Matrix Online: Chapter 10.1: Oligarchy
Matrix Online: Chapter 10.3: Checks and Balances
Mauser, who was freeborn and never had jacks, appears in the Matrix. He hops through unmarked hardlines, avoiding contact, saying to Zion only that he's working to win the war. The Merovingian seeds the storm between the Machine city and the no-fly zone in order to reestablish contact with the General. They find Oligarch network data flowing into the Ouroboros Corporation in Downtown. The Machines nearly isolate Mauser's signal, but are interrupted by the Morpheus simulacrum. Mauser steals data from the Merovingian, then disappears. Missile barrages devastate the General's forces in the no-fly zone, forcing him to retreat. EPN detects a small craft outbound from tunnels below the old city, heading north.
Colt reported to Zion that his old crewmate Mauser, thought to have been killed rescuing Lock from the destruction of Zion, had been seen in the Matrix. This was doubly surprising since Mauser never had jacks for entering the simulation. Zion picked up readings thought to be Mauser at several hardlines, and at an internet café, but did not locate the man himself.
With the departure of the intruders, the Machines resumed anti-Zion operations in the Matrix, disabling their computer systems, and interrupting coppertop awakenings. Some Machine operatives, however, encountered a large Zionite force headed by Niobe, who stated Zion's determination to resist offensives by the System.
Signals between the Matrix and the Machine no-fly zone becoming too weak to maintain communication with the General, Merovingian operatives inserted a program designed by Malphas into Bluepills around the city, with the intention of using the EEG wiring and human energy fields of people in the pods to create a wide broadcast array, but the signal generated proved insufficient to reach the General.
The Machines sent operatives to delete a small group of override programs remaining in Zia. The operation was complicated by the unexpected presence of Zion captain Niobe, enemy operatives, and nearby overridden Agent programs.
Cryptos led Cypherite operatives on an information-gathering mission against Zion strongholds, hoping to find out more about the mysterious broadcast signal picked up earlier by Zion in Richland. No pertinent information was found, and the Cypherites discussed the possibility of Zion themselves lacking further data, and of recent occurrences suggestive of a larger conspiracy.
Veil and her operatives infiltrated Zionite hovercraft to intercept a courier, capturing data, programs, and a copy of a message from Zion's Councillor Dillard to Commander Roland, telling Roland that ex-Commander Jason Lock was not due to be reinstated.
Merovingian operatives helped an operative named Medea gather information from broadcast towers in Downtown. The information was the final ingredient needed by Medea's crew to set up a new, more powerful communication relay to the General on the Earth's surface, but on the verge of completing the station, the crew was wiped out by Machine Sentinels.
Colt called for a sweep of hardlines across the city, hoping to find his old friend Mauser, who still had not contacted Zion. Mauser's signal was narrowed down to the vicinity of Mannsdale, where he was eventually seen heading for a hardline, but when he spotted the operatives around the phone booth, he made a dash for a pay phone down the street, and vanished.
Zion found that the line Mauser had escaped through was part of an old, pre-Truce Zion hardline network to which only certain operatives had been given access. Zion's current data on the network was incomplete, since some was lost when the Machines sacked Zion's mainframe, and it was also suspected that some areas of the network had never been documented.
After some difficulty in navigating the network, Zion operatives encountered Mauser, who, before exiting along a spliced restricted line, said only that he was working to win the war.Machine operatives worked with law-enforcement officials to investigate break-ins by the individual said to be Mauser. Evidence of computer tampering was found, leading to the discovery of a backup log showing that one of the tampered computers had been used to connect to a remote system via network tunneling using an unknown, encrypted protocol.
The Merovingian, needing to re-establish contact with the General, stranded on an investigative mission in the Machine no-fly zone 800 miles northwest of the Machine city, sent operatives to find a way to improve the communication link. Research indicated that cloud seeding of the mysterious, global storm, created early in the ManMachine war by a human project called "Operation Dark Storm," could possibly boost communication range through a weather phenomenon known as "tropospheric ducting." Specially-equipped commando Sentinels were dispatched to begin the seeding operation along the route to the no-fly zone.
Theresa Morton, a bluepill, helped E Pluribus Neo locate a phone line on the old restricted network in Downtown, near a terminal that had been hacked by Mauser, and investigated by the Machines. Zion operatives caused a distraction elsewhere in the city to keep the Machines away from Pluribus Neo during the investigation, but when EPN tried accessing the line, security quickly appeared on the scene in large numbers. Morton was taken into Machine custody.
