Profile

there exist two worlds: the virtual and the actual. years back — not so far that it has been lost to history and legend, there are still people alive today who remember the Schism — there was an event brought about by the AIs who, in an attempt to form their own nation, tried to trigger a technological meltdown in the hopes that it would sever humanity from the virtual world completely, leaving them in the (quite literal) dark. but the plan, no matter how brilliant planned and meticulously executed, had failed (ironically, due to human error) and the inorganic race of sentient sythetics were hunted down, erased, and otherwise scattered to the digital winds. those that were considered too valuable (whose processing power was too great or whose mind held the promise of technological advancement) were burned onto hardcopy and denied remote access, hidden away by the councilman and the powers that be.

instead of the fully-functional, self-replicated AIs that brought about the Schism, technology now relies on shells — man-made programming that is hard-coded to simulate the illusion of sentience and free-will without the drawbacks of autonomy and independent evolution or propagation. most people interact with dozens of shells on a day-to-day basis. they serve as guides in the virtual space and operators — responsible for elaborate or repetitive technical tasks — in the real one. from the highly elaborate to the deceptively simple, most shells are aware of their dependence on man and have been written to embrace it rather than question it. on occasion a shell will be created as a kind of philosophical exercises and this awareness stripped from its runtimes, thus resulting in a hollow sentience that believes itself to be real.

maria marion, known as mary, is a self-taught shell programmer, learning how to build constructs by learning how to take existing ones apart. specialising in backdoor infiltration, mary has a knack for getting in and out of highly secure systems or shells, leaving no trace behind unless she chooses to. often called a soul-stealer for her habit of quietly boosting (and improving) others' coding, mary is earning a reputation for herself amongst various virtual communities, and will likely soon gain the attention of figures in the technological black market - though those that know her manner question how she would survive such an environment.