Chapter 5: "Uneasy Dreams"
Apr 20, 2015
Nero encounters an unexpected development in his moon computer's evolution, as his friends become increasingly concerned about his mental health. Meanwhile, Mbali Maxx and Barker hunt for the elusive shadowrunner in the dark corners of the Deep Web...
(Please see below for numbered footnotes.)
Luke Molver
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FOOTNOTES:
④
Like most urban environments of the late 21st century, Durban's drug scene is a veritable smorgasbord of mind and body modifiers. From prescription pharmaceuticals to streetside hits of Rattex, a twitching junkie can find whatever they need if they know which alleyway to walk down.
Smartknock pills, 'smartknox', or 'eskays' are prescription drugs, legally available only from the big pharmacorps, but can be 'unofficially' procured from pretty much any Nigerian in Durban's city centre. Eskays have the basic effect of temporarily increasing one's capacity for memory and learning... they makes you smarter.
However, like the effects of many intoxicants, what goes up... must come down. Chemical levels in the brain that are boosted by the pills plummet down with hundredfold ferocity. In local drug culture, the comedown after a binge on smartknox is affectionately known as 'the suicide crash'.
⑤
I.C.E (colloquially, 'Ice'), stands for Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics, and refers to security programs and firewalls which protect computerized data from being accessed by hackers.
Usually used simply as a barrier to prevent such access, there are forms of these countermeasure electronics which are far more dangerous, 'Black Ice' being the most feared and notorious. Developed by the military, black ice creates lethal feedback in the human nervous system, giving any hacker attempting to access such protected files a particularly fatal brain haemorrhage.
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South Africa, several years from now.
A techno-industrial dystopia, the sprawling megalopolis of Durban stretches across the country's east coast, breeding ground for a cosmopolitan cross-section of high-tech and low-life.
Lazarus Nero is a keyboard cowboy, one of millions of hackers earning their crust in the dark alleyways of cyberspace.
When Nero takes on a particularly lucrative programming contract from a major corporation, he does not realize that his actions are about to tear apart the fabric of reality...
A techno-industrial dystopia, the sprawling megalopolis of Durban stretches across the country's east coast, breeding ground for a cosmopolitan cross-section of high-tech and low-life.
Lazarus Nero is a keyboard cowboy, one of millions of hackers earning their crust in the dark alleyways of cyberspace.
When Nero takes on a particularly lucrative programming contract from a major corporation, he does not realize that his actions are about to tear apart the fabric of reality...
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