Matt "Positron" Miller felt uneasy. He wasn't sure what had hit him, exactly, but he'd woken up at his development console in his private
office, a massive headache pounding at his temples and an hour missing from his memory.
And the Virtue server status icon blinking angrily at him from one of his displays. On the center panel, the City of Heroes login screen -- production
version, dev tools enabled -- stared back at him, informing him he'd lost his connection to the server. Which was ridiculous, they had a permanent link...
He jumped on the horn with the guys in California right away, snatching his not-often-used desk phone up and punching the 'red alert' button that
connected him directly with the Network Operations Center. No, they weren't sure what had happened; yes, they'd been trying to call him and the other
developers, but nobody was answering their cell phones; yes, the server hardware passed all its diagnostics, whatever it had been it seemed to be transient.
No, no clue what it was.
"Well, fire it back up, then," he sighed into the phone. "And someone call CS, we're going to have a flood of angry emails to deal with
tomorrow morning."
He hung up his desk phone and frowned. His team was dedicated and professional; they always answered their cell phones when the NOC was calling. He fumbled
his own out of his pocket -- or tried to. He didn't seem to have a pocket.
He glanced down and froze.
He didn't have a pocket because he wasn't wearing pants. Instead, he was wearing a suit of high-tech armor. Very familiar armor, and why
shouldn't it be? He'd designed and built it himself.
With a growing sense of wonder (and no small degree of fright), Positron held up one hand and watched as energy flickered into being above it.
"This could be ... interesting," he said aloud, staring at the green ball hovering placidly above his hand.
The better part of two days later, he was certain of two things:
One, this was the most incredible, fantastic, and generally awesome thing he'd ever heard of.
Two, they were going to be in a world of hurt -- legally, financially, and most likely personally -- if things weren't handled very carefully indeed.
After removing the armor and congratulating himself on having changed the storyline so that Posi could, indeed, function outside his armor without blowing
stuff up, some discreet inquiries had revealed that he wasn't the only developer affected. Based on that, he knew players had been affected as well.
There wasn't any direct proof, not yet, but he was a fan of wierd news and there was a LOT of it cropping up, from a mysterious sonic boom on Interstate
20, to reports of a kitten-in-a-tree being saved by Superman, and more.
And the gaming public seemed to have sensed it, somehow. Their higher-ups at NCSoft were ecstatic -- a tremendous spike in subscriptions, both renewals and
new sign-ups. The servers were groaning under the load -- more so than usual.
He knew that if he suggested pulling the plug -- which was his first instinct, admittedly -- he'd be shown the door in a heartbeat.
Fortunately, he -- or Positron, he wasn't sure if it was his brain or Posi's super-genius intellect at work here -- had another idea. He picked up his
phone and dialed a number he always dreaded seeing when it came up on his display.
"This is Miller. I need to speak to the head of Legal."
He drummed his fingers on his desk impatiently.
"Chris? Yeah, it's Matt. Listen. We've got a situation here that needs your expertise." He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
"You remember that billboard we based off of you in the game?"
The strike team was well-prepared and comprised of experts from various branches of the government. The FBI, of course; also the CIA. The NSA had sent a
quiet little man along who wore thin glasses and the tactical body armor with the ease of long practice. The BATF wanted in, but had drawn the short straw;
their men were the drivers, chafing at the bit and waiting impatiently in the large black SUVs in the parking lot. And the Army had sent along some forces as
well, currently holding in reserve a half-mile down the road.
They wanted this to be quiet, after all. It wasn't quite illegal -- an understanding judge had issued a search warrant, even if the siezure part they
planned was not covered by the document -- but it was definitely in the gray area.
Which was fine with these men. All of them were used to operating there.
The point man opened the door and stepped through boldly, standing to the side and holding the door as the others came through in rapid single file. The lobby
was empty, except for four men sitting comfortably on a large leather couch facing the front doors. These men rose as the strike team entered.