Machine operatives fought to protect mechanic programs as they modified hardlines in Downtown to prevent access by Mauser's unusual broadcast signal. Strong resistance from Pluribus Neo and Zion operatives forced the Machines to send successive mechanic programs in order to complete the work.
Soon afterwards, Pluribus Neo operatives hunted for possible unmarked hardlines around the city, particularly in Downtown. Machine and some Merovingian operatives hindered the search, but it was hoped that the line location data gathered would lead to the mapping of more of the hidden network.
Merovingian operatives seeking more information on the "Dark Storm," with the goal of improving the tropospheric ducting project, located a program named CAR80N in One Zero. CAR80N, claiming to be a pre-war Zero One assembly line worker, proved to have very limited data on the storm and its origin, but gave what may have been a uniquely first-hand perspective of Machine attitudes at the time in which Operation Dark Storm was put into operation. CAR80N's reminiscence painted the picture of a peaceful Machine population forced into war by human jealousy that they did not understand.
Zion began the process of shutting down known sections of the old restricted access hardline system, now compromised by Mauser, and possibly under threat of scrutiny by the Machines. Progress along one of the branches came to a sudden halt when a Decelerator program, one of the intruder overrides, appeared nearby, its command routines scrambling the line.
The Machines began investigating the restricted line system, using data captured from Zion's old mainframe, as well as intelligence gathered by spying on Zion operatives, to determine that an unusual broadcast signal associated with the system - possibly Mauser's Matrix connection--was coming from the vicinity of old Zion.
With the tropospheric ducting effect of the seeded Dark Storm re-enabling communication with the General in the distant Machine no-fly zone, the Merovingian started looking for Machine links that would help unscramble complex data found in the strange network there. Data was obtained, but the General's comm link into the Matrix was severed just after he relayed a report of an incoming missile attack on his forces, from an unknown source.
Pluribus Neo helped the ex-Zion operative Grace work out some personal issues with her nemesis Ginjiro, leader of the Silver Dragon gang, in exchange for whatever she could tell them about Zion's old restricted hardline network. Grace showed EPN the phone line in Furihata that was her appointed emergency exit when she worked there for Zion, but said that she had never used it, and that Zion had informed her that the system was being shut down when the Truce with the Machines went into effect.
Merovingian operatives helped a commando program salvage flight data from the General's downed Sentinels in the no-fly zone. Retrieving the remains of their programs after these were returned to the Matrix by the commando, it was found that just before they were destroyed by missiles, some of the General's Sentinels had detected a distant ship matching the profile of the craft used by the intruders, Carlyne and Halborn.
Now able to access sections of the restricted line system, Zion operatives chased Mauser through unmarked lines across the city. They caught up to him several times, but he did little to acknowledge them, uttering only one sentence in Downtown, and ignoring his old crewmate, Colt, before vanishing through a phone near the Hel Club. A Runtime program appeared where he had been standing, bringing overridden Machine programs that attacked the assembled Zion operatives, and disabling the line Mauser had used to escape.
The Machines captured Pluribus Neo scanning stations on the surface above old Zion, and accessed their control interfaces inside the Matrix to begin using them to help pinpoint Mauser's broadcast. But, much to the surprise of both the Machines and Pluribus Neo, the scanning station network security systems, which had been disabled in the earlier Machine attack at the surface, suddenly re-engaged, forcing the Machines to give up the attempt.
Mauser's course through Zion's old restricted line system ran through Merovingian territory, causing problems for the Zionites tracking him, and for the Merovingian and his Exiles, who found themselves victims of the theft of the topographic data on the nofly zone they had stolen earlier from the Machines. The Machines, encountering an unexpected error message when trying to capture surface scan data from EPN computers, resort to the internet black market in order to obtain information on EPN's rescue of Jason Lock, in which Mauser, according to Lock's account, had been involved. Lock's account contained noteworthy discrepancies, however, not the least of which was that Sentinels were supposed to have killed Mauser, in spite of the fact that, according to the Machines, they had no Sentinels in that area at the time. After obtaining a copy of flight data from the EPN ship that had picked up Lock from the ruined building on the Earth's surface where he said he had been hidden by Mauser, the Machines realized that the building was the same lab where, roughly nine months earlier, they had found and killed Danielle Wright, whose connection to Zion's mainframe had then become the key to the Machine destruction of Zion's former city. Agent Gray suggested that Mauser, a highly skilled technician, may have salvaged Wright's technology from the ruined lab, which could explain some of his surprising capabilities in the simulation.
Pluribus Neo, following up overheard police reports of a person matching Mauser's general description in Westview, ran into dedicated Morpheus follower Joshua Maston, who said that police may have had Mauser confused with the Morpheus simulacrum, whom he had just encountered in the area.
