==Daniel Green's Phasebook== 
===Journal the First=== 
Just about finished up at a Blue Pod party. Some professor at *** has asked me to find out what happened to his coworker, who has gotten in over her head, probably been attacked by an half dead TITAN or something. She was looking for pre-Fall military hardware, and let's face it, everyone knows what that means. I have no idea why he asked me to look into it, but for whatever reason, he decided I'd be useful.

There's a few other people working on this as well.
* N*** A*******: She's apparently some kind of doctor. Or maybe she just works for one. She's got a clinic that needs covering. She was pretty quiet.
* T*** Y***: Reminds me a bit of Ari, though a lot of that is because she's also a programmer. Seems fairly introverted, but (or maybe because) she's good at her work.
* T**: The anti-T***. Whereas T*** is an introvert, she tends to come on strong. She uses her sexuality like a sledgehammer. Which can be effective, but almost caused a big problem in a situation where some more finesse is called for.
* D****** C******: He's really the reason I'm doing this. He's got some sort of grudge against Hypercorps, I think he's probably linked to the Venus independance movement. And hey, more power to him for that. But for obvious reasons, if he's got it in for Hypercorps, I want to know what he might find to use against them. So I'm not letting him go and poke around on his own.

Now, we're about to find out what exactly Mason was doing for the lady we're looking for. With luck, we can find out where she went, and that she just had something horrible but mundane happen to her long before she ever even made it to the site of the battle. Because if she did get there, and find something, odds are very good whatever it was will still be there waiting for us.

===Journal the Second=== 
Well, Y*'s target has a name. Myrmidon. The more I find out about this, the less I like it. Especially with something we saw in a video Bey sent over. Turns out Mason did some work making a robot to back Y* up, with two AIs, one to run the machine, one to do the thinking. She was apparently worried about contamination, and I can't blame her.

Bey isn't just a botanist, he's also a hacker. I was able to explain the situation to him, and he was able to give us some more information, about what she wanted. And for that, he and his comrades were all killed by the White Khan, a gang that lives on the Song Cai Flower, which, is of course, where Y* went. He was also willing to share with us two videos he found. One of a guy eating noodles, to confirm she had found the leader of the gang. The next was some sort of monstrous looking creature. I'm hoping it's someone with a really disturbing looking morph. Otherwise, it's someone who's been infected by the Exsurgent Virus. Or, as a possible very long shot, there's yet another Alien Intelligence out there.

I suppose it's also possible that the videos are faked, and Bey is trying to scare us away from visiting the SCF.

I had a talk with D******, his grudge against the Hypercorps is apparently focused on the Consortium. He IS connected to Venus, hence his distaste for the Consortium. Shouldn't be a problem, but he was pretty quick to threaten to murder me. I think we've reached some kind of understanding though how things will pan out once we get there, and once we find what happened to Y*, who knows?

N*** also was more active once we left the party, got a better read on her. I liked her better when she didn't say anything. For a therapist, she's awfully quick to oppose being straightforward with people. And pretty rude, as well. Maybe it's just first impressions. We'll have a few days to get to know everyone better on the trip to the SCF. Whether we like it or not.

Of course, that time also gives me a chance to work on my gear. In case things go bad, I got some plans for a smartlink system, and ran off a few copies. I got enough for everyone to get one as well. If we're going into a nasty situation, I want everyone on my side to have the best chance of getting out of danger, if only to get me out of danger.

===Journal the Third=== 
Still not at the Flower yet. We were on our way, but got sidetracked. We have almost certainly found the ship Y* used to get out here. And we're not the first ones to do so. The main controls and computers were absolutely gutted. Computers wiped, controls physically destroyed. I assume the White Khan found her ship, either before or after they found her, and cut their way in. And the fact that they found her ship is not encouraging. It was very well hidden. Of course, we also found the ship, so it wasn't //that// well hidden.

