Come out to Play-yay : First
09 Jul 2024Willow Thorn
After Docks RP
It felt bad shooing out her first real customer and Vee, but curiosity was a powerful temptation for Willow. Put a piece of unknown tech in front of her too, and there was not much that could make it better. Maybe one thing could, but like, Vasil had already dropped off some BBQ Unmeatabels; so score!
Cracking a self-cooling tin, Willow shut the shop in a hurry and picked a pink straw on the way back. The straw's pack had some weird ass looking berry on it, but what the hell, today was a new thing's day.
Pushing the slow moving Android out her way in a hurry to get into the workshop, Willow stood in front of the terminal she had booted up, and gave the stick thing one last visual inspection before she plugged it in. She was expecting, or maybe hoping, the screen would go black, and then some strange dark UI to load up with a command box, and maybe a deep voice telling her what to do. A normal tab with a link address was real disappointing.
“Oh, well whatever I guess”
Okay, it was an address for a communications link, so she could use her own pad, but that was dumb. Her ship had way better cybersecurity, but god knows what the people on the other end of the coms could do. The guy, Maul, that left her the stick was a cowardly asshole, but he was a hacker she had used so many times before the thing with the Thargoids.
She’d looked for a computer expert when she was working alone, and come across this group called The Network, that put her in contact with someone that could help. It was always anonymous, and if they needed to contact her, they did so with text or voice changers. After fitting some extra tech to her ship and portable deck, The Network had helped Willow solve all her computer related needs while she was out in the galaxy.
“So, a public terminal I guess” said Willow snapping a pic of the address.
“The restrooms are located to your left, sir” said the Android, looking at Willow with its one friendly blue eye.
“Um sure Odie, sure. So why don’t you go to your station and shut down for a bit. Kay?”
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The concourse was full of public terminals, and people, so it would be a great place to try this address out. If something espionagey and dangerous happened, at least there would be someone close by to help her out. She wished Wild Jim was still around. There was something wrong with him, but he really liked Willow in a kind of big brother way, and a big guy that wasn’t scared of anything was great guy to have around.
Whatever, right now all Willow had was the reassuring feel of the glass knife tucked away in her utility pants. Stepping up to a terminal, Willow typed in the address from the pic and hit return. While she waited for a connection, Willow looked around noticing just how many people had a pad out with a camera pointing at them. Another camara looked out at whatever was on the other side of the screen they were lost in.
In the corners by the ceiling, more electronic eyes watched everyone getting on with their lives. More devices impassively watched everything from inside stores and restaurants. There was hardly a corner of the public spaces on a station that wasn’t covered by some sort of sensor, but everyone took them for granted and forgot something was always watching.
For a moment, a page of text appeared on the screen, scrolling line by line, like new posts were being made. Before she could read any of it, it was covered by a new tab. What little text she could see behind the tab was masked any way. Willow recognized the page; it was the page that loaded up every time someone from The Network contacted her about a request.
"Your interest is noted. Who are you and what shall we call you?" Said the text in the top tab. A cursor blinked under the text, and a keyboard appeared on the screen.
If she was going to walk away from this thing, now was the time. Nothing she couldn’t take back had happened, and almost no answers had been offered to questions she wanted to ask. She looked around, trying to spot anyone looking her way, but she was a pretty woman that looked school age, with long black hair and ghostly white skin. Not catching someone looking at her was kind of strange. Her fingers tapped the rim of the screen, and Willow tasted her black lipstick as she bit her lip and poked at it with her tongue.
But there were no answers, and like wow, Willow had questions. Almost without meaning to, she had entered her name.
Willow Thorn
And now she was tapping a blank spot on the screen as she tried to think of a cool code name.
Oo, The Mortician? Or maybe Morticia. No, that had connections to a gloomy little girl Willow was sick of being compared with. Oh, the Undertaker? Again, too on the nose. Wisp? Willow's dad used to call the Will-o'-the-wisp. She pretended she never liked, but secretly, she found it real sweet when he called her that. Sweet maybe, but it didn’t really say cool secret agent kind of thing.
Then it came to her. She was always getting called Will, and that she didn’t like, but there was this story about some bandits that had a guy in their gang called Will Scarlet, and Agent Scarlet sounded kind of cool.
Looking down, Willow was surprised to see the cursor was gone, and she had already selected a name.
Alice