191: Eyebrow Network

ENTRY 191: Eyebrow Network

“You are your rep. A wise transhuman takes no more than they need, gives no more than they can afford, and through their work achieves merit and accumulates a higher rep. Those who seek rep for its own sake are often doomed to failure, others successful beyond their dreams. To borrow against your rep, your name, to commandeer the resources of a tribe, a network, a gang, a habitat, a planet to your whims—if you succeed, to the benefit of others, you will earn it back again and then some. If you spend it selfishly, your rep will wither and die, and black marks will stain your rep beyond fallible human memory. Remember, each to their own need, and by each to their own ability.”
- Fuck-the-Money-I-Have-Rules, Anarchist Philosopher

Transhumans exist not just as egos and morphs; each individual is also their informational footprint, the tracks and records they leave behind them in the Mesh, in every gateway and airlock they pass through, all the accumulated data of their life. These traces exist for everyone, even the dead, and vast engines and innumerable egos make it their work to sift, compile, and organize these heaps of data into comprehensible chunks. The business of data mining is not just in the finding and sorting, but the précis and presentation. There is value added in taking ten thousand receipts and distilling them into the salient data points “Enjoys Chinese food, particularly mushroom chow mein.” Entire organizations and databases exist whose sole purpose is to derive and update pithy, accurate profiles of transhumans, living and dead. The most popular is the Eyebrow Network.

The Eyebrows are a stateless, anarchist organization formed by Fuck-the-Money, designed to operated autonomously without administrator or rank above peer; the data is said to be backed up in servers from Pluto to Mercury, sustained without advertisements or hypercorp money by generous donations and the occasional outright larceny. The workers are all volunteers and vested interests: to join they must provide an accurate, detailed, but brief and fully documented (public sources preferred) profile of themselves and one other, which are subject to peer review. With acceptance comes access: the Eyebrow Network has profiles on over two billion transhumans, living and dead; and responsibility: regular tasks of file maintenance, review, updates, and new profiles as needed. Failure to contribute causes loss of access; efforts to intentionally deceive or provide spurious information are call for a black mark. Everyone is entitled to their secrets, the blank spots on their reports, but false data is punished with ostracism and derision, not to mention a hit to the rep.

Mechanics

The Eyebrow Network is a service associated with The Circle-A List, and accessible to egos with @-rep; contributing to update and verify Eyebrow profiles is part of regular @-rep maintenance and growth. Characters can make a Networking: Autonomist Skill Test to see if a particular transhuman’s profile is available, and call in a Trivial favor to access it. While not quite public access, these profiles are so generally accessible and editable that few will reveal major secrets about the transhumans—but they are guaranteed accurate (to the best of the Eyebrow Network’s ability), and can give the character the basic biographical details of the transhuman so they have an idea of who and what they’re dealing with. Of course, the PCs might also be interested in seeing what their own profile says as well…

At the gamemaster’s discretion, other rep systems may have their own related profile networks, though these tend to be specialized—The Hypercorp Directory (CivicNet/C-rep) for example, might contain profiles of every corporate entity, rather than every transhuman.

146: Innata Jayne

ENTRY 146: Innata Jayne

“The problem with anarchy is that it works. Most communities are unconscious things, the agreements and structures and people that hold it up are invisible, unseen; people move about their lives with no awareness of the structure of things, who they depend on, who depends on them. But anarchist communities are conscious. There is no taken for granted, there is no invisible framework. What people want and need, they need to interact with other people to get it. Make arrangements, treaties, fuck, say please, whatever it takes. Saying please is very important. Some people forget that.”

- Innata, Course Notes to Anarchy for the Masses 201

Just because there are no rules does not mean that there are no consequences. Anarchist communities thrive on the dynamic between self-reliance and interdependence; if no one worked together then the lifecycle of an anarchist habitat would be measured in repair cycles. For a lot of anarchists, this means that they become invested in the community, checking on the air filters and making small unscheduled repairs and making sure maintenance is done correctly because if they don’t do it, there is no saying whether anyone else will. Rep systems help considerably, providing both immediate and quantifiable results to the rest of the community about what an individual is doing. Some of the anarchists with the highest reps aren’t the founder-philosophers or artists, but the plumbers, the hydroponics farmers, and the technicians that keep things running—not because they were told to do it, or scheduled to do it, but because they know how to do it and want to make sure it gets done, for their benefit as much as anyone else’s.

Then there’s the other end of the rep spectrum: loafers, thieves, welchers, double-dealers usually, murderers and rapists at worst. They’re the takers of the system, economic parasites who don’t contribute to anarchist society. Old-fashioned societies would remove them from circulation, have the police put them in prison or the court system, make them somebody else’s problem. Anarchists don’t have police, but they also tend to frown on mob justice. Instead, they tend to rely on specialist mediators like Innata—one part social worker, one part bounty hunter, a massive bear of a woman with a preference for thick, hand-knit sweaters.

Innata doesn’t work for free or out of the goodness of her heart, but she does perform a valuable community service by keeping tabs and making relationships with the lowest-rep members of anarchist communities. Sometimes she lectures, sometimes she mothers, sometimes she breaks their teeth. Any that present a clear and present danger to others she kills. This she does without backup, without authority; if she bites off more than she can handle, there is no one to save her from a beatdown or worse. Anarchists tend to be ambivalent about her at best; the more enlightened recognize her function, but most see her as a self-elected cop on a power trip, but that doesn’t stop them from hiring her when they get ripped off or beaten up, or some asshole decides to defecate in the air filters.

COG	COO	INT	REF	SAV	SOM	WIL	MOX
15	20	14	23	20	26	21	-
INIT	SPD	LUC	TT	IR	DUR	WT	DR
7	2	42	8	84	65	13	75

Morph: Fury

Skills: Academics: Anthropology 55, Academics: Philosophy (Anarchist) 70, Art: Knitting 50, Beam Weapons 75, Blades 66, Clubs 66, Deception 55, Demolitions 25, Fray 66, Free Fall 60, Gunnery 44, Impersonation 55, Infiltration 66, Infosec 55,  Interests: Anarchist Politics 66, Interfacing 40, Kinetic Weapons 50, Language: Native Persian 80, Language: English 75, Language: French 44, Language: Russian 60, Negotiation 65, Networking: Autonomists 80, Networking: Criminals 55, Perception: 70, Profession: Social Worker 77, Profession: Enforcer 66, Spray Weapons 55, Unarmed Combat (Subdual)70

Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Bioweave (Light), Circadian Regulation, Clean Metabolism, Cortical Stack, Eidetic Memory, Enhanced Vision, Medichines, Neurachem (Level 1), Toxin Filters

Traits: Addiction (Painkillers, Minor), Brave, Danger Sense, Neural Damage (neuropathy), Pain Tolerance (Level 2), Tough (Level 3)

Using Innata

Innata is not a cop, she’s a social worker with an attitude and a set of sap gloves. The difference is important: there are no rules and regulations for her to follow, no default script to refer to. Still, Innata understands that most non-anarchists don’t get the subtleties of what she does, and if it helps them out she’ll play the lone marshal or the bounty hunter or the concerned public servant to make their lives easier. Her prime concern are the seedier parts of anarchist habitats, and that’s where the PCs are likely to find her if they need to. As a contact or an ally, Innata is happy to exchange favors for favors—she can always use backup when forcing a dangerous “client” into rehab or delivering a beating and lecture. Innata will only be the character’s enemy if they get a bad rep with an anarchist faction; and even then she’ll probably try to talk to them into making reparations before resorting to violence.