Assuming we're in any position to do something about it, we need to decide what to do with the ship. We could claim salvage rights, but I'm not sure if that's the best idea. Y* borrowed the ship, as I recall, so it still belongs to someone else. And if we just hang onto it, sure, that'd be a ship we can use (if we can figure out how to manage that) but having a ship of yourself also means that you're responsible for maintaining it. If we return it to the owner, we might be able to convince them to loan it out at some point, while they take care of otherwise maintaining it. And, I think the reputation (not economic rep, but people having known we did it) for doing stuff like that would ultimately be more valuable than having a ship. Makes us known as people who deal straight with others.

We should be getting to the ship soon. I have no idea what will happen if they find us before we even dock. Or if they find us when we're in the ship. Or if we find them. I don't know if there's any real plan at this point, other than "Try to find Y*, and hope for the best." If things to go bad, I'm wondering if I should actually have my rifle with me. I brought it because it never hurts to be prepared. But now that we're getting closer, it might do more harm than good. It's an obvious signal of expected violence, the way a normal sidearm isn't. But with what the members of the White Khan did to themselves (or had done to them?) we might need that extra firepower.

And when exactly did I start thinking like this? Sure, hunting some cape buffalo isn't like picking flowers, but now I'm talking about grabbing a gun, planning on what happens in a firefight, thinking like some sort of commando about to assault a target. It's not really me. If I have to, I can shoot someone, sure. I've had to. But they came to me, I didn't go looking for a fight. And, sure, I'm not looking for a fight now, but in this case, I'm definitely going to be an intruder in someone else's territory. You don't sneak into someone's house if all you want is a polite chat.

Hmm.

===Journal the Fourth=== 
Well shit.

===Journal the Fifth=== 
The good news is, I'm not dead. Despite the bad situation we found ourselves in, I, at least, managed to get out unharmed. Some of the others, not so much.

About the situation we were in. We found the Song Kai Flower, and were able to sneak in disturbingly easily, actually. And found out what happened to Y*. Specifically, that she'd had her stack ripped from her current body, tossed into another one, and then that other morph was ground up into food. While she was alive. So we're not really dealing with rational people here. Big surprise. Anyways, after that, T** went to try to sneak into a room that they were in, and despite her being invisible, they must have, I guess, heard her. Or smelled her, and out comes the claws and fangs and guns and knives.

Yeah, they've got claws and fangs. Some of the crew are more monsters like what we saw in the video. And the other crew has plasma guns! T** and T*** were injured badly enough to need serious care, so they got put in the healing vats. Hopefully when they come out, they'll be healed, and nothing more, since something turned the crewmembers into the monsters, and I figure the healing vats would be a great way to do it. But according to N***, taking any sort of reasonable precaution is a "paranoid delusion."

And, the monsters are called the "Holies." So basically everyone but us are mentally unhinged, and crazy. And I'm not that confident about all of us, for that matter. I'm pretty sure this is part of some outbreak of the exsurgent virus, making everyone crazy and cult-like. They want to spread the virus, make everyone share in their "gift" probably turn everyone into the monsters. That's what N*** says, while at the same time, she takes the stacks of two of the cult leaders with her, and just tries to say that they're insane, and nothing more. For a doctor, she has absolutely zero interest in containing any sort of disease, either physical or mental.

I hope we get T** and T*** out of the vats soon, so N*** will have someone else to try to boss around. It's more than a little grating. More importantly, because we need T*** to set up the power plant on the ship to blow, so we can prevent this thing from spreading. If it is an exsurgent virus driving everyone nuts, I hope that the heat from the explosion, and/or the vacuum of space will be enough to destroy it. Otherwise we might just be spreading it across the local space, doing what the members of the White Khan wanted all along. Too bad this isn't close enough that we could just toss it in the sun. That'd well and thoroughly scour everything clean, even the radiation might prevent someone from broadcasting out if they had a farcaster. I'm not sure how it works. But there's the chance that someone might find the ship and then this whole thing starts up all over again.

Now, we're off to Ops, to find anyone else who may still be here. There's a Bien, and "Mother." And I'm confident that Mother is part of this whole thing. Supreme leader of the cult, maybe. That sounds like a title you'd take if you were a horrible cult leader. I hope it's just a title, at least.

