The part that involves you
Be a runner.
On the surface, the services manage themselves and do it well. Underneath, the net is hardware in buildings that somebody owns, it is always scarce, and everyone who needs more of it is competing for it constantly. A runner is who they hire when that competition needs somebody to physically go somewhere on the wire.
One job at a time. One deck, and memory enough for about half of what you want. Get in, take what you were sent for, and get out under your own power before anyone works out who was in there.
The role, precisely
A contractor, hired by the job.
- Somebody else is paying
Work arrives from a client with a budget and a short brief. You are being paid for a trip they want kept off their own payroll, which is the oldest reason in the world for hiring a freelancer.
- You are the one they call
This job stands on its own: you are the person they bring in so the board stays green while something is being moved, and that is the whole of the arrangement.
- The deck is the whole of your capability
Memory is the scarce resource in every deck ever built, and the spec sheets say so. Every raid begins by choosing which problems you are equipped to answer, and everything after that is the consequence of that choice.
- Leaving is always available
Disconnecting banks everything you are holding, at any moment, and it is the one good ending there is. Which is exactly why losing feels like your own call rather than the game's.
The first decision
Whose deck do you run?
Two companies in this world are worth buying a deck from, and they disagree in public about what a deck is for. Both catalogues are online, in character, with part numbers, specifications and lead times. Read them at the source — the interesting part is that the two of them disagree about which numbers matter.
Cybrscape
A repair shop that grew into a manufacturer and stayed a repair shop at heart. Five marks of deck, I through V, on a chassis where every serviceable part comes out on its own.
- Will deal with one person who owns one deck.
- Quotes in credits at the works. Memory is fitted, the deck is run for four hours against the mark's test card, and the signed card ships with it.
- Thirty-six months of warranty from the date on that card, transferable with the deck — so the cover you paid for is still worth something on resale.
- Publishes service turnaround monthly, including the months it missed.
Nitrosoft
One product line, five generations of it, shipped faster than most people finish paying for the last one. Their claim is that they waste less of the same memory than anybody else, and they publish the harness so you can check it yourself.
- Sells through a yard's supply desk: a quote is raised against a deck code and a quantity.
- Credits settle on the yard account, and they say so up front.
- Benchmarks everything, states the ceiling on its own headline number, and compares itself to Cybrscape by name.
- Slower to answer the phone, and their support page is specific about how much slower.
These are two different lives. One is a relationship with a manufacturer who will know your deck by its serial number. The other is a place on somebody's supply account. Deciding which of those you would rather have is a real question about you, and it is the only question this site is asking.
Neither link is a shop, and there is nothing to buy anywhere in this world. Everything on both sites is priced in credits; credits cannot be bought, at any price, by design. There is no cart, no card field, no checkout and no account across any of the five in-world sites. If a page over there ever looks like it will take a payment, that is a bug in the fiction and not an offer — and our terms say so in the first sentence.
Before you go
Six words, and you can read any page in this world.
Every term in the vocabulary is a thing somebody manufactures, licenses, resells or bills you for.
- Deck
The machine you jack in with. Bought, financed, repaired, outgrown. Memory is the scarce resource in every deck ever built.
- Warez
Programs you load into a deck. Sold by people who are careful about invoices and careless about provenance.
- ICE
What a company puts in front of its data. Barrier, Ward, Sentry — three products from three vendors doing three different jobs.
- Trace
How close someone is to knowing who did it. Not a siren. A slowly improving guess, assembled by people at desks.
- Credits
The money. Priced on every in-world page and not purchasable anywhere — there is no way to buy a credit, deliberately.
- The net
All of the above, plus the buildings. Owned in pieces, routed between rivals, and nowhere near as well audited as its owners believe.
What is being asked of you
Read two catalogues. That is the whole of it.
There is no account to make, no list to join, no code to redeem and no build to install. NETGODZ is in development, there is no date, and when there is something to play this site will be the thing that says so first.
Until then the world is the thing that exists. Five companies, five websites, sitting there being ordinary on a Tuesday afternoon. Go and decide which deck you would run, and you have joined in as far as anybody can join in yet.