Awakening Apocalypse - Chapter 2: The End of the Beginning

Skinny pores through the data in an old-fashioned, familiar way. The first file that catches his eye is a budget report for Crash Test Industries 4th quarter. It isn't public information yet, so Aleksander must have paid someone for it (or stolen it) from the inside. The file reads like a ledger, boring and straightforward, with occasional notes written in a different hand, in red ink on the margins. One header reads "Asset protection - POW!" One of the lines under this heading reads "autonomous mechanisms - 200,000". In the margin is a long handwritten note. 15 Doberman drones/3 squads of 5/one human guard per squad. Non-lethal ammo. Programmed to switch to lethal after suffering first casualty.

A hotlink has been added to the handwritten description, which leads to the General Motors website description of the Doberman drone. It was advertised as the latest and greatest in autonomous security, but Skinny isn't too concerned. He has already seen demonstration videos of these things in action, and the "autonomous" part of their description seems almost like false advertising. The Doberman drone can hardly tell the difference between friend or foe, let alone react as quickly and decisively as a living security guard could. The cost seems particularly high for fifteen of these drones, though. Maybe the price tag also accounts for the salary and equipment for the guard in each of the three squads?

Delving further into the info, Skinny finds blueprints and maps of the entire Crash Test Industries campus. He's not particularly well equipped to read these files in depth, but he can understand the general layout just fine. The place takes up a city block in the Denver business district. Much of the space is dedicated to an impressive open-air market along the front of the west-facing building facade. There is a public entrance from the market (made up of individual entrepreneurs selling various sports-related items, with a cut of the profit going toward CTI) to the main campus building. Skinny has seen this area before. It's always very busy with shoppers, equipment demonstrations, CTI employees, and general pedestrian traffic.

There is another public entrance, near the northwest corner of the building. This entrance leads to two pedestrian bridges crossing Broadway to the west, and 19th to the north. According to the blueprints, there is a service "back of house" entrance to the east of the building, leading to restricted areas for employees only. Interestingly, there are also some emergency exits leading out of the main building from the north side. The exits were hidden from view by elaborate hedging. Skinny couldn't tell for sure, but it seemed like the emergency exits led to stairways and back hallways all over the campus, going to restricted and public areas alike. Too bad they're locked, to only allow exit traffic...

Opening other files reveals a vague outline of the press conference schedule. The inside informant clearly did not have as much access to this information as he does for blueprints and accounting budgets. The schedule is handwritten in the same red script as the accounting margins, and most of the lines have question marks after them. The location and time are listed as CTI Showroom, 3pm, 11th Dec, 2011 Further notes indicate that Daphne will introduce POW!, finally revealing it at 3:15, after which enough POW! would be distributed to serve the entire audience (750 total expected people). CTI appears to be taking a risk, allowing independent journalists to live-feed the event. Crash Test Industries must be quite confident that their product will be well received...

Saint gives Aleksander and the others a nod,

"I look forward to meeting you all tomorrow."

He disconnects from the call and immediately goes to work deciphering the mass amounts of information that was now appearing on the blank wall in front of him. He's currently sitting at a desk in his converted office in his home. All the walls would appear blank to anyone but him, his cyber eyes allowing him to see and interact with the files. He reaches up and taps on a folder, that opens up with more folders, dragging them out and throwing information he finds irrelevant against the far wall.

An alert pops up informing him of an incoming message, a small portrait of a blonde girl, in her 20's appears with the alert.

Hey bro, I'm in a bit of a bind, could use some cash, I promise I'll pay you back this time.

The girl, Melody, was his sister, and an increasing pain in his a**. She means well, but she seems to always find herself in situations that required him to get involved, and more than occasionally she occupies his couch when she isn't out partying. He sighs and throws the alert in an appearingly empty trashcan beside his desk and continues combing through the files.

TillForPie said:

Skinny holds the oxygen mask to his mouth as he examines the blueprints. He clicks out of the files and pulls up a public satellite-view map of the area, scoping out the properties surrounding the campus. He's looking in particular for tall buildings that might provide a vantage with a good view into the market.

