A Future We'd Like To See 1.31 - Gilligan's Matrix By Twoflower (Copyright 1993) Logbook : May 23rd Well, Skipper and I just got a charter by some hacker named George to take him into a Macroware haven. This is great, since we haven't gotten much work lately, just running three hour trips to various bad sectors for smalltime hackers. Gee, I'm glad George signed up with us. He's pretty bigtime in the Biz. Anyway, Skipper happily accepted George's passage fee, and started prepping the minnow.exe. I'm helping him calibrate the compass and navigational programs, so we don't get lost and crash in some deserted sector or something. This really beats serving tables at McSpackle's. Logbook : May 25th Only three days until George's run, and we're having some small problems getting the minnow running. Apparently I screwed up the compass, and now it thinks that left is forward. Skipper bapped me with his hat. I hate it when he does that. Some ex-actress showed up at our pad today and asked for passage into an underworld sector. She wouldn't say why, but Skipper figures that her destination is en route to George's strike zone, so we can just store her away in the minnow until he's done. I forgot to ask who she was, but I vaguely recall seeing her in Yttian Chainsaw Slayer 6. Reoriented the compass program : should work nicely now. Logbook : May 26th Skipper and I got into a fight, because I wanted to bring my new girlfriend Mary Ann along on the trip and he said that the less people we had, the better. He hit me with his hat again. God, I hate that. I think I'll sneak her on anyway. She always wanted to see some real illegal activity in VOSNet, and why not? Can't hurt. Logbook : May 28th The day of George's run. Skipper got a bit mad at him because he didn't mention he was bringing his gum-chewing gal Rebecca onboard too, nor his computer professor. Apparently Rebecca wouldn't let him go on the run unless she tagged along, and his teacher is letting him use the trip as extra credit in an APCS class. Skipper got angry about this, but they George gave him a few credits and he started grinning again. Whatshername, the actress, showed up. I found out her name, H'rrit, and apparently she was in Yttian Chainsaw Slayer 6. Once everybody arrived, we were ready to jack in. Skipper hit me with his hat again for forgetting the catheters. I hate that. I went down to the drug store and bought a few, so we could stay jacked in for a full day if need be, along with IV drips. Skipper and George figure that it'll only take three hours. Logbook : May 28th, Addendum The minnow got into a data storm when we accidentally crossed a few data streams of some guys playing DOOM 5. The boat's heading was messed up a bit, but my compass program kicked in and guided us along. Logbook : May 29th We've been coasting along the net for a few hours now, and haven't found the site George wants yet. Rebecca is starting to whine a bit, and the Professor is beginning to take off credit for the delay. Skipper found Mary Ann and hit me with his hat for letting her stowaway. I hate that. Logbook : May 30th The minnow.exe ran aground on a little-used sector after we found out the brakes were destroyed when we hit the data streams. What's worse is that we can't seem to jack out; our connections got a bit screwy too. Skipper got mad and hit me with his hat. The Professor is genuinely mad, and is threatening to fail George. George and Skipper are arguing madly over whose fault it was that we got stranded, and the blame fell on me. Skipper used his shoe this time. H'rrit is mad now because she was supposed to meet her agent in that sector, and now has missed the date. Rebecca seems distraught and not her usual bubbly self. I suggested we built some huts or something to keep out the rain, before everybody reminded me there wasn't any rain in virtual reality. Everybody spent the day arguing. Logbook : May 31th I woke up while the Professor, Skipper and George were trying to tinker with the few code bits they could salvage from the minnow.exe. Apparently, not much survived the crash, and they were trying to code an escape out of the sector from scratch. I tripped over a bad block and crushed a few lines of code by accident. Skipper hit me with his hat. I suppressed the urge to hit back. H'rrit apparently got inspired and is trying to write a screenplay of her situation in a makeshift privacy shelter. Mary Ann dumped me, which is going to be a bit hard since we're both trapped here. Logbook : May 32nd A bit of an old Russian icebreaker washed up in the streams today. George managed to tweak it so it'll trace back our connections and find a path back home. We're going to set it off later tonight. Rebecca was caught ruffling through George's toolkits. She said she misplaced her comb. Mary Ann is helping H'rrit with her script. They're on page six now. Skipper didn't hit me with his hat today, and I am happy. Logbook : May 24th I was wandering around tonight looking for something to drink, or at least pretend I was drinking, when I accidentally tripped and kicked the Russian icebreaker into the streams, washing it away forever. Everybody hit me Skipper's hat, except for Rebecca, who was missing. Logbook : May 