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Bit sat at his terminal, it was a boring day by any other means. He'd done nothing and could feel it in the pit of his stomach. He span in his office chair glancing at the four walls to his cheap apartement.
A water stain on the ceiling, a pile of unwashed clothing. Nothing, he took a deep breath, the smell of solder and soy sauce filling his lungs. Bit had nothing to do, and he wasn't happy about it. Fresh out
of work, all that was left for him was sleep. Unfortunantly, Bit was as incapable of sleeping without work as he was working without sleep. He rolled onto the cheap matress covering the floor. He stared at
the water stain on the ceiling, smelt the soy sauce and solder, and moved the pile of clothes around countless times. Sleep didn't come. It never did. Bit couldn't sleep, not tonight.
Normally Bit would sink, envelope himself in a virtual world and look for something to do there. But not tonight, Bit's inducer had broken. The radiowave immeter used to take quick CAT-scans of the users brain,
was fried. Without it the inducers security features wouldn't be capable of operating. As such Bit thought it best not to sink that night, not until he could afford the parts to repair it. However a radiowave
immeter capable of preforming brain scans was costly, and Bit didn't have money. So once more he span in his chair, feeling useless, feeling bored, feeling lonely.
No software requests meant no work, which meant no money, which meant no inducer, which meant fewer communications, which meant fewer software requests. It was a visiouce cycle, no escape. Bit rubbed the bridge
of his insomia ridden eyes, it'd been 4 days since he last slept. He stood from his chair and moved towards the door of his room, when he arrived he put on his jacket and left.
The streets of New Station City were bussing with people, despite the ungodly hour. Everywhere Bit went he could see people going about their lives, wether it was arguing about money or confessing to someone
they loved, everyone sounded the same to him. Bit didn't mind, he liked the uniform noise. Not because it in itself was anymore pleasant than a quiet street, but because it proved his points and reassured his
beliefs. The more Bit heard the noise-pollution of the world, the more Bit longed for the comfort of a digital one. Bit bought a ticket, waving his credstick over the reciever outside the train. The Ginza line
had been expanded since the 20s, it spanned not just over Japan, but even made a treck from the west cost off to China, stopping in Beijein before returning to it's home. It was late, but regardless of this the
trains would be packed tighter than a can of sardenes. Bit didn't mind people, just as long as they didn't try to speak to him. While waiting for his train he decided to get some coffee, he stopped at a small
shop and got in line for one of the vending machines. After placing his credstick over the sensor he was greated with an over the top menu, displaying countless options. Unable to make the smallest decision in
his stupor, Bit just pressed the "Accept" button until coffee came out of the machine and into a cup. He made his way towards the seats, they were empty, most people awake at this time of night had someplace to
be, something to do. Not Bit. Bit sat down at the back corner of the coffee shop, secluded by two walls and an army of chairs. He watched the people come and go from the shop, noise, day in and day out, all Bit
could hear was noise. Others might have seen ideas or emotion in there, but to Bit it was all noise, interferance in the usual sound scape. He took a sip of his coffee, letting the cup surround his field of view
and his face bask in the beverages warmth, before putting it down to find someone in front of him.
A tall sleak american, topped with short dark hair and an unruly grin. Bit stared at him, he was speaking but Bit couldn't hear, Bit wouldn't hear. Noise, all of it noise. Bit kept looking, and as he did he
kept finding. The man in front of him was somewhere in his twenties, he was wearing a dark blue t-shirt adorned with the logo of some company from some place. Bit couldn't care, Bit wouldn't care. He refused
to. As far as he was concerned it was all noise, everything. The shirt, the logo, the hair, the words. Noise. Finally the dark-haired stranger seemed to be comming to a conclusion. Something about his posture told
Bit he was a bit self-righteouse. Finally Bit noticed one last thing, along the sides of the man's temples. Two small rings forming a taurus, indented his flesh. Inducer rings. Barely visible, covered by the
man's hairline and colar, but they were there. Most people might not have known what they meant, but Bit wasn't most people. This man sunk, and regularly. Bit was intrested for a brief moment, but then it faded.
Noise. It was all noise. Why should Bit care who sank and he didn't? The stranger finally finished, sliding a card over to Bit, leaving without waiting for a response. "Well then" thought Bit. "That was an event"
he continued, prooving non-shalant through and through.