Click to expand...

The market is on street level, and can be easily seen from the two buildings directly to the west of the CTI campus. The southern of these two buildings is a Bank of Colorado corporate building, about 20 stories tall. North of this is a generic office building, about 15 stories. There are some medical and dental offices, along with tax attorneys, a jazz club, and various other small-time businesses all renting space out of the building. Either place would have a great view of the CTI street level market, if he were somehow able to find a quiet, undisturbed vantage point.

Rubberneck said:

Saint gives Aleksander and the others a nod,

"I look forward to meeting you all tomorrow."

He disconnects from the call and immediately goes to work deciphering the mass amounts of information that was now appearing on the blank wall in front of him. He's currently sitting at a desk in his converted office in his home. All the walls would appear blank to anyone but him, his cyber eyes allowing him to see and interact with the files. He reaches up and taps on a folder, that opens up with more folders, dragging them out and throwing information he finds irrelevant against the far wall.

An alert pops up informing him of an incoming message, a small portrait of a blonde girl, in her 20's appears with the alert.

Hey bro, I'm in a bit of a bind, could use some cash, I promise I'll pay you back this time.

The girl, Melody, was his sister, and an increasing pain in his a**. She means well, but she seems to always find herself in situations that required him to get involved, and more than occasionally she occupies his couch when she isn't out partying. He sighs and throws the alert in an appearingly empty trashcan beside his desk and continues combing through the files.

Click to expand...

Saint is more easily able to access the CTI blueprints from Aleksander's files than Skinny is. He experiences the data in a more pure way, as if watching a movie where he could control the action. Saint finds that he can access most areas of the building virtually, although some of the more restricted areas are impossible to see past. The areas are all blank and gray, and there are no details about what actually happens in any of these areas, or what the restricted rooms are for. He can see a pretty impressive model of the CTI Showroom, and is mildly surprised to see that 750 people wont even begin to fill the room. The place is more of a theater than a press room, and Saint is quite certain that it is capable of holding thousands of people. Of particular note is a balcony level overlooking the stage. One emergency exit leads directly from the balcony to the north side of the building, where Saint discovers the same hedging that Skinny has already found.

Melody's message interrupts his search, but only momentarily. Saint discards her message, and continues virtually exploring the campus.

It seems like only a moment has gone by when Saint hears a loud thumping on his door. "Bro!" A female voice calls from the other side. "C'mon, bro! Let me in!" Saint glances at the time, and realizes that Melody's message is now over two hours old.

And even worse; she's drunk.

TillForPie said:

Skinny searches for commercial rent listings, hoping to find a vacancy on the eastern side of the office building. The higher the better.

Click to expand...

This search is an extended (short), easy (threshold 6) test using the Computer skill. Skinny defaults to his Logic (4) rating for this test. After four intervals, Skinny has earned only 3 successes, and fails the test. He cannot find any information on the Matrix regarding which offices are vacant. He finds only a number for the office management company, along with the message, "office rental information by appointment only." It makes sense that the information would be difficult to find, as the building probably wants to discourage squatters.

Skinny has, however, discovered that the jazz club takes the entire fourth floor of the building, and boasts of 360 degree views.

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Casper's icon nodded solemnly and dissolved into mist as it vanished. The real world unfolded from the little picture-in-picture frame it had collapsed into while she was in the session and took center stage again. She was in seated at a bench near the fountain in some memorial park or another...she wasn't entirely sure of the name. It wasn't her neighborhood. She didn't do business anywhere near where she slept. The fountain was burbling merrily, oblivious to the graffiti and obscene carvings that had been dug into its well-weathered sides. Augmented reality objects, AROs, danced along the rim of it, offering information and links to the generous philanthropists and corporate sponsors who now kept the park maintained, and their fine products. They didn't superimpose well over the homeless man sleeping fitfully on the hard stone though.