25th Mary Ann made up with me, figuring it was easier than trying to avoid me in this dinky sector. Everybody seems gloomy over last night's accident. I tried to make up for it by coding up some sensitized breakfast, but messed up and everybody tasted old, rusty tin cans. Nobody hit me with anything, fortunately. H'rrit and Mary Ann are on page ten now. Rebecca is still missing. Logbook : May 26th H'rrit and Mary Ann performed a scene from thier movie today after dinner. George was visibly moved. The Professor was too busy reading the minnow's user manual to watch. Rebecca's still missing. Nobody hit me today. Logbook : May 27th I was out looking for coconuts when I saw some guys on the other side of the sector. They saw me, freaked, and ran. Skipper thought I made the whole thing up, since he couldn't detect any other connections in this sector. The girls are on page sixteen, and from the few bits I've read, it's pretty cool. (Except they make me look like a total goofball.) Rebecca is still gone. George doesn't seem to care, except to mention that he's not getting any now that she's gone. I asked him what he wasn't getting, and he hit me with Skipper's hat. Jeez, ask a simple question. Logbook : May 28th I saw the guys in the back of the sector again, and I think Rebecca was with them. They noticed me and ran again. I tried to look around for them, but almost fell into the data streams, so I went back home. I borrowed the opening pages of H'rrit's script to mull over the symbolism and accidentally deleted them. She didn't hit me, but wasn't very happy either. Logbook : May 29th A stray pathfinder program shaped like a pigeon Objicon showed up in the sector, lost. The Professor and George got an idea to give it a message to bring back to civilization. They spent all day working on it. H'rrit has tried five times to rewrite the section I lost, but claims her muse hath left her. I didn't know she could play music. Mary Ann is spending more time with H'rrit than me, so I wander around looking for those weird guys most of the day. Logbook : May 30th We set the pigeon loose today, and watched it wing back to its owner. Everybody crossed their fingers and waited. Two minutes later I remember that I hadn't attached the message to the bird like I was supposed to. Skipper hit me with his hat. Again. I promised myself I wouldn't think about laying his chest open with a knife next time he did that. Still no sign of Rebecca or those weird guys. George doesn't seem too distraught, and the others couldn't care less. Logbook : June 1st George wasn't in his hut today. Nobody knows where he is, and Skipper can't find his connection on the radar. Skipper was cursing all morning about George running off without them, and worked twice as hard at fixing up the minnow.exe. Everybody was doing thier own thing (the girls are on page 56 now), so I figured I'd go explore again. One of the guys I saw before accidentally bumped into me. He grabbed me and dragged me off to some cave-like formation, where I met the other two guys. They tied me to a rock so I couldn't @tel away. Rebecca walked in and explained that she was actually an undercover Not-So-Secret-Agent whose job was to assassinate George. Apparently, Macroware wasn't happy about the last run he did on them. I was sort of surprised and told her. She said it wasn't a very fun job, especially the sex bits, (huh?) and was more than happy that the guy was dead and buried now and she could get on with her life. I asked her where George was buried, and she didn't tell me. I asked where she was going now, and she said that her agents here had arranged for a secret pickup, and that the rest of us could leave with her too. I was really happy about this, and thought the Skipper would be happy with me, so I ran off to tell them. Logbook : June 2nd The whole crew is really happy that we get to leave. Everybody packed up, including H'rrit with her 166 page screen play, and got ready to leave. I just told them that George fell in a data stream and was washed away, and that Rebecca found some sort of ship on the other side of the sector. I felt so neat and spy-like. It was fun. Logbook : June 3rd Rebecca's NSSA ship arrived and a crack team of NSSA programmers traced and rerouted our connections. Everybody jacked out, groaning because thier muscles were aching and they were weak from constant IV feeding. H'rrit backed up her script to a disk, and Mary Ann promptly socked her across the jaw, stealing the disk and running for it. I never saw her again, which is bad, because I thought she liked me. Then Rebecca arrested me, the Skipper, and the Professor for aiding and abetting George in his hacking activity. Logbook : June 10th Last I heard, H'rrit and Mary Ann are involved in a major copyright lawsuit about thier movie script. Rebecca got a promotion, George was never heard from again. We're all in the same cell now, and Skipper isn't very happy about our sentence of twenty to life. The Professor is publishing a book about VR programming while carrying out his sentence. Logbook : June 12th Skipper hit me with his hat again, so I broke his neck and kicked him until he was drenched in a pool of his own blood. I feel much better now.