Bit couldn't care without work, and he couldn't work unless he cared. It was a cycle, a loop, everthing was. Anything that wasn't was noise, Bit didn't like noise, but then again Bit didn't hate it either.
He longed for the silent world of ones and zeros he'd grown so accustomed to. Bit picked up the card and put it in his jacket. He headed for his train, packing himself into the can of sardenes like everyone
else. He could hear the noise, that was the problem with analogue tech, too noisy. Try taking an old VCR or cassette tape and reading the data off of it. Immediatly you'll notice noise. Whatever the type. If
it's a movie you might notice fuzz covering the video, if it's music you may hear the same fuzz in the background. Most people didn't like the noise, they didn't like the audio distorion or the blurr on the
picture. But Bit didn't mind, he didn't care. As far as Bit was concerned it was all the same, neutral. The way he saw it, everything was fuzz, everything but work. The real world simply surrounded the virtual
one, accompanying it in some minor ways, it was simply there, roaring in the background. Like the fuzz in the audio or the specs atop a polaroid picture. Bit didn't hate the noise of people talking anymore than
he hated the noise of the rest of the real world. Wether he was in a playground of screaming children, or sitting calm by a river, the noise came from the world he was in, not his surroundings.
Bit liked to take the Ginza, not to go anywhere, but to think. He agreed with it, it was one long loop, stretching from the farthest reaches of Japan to the prominant sections of China. Forever and ever the
train ran, on loop. It reminded him of a well written program. It reminded him of his life. Forever on repeat. The same tranquil song playing until he had the chance to leave. The train arrived, "New Station City"
blared the intercome. Bit picked himself up, and made his way off the train. It was well into 8am now, another night without sleep for Bit. Aimlessly waiting for something to happen, something that wasn't noise.
He arrived back at his appartement, hanging his jacket on a chair. He glanced at his inducer, the sleak metal device looked more like the end to a cable than a stand alone machine. A thin wire ran up to two
metal prongs and two metal diodes, or at least, they normally did. Right now Bits inducer looked closer to a pile of spare parts, dissambled, waiting for replacements before it would be put back together.
Nothing had changed, Bit still had no work, he still had no inducer, he still had no sleep.
Bored, again. Bit hated how empty his life had become. It was nothing but noise now. Noise until he was free again, free to go home, free to sink. Wether it was because he was bored, desperate, or both.
Bit decided to take a look at the card he was given. Maybe it was a job offer, but likely not. If people wanted to hire his expertise they would meet him in dijitaru, cyberspace. If they were impatient
or old school, they'd contact him through an Instant Messaging service, but no one would contact him in the real world. Chances are that would require a flight or train, then, they'd have to track him down.
Finding people through the net isn't hard, the GCCC kept records of most people. However, Bit isn't most people. He'd spend a lot of time and effort into making sure that couldn't happen, and was relatively
successful. Bit uncrumpled the card, smoothing it out between two fingers. The card was dark blue, adorned with some logo from some company.
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Bit knew that this downwards cycle wouldn't end itself. NewYen wasn't about to apparate into his credit. He had to make a decision, either find work in the analogue world, or try something desperate.
Bit pondered over the idea, concidering applying for a job at a cyber security company, then hacking them and accepting his own application, but then it dawned on him that even if he was accepted, working
at some corporate empire didn't appeal to him in the slightest, and neither did trying to talk to people on a daily basis.
With that thought, Bit had made his decision. He would try something desperate, and accept the risks. Beats trying to talk to people through the noise of the analogue world. Bit's apartement normally smelt
of a careful balance between solder, cup-noodles, and vat-grown stir fry smothered in soy sauce. Tonight, that balance would become tilted, as Bit spend hours working through the sickening smell of cooling
solder. He started with a microcontroller, he wired that into the data I/O pins on his inducer. Where the broken CAT scanner used to be, now sat lead wires, half hazardly taped over to avoid shorting. Bit
then began the software work, the inducer kept previouse brain scans on an internal memory card, these are used as data to predict when something is wrong. If the old scans don't match the new ones,
something's probably gone wrong. Bit copied over these previouse scans through the microcontroller, storing them in a capacitor drive for quick reading. Bit then re-programmed the micro controller to feed
the inducer data from the saved scan.
