Hands off My Database!

[Dabblez]

Planning to get an early start to catch up on her work, Dabblez set's off for the RUR offices at an ungody early hour. She opens the place up, turns on the lights, then grabs herself a cup of coffee. As she is about to boot up her Multivac Budget Mainframe, she notices that the entire RUR customer database has been ripped out. Not illegally copied, downloaded or even sabotaged, the actual, physical memory storage units of database had been torn out of their metal casings and were now missing.

Dabblez sips her coffee stares at the empty memory storage device in silence for a while. "Fine." is her only comment as she turns the lights off again heads back home to hide under her duvet for a little longer.

[Vixentrox]

Cathern was sitting in The Cup once again with her apprentice getting a report on the little spy job Rivenna had done on Shawnta, Cathern's sister. Barely had she begun giving her report when Cathern started getting a comm from a strangley named person. Armpitt, a representative of R.U.R, said he had a "book" for her. How strange Cathern thought...then remembered that the silly company hadn't sent her a cataloge yet. "Ah...that must be what this person is yammering on about." She thought it would be a good task for her apprentice to go get it for her. A quietly spoken order, and off Rivenna went.
Cathern thought...."Finally, I can get a R.U.R. robot for my guild engies to play around with."

[_______________Viray]

Viray was out in the field when the comm came to life... "Viray I have a job for you..." Vixentrox voice came through the din of battle clear and calm. "Sure, where too?" Viray managed to squeeze inbetween dodging incoming fire. "Come to the cliff, my usual spot..."

Excusing himself from his group and steping into his Yalm he made way for the nearest grid access to arrive as quickly as possible in West Athens.

"Toshiko has the item in question, need some enigneers to look at it. A large atrox named Armpitt from RUR gave it too me... said it was the book I ordered, but simply gave me a large chunk of plastic... if you will figure out what it is exactly... I haven't a clue what the atrox was talking about." Vixentrox finished with, "Oh and Ariekel will be there as well."

Viray made his way up the hill and found Toshiko and Ariekel sitting quietly on the hill. "Hello Viray, glad you could make it." spoke Toshiko softly. "Nice to meet you in person Viray!" Ariekel said. "Hello guys. What are we looking at tonite?" Ariekel handed Viray a large plastic looking board that had an assortment of chips, diodes, crystals, and wiring coming off it... "Look at the marks on it, rip right from the casing, not a bot though... maybe a large atrox?" said Ariekel. "Possibly... look at these chips here, data storage..." Viray added.

Slowly they went over the large chunk of silicon and finally decided it was part of a much larger database matrix, and had some of its own independant data on it.

"Well lets see whats on it..." Viray said. Taking out a screw driver and his Hack tool he opened a panel along the side and started making testing connections, when his hack tool finally flaired to life... "Wow... this is some interesting stuff." Ariekel stood behind Viray peering over his shoulder... they browsed through files containing lists of delivery schedules, part orders, various personal files, and some other schematic information. "Whats that?" Ariekel asked... "Dunno..." Viray brought up a strange file, not part of the system at all. "Lets put some more power to it..." He began to connect RustBucket (Viray's trusty Bot companion for life) to the chunk of data matrix. "Now lets see whats going on..."
Viray and Ariekel studied the display "Look at that, the file is on the move..." The strange file started to probed RustBuckets Analog systems looking for a way out to get out... Viray forced the file into an isolated memory buffer on the chunk of data matrix. "Its a virus of some kind... its trying to replicate and get out. What does it do... " a flash as holo projectors onboard the matrix flared to life to startingly a display... a rotating severed head with badly scribbled text beneath it reading 'We knowz were you live. Stop tha Machinez!' hung in the air... "My god... thats Dabbelz from RUR, this virus is carrying a dangerous message..." gasped Viray.

A moment later as Viray and Ariekel were studying the rest of the data matrix contents RustBucket began to spew horrible techno music... to an old song that seemed to be "Robots aren't made to be Jukeboxes"... Viray and Ariekel groaned together... "Must be the virus..." Viray spat as he removed the power connectors "thats enough of that..."

Viray copied the virus to the memory of his hack tool, "Here Ariekel you should carry that..." Viray took one last look at the display of the data storage, "Oh look... there are catalog files here too! Bet Vix would like one of those." He downloaded the Catalogs to a small NCU unit... "Humph. I wonder if Armpitt was trying to deliver the catalog she ordered... and brought her this chunk of data matrix... well I mean it does have the catalogs in it..." he said while placing the data matrix inside the chamber of his Quantum Physics tool and activating a static field "I'll tote this. Suppose we should wait til we see Vixentron again, let her dedcide what to do with all of this..." Viray noticed Ariekel wasn't listening to intently...as she had begun tinkering with the Hack tool... twisting dials, knobs, and pressing a quick series of buttons... "Uh... what are ya doin?" Viray asked nervously... "This virus is so silly... " Ariekel replied, "It's made to accomplish three things... One is to escape into the grid and saturate the entire thing with data... the Second is to display this message of ... Dabbelz you say? ... and the thrid... well I can't figure that one out yet but I will..." Ariekel continued to tweak the hack tool.

"Well just don't hook it up to nothing and we should be fine..." Viray replied as Ariekel continued probing the virus."Oh yes, would be a shame to connect to Omni facility to see what this thrid option is..." Ariekel finished with a chuckle.

"Yeah, that would be... bad." Viray said with a smile.

"Lets head out, we will catch up with Vixentrox tomorrow for sure, I know she will be happy to finally have a catalog. I'll see you as well, and like I said Ariekel... don't connect that to anything."

They parted and as Viray settled onto a windmill in West Athens he hoped that tomorrow he'd be able to warn RUR of the message they had discovered and hoped even more that Ariekel wasn't already near some Omni-Tek outpost with that hack tool in hand...

(( Let me just say that RUR has some fine GMs (thanx Bill)and great processes for story advancement without bottle necking the out-come or improv of involved RP players. Also the speech isn't verbatim as I didn't have any of my logs on, overall this is pretty accurate to detail.

Re-posted here to avoid confusion ))

[rheena]

Noholds was still redirecting the programing on Timmy's bot ,Barface, when suddenly the computer terminal died out.
''Whaa!?" the comfused Atrox programer exclaimed. He tried to
turn on the computer again. ''First i will wait for the dampers
to cool down.'' Then he pressed the on switch... nothing.
He went over to the data storage area and opened one of
the circuitry boards. ''The data storage fields are void@!?'' he
said.