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Keep Your Rifle By My Side: A Cyberpunk ATF Quest

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[ ]The Khodorkovsky: There's a team of Russians affiliated with the resurgent Tambovskaya gang, here to apparently hit the vaults at Merrill Lynch with an FSB/Yukos siphon worm while leaving the blame on another oligarch. The ATF has orders to hit them for illegal possession of firearms. Good luck, Agent. You probably need it. More force, less legality.

Edit: late again, huh. Alright, I'll swap to a different vote once I read the new update.

mouli said:
Sometimes called Second Yaponchik. You don't know why
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Okay, I laughed at that one. Someone's done their homework.
mouli said:
Everything from election hacks and bank transfer intercepts to pharmaceutical fraud – why would the Russians be tampering with Viagra doses?
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Hit them where it hurts! They take sabotage very seriously in the FSB.

[x] Irony Is Beyond My Paygrade
 
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[X] Speak softly and carry a big stick

mouli said:
What you get is a soft ding and a friendly voice in your augs informing you that further information is classification-locked and would you please verify your law-enforcement clearance. That in turn takes five minutes of hunting through a dropdown box before you find BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO AND FIREARMS somewhere halfway down the list beneath every single other relevant agency. Beneath the EPA, even. Goddammit.
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Confirmation that we can turn the EPA into a department no one wants to mess with.
 
silentorphan said:
Unless it's just very explicit world-building that the ATF is in even worse shape than the EPA. To borrow a turn of phrase, while the EPA is where careers go to die, the ATF is where careers are stillborn.
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TBH I want to see the EPA become the Boogy man of the setting... They are the last people want to see because of how... Scary they are at protecting the enviornment.
 
[x] Speak softly and carry a big stick

We can call our grenades flip flops when we throw them at people.
 
Seems a landslide...so votes are called.
Scheduled vote count started by mouli on Feb 21, 2021 at 4:57 PM, finished with 41 posts and 30 votes.
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So in the dystopic future the FSB has won the Spook Wars and got back the foreign intelligence porfollio?
 
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0.2: Welcome, Agent
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    • 0.2: Welcome, Agent​

    //Welcome, Agent Amanda Mendoza ID Number *******4331
    //Access Granted….Loading saved avatar...the purchase of Premium VR by Microsoft can speed this process…

    You always did dislike the sensation of shifting into cyber-space, as some of the more old-fashioned in the Bureau like to call it. The network-jocks at No Such Agency like to tell people that there aren't any medical or brain-damage issues for the uplink nodes these days, and their helpful briefings on the mechanics of uplinking to the VR bits of the Network are simple and clear from long practice on the Pentagon – but you still dislike the sensation. It's a weird sort of tingling, as your vision fades out and fades in again and your muscles almost seem to spasm before suddenly you're still.

    This time you wind up in the same black emptiness of the 'ready space' as earlier with a bad taste in your mouth on top of it all. Probably the headset maintenance being spotty, but then it's always been that way. Ever since Triple Canopy got the maintenance contract, in fact.

    The ready space of the ATF's cyberjocks is the low-end matte-black-room model, a single light hanging overhead with no visible suspension as though held there by God Himself. You're in the middle of the room right under it, casting no shadow, your eyes sweeping out to a near infinite blackness that would make damn near anyone unsettled.

    You've done this before, and so you just look up and tell the system to "Engage user profile Amanda Mendoza, Agent, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Triple Canopy Auth is," you pause for a moment as the authentication hash comes to your simulated tongue in a fuzzy greasy mix of syllables that no human would be able to say, and to your ears it comes off as a meaningless buzz. It takes a minute to get yourself back together, throat hoarse and for some reason needing water, "Authenticate."

    "Authentication complete. Welcome, Agent." The computer systems are old, old enough to be using a Star Trek voice instead of a licensed Alexa. And the moment the computer tells you you're in, the world begins to shift...as do you. The black all around you begins to weep tears of color, rip after rip after rip as the ready room dies of a thousand tiny cuts and reality changes towards the Network...and your form shifts in turn, to something a little less like Agent Mendoza and a lot less likely to dox you.
    Pick one configuration:

    []The Agent: You're the stereotype that software engineers tell their kids about, in a black suit and shades and completely nondescript. Your face is a blend of people, changing constantly and unable to be tracked by recognition software. One moment you're a bland white male, the face that the geeks at Meade call Smith. Another moment, and you're a smiling caricature, a television anchor's deepfake. You're not someone to be ostentatious, and for as long as you could, you've used the Agency 'face' instead of something more fixed.