Franticly turning the screws meant to hold the inducer cable in it's port, Bit hadn't realized how excited he was. He finished with the cable and span his chair over to his terminal. He typed the same
command in three times, typo-ing each attempt as his hands shook with excitement. Taking his time to get the line right, Bit whacked the return key with more force than could be justified. He grapped the
inducer set, attached it to his head, and punched the activate switch, a read button duct taped to the side of his desk.
"D A T A E R R O R: scan error, data stand-still"
Bit was suddenly thrusted back into the real world as the inducer feed cut out. Even on his cheap hacked together knockoff inducer, the security measures knew to look for redudant scan data, a real scanner
would have given an inconsitant signal, no scanner is perfect. The machine probably thought that the CAT scanner had broken somewhere, returning the same consistant output. Bit thought for a solution, he
could try to remove the security checks from a firmware point of view, but his inducer model was far from open source, and the firmware would be a pain to work around. Bit span his chair in circles, looking
at the mess of dissambled and disused hardware laden on the stained bamboo floor. There, it caught his eye, a sleek plastic rectangle, encased in a black and pink shell. Bit removed the cassette tape from
the surrounding mess.
That was the problem with analogue technology, too noisy.
But maybe it didn't have to be a problem.
Bit rummaged through the pile of garbage further, looking around for a tape deck. Sure he could have just used another microprocessor to scramble a couple ones or zeroes every now and again, but Bit couldn't
think straight after 124 hours without sleep. He pulled out the ancient device, it's wires still tangled in with the rest of the pile. Bit took the tape drive over to his desk with his terminal and inducer,
he grabbed a small blowtorch out of his desk drawer, turned it on, and held the flame to the ends of the tape drive's wires. It was easier than trying to strip them. Bit wiped the melted plastic off his desk
with a piece of paper from an instruction manual, crumpling it up and tossing it towards the pile of trash on his floor. He spliced the wires from the the tape-drive into the GPIO of the microprocessor from
his first attempt, then Bit swung over to the front of his terminal and began to write the software. A simple program to store the CAT scan and all the other incomming data from the inducer to the casette tape,
and to read the data back.
A few hours of whatever unkown breed of thought was established by Bit's sleep deprivation later, Bit put his inducer back on his head, and pounded the red button on the side of his desk. Next to the button,
sat a timer slowly ticking itself away counting down to four hours. When it did, the signal normally used to trigger the alarm would instead trigger Bit's "Punch Out" button, pulling him back into the real world.
This way if anything really went wrong, Bit had a safety system, as crude as it may be.
Cyberspace slid into existance, filling Bit's field of view like a warm cup of coffee at a trainstation coffee shop.
Home, Bit was home.
In the analogue world, Bit had difficulty with people, he couldn't focus on what it is they were saying or doing, all he could notice was the noise. The noise that surrounded him and everyone around him in a neverending
constant roar. In cyberspace, things were different. Sure, he was no charmer, but Bit could at least manage with people. Bit opened his mail, too busy trying to fix his inducer, he hadn't bothered to check it in a number
of days. His inbox was full. Bit had about 25 messages comming from people he knew, asking why he hadn't been online recently, or offering jobs. Bit also had about a thousand emails from some unkown stranger, offering
him work aswell. Bit opened a messages to see a dark blue background, with some logo from some company atop it. Bit continued onto the next few emails, carefully reading each messages conditions before finally choosing
a job. He settled on one from the Yakuza, go to a place, steal a key, pretty straightforwads, but Bit figured he might be rusty.
Normally Bit avoided jobs from the Yakuza, or any large crime organization for that matter. He hated how they turned the intricate underground network of crimes and their criminals into yet another corporate structure.
But Bit needed money fast if he wanted to make rent, and the Yakuza never failed to pay well. He dailed into the address given in the email, it was a pretty standard network by most means, seemed to be owned by some
small loan company. Bit poked around the network looking for something outdated or vulnerable, before finally stumbling onto an old remote admin tool. Bit ran a series of scripts that automatically scanned through
every public database he knew, aswell as his personal collection of lesser known exploits, a few minutes later and he had full administrator permissions on the server. "Hard to be rusty if you have
to do is run a script" thought Bit, copying the NewYen key and wiping his traces.