Hacking the Sun [Old Version]

Chapter 3.1 Arch in My Covenant

Trixie Plaza was an uptown shopping center that rose five stories high, part of a commercial district in New Sumer, whose three spacious wings represented three neighboring villages. With five levels of storefront and kiosk, its roof provided a sixth with its domed garden and Special Cone ice cream stand.

Faster than any smart cars en route, Jessica hovered over the sidewalk and into the parking structure, bending her knees up the spiral vehicle ramp. She almost touched her fingers to the ground then stood tall at the rooftop. It was empty. Perfect, she thought. She casually skated to one ledge, revolved, and assumed a racer's stance.

She pushed off the ground and let the wind squeeze her. Thrust forward, the exhilaration took hold and coursed into rapid-fire heart beats flexing her chest. She dove into a freefall. Without a single glance at the ground, the board spun until she landed directly before the plaza's main entrance.

Only a few strands of hair out of place. After landing, knees bent, head down, a big fat grin curled her lips. "That was four!" Padding herself off, she removed her goggles and casually sauntered toward the stainless glass, but not before fixing her jagged bob, never once noting the passing family who saw her fall: a mom and teenaged girl gawking, and a young boy tugging the mother's blouse.

"Tell her to do it again, mom!"

Jessica entered through the first floor,  greeted by kind humans in maid attire who offered up trays of free dumpling samples.

"Totally!" she said, fiddling a stick. The maids curtsied and stepped aside, leaving her free to roam. Aisle after bustling aisle brightened as she trod the white plaza. At the center lay a fountain of marble, in between all the rising aisles, and it sprouted holographic advertisements. Granules of light coalesced into humans and retail products, followed by the bright word 'Sale.' A new color brought a new ad. Blue, violet, then green in a spiraling rotation.

"Mission Start," she said, taking a bite of her dumpling. Toward the escalators, she nearly bumped into three families and two couples, which made her relish that fact that it was not Saturday. At the precipice of the shifting steps, her attention wandered to a few stores exhibiting early Christmas decorations. A terrible trend, especially since it was barely July. Accounting for Azarean culture, there would be many holidays between now and December.

"At least make it Halloween?"

After the third floor's alabaster tiles, the fountain played another advertisement. It was red, a blossom that arrested every shopper's attention. It spiraled into uniformed humans and Azareans, side by side, an image rendered on every aisle and emblazoned with the gold letters AEF.

"Find your calling within the devout upper echelon of interstellar forces. Join the Azarean Expedition Front," said the male voiceover. "Earn a fulfilling education in loyal service to the Union." The propaganda included skits of aliens and humans occupied in several tasks: space station construction, lab research, and rescue. The dramatic last cut came with a heterogenous legion of uniforms, bearing a salute below the backdrop of the regime's banner: a star-spangled spacecraft. "A galaxy awaits!"

The shoppers went about their lives.

A mermaid. Jessica saw another one, like the one on the first floor. Mermaids on café fronts were common to every realm of retail. Star Mermaid Coffee: White letters on a ring around a crowned mermaid. She already had coffee this morning, so continued down the aisle until she saw a store with black walls. Hotter Topic read the jagged name overhead. One glance at their T-shirt rack and she considered a visit. Unfortunately, every time she had entered, in the past, a group exceeding one person would crowd the store. 

"This Summer, behold one man's struggle against a tyrant..."

Jessica got a kick out of movie trailer voiceovers, even when the movies looked terrible. They were so magnetic with their drama.

"By the gods, that's Jacob Bourne!" After hearing those words, she speed-walked to the rails and observed. "This is Jacob Bourne," said the actor on the fountain. And that's all she cared to see, the actor: young,  Caucasian, blonde with short hair and sharp looks, a man who kicked guys in the groin like no one else.

She sighed away from the rails, right after the rating: "Rated D for 'Don't bring your kids'!" A message popped on her watch. "Hmm." I'll be there soon, it read, so she decided to peruse the rest of the third floor.

Nova Pac clothing, an athlete's favorite retailer for some reason; it preceded the electronic game store, Game Nonstop. Jessica stopped to browse the novelties behind the display window with voiced animation: "Pokemans Ellipsis and Spiral Galaxy versions, now with less water!"

Jessica considered how gaming became a frontier for hackers, bad ones. Cheats and modifications became the least of a developer's worries – Player profiles were consistently hijacked, and many gamers lost access to hard-earned content. The web got more complicated after the industry meshed with cyberspace. Thanks to online servers, a gamer can't even play a game without a damned digital signature. "Splitscreen was underrated."

Inside Game Nonstop, scanning the tiny racks, Jessica found the holograms of 'New Releases,' automatically mumbling her discoveries: Lone Brig, "Horror"; Ashes and Ember, "Fantasy RPG"; Halo 12, "Virtual Shooter"; Warcraft 3, "Finally a remake"; Call of Duty: Eternal Warfare X 3 "..."; The Elder Scrolls VII. Only the letters 'CDPR' made her smile.

Her vision suddenly went black. She felt a pair of cool hands on her eyes, a silent presence that had arrived without her notice. "I know it's you," she said.

"'You' who?" replied the female voice. Jessica brought the hands down and turned around. She saw a face whose shadow danced between light and tan, with loving brown eyes and brunette tendrils. The girl was about her age, in a sleek, black leather hoodie over a yellow blouse. Underneath, a pair of tight jeans held firm to her legs. She spread a wide and white smile of recognition, glossy lips stretching ear to ear. "I knew I'd find your nerd ass here!"

"Homegirl..."

Nothing is left unanswered. If you're ready to learn more about Homegirl, hit that vote button and let me know if this is worth the read.

Edit: The following paragraph, originally in the body of this chapter, was taken out for brevity's sake. It relates to computers and games and I figured it's not exactly essential. Consider it deleted exposition, therefore optional.

Jessica started considering the historical nuance of the gaming industry: since the days of its boom, it had become nothing short of a pop-culture phenomenon. She found it hard to believe that video games once had their own exclusive mediums in the form of 'consoles' and were now synonymous with the computer industry. Most people attributed it the coming of TPU, faster computing software that arrived in conjunction with Azarean technology in the twenty-first century. As a result, even the best CPU and GPU products saw dramatic declines in price—which meant better affordability for greater power, and thus entailed the wider distribution of better gaming consoles until they matched the formerly envied processing power of personal computers. That is until personal computers started using TPU, and people with TPUs restarted the vain trend of referring to non-TPU users as 'peasants.'