She reached up to her sunglasses and brushed her thumb over a tiny catch in the frame, powering them down and making them just regular sunglasses. It was possible to just turn off the AR mode, leaving the reactive polarization filtering on, but it felt nice sometimes to just have quiet, dark lenses that didn't constantly adjust to light levels or try to show you things that weren't there. Casper didn't hate technology, but she appreciated the 'off' switch very much.

Right on cue, her commlink chimed. Since her glasses were off, that was all it could do. It was all right though, she knew what it was. Time to go.

It was nearly an hour later before she got back to apartment. A fair walk to the tram station, and she didn't do busses unless there wasn't a choice. Walking was good. There was no hurry...she'd given herself time. Her glasses gave off a brief hum as she turned them back on...she had layers of spam filters on her apartment's little corner of the Matrix...and started to review the information as she changed clothes. A brief break for a shower and a quick meal, then dressed in another, slightly nicer outfit and headed out for the tram.

She spent the trip in silence, her eyes flicking around behind the dark lenses to control pages of content. Ideas flowed quickly.

Five drones per operator is too many. Easy to flood with false hits, distract and confuse. We could trick the drones into misfiring if we have a decent decker on board. Shouldn't be able to stop us even if we don't though. Seven-fifty feels low for the venue though. Interesting...hand-picked audience maybe. Camera angles to make it look packed. Wonder if we can get a crack at the guest list and maybe throw a few extra names in there.

She took a moment to push the glasses down her nose far enough to peer over their rims; striking dark brown eyes on a mocha brown face. The guy across from her was leering rather openly. A moment of observation convinced her he was drunk though, and probably no threat. The weight of the taser up her right sleeve was a comfort though, regardless.

Back to the data. The blueprints were golden. Service entry was good, but there was only one so there'd be eyes on it. Not a dealbreaker, but something to keep in mind. Emergency exits were intriguing. She liked that the idiots tried to obscure them. It was MUCH easier to try to break into a place that obligingly covered its doors with shrubbery. And even if the doors couldn't be opened from the outside, there were always ways to get them to open from the inside. Creativity was all that was required.

The schedule...too unreliable, Casper decided. The 3:00 timeframe was plausible, but they'd be fools to depend on it. This would need a lot of snooping and intel-gathering to nail down. They'd need plenty of time. Ideally they could beat CTI to the area entirely so the setup could be observed.

So. Try to hack or fool the drones into firing gelpacks into the crowd.
Find where they're keeping all that POW and sabotage it.
Get hostile plants into the crowd maybe and screw up their messaging? Eh, weak sauce. Scratch that.
Pick the locks or hack the building to simulate an emergency so people leave, and I can slip in. Once inside I can let the others in. From there, maybe we'll be able to get more ideas.

Satisfied, Casper switched the AR off. Her commlink told a white lie about her identity being Artemis Foster. She wondered how long it would last before it had to be changed again. 7,500 nuyen seemed like a lot, but buying a new ID, paying rent, and food and... Well, it added up.

And it didn't help that her other job was volunteer work.

She chuckled at herself as the tram stopped, and she got to her feet. People crowded towards the exit, and of course...she felt a hand from behind copping a feel. Oh, she knew who that was...yes she did. Two could play that game.

Without looking, or seeming to react, she reached her hand back until she brushed the groper's arm. A quick set of wrist motions triggered the mechanism hidden up her jacket that sent her taser into her hand. A small weapon, it was easy to tuck up and fire straight into that arm. Then...as quickly as it appeared...it zooped back under her sleeve.

There was a yelp behind her, and a collective gasp from surrounding people as some drunk guy suddenly freaked out and threw himself backwards.

Casper, above the fray, walked out and never looked back.

[sblock=Because I am too lazy to have a very good self-description in my post] [/sblock]

[sblock=For Mosier]Is there some kind of shelter or something that offers services for Amerindians in Denver? If so, she does volunteer work there. If not, then a less specific homeless shelter type deal will do. [/sblock]