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Barliona. A virtual world jam-packed with monsters, battles - and predictably, players. Millions of them come to Barliona, looking forward to the things they can't...
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The Path of the Shaman. Step 1: The Beginning.
Chapter 1. Introduction
"... to find the defendant Daniel Mahan guilty of hacking the control program of the city sewage network, resulting in total system shut-down, and sentence him to confinement in a correctional capsule and resource-gathering labor for the term of eight years, under Article 637, section 13 of the Penal Code. The place of confinement will be automatically appointed for the defendant by the system. Should the prisoner meet the conditions stipulated in Article 78 Section 24 of the Penal Code, he will be given the opportunity to transfer to the main gameworld. The Court appoints the defendant the following specifications: race — Human, class — Shaman, main profession — Jeweler. The sensory filters are to be turned off for the entire term spent in the capsule. Parole is possible if the defendant pays an amount totaling one hundred million gold in gaming coins. The sentence is final and cannot be appealed."
They say that God is Truth. I don't know, really. Maybe that's how it is - it's not something I ever checked, so I'm not going to argue. But all arguments are evil and a great evil at that. And that's a Truth against which there's no argument. A play on words, if you like.
Let me introduce myself - I am Daniel Mahan, as it has already been mentioned. I am a thirty year-old specialist in IT security and everything that involves. I am a freelancer, periodically hired by corporations for finding exploits in the virtual game of Barliona. This game had filled the whole world with itself and had become the entire world for some. I can't say that I am the best security specialist, but I'm in no way the worst either. Something between a genius and totally useless. Fair to middling.
Each year all the specialists officially involved in looking for exploits in the Game must go through retraining. What it was we had to be retrained in remained a mystery to us, because for many the search for exploits was the only source of income. But the Corporation had strict demands: if you want to look for weaknesses without breaking the law, you had to go through retraining. Moreover, the additional training mainly meant the study of new laws that increased the punishment for hacking and we were never shown any tools or methods for finding exploits. The Corporation kept a stringent control over preventing any internal know-how from being leaked to outsiders, especially to the likes of us. Today we might be honest and rule-abiding and tomorrow any one of us could turn into a malicious attacker and try to break into Barliona.
At one such retraining session I ended up sharing a table with a fairly attractive girl and striking up a conversation with her. Unfortunately she was, of course, also a freelance artist, as all those engaged in finding exploits in the game called themselves, whether they actually worked anywhere or not. I was all set to start throwing around clever and obscure terminology, expecting the girl, stunned by the brilliance of my mind, to fall into my arms. Far from it. Marina turned out to be clever and sufficiently professionally experienced: her main job was providing information security for the city sewage system, while the search for game exploits was just a hobby.