"We have a warrant--" their point man began, and the four men facing them smiled as one. One of them raised a hand calmly.
"We'll look at it in just a moment, if you please. Introductions are in order, I think. My name is Chris Jenkins; I'm the head of the legal
department here. To my right," he said, indicating a pleasant-looking man wearing a business suit, "is Mr. Smith, from the ACLU. To my left is Mr.
Jones, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And to his left," Jenkins said, his smile growing wider and more predatory, "is Senator Kelly.
I'm sure you know who he works for."
"Now what's this about a warrant?" the Senator boomed, raising an eyebrow.
From the secured server room, Positron watched the proceedings on a laptop hastily wired into the network and the closed-circuit cameras. He trusted the
lawyers and the Senator -- and what a stroke of luck THAT had been, discovering a senator that not only played the game but who had a vested interest in
keeping it safe -- to tie the whole matter up, to prevent anybody from seizing the data on the systems that could be used to identify affected players -- a
massive invasion of privacy by anyone's standards, but something he'd been afraid of ever since realizing what had happened -- or seizing the equipment
itself, to see how it had done whatever it was it had done.
But in case the legal stall didn't work... just in case...
He eyed the machines humming around him and sighed, hoping it wouldn't come to that. As Positron, he could blank the data on these things in a heartbeat.
He didn't want to, and he knew that that would be a stall at best -- the credit card users, at least, could still be tracked -- but it would be MUCH
harder.
It also meant at the very least he'd be out of a job.
However, it appeared the high-powered legal team Chris had assembled was doing the trick -- for now. The men were leaving, baffled looks on their faces and
reams of paperwork in their hands, while the legal eagles stood there looking smug.
Matt nodded and made a note to thank Chris directly, when he could. For now, he was staying put here. He had a cot in the corner and he could have food
delivered; until this was resolved, he wanted to make sure nobody could misuse the data he'd suddenly found himself the guardian of.
It was, he noted with some amusement, much like being back in Paragon City. His job was to stay put, to make sure that other heroes had their chance.
He could live with that.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
office, a massive headache pounding at his temples and an hour missing from his memory.
And the Virtue server status icon blinking angrily at him from one of his displays. On the center panel, the City of Heroes login screen -- production
version, dev tools enabled -- stared back at him, informing him he'd lost his connection to the server. Which was ridiculous, they had a permanent link...
He jumped on the horn with the guys in California right away, snatching his not-often-used desk phone up and punching the 'red alert' button that
connected him directly with the Network Operations Center. No, they weren't sure what had happened; yes, they'd been trying to call him and the other
developers, but nobody was answering their cell phones; yes, the server hardware passed all its diagnostics, whatever it had been it seemed to be transient.
No, no clue what it was.
"Well, fire it back up, then," he sighed into the phone. "And someone call CS, we're going to have a flood of angry emails to deal with
tomorrow morning."
He hung up his desk phone and frowned. His team was dedicated and professional; they always answered their cell phones when the NOC was calling. He fumbled
his own out of his pocket -- or tried to. He didn't seem to have a pocket.
He glanced down and froze.
He didn't have a pocket because he wasn't wearing pants. Instead, he was wearing a suit of high-tech armor. Very familiar armor, and why
shouldn't it be? He'd designed and built it himself.
With a growing sense of wonder (and no small degree of fright), Positron held up one hand and watched as energy flickered into being above it.
"This could be ... interesting," he said aloud, staring at the green ball hovering placidly above his hand.
The better part of two days later, he was certain of two things:
One, this was the most incredible, fantastic, and generally awesome thing he'd ever heard of.
Two, they were going to be in a world of hurt -- legally, financially, and most likely personally -- if things weren't handled very carefully indeed.
After removing the armor and congratulating himself on having changed the storyline so that Posi could, indeed, function outside his armor without blowing
stuff up, some discreet inquiries had revealed that he wasn't the only developer affected. Based on that, he knew players had been affected as well.
