technoMancers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 > I know that Netcat’s rep score took a bit of a plunge when she revealed herself some time ago, but I don’t think there’s any better source on technomacers aside from technomancers themselves. I have approved two others to this Jackpoint discussion to provide some alternate viewpoints on the matter. Please welcome undernet guru Otaku-Zuku and Inbus, a technomancer who is working for Technicolor Wings. Let’s hope this discussion soothes some of the wounds generated over the past year. > FastJack eMerging Posted By: Netcat “How is it, being a technomancer?” I have been asked this question numerous times since my “coming out.” Even if you haven’t asked it openly, you’re probably wondering what it is like being a walking commlink. Though I still encounter mistrust, prejudice, and suspicion simply because of what I am—even here on Jackpoint—I’m paying back a favor to FastJack here by providing a personal report on my Emerging (that’s what us technomancers call the event that introduced us to the Resonance, sort of like how magicians refer to their Awakening) and how I experience the real and the digital world. Being in reSonance The first thing you have to understand is that I never asked to be what I am. I just am. In the years that followed the Crash 2.0, I made peace with myself and accepted that I am different now, that something changed me. I cannot say how it happened, though I can say that the Crash somehow triggered it. Here’s the story. Before ´64 I was a student on Matrix technology and system development, though that wasn’t my real passion. I was a passionate gamer and as interested in the code as any Matrix freak. I did some small scale hacking and code breaking under the same online handle I still use now—nothing spectacular, though, and definitely not on the level of our hacker wunderkind Slamm–0! > Don’t flatter me. No, just kidding. Continue. > Slamm–0! The day of the Crash, I was killing time as I often did, hacking through the levels of Paranormal Crisis to obtain some ultra-scarce modifications and gear for an avatar of mine. I don’t remember exactly what happened when the Crash hit, but like many others, I was trapped in the Matrix. I have some very faint memories—just a few images and sensations really, plus a fair bit of confusion. Then I came to in an Emergency Room. My roommate had found me slumped on the couch, still jacked in, with static on the display screen. He pulled the plug and got me to a hospital. It took a few days before I was released from the hospital. I was disoriented for most of that time, and the hospital was overwhelmed with other people who had suffered during the Crash—including dozens who had been trapped online, just like me. The doctors hadn’t found any lasting neurological damage they said, so they sent me home with a bottle of painkillers for the non-stop migraine I still had. At this point, I had no idea that my life had changed. Some weeks and months passed, during which I experienced a few … strange encounters. Sometimes there where whispers as if unseen people were talking to me. Today I know it was the noise and electronic prompts from devices I had unconsciously interacted with. Sometimes I saw things that weren’t there, data traffic shaped into images by my brain so that I could understand them. Electronic devices started to function strangely around me. I chalked it on my nerves and post-traumatic stress, trying to ignore it all until the changes were so blatant that I couldn’t turn a blind eye anymore. I was confused and frightened, looking for help, but most of the “experts” I visited thought I was a freak, crazy, or overstressed. I started to worry that I was going to be locked away. > Oh, cry me a river. You can pull our heart strings as long as you want, but that won’t persuade me that your kind and your AI allies/ creators are not a threat to metahumanity. It doesn’t matter if you were a hacker before—you’re a mutation now, a freak of nature. For me, you are just a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. > Clockwork > One very important point that needs to be made here is that not all technomancers were “created” by the Crash. Take me, for example. I was hiking in the mountains when the Crash hit, and didn’t even hear about until a few days afterward. Before my Emergence, I never met an AI, never saw a ghost in the machine, never had a run in with Black IC—heck, I never even hacked anything. Then one day back in ’68 I was doing maintenance on a drone, running diagnostics on its OS, when I realized my commlink had been accidentally turned off. It confused the hell out of me at first, I couldn’t figure out how I was accessing the drone with no ‘link. Over the next few weeks, though, I experimented a bit and managed to replicate the situation, and even go a bit further. The day I jumped into a drone, rigging it direct via VR, commlink-free, I knew I was something different. I’ve heard similar stories from other technomancers—some of them even dating to before the Crash. So don’t assume we’re a product of the Crash, or manipulated by AIs, or any other such nonsense. If you do, you’re just expressing your ignorance. > Inbus > The Sixth World has seen many strange things, and I’m sure we’ll see even stranger ones in the years to come. > Icarus With the installation of the new Matrix and the distribution of commlinks and all kinds of wireless devices, it became worse each week. To walk down a street and have thousands of prompts, data projections, and transmissions raining down on me every second was hard to bear. The more traffic there was clouding the digital ether, the more I had trouble adjusting and dealing with the data flow. > I imagine it would be much like constant, unstoppable mind reading. If telepaths existed, they would need to learn to shut out the thoughts of any person they interact with or who even comes close to them. I don’t envy technomancers, since there is surely a lot more traffic and devices than people. I’m no computer wiz, but I know there are a plethora of processes going on my commlink that Unwired Simon Wentworth (order #1132857) 9
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