    []Amanda: Not really your face, but some Filipina's. A Filipina face that came up as the inbuilt version in the VR databanks, and one that you've carefully customized to make it more you, even if it's also carefully tailored to not look like you. You're not someone who likes the anonymity and the gray Agency decor of the default 'face', and you prefer to use something of your own.

    []Write In: This shapes the character.
    San Francisco looks better, to you, when it's virtual. You can see the same damn skyline that you do on the morning commute, the skyscrapers of the Bay Area and the great sweep of the Golden Gate Bridge across the bay, all of it rising far, far above the swathe of lower-density housing, offices, and slums that huddle near the ultra-wealthy ultra-fortified city center. Normally you'd also see the other side of the coin – the darting black forms of delivery drones, the lazy loitering forms of media drones, monitors and the occasional helicopter, and you'd hear the endless roar of the city.

    Not to mention the smell.

    But here? It's shining bright and clean, the only scent a faint whiff of ozone – Purchase the Microsoft Environmental Scents Pack for VR! says a chirpy voice in your ear - and the skyscrapers ahead of you are ablaze with a cold blue light reminiscent of a Google router complex instead of the warmer light of human habitation. The roads are a thickly lit buzzing data-pipe, flashing through colors you can't describe and draining into the Bay, the same San Francisco Bay that in the Network is one of the largest data reservoirs on Earth. Nobody's sure where the servers are – you're willing to bet money that some of the 'fish' that hackers keep seeing there are No Such Agency, though.

    You flit from zone to zone to zone, from Redwood City to Oceanside to the great Intel complex at Santa Clara, faster than thought and flying on wings of the mind. The city is beautiful both from above and up close, here in the information superhighways, and you can see why so many of the shut-ins prefer this to the real San Francisco. It smells better, and you're damn sure not buying the Environmental Scents Pack to change that. Even here in the shifting clamor of the Network's outskirts and near the seedy server-banks of Berkeley students' porno VR/torrent setups, things are prettier than the real San Fran. Color shifts about you periodically, a crazy-quilt of mass requests blanketing the area and sullenly withdrawing, occasionally interrupted by the frozen hawklike screech of a DMCA warning. Flitting forms marking out regular civvies are thick on the ground, flashes of quick-moving quicksilver data, each one a human mind. You just stand for a moment and take it in, the lights and the 'noise' and the sensory near-overload, underlaying all of it the faint scent of ozone.
    It's been a while. You still aren't sure if you missed it.

    Beauty comes with its price, and your mind flits back to the price when you hear someone start singing derangedly, a random series of data-packets to everyone in the area telling you to buy Domino's. The color and clamor and soothing computerized interface of the data-pipe is stalked by rogue adware, and those without updated software wind up paupers or worse. Almost as if to remind you that you're exempt, the angular blue-on-white ever-shifting box of one of Domino's deliverators sees you and melts, a pleasant buzz at the base of your skull telling you that the federal anti-tracker software still works.

    But for everyone else, a Deliverator infestation means bad shit. Credit cards get stolen, Domino's pays out a settlement eight months later, and some botnet in Ukraine uses the credit card details to launder cash from the mafia. No goddamn wonder the net neutrality boys and privacy activists – the unwirers, you remember them calling themselves – get so worked up. And violent.

    The destination that you had in mind is one that shifts around, to wherever in the FTZ's server banks it can get hosting. It's called the Broken Drum, and you're pretty sure that the name's got it slapped with a cease and desist more than once. You flit into the Broken Drum on a pair of borrowed passcodes – it likes to advertise itself as a members-only hackers' dive – and you materialize into some nerd's Dungeons and Dragons fantasy pub. It's very 1990s, and not in the nice nostalgia Disney-sells-movies-on-it sense. Behind the bar is a big green – green, a bright green like some sort of apple-flavored Jolly Rancher – orc, trying to smile at you and unable to hide his fingers' fidgeting. You smile inside, and walk up to the bar – it's nice to be recognized. The rest of the place is similar – low-end graphics avatars, things that might have been on sale after a bunch of yuppies went to Comic-Con and decided not to go again. You can see an elf, slender and tall and wearing too damn little. A group of dwarves, with axes that look lethal and probably are – your overlays kick in for a moment and you get informed that those are low-grade zero-days for outdated routers.