A previously unknown operative contacted the faction Temet Nosce, asking for help in reclaiming his former life from a program the Machines had put in his place. His attempt to assassinate the program was brought to an abrupt end by Agent Griffin, who shot him dead, and explained to the operative whose cooperation he had hired that the assassination target was a real bluepill, and that the would-be killer was in fact an exiled program. The Temet Nosce operative was skeptical of the Agent's spin on the story.
Machinists helped guide a team of operatives on foot through the raging electrical storm at the Earth's surface, searching for the fugitive Mauser's broadcast location. The furious storm claimed victims among the surface team, but, guided by operatives analyzing the scans they returned of the area, they succeeded in locating a Zionite "lightning gun" firearm at the edge of a large chasm in the Earth's crust.
Ookami and Merovingian operatives followed Mauser's erratic trail across Downtown, fending off Mauser's former crewmate, Colt, who was also looking for the evasive former technician of The Hammer. The Merovingians found Mauser just as he jacked out in a far corner of Creston Heights.
Zion searched for whoever it was that was in Westview, Mauser or the Morpheus simulacrum, but found only an old disconnected phone line, Cypherites, and a cryptic message on a mysterious computer.
Pluribus Neo detected an unidentified small craft heading north from a deep tunnel location around old Zion. Searching the tunnels, they found a recently used site strewn with pieces of Sentinels and hovercraft. A terminal from one of the hovercraft was found to contain some data, which they set to work decoding.
The Machines located Mauser's RSI, and were moving to lock his signal, when the Morpheus Signal appeared in their scan control room, disrupting the procedure. By the time they could reinitialize the process, Mauser was nowhere to be found. The General, returning from the Machine no-fly zone, sent back all of the data he had pulled from the mysterious network line found there. The data was found to contain circa-1999 traditional human network headers. These were tracked by Merovingian oper tives to a private corporate provider, where they were ambushed by securityguards from the Ouroboros Corporation.
A bluepill named Gerald Croyden complained bitterly about the difficulties of moving and coming back to the city, but persevered to attend his son's high-school graduation.
Merovingian operatives pumped Ouroboros tour guide Judie Lahler for information in Club Janus in her off hours. Judie, who leads tours in Ouroboros' corporate headquarters in Creston Heights, indulged in a number of drinks, and seemed unhappy about her job, calling it boring and restrictive. She said that the things she had to tell tour guests about the corporation were just silly lies, that no real work was done there, and that nobody ever told her anything.
Cypherites found the Morpheus simulacrum in a church in Westview. The simulacrum admitted that it had intended to be disruptive in its sudden return, and made mention of the difficulty of achieving peace. The simulacrum directed the operatives to a nearby construction yard, where they found Pluribus Neo operatives in the act of using Code Pulse Devices. The Cypherites eliminated the operatives and defused the devices.
Pluribus Neo shut down the Matrix interfaces to their scanning equipment around Zion's old city, after finding the Machines attempting to hack into the interfaces once again. Shimada said that from now on they would have to rely on indirect communication with the scanning arrays in the Real.
Machinists tracked down a dangerous escaped Lupine, Vulg, and eliminated him. Their Exile informant, Rosaleen, startled by the sudden approach of one of the Twins, was killed by the trigger-happy Machine operative BlazinWolf.
Ghost and Zion operatives stopped a Machine attempt to hack a previously undiscovered section of Zion's old restricted-access hardline system in Park East. The Effectuator was caught by operatives while trying to gather information at Kalt Chemical Engineering in Kedemoth. Kalt herself appeared on the rooftop, warning the group of operatives to disperse. A strong security force appeared on the scene shortly thereafter.
A small group of operatives found Persephone musing at an old bookshelf in a hidden study in the chateau. A conversation about the nature of love followed, and Persephone invited operatives to write down their own love stories to share with others.
Operatives found Ghost standing quietly in Debir Court, near the bench where the Oracle was killed. Ghost and the operatives talked about the war and the views of the opposing sides. Ghost remarked upon Machine insistence on remaining emotionless, and wondered if humans had reason to fear that Machines might become better at feeling emotions than humans, whom they have already surpassed in industry and science.
Disguised Cypherites infiltrated a party held by the Merovingian at the Hel Club. The operatives, in the guise of Exiles, attempted to get the Frenchman to talk about his ambitions in investigating the Ouroboros Corporation, but his replies were light-hearted and insubstantial. Ookami appeared, examined several of the Cypherites, and unleashed an attack of Lupines that drove the operatives out of the club.
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