Asking Alice: Black Tenet Update E1
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Originally Published on February 5th, 2491
Orbital News Network/An MGM HoloNET Production
The Show’s catchy intro is stepped up a bit for urgency, and there are a lot more logos that show on the load-in before there’s Alice, in a chair, a holographic display beside her, showing helpful graphics and guides as she talks.
| “Thank you so much for joining me at New Geneva Headquarters. I know that the early stages of any event like this are going to feel confusing, as we very much do have more questions than answers. I want to take this chance to share the information we do have, and what applies to you, so that you can make the most informed decisions for yourself and your loved ones.
As you know, we’re coming through the second week since the first Black Tenet infection, let’s take a moment to look at what Black Tenet is and how it affects you, then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do about it. Black Tenet is an adaptive Malware program that is able to rewrite itself to circumvent standard cybersecurity protocols. While the actual origins are still being investigated, what’s more important to you right now is what it does. We have filters in our Interlink to edit the signals we receive. We may only have certain channels turned on, or cue the system to mute or minimize advertising. It also helps regulate cross traffic between signals and transmitters. It’s what makes sure that you don’t hear me ordering my seventh Soykaffe from Gigabites that day, or all of the coms traffic from ships entering and leaving the station. Black Tenet breaks down the systems that make those filters possible, causing your relay to become overwhelmed with the amount of data it’s being expected to process at once, and making you unable to edit or control the information being fed in. If you’re infected, you’ll notice persistent and invasive advertising. Even in situations where you shouldn’t normally be seeing ads, like while driving, or firing a weapon." |
| "Alarmingly, it seems to be able to adapt itself right across the biomechanical barrier. Meaning when you get infected, and it meets your biomesh, it seems to use that to code an organic version of itself from your own DNA similar to how a biological virus works. And it becomes that, able to cross the barrier again if the infected augments are removed, and starting the whole infection cycle over.
While it’s not lethal so far. It’s changing with every infection. So that may not be true forever. Because it can rewrite itself, it’s able to get around even the best ICE eventually, and it will adapt faster and faster. And for that same reason, it cannot be cured. It will adapt itself to whatever is thrown at it. New Geneva has made the decision to order an unprecedented scale of upgrades. What that actually translates to is ordering a bunch of corporations to come off of technology they’ve been sitting on and waiting to capitalize. New hardware with faster, more intuitive connections. Stronger encryptions for financial and PII transactions. New dedicated bandwidths that will extend the reach of corporate subnet communications cutting the delays with ships in transit, or cross-station down substantially. I have no idea what those actual numbers are yet, because we’re still figuring all of this out. But they are making sure that the next generation of the Net is worth the effort of the upgrade. In the meantime, we need to build a shield from Black Tenet. And that’s where we get to the mandatory update. An independent company developed a multi-layer ICE that is FastChaos adaptive. Meaning it’s able to generate random permutations of itself at a faster rate than Black Tenet can adapt to it. It’s able to overwhelm Black Tenet and contain it long enough for the relay to be removed and replaced. Downloading the update is going to shield you from Black Tenet, hopefully for long enough to get the next Net up and running, and you will be granted access as long as you have the update and have been running it, because that will ensure that you’re free from infection. For those who have already been infected, Genetectic has plans to ask Aegis Macrogenetics to take point on developing a way to help those already infected. Until then, if you are infected, make sure to keep your relay offline, use credsticks instead of wireless funds transfer (WFT,) and use a deck when you use the Net. Over the counter medications are fine for any headaches; and there have been some promising results in sleep improvement by using Better Than Life chips of peaceful events during rest cycles for Synths and Cyborgs for whom the advertising is too pervasive. I personally love the Radio Frequencies of Quasars experience for enhancing my own rest. I am keeping my full attention on this as things develop, and I’m invested in making sure that you know things when I do. I appreciate your time, and will update you as we learn more. Thank you for tuning, take care of yourselves, and each other.” |
[THE SHOW CUTS TO CREDITS AND A ROLL OF SPONSORS]