    "So, bartender, what d'you have for me today?" You smile at the bartender and lean on the countertop, the oddly smooth feel of a cheap VR environment as off-putting as ever. "More to the point, Brin, who do you have for me? I need Sergei, stat."

    Brin shifts again, picks up a glass and polishes it, puts it down again and then looks at the big barrels of beer behind him, "Beer, Agent?" He doesn't know who you are, but the avatar screams fed and you've dealt with him before, "On the house." He smiles, personable and charming and with the same expressionless pebbles for eyes that everyone here has. That the Network has. It's masks all the way down, here.

    "No." There's some sort of little worm in the beer, and you're damn sure that it isn't a nice one. For all that you have the best defense systems that Triple Canopy and the feds can provide, you're not risking becoming part of some Central Asian viagra salesman's botnet. "I can get drunk in real life, Brin, I don't need to simulate it. Sergei. Now. Or I have this place DMCA'd and get a Disney legal team on your ass for copyright infringement."

    "It isn't Disney." He shakes his head sullenly and cocks it for a moment as if listening for someone – private chat, probably, "Alright, alright. You don't trust us at all, do you? After five years of working together."

    You point at the elf in the corner, "You see Galadriel in the chainmail bikini there? That's a fat forty-something Montanan pervert who works with the Defense Distributed boys, who forted up in the Rockies with twenty veterans and an armory a few years ago. Someone sent them warning." You give the orc a long look, and his hands pull up a glass and start polishing it again. Body language makes a better tell here than eyes or face. You grin at him, "Now, we still got him and put him away for three years, and we nailed his armed friends to the wall, but there's a suspended investigation out for the informer. Who almost got a team killed. We aren't friends, Brin, and we both know that."

    Brin nods slowly, his eyes as blank as ever and his movements slow and careful. Better that way, lest he alarm the federal agent with federal attack codes and a zero-day at her hip. The both of you know that nothing's as it seems in the Network and that applies to friendliness most of all. "I'll put you in touch with Sergei, Agent."

    He says that last word loud enough for everyone to hear, in general chat for the room. The place goes silent faster than you expected and there too damn many eyes on you, Brin smiling cheekily before his eyes go distant again and his mind's off in a personal chatroom. There's a voice from the corner of the room, breathy and sensual and something that the user no doubt paid top-dollar for, coming from the elven princess in a chainmail bikini. It says Government pig, statist jackboot, get the fuck out.

    Your eyes sweep past the elf to the hooded eidolon behind her – him, you know that's Michael Lee there – and you can see the hooded avatar trying to haul Lee back and shut him up. You smile at Michael Lee and call out across the room, "Now then, gentlemen – and the pervert in the elf fetish outfit – any problems?" As if to remind the small-timers here about who came in, an attack interface spins up from your VR headset into the Network, military-grade attack code taking the form of... It's a bald eagle in aviator sunglasses. Fucking nerds and their weird memes.

    It shuts the room up, but goddamn if you don't want to strangle Meade and Langley right now.

    Ah. That's why everyone's silent. Lee is making little high-pitched choking noises and the dwarves at the big table are dropping their axes as though they're burning hot – they probably are. No Such Agency threat-assessment and neutralization code, don't you just love it when it works. You smile at the room, put on your shades and say in your best law-enforcement voice, "Don't do that again, folks." Out of the corner of your eye you can see Brin fading back into reality and rapping on the countertop, and the eagle fades away as you turn to the bar.

    "I'd appreciate it if you left the patrons alone, Agent." Brin's nervous and trying to hide it, but you can't really blame him. "The door is on your right." Standard theatrics, a door of shadow spinning itself to life next to you and yawning open to...a private chatroom that's sealed off from the rest of the server, and Brin's smart enough to have given you admin access here. You can see one user waiting in the room. Sergei's arrived, then.

