physical form, as his conscious is pulled in every direction. Leon returns to The Real, only to find he is being approached by security. He is unsure where he has walked to. They attempt to restrain him, and he has to rely on Princess controlling his body to free him, although he loses the connection to her at pivotal times and does complete her moves with her brutality, which delays the fight. He manages to hide the security guard from the security AI in the toilets, although he knows his presence will be missed and will likely wake soon, without Princess’s chemical aids to keep them knocked out.
leon three
Leon arrives at the chamber to find automated AI security. He has to pass a mind scan to gain access. It was not what he expected. He calls the team, but there are no solutions for a mind scan. He struggles for a solution before realising that he may be able to defeat the machine by exploiting his unstable link to The Real and drawing Ms. Penumbra into his mind as his own connection to The Real fades out . It is the last thing he wants to do, but there is no other way. By doing so, she will know everything that he knows, including everything about his relationship with the team. He calls Suunto, who tells him it is the last thing he wants to do. She will be the fox in the chicken coop - ’what’s a chicken coop?; she doesn’t know. He tries to slowly trigger the process, but it comes quickly to him and he struggles to return. He tries again and manages to hold himself partially from his body, but still be aware of it. The room around him turns to soup, and he feels a strong pull towards to the room past the mind scanner. He summons the Ms. Penumbra fully into him and she seeps it into his mind, pushing his own conscious dangerously to The Abstract. He senses his tether, already tenuous, slowly stretch further. He bundles himself at the end of it, and allows Ms. Penumra into his mind and letting her memories settle into him. His body becomes her. He enters the machine, and senses from the darkness of the soup, the invasive touch of the machine, but it passes over him and settles on the Ms. Penumbra. It follows his connection to the rat - he forgot about the rat! He senses it examining the rat, before the rat, under Hamelin’s control, dies or runs out of the area, or Ms. Penumbra kills it. The chamber opens. Ms. Penumbra hesitates before she leaves his mind, talking to him about what she has discovered there. She knows everything about him now. She has been in his mind and she loves it. She knows everything, including his desire to return his mother to The Real, and his desire to find his missing memories while helping her find what she needs.
mrs P one adn two
She offers Princess some fun though violence and she heartily agrees. She will not kill anyone - they are just stooges - but she is happy to cause some distruction for Keres. Ms. Penumbra considers her mad, but is more than willing to stoke the fire. She wants her to leave, but will guide her somewhere to collect some tools to make a noise from the outside. She needs security looking outside. And she wants her to act rather catholic when she does it. Princess tells her she is catholic - just a bit lapse on the whole peace and love bit, but still has a whole lot of guilt to use. Her violence will taste very catholic. Ms. Penumbra laughs and provides her with the knowledge she needs to exit the building.
Ms. Penumbra contacts Fix and explains her problem. He has no answers, but tells him he needs time. She tells him he has no time, and that she can make his time in The ImpVerse, and for Jem’s a lot more than they had ever hoped for. She can facilitate far greater rewards, and access to new experiences, and even ways of returning to The Real through mechanical implanting of their consicousness into a human body. They are only a few years away and it will be a reality. He is tempted, but concerned about the bodies. He says they aren’t used. They’ll be fresh ones, although it will be a way he can return to The Real to be with Jem. He accepts and says he will work with the team to figure it out. He contacts Suunot, Jem and Hamelin, who look at the problem in a different way. It is all about deception and locks. She wants him to hide a safe within a safe, so when they open her mind, they dont see the next safe. Or is it a case of misdirection? They need to fool the algorythm to copying what it thinks is her conscous as it transitions? Nope. It will follow the threads and find all of it. Jem suggests that the only way to do it, is to remove the contents of the safe before the lock is opened, but leave enough reward in there to make them think it has been successful. The team agrees, but they are unsure how to do it. Leon does it when he has a skin, but they will need a mechanical way of doing it.
At least they have a theory. They ask Ms. Penumbra to start considering what she does not want them to know, and if she can get her hands on a memory machine on short notice. She laughs. She has her memory stick on her.
She allows herself to feel a bit of hope, although she knows that it will be a tough ask. She considers her backup plan of wiping select aspects of her memory, like what she has on the executive members, and definitely the shadow bishop. There are so many things she will need to wipe.
Maybe she can set up a hidden aspect somewhere in The Abstract, and get someone to guide her to it? Or is this Fix’s solution for her. It then means she has a choice of accessing all her leverage and power, or returning to the idle and reliant girl she was with Emmet? She choses the power instead? The drive is still there.
The solution provided is that she can segment protions of her memory away that she does not want discovered and he will store them on the other side of the ImpVerse. When she is safely on the other side, he will contact her and smuggle it back to her. They have smuggled in information before. They will do it again.
She will not return to that innocent girl she once was because those memories and knowledge she has is gone. She will be confused, but ultimately, she is the result of the what she has done, even if she cannot remember what she has done.
She hooks herself up to the portable memory machine in her office and does the process she has done a thousand times before. She accesses her ‘second brain’ and allows it to blend with her own mind. There is so much she does not remember, and she finds the connection hard to maintain given her damanged brain. She knows that scanning her mind using the machine, and extracting the information that will expose her disloyalty to ImpCorp, and her contacts throughout the world will take a lot of time. She sets a word that will allow her to wipe those moments from her conscious - something that she would never speak out loud to anyone - love or mercy or emmet, or i love you. Something meaningful only to her that she would never say again. She will say it just before her transition and it will trigger a mechanism that will shatter the links to the memories. With such a large selection of memories, she knows it will hurt a great deal. But her life has been pain for the past two decades. What is one last burst of it before she never feels her body again? And if they fail to find a way to transfer it all, then she will have to exist without it all. The thought disturbs her. She has to pin her hopes on Suunto again.
She withdraws to copy her memories to a vault set up by Suunto, and uploads information from her second brain, the one used to record the memories she has been unable to hold in her decaying mind. As an added measure, she sets a code word to electrify the neurons connecting her body to the thoughts, so there can be no retrieving them in The Real after her transition. She has used the technique herself before and will not be caught again.
- Hook up to machine, copy the memories over to a virtual place on she has access to, when she has transitioned, a timer in The Real will send a way to access it to Suunto, and she will transfer it back to her by smuggling it into The Abstract. In theory, at least.
The deletion of her memories is to be triggered by saying a line from a song her father used to sing: ‘This time round. This time round. I’m gonna get it right. This time round.’ doesnt quite feel right. too easy? how to layer it with a bit more memory?
She contacts her money dealer and tells her to arrange the transfer of the total funds into Suunto’s account and wipe the record of it, only if she gives her authority to, verbally, or via an Abstract channel. She gives him a password she will say to authorise the transfer.
Created:
Tags: #template #sequence
Links: Chasing The Rhino Masterlist