Slot'n'scan, Chummers... Glass Paladin here with some pay data I'm NOT gonna charge for [GP waits for the gasps of astonishment to die down :-)] That's right, Mister Info-Broker himself''s NOT gonna dole this bit out in dribs and drabs and charge by the megapulse... because this seems, to me, like something I want as many of you out there to know as I can manage. So, here's the scat: I was coding a smart-frame sniffer, a proggy to nose around news items buried in the gigapulses released all over the 'trix each hour, find interesting patterns, and follow up on them, then report. In my first test run, I got a report, but when the sniffer went back out to follow up... it vanished. Now, anyone who can GET to Shadowland knows Smart Frames aren't exactly combat bots, so something icing a frame isn't a real big deal. BUT... it didn't just get iced, it VANISHED. Whoever iced it went to the trouble of erasing the frame's tracks. And that, to me, spelled paydata, so I started digging in persona, so to speak... and found a good bit more than I'd bargained for. No damage, but... well, see for yourselves.
All of us in the shadows have lost people at one point or another -- either it's what dropped us into here in the first place, or the daily dangerous dance with death took one of our friends or enemies down. In the shadows, Life and Death walk hand in hand... it's an old saw, but seems to be a bit more LITERALLY true than most of us thought. But Death isn't the end most people think. No, I haven't gone and gotten religion. Proof of the existence of ghosts has been around for over thirty years now. Thing is, as you'll see in this document, the spirits of the dead (or astral echoes of the dead, or whatEVERth'frag), are a lot more common than the buzz tends to say... and the magic to make 'em jump through hoops, and even draw power from them, is on the rise. I'm no Magician... only Wiz I pack is photons on the 'trix, but I've had several Magicians and Shamans of my acquaintance look over the technical drek, and... well, the talismonger who helped particularly with the Necromancy data dumped and destroyed about 10k worth of materials from her shop after she looked into it. So SHE takes it seriously enough... as usual, shadowdata has to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt, and if any of you knows more accurate or up to date data, chime in... but DO scan, Chummerinos -- the life you save may be MORE than your own. I know *I*'d hate t'die and have my ghost used to power up a Necromancer to toast my bud's...
Seeing as Shadowland's Decker Heaven, and most of us here aren't the dreks when it comes to Wiz-Bang, I thought it appropriate to start off with the slightly edited and annotated version of a paper recently presented at the Odun Symposium at The Zenshöan/Ueno Park Plasm Metaphysics Research Center. The Zenshöan center is part of the Impie Japanese effort to unify the "Cutting edge tech" image of Japan with the "Back To Our Traditional Roots" so lovingly touted by the new government... and like the Japanese Government investments in VR and AI research of last century, they went for it in a big way. Even back IN the 20th century, the Monastery located at Zenshöan was big on ghosts, holding the most complete collection of artwork and literature on Japans rich ghost-related folklore, so the Impie's had a major base to build on. So it's no surprise that the Zenshöan Research facility has had some startling and impressive results. For those of you who are STILL going "Yeah, yeah, but I grew out of ghost stories decades ago, bub... what's it to ME?", I'll note that when I dug through the ice to snag the phone records after this conference, I found that Rep's from Aztechnology, Shaiwase, Saeder-Krupp and Mitsuhama had been there alongside the eggheads from MITT and UDUB, and the Corp Reps racked up about 20 Gigapulses APIECE calling home to their Corp's Magical Research Departments... and all four departments got boosts to their research budgets of from 30 to 50 percent. So SOMETHING in the presentation seems to have hit the fan... but here, scan it yourselves:
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