    You step through the doorway and get the same weird fuzzy-mouth-sensation that stepping into VR gives you, your defense systems reject a drive-by Trojan infection, and you're reminded that Brin is a cheapskate when you step inside the room. There's nothing here save a table and two chairs, endless blackness similar to the ready room around you on all sides. A single light blazes above, and casts no shadows.

    Before you is a formless eidolon, a shifting black mass that rotates through a series of shapes. It says Hello, Agent, and you sigh and shake your head. "Goddammit, Sergei, I thought we paid you better than that – using Cortana in shadow mode as an avatar?" You take a seat at the table and the rotating rings of shadow follows, floating opposite you above their chair, "So. You know what I'm here for. The Tambovskaya are in town again, after the last time they got kicked out."

    "Yes." Sergei's 'voice' is a synthesized filtered thing more akin to the default setting on a Chinese smartphone, anonymity personified from the strip-mined data of a billion Chinese consumers. "I know they're in town, and they know that I am in town. I have already had a meeting, Agent."

    "With who, and where?" You're not getting that bit out of him, but you might as well start high. You lean forwards with elbows on the table, "The Tambovskaya are a threat to national security, Sergei. You know what that means. You might've helped us out before and been a reliable stringer for the Russian districts, but you know that this is big enough that I can't make excuses for not talking."

    "I'm not Russian," he replies, "Ukrainian." There's a sullen distinction made there, as if he isn't a U.S. citizen who's already served time for credit card fraud. "You have a reputation in the Russian areas, Agent, and your agency is not well-loved. The Tambovskaya bratva have made a deal – I do not talk, the community doesn't talk, and we don't die."

    "There are that many, then?"

    "Oh, yes." He says that with relish, "I cannot say how many and what force, but it is sufficient. We aren't all that many in the Ukrainian hackers' community, at least in mine. Maybe the legitimate ones who work for Intel might fare better. Or they don't even know." He pauses for a minute, adding in a disgusted tone as if he'd seen a cockroach in the pristine surroundings of the Network, "Half of them don't even speak Ukrainian anymore."

    You lean back for a minute to think, and then think the right thought to get your monitor-eagle back up. It takes off to the endless black above with a screech, and you can see the code sniffing about the chatroom boundaries. Sergei relaxes a little when it comes out, and you take a minute to see if it turns up any snoopers before talking. "You're afraid the Tambovskaya will run keyword searches and tap everyone they can find. We have better backdoors and better hackers, at least in Langley and Meade. This is a national security threat, Sergei. We're the heavyweight here."

    He shakes his avatar from side to side as if shaking his head, voice wobbling for a moment, "No."

    "Think of your sister," you say, hating yourself for bringing it up. It's a dirty trick to play. "She's safe in Witness Protection, and you can be the same. We've taken damn good care here, and there isn't any way the bratva are coming for you under Witness Protection. I can even throw in government healthcare, gold-plated. Better than what anyone's got." Most of the reason people join up is the healthcare, it covers cyber-crime as well. It's a potent draw ever since the insurance companies got acquired by Silicon Valley or sold abroad.

    Still, Sergei shakes his avatar and says "No." A glowing ember appears on the table, a collection of data in a sterile container that you can load back for analysis without risking infection. "See there. Triads. I can give you intel on them, and that as a first offer. Talk to the sources there, I cannot help you and I will not talk. Look into the Chinese, Agent, and you will find promotion." There's a desperate push there in his words, as if he wants you to believe him.

    Pick one:

    []Follow Sergei: You know Sergei well enough to try to trace him through the Network and kick some doors in. This will burn a long-time informant, but in this case you know that the Bureau will sign off – national security makes for wonderful excuses. And Sergei has been frustrating for far too damn long, and hasn't been a decent source for years now.

    []Analyse the Data: The data on that chip is something that's related to the mafia, not just a desperate ploy to throw you at the Triads. Take it back, check it, and talk to the Triads – they're unsavory bastards who are also a natsec threat, but not as immediate of one. You can use them to track down this FSB/Tambovskaya team. Maybe this time you can do without a heavy team and gunship support, even.

    AN: Still alive, still writing slowly, trying to shake the dust off and write something fun that's also good reading.
     
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