Bien, I'm actually more optimistic about. He wasn't part of the group that attacked us. And as of a few weeks ago, was in a human morph. Or, had a human arm, that got broken. While he could have been a crewmember who got injured, he could also have been someone they were holding prisoner, and torturing. Given my luck, he's probably now a monster-type, with a plasma gun, and knows we're coming, and can make our heads explode by the power of his mind. But I'm hoping not, maybe we can actually talk to him and find out what happened here.

Really, we shouldn't be here. None of us should. This is the sort of thing you'd send a team from Direct Action in on, in armor and heavy artillery, and people who actually work as a team. Of course, I wouldn't trust them with anything they'd find here, they'd probably also want to take anything they found, samples, bodies, and then everything would be right back where we started, only now the crazy people have far more resources at their disposal. Or it'd just give them yet another weapon in their arsenal.

===Journal the Sixth=== 
I have probably two different pieces of crow to eat, maybe.

I may have been uncharitable towards N***. After the assault let up, she was much less rude. So it could have just been the stress of a fight like that. And while the stacks she wants to keep haven't come up as a topic of conversation, she seems more than willing to keep Mother contained. Which is an interesting reversal of position, she wanted Mother dead in a big way. And looking at Mother, I don't blame her. But I'd like to at least try to talk with it (her?) and see if we can find anything about what's going on. Mother has more than one mouth, that sing songs, so there's some vocalization going on. Whether or not it can communicate, we'll see.

Mother itself is... pretty horrifying, actually. I assume it started out as a human morph, and has somehow been altered, into a pile of organism. It's got mouths and tentacles, and is spread all over Ops. And seems fairly insane. I know I would be. N*** also knew about its "web" before we ever saw it. If this is an Async thing, or if she knew more than she said, I don't know. If she found out more than a pair of names like she said at first, why didn't she share this very important information up front? One of the reasons I wasn't too enthusiastic about leaving her alone in the shuttle with the other ladies, who were in the vats. Fortunately, D******, with help from, I assume, Bien, was able to convince her that we'd need her help. And we did, to warn us about the web. And depending on what happens next, I think the more people we have to deal with Mother, the better.

Which leads to the other part of the crow I've got coming. Specifically, any optimism regarding Bien not being hostile. He seemed awfully willing to try to kill us with grenades and nano-hives. That might be what happened to some of the Myrmidion stuff, as well. Maybe someone tried to mess around with it and unleashed a TITAN nanoswarm. It's not a truly independant swarm like some TITAN swarms, but it's still possible. Right? I'll give D****** credit for having Guts to kick the hive away. Not much credit for brains, but guts, at least. It could be that it's not Bien, there could be some other entity out here trying to kill us. Or maybe Bien thinks we're with Mother and the cult. But at this point, I'm not that interested. I just want to leave, and stop this infection from spreading. N*** doesn't want to talk to Mother, but she's not wrong when saying that we need to kill it.

And I don't like what this is making me do, talking about killing, if not people, things like this. Granted, I'm going to, there's too great of a danger not to. But I had hoped I left all that behind me a decade ago, even as I prepared to do it again.

I just want to go home. Try to get some of Methuselah's art shipped back home, see if he or a broker here are interested in some inner system art. I might be able to arrange a tour for Methuselah's ego around there. Something that doesn't involve getting shot at, eaten, or infected with some horrible body altering disease.
=== === 
===Journal the Seventh=== 
Hopefully this won't fall into any wrong hands. Because I've found out, among other things, that Firewall is real, and not just one of those rumors passed around the Mesh, like the Illuminati. And I'm in it.

M*** was basically auditioning us for recruitment. And as part of the audition, it was of course, important to not actually tell us what we needed to know. Given what almost happened, his priorities are well and thoroughly fucked up. If we died, that'd suck, and I'd be mad. But I was almost infected, any of us could have been infected, and sent out to continue infecting other people. Moot point, we didn't get infected, as near as I can tell, and Mother is now dead, but it's not a smart risk to have taken.

So, that was absolutely an Exsurgent outbreak. Mother was some sort of hideous mutated womb, breeding something I don't want to think about. And it could have infected me if I wasn't sealed up due to the air having been evacuated from the ship. I tried to talk to it, figure out what was going on, but it spat a corrosive nanovirus glob at me, and suddenly I had bigger things to worry about. Fortunately, the medical bay had antiviral power to stop the viruii from breaching my suit. But it was a close thing. Especially since my other options included shooting myself in the face with the plasma gun I picked up.