There wasn't any direct proof, not yet, but he was a fan of wierd news and there was a LOT of it cropping up, from a mysterious sonic boom on Interstate
20, to reports of a kitten-in-a-tree being saved by Superman, and more.
And the gaming public seemed to have sensed it, somehow. Their higher-ups at NCSoft were ecstatic -- a tremendous spike in subscriptions, both renewals and
new sign-ups. The servers were groaning under the load -- more so than usual.
He knew that if he suggested pulling the plug -- which was his first instinct, admittedly -- he'd be shown the door in a heartbeat.
Fortunately, he -- or Positron, he wasn't sure if it was his brain or Posi's super-genius intellect at work here -- had another idea. He picked up his
phone and dialed a number he always dreaded seeing when it came up on his display.
"This is Miller. I need to speak to the head of Legal."
He drummed his fingers on his desk impatiently.
"Chris? Yeah, it's Matt. Listen. We've got a situation here that needs your expertise." He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
"You remember that billboard we based off of you in the game?"
The strike team was well-prepared and comprised of experts from various branches of the government. The FBI, of course; also the CIA. The NSA had sent a
quiet little man along who wore thin glasses and the tactical body armor with the ease of long practice. The BATF wanted in, but had drawn the short straw;
their men were the drivers, chafing at the bit and waiting impatiently in the large black SUVs in the parking lot. And the Army had sent along some forces as
well, currently holding in reserve a half-mile down the road.
They wanted this to be quiet, after all. It wasn't quite illegal -- an understanding judge had issued a search warrant, even if the siezure part they
planned was not covered by the document -- but it was definitely in the gray area.
Which was fine with these men. All of them were used to operating there.
The point man opened the door and stepped through boldly, standing to the side and holding the door as the others came through in rapid single file. The lobby
was empty, except for four men sitting comfortably on a large leather couch facing the front doors. These men rose as the strike team entered.
"We have a warrant--" their point man began, and the four men facing them smiled as one. One of them raised a hand calmly.
"We'll look at it in just a moment, if you please. Introductions are in order, I think. My name is Chris Jenkins; I'm the head of the legal
department here. To my right," he said, indicating a pleasant-looking man wearing a business suit, "is Mr. Smith, from the ACLU. To my left is Mr.
Jones, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And to his left," Jenkins said, his smile growing wider and more predatory, "is Senator Kelly.
I'm sure you know who he works for."
"Now what's this about a warrant?" the Senator boomed, raising an eyebrow.
From the secured server room, Positron watched the proceedings on a laptop hastily wired into the network and the closed-circuit cameras. He trusted the
lawyers and the Senator -- and what a stroke of luck THAT had been, discovering a senator that not only played the game but who had a vested interest in
keeping it safe -- to tie the whole matter up, to prevent anybody from seizing the data on the systems that could be used to identify affected players -- a
massive invasion of privacy by anyone's standards, but something he'd been afraid of ever since realizing what had happened -- or seizing the equipment
itself, to see how it had done whatever it was it had done.
But in case the legal stall didn't work... just in case...
He eyed the machines humming around him and sighed, hoping it wouldn't come to that. As Positron, he could blank the data on these things in a heartbeat.
He didn't want to, and he knew that that would be a stall at best -- the credit card users, at least, could still be tracked -- but it would be MUCH
harder.
It also meant at the very least he'd be out of a job.
However, it appeared the high-powered legal team Chris had assembled was doing the trick -- for now. The men were leaving, baffled looks on their faces and
reams of paperwork in their hands, while the legal eagles stood there looking smug.
Matt nodded and made a note to thank Chris directly, when he could. For now, he was staying put here. He had a cot in the corner and he could have food
delivered; until this was resolved, he wanted to make sure nobody could misuse the data he'd suddenly found himself the guardian of.
It was, he noted with some amusement, much like being back in Paragon City. His job was to stay put, to make sure that other heroes had their chance.
He could live with that.
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs