[jaunt] very early in week 3, before the attacks

[claudiometer]

[Today in unintentional livestreams, have a view of Liminal Space at the moment, more specifically the wooden-horse figurehead at the front of the boat Claudia and company entered onto.]

Oh for fuck's sake it's a motherfucking Trojan.

[some time later]

Okay, now that I mean to be here, some actual explanation.

A Trojan, in computer land, is a type of virus that gets you to let it in under false pretenses and uses your processing power to do its own shit. They don't usually propagate themselves like this, but I think we can chalk that up to Grid weirdness. They do make heavy use of anonymizers, which explains the grey lights and blurry faces.

Jules and I are gonna work on how this spreads, what it's doing, and how to stop it. Until we have answers, do not Interface anything or anyone you haven't had on your person or in your line of sight at all times - safest way to keep from catching it.

I've made a few Interface-proofing kits if you want to keep exploring without getting ambushed. Not sure how well they work on dataspikes [or why anyone thought Combat Interface: The Utility was a good idea, but that's a rant Claudia will save for another time], but they can at least save you an Interface ambush. I don't have a whole lot but I plan to work on 'em over the week, when I'm not working on the code.

Comments

[bite_the_hand]

Wait, I actually know what that is! ...Oh. Oh glitch.

[While at first a little excited - Eren feels like he has to ask Claudia what something is every time she has an important announcement, so this feel something like a small victory - his mental voice quickly switches serious and worried instead as the meaning of the word really hits him.]

I can let the programs in charge here know what we're dealing with. What should I tell them for how we figured this out? I doubt everyone would believe me if I said it was a message from the Variables' Users. [He also doesn't understand what horse-boats have to do with anything, and doesn't want to look like an idiot by asking when he finally sort of knows something.]

[claudiometer]

Some of us have dealt with similar code before. It's entirely true, and believable for local circles.

We're gonna work on how to counter it, since we haven't seen this specific thing before.

[bite_the_hand]

I'm just not sure the Colossus programs will believe it. Even the stuff they have direct proof of from the Grid has been hard for them to process. I don't want them to not take the warning seriously just because they can't calculate the explanation. ...I'll think of something to tell them while I'm on my way back to Gemini and let you know what I come up with.

You're analyzing Captain Shiro's disc now, right? How's he doing? I tried talking to him over the Network but he seemed, uh... really, really sedated.

[claudiometer]

It's a place to start, at least. And Pidge did track Shiro after he went missing, so we don't even have to drag the network into it.

He's hanging in there, for the most part.

[private, double protected]

He agreed to be restrained for the duration, so Trojanface can't hurt anyone. He's... taking that about as well as someone who has 'restrained and sedated' trauma is likely to. I think it helps that he got to design the chair himself.

I think he'll be more fine with this, since it's helping, than the alternative.

[bite_the_hand]

I'm going to tell them about the data gathered from manual observation. I'm just not sure how to explain that we know it's a trojan. ...Wait a tick. Since you're looking at his disc, can't I just tell them you did a quick scan on it before starting a full analysis?

[Private]

Yeah, but something being better than the alternative doesn't mean it's 'okay.' [The world of the Walls might not have any concept of mental health, but this is something that Eren's learned first-hand several times over. He's quiet for a moment, and when he does speak again his voice is quietly worried.] I knew he'd been through some serious shit, but I didn't realize this would be so similar...

[claudiometer]

That should work, yeah.

[private, double protected]

I didn't either, until I had his reactions to the situation to go off of. And believe me, I know 'better' isn't 'okay.' [Her least favorite Liminal Space to date was probably completely innocuous to most people, but that fucking psych office right before the space jaunt? Came very close to giving her a panic attack.]

We can't keep him unconscious or it's All Trojan All The Time. We can't keep him paralyzed because that'd apparently be even worse than this. So 'heavily sedated and mostly loopy' it is, and we're doing our best to talk him through the bad flashbacks.