Ultimately, we decided to blow the whole thing to hell. Overloaded the power plant, and ran for a safe distance. Anything there would have been vaporized to its component atoms. I doubt even TITAN tech can maintain its integrity at that level of deconstrution.

We returned home, with a quick stop to pick up Y*'s shuttle. Before we could talk to our patron for this job, N*** got blasted by some representative of the Nine Lives. What that was about, I have no idea. Not surprised she's made enemies, but it's a little suspicious that they knew where to find her so soon after we got back from the SCF. But, it didn't come up or make a difference, so I figure it's between her and them.

A hop over to M***'s school covered the above. He works with Firewall, now I do as well, he didn't tell us anything for an audition, here's our reward, get out. I'm not happy with how he operates, but what am I going to do? Say no? The kinds of threats that we're dealing with aren't something I can just ignore. And I have a feeling that if I turned him down, there would suddenly be some horrible accident and I'd have to be resleeved from a backup I made long before I ever heard of M*** and thought Firewall was just a legend. We'll see how things work when some other metaphorical fire needs to be put out.

On the less Earth shattering front, I was able to work a deal with Methuselah to do a series of shows in the inner system. He'll egocast around the place, doing much as he did for Blue Pod. Should get a nice bit of credits for the company, and a boost to my reputation for bringing him in. Also, we all got a more concrete boost to our reputation for returning the shuttle Y* took out, and was then destroyed.

===Firewall Technical Briefing=== 
====Increasing the efficacy of plasma guns against nanoswarms==== 
Hello. I am putting together this short instrutional lecture on how to modify a plasma gun to increase its effectiveness against nanomachine swarms. I will be sharing with you the thought process I used, the methods I used for modifying the weapon, and blueprints and system settings so that you can replicate it or modify as needed for your own use.

I recently ran into a weaponized swarm of nanomachines. While options are available for dealing with the hive, in the short term, when it is most crucial, that does little to stop the swarm itself. And even less against nanomachines of TITAN origin. The plasma gun is not actually the worst weapon you could weild against nanomachines. But it has many drawbacks.

# It is incredibly overpowered for the job of killing nanomachines. (<span style="color: blue;">__Appendix 1__</span>) The incredibly high energy density of the plasma gun blast is enough to destroy an individual nanomachine several dozen times over. Depending on the area in which you are using it, it can cause considerable collateral damage. Given the threats we face, it may be worth it on balance, but then again, maybe not.
# It has a very slow rate of fire. Attacking a full sized swarm could take over a full minute, given the delays inherent in the weapon to prevent overheating. And while you don't fire, the nanomachines are redisbursing themselves.
# Each blast has a limited effective area. One shot will blast a hole through a swarm, but the hole it makes wouldn't take out even a tenth of the swarm, on average.

To that end, I have decided to sacrifice the damaging power of a plasma gun against cohesive targets in order to increase the rate of fire dramatically. This lower damaging weapon has several advantages against nanomachines

# It does more than enough damage to kill nanomachines. A less dense energy blast covers the same area, still roasts nanomachines like bugs in a fire, but will do minimal damage to any objects in the area that it might strike in a firefight.
# A less energetic output allows the weapon to fire several times faster than an unmodified gun. It has no need for an inherent delay to cool down, and can fire steadily until the battery is drained. The standard cooling system is more than adequate to stay in front of the weapon overheating. (<span style="color: blue;">__Appendix 2__</span>)
# The ability of the weapon to fire continuously allows it to actually fire in a burst mode as well. One trigger pull with this setting can cover a larger volume of the swarm, while still keeping up a steady rate of fire.

I considered altering the emitter to increase the size of the burst itself, but simply altering the power output and rate of fire has the advantage of simplicity.

Physical Alterations to the Weapon (__<span style="color: #0000ff;">Appendix 3</span>__)
Setting Changes to the Weapon (__<span style="color: #0000ff;">Appendix 4</span>__)
Before and After Demonstration __(<span style="color: blue;">Video 1</span>__)