General Summary

Fiana and Idra

an eSports Love Story

(or the 127 versions of the Yellow Sign)

-- BYTE

Journal Entry 2048.09.06

https://www.worldanvil.com/w/sg2048-andante/a/byte-articleThey came for me. I knew they would come for me sooner or later but never did I expect them to come for me at my place of work.
It was a late morning like any other workday morning. I show up for work at 0700 hrs, biometrics registers my presence at work and I proceed to catch up on 2hrs and 30mins of sleep in one of the many cabinets whose contents I had removed and converted into a standing coffin like bed. Dracula would be proud.
My department, such as it is, was created in the late 2000s, as a 2 years inter-departmental joint project for statistical analysis and data reconfiguration for the information that flows between the middle office and the back office. They were given a staff strength of 5 including a VP to oversee the temporary department and they were tasked to produce a number of reports which went into the Annual Big Book of Numbers. Real Important Stuff. Through some corporate magic the ‘project’ never ended and now some 40 years later it still exists and I have been working here for the past 4 years.
My responsibilities are mainly to move data from myriad outdated systems (including two Windows 2000 servers and IBM 360) and input them into some relatively newer systems. And oh yes show up for the occasional meeting with my line manager. I don’t work with anyone else and if there is anyone else who works in SADR I have never met them. I have long since automated pretty much all my work and use my work hours to catch up on sleep and jerk off to the voyeur cam on the 23rd floor. OL No. 3 gets my monkey every time.
So on this particular late morning, I was deep into REM sleep when my internal alarm goes off. Someone at work is paging me. Groggily I checked the log. Shit, Carol from HR. She would be my greatest nemesis except sweet Carol is dumb as a log. I try to make myself as uninteresting to HR as possible. No complains and definitely no commendations. A solid and very average 3.5 for my evals.
I stumbled out of my cabinet, stole out of the danky room, grab a stimulant and made my way to meeting room TCJ. I was starting to feel human just as I opened the door to the room and walked in on Carol with 2 CB suits.
I said they came for me. Not quite I suppose. They came to ask me some questions. Introductions were made, my heart was pounding 200 beats per minute, either from the stimulant or from fear, probably both. I planted my ass down on the chair beside Carol just to stop shitting myself, leaned back and tried to look casual.
The questions came, where was I on this day and this time blah blah; I did my best to look like I don’t remember and checked my clark kent log. Gave them my alibi after ‘looking it up’, Flick them the details making sure Carol got a copy too. They didn’t buy it, I could see it in their eyes. They kept asking questions, trying to trip me. At this point, my heart about to burst, I turned to Carol and gave her my best ‘hey buddy, we are on the same team look’, and said something like,’Carol, what’s going on, I answered the questions of these Con-Boe suits and they are making me real uncomfortable. Should we get CorpLaw down here?’
That did the trick. I don’t know how CB managed to wrangle an interview with a Temasek employee on Temasek grounds, and I am sure at that moment a few red flags at Temasek has gone up with my name on it, but Carol knew this meeting was an extension of courtesy to CB. She told them off as nicely as she could and started to quote a series of protocols CB will need to follow if they want to take up any more of Temasek and Temasek employees time. Good ole Carol.
The CBs left. I am pretty sure they knew they weren’t going to get me to spill anything so the meeting must have been to rattle me and hope I make a mistake.
Well, I was rattled. I willed myself to get through the rest of the work day, before leaving for home at my usual time. I wasn’t even in the mood to check the voyeur cam all afternoon. I felt like there were a 100 pairs of eyes on me (50 more than usual) all the way back to my pad.
Typing this at 0500hrs. Heck it, I got to get to mySpace. Time to use one of my many accumulated off-days.

Journal Entry 2048.09.07

So I am at mySpace (my wetshop, an actual meat space, the name was a in-joke to the oldtimers), my hands casually toying with some new splicer tool (dont do this at home kids) while I started working on a plan to get CB off my back and make sure my cozy arrangement at Temasek remains, when the outer door chimed. I saw the Plumber and one of her girls, Eileen (she’s a cutie), on the comm with a guy I vaguely recognise and wave them in.
The guy I met once at a drove, spouting the usual post-singularity crap and UBI. The Plumber and him were working on a new job. I wasn’t interested but they told me to take a look at the girl and I wasn’t going to say no to getting a bit personal with her. I jacked into her in and took a look.
Her memory wasn’t working right. I did the usual diagnostics and scans and downloaded her logs. Scans were showing up negative so I did a soft reset of her coms and ran in debug mode to see what else came up.
Then I opened up her logs and put it through my usual algos to see if anything abnormal showed up. Bingo, deleted code and logs. Some code was introduced, then subsequently deleted and even the log about the insertion of the code was deleted. So how did I know? Let’s just say when you take a shit and then try to flush the evidence away, if your shit is bad enough, the smell lingers.
I ran DP4 to attempt to reconstruct some source from the binaries, normally this would take hours at least but I had a hunch and narrowed down the parameters. Something coherent started appearing: The Yellow Sign.
Something gnawed at me. I have read this somewhere before. Ignoring some pointed questions from the Plumber I dived into the Fringe net and did some searches…
Everything I read pointed to TYS as a kind of virus from before Y2K and it has evolved from old school computer hardware to cyberware, but no one seems to know where it originated (A whole bunch of myths but those are useless, usually), no one credible claims ownership, and the grapevine says it is harmless.
Except I don’t think so, it felt too benign, almost as if certain quarters want it to be perceived as such. I did a geospatial/temporal visualisation of where the Yellow Sign virus/meme might have surfaced in the region and some interesting patterns emerged. Almost nothing for the past 25-30 years and suddenly an increase in the past 6 months moving from the Western Malaysian Peninsula down to SG, yet doesn’t appear on any watchlist. Most odd. Maybe my recent experiences have coloured my perception, or maybe I am just paranoid, but I think it is bad news.
I told the rest as much. The Plumber sent the girl back home (I hope to see her again for other reasons). Then the Plumber told me about the job they took. And it is our dear boy Idra. You know what, heck it, I need something to take my mind off things. I told them I am in, I start researching for the job.
Alright done with this entry for now. Back to work.

Journal Entry 2048.09.09

I did a good deed today. Or at least I like to think I did.
We finally tracked down Idra and Fiana and they were trying to be inconspicuous by being constantly on the move using a bus. In Singapore. If we could find them this quickly I am sure others were on their way.
We decided on a speedy and direct approach. UBI guy had a chopper (rich bastard). We are going to get close to the vehicle and drop in on them. Guess who volunteered.
Getting onto a moving vehicle from while hanging off a rope ladder attached to the chopper is much harder than it looks. It was a double decker bus but for whatever reason I decided to enter on the lower deck where I knew Idra and Fiana were holding out with a pink haired woman named Olivia .
After a few harrowing moments I smashed my way into the bus to land, at a very painful angle, on the floor of the bus. After the stars cleared from my vision I found myself looking down the barrel of Olivia’s SMG.
That was when I decided to do the Good Deed.
“Idra, it’s me, Byte! Don’t shoot! I am help to help you!”
And I was sincere. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say or do until that moment but after i uttered those words I knew that I wanted to help them at the risk of my life and pay.
No one looked convinced, and the gun is still pointed at my noggin but Idra did recognise me and they were at least willing to listen.
So I laid it out to them, they will be discovered by the rest soon enough, if they stay on the roads they are done for but I fortunately I had a cunning plan, etc, etc.
There must be something about my handsome mug ‘cos they agreed to it.
Leaving out details, we got them off the highway as soon as we could into a street that lead to some Pfizer facility, which bordered the canal leading to straits (nope not saying which one haha). The Plumber got Eileen to bring her boat to pick us up. Things were going smoothly until we realised Pfizer armoured car was pulling out to intercept us, and they were firing automatic weapons too.
Somehow Idra, Fiana and Olivia got out of the bus and jumped into the water to be picked up. I was out of the bus and going to join them when I realised I needed to buy them time. In a split second I made a decision and jumped back into the bus just as yet another hail of bullets hit the pavement where I stood.
I got to the driver seat and got my hands on the wheel as I see the approaching vehicle. I took a breath and floored the accelerator, straight at the incoming black beast. The car was coming in fast as I gathered speed. We were going to impact in a matter of seconds, I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to swerve. At the last possible second, my counterpart chickened out. They swerve and flew off the road and into the water.
What happened after that was a bit of a blur, but we got out and managed to get Idra and company off the island. We had flipped our employer the bird, but the Plumber somehow managed to wrangle some compensation for us, so it wasn’t a total loss.
No one actually thanked me, I think they were still expecting a doublecross up till the end. But the last sight I saw of Idra, he gave me a nod and a tight smile. I nodded back.
Of course I don’t know where they went, the Plumber arranged it. Even if I did I would never write it down.
Where ever they are now, I hope Idra and Fiana are happy. I hope I never see them again.

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Rewards Granted

Operation Bus 404 (Employer: Unknown ?)

• Mission not completed for employer
• Paid Well - by Olivia & co.
• Paid in Full

Character(s) interacted with

• Phua Chee How Idra
• Fiana Chewie Chew
• Olivia 404

Operation Bus 404

Campaign

Shadow of the Lion

Protagonists

The Plumber

Poisson

BYTE

Report Date

09 Sep 2018

Primary Location

Woodlands

Author:
BYTE (Koihin)

Scheme