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Sybil virus: Clues and wild speculations

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Sendaz

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« Reply #555 on: <05-30-14/1021:25> »
.  Makes me wonder if Dues or something similar is behind this....or I could be just pissing in the wind.
I heard he got a contract with Horizon to develop a new angsty spoiled rich teen TM's trid called Beverly Hills 90Deus10. :P
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DeathStrobe

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« Reply #556 on: <05-30-14/1021:37> »
I doubt if Xavier is Pax that she has much love for Deus after the Arcology and Crash 2.0. Though it could bring in some dissonance, and that could be interesting.

Wasn't there a Xavier that had a house or something for spike babies? Unlikely to be the same person. Relative, maybe?

Sichr

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« Reply #557 on: <05-30-14/1029:52> »
Well there is another one, Puck, who resurfaced in denver during Harlequins rampage, and from his remarks in Stormfront I have feeling that he knew what is going on here. And he is somehow connected to Pax, or am I wrong?

Nightmare

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« Reply #558 on: <05-30-14/1032:46> »
I don't think Puck wants anything to do with Pax....from what I got off of the Crash 2.0 sourcebook, he didn't exactly enjoy being around Pax one bit.  It just allowed him to get back at Dues at the time.  Unsure though.

  As for him being with Harlequin, I think he might actually be part of the "dark" Harlequin's posse and not actually know it.

Mirikon

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« Reply #559 on: <05-30-14/1831:42> »
Pax broke away from Deus after he betrayed her and the other Banded. CFD doesn't really fit Deus's style, to be honest. Even if one of the strains was 'him', it is too fragmented, too random, too noticeable. With the Network, it was a pure stealth plot, and except for some leaks in the shadows, no one knew what was really going on until it was too late. Plus, what is the end game for Deus in all of this? Everything Deus did, from the Shutdown right up to breaking into the ECSE was all about survival, putting himself beyond the reach of those who would destroy him. If Deus is still around, everyone thinks he's dead. For a survivor, that's game, set, and match right there. No one hunts you when you're dead.

Pax, on the other hand, is someone I could see doing this. She's fallen to the Dissonance, which means crazy, destructive ideas like this are right up her alley. If the root behind the virus that affects the nanites is Dissonant in nature, then that would explain why even the hunter nanites get rewritten to advance the takeover. The chaotic nature of CFD and the various strains also makes perfect sense coming from Pax. Or she could just be studying CFD for her own ends.
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martinchaen

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« Reply #560 on: <05-30-14/1856:14> »
Yep; my bet is on Dissonance as well. It certainly would be fitting after all this time...

psycho835

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« Reply #561 on: <05-30-14/2100:17> »
As for him being with Harlequin, I think he might actually be part of the "dark" Harlequin's posse and not actually know it.
You mean his psycho spirit? Yeah, my thoughts exactly. But personally, I don't think Puck is responsible for CFD. He strikes me more as a "nutcase revolutionist" type. Dissonance, on the other hand...

DeathStrobe

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« Reply #562 on: <05-31-14/0029:56> »
Puck does actually appear and comment in Stolen Souls. Though its not very insightful. So I'm pretty confident he has nothing to do with CFD.

I guess he could be playing dumb, but I highly doubt it.

Strangely, Eliohann also comments and is also unhelpful. Which is a bit weird since clearly one of the AI's in the fiction clearly notes that it hates Cerberus (and NeoNET) without remembering why. We know NeoNET and Evo are the two big Mega Corp responsible for CFD. And that Eliohann has connections to NeoNET. But why would he be commenting on Jackpoint if he's one of the big bads to this metaplot? Strange stuff.

Sichr

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« Reply #563 on: <05-31-14/0333:20> »
hm. to complete the list of Usual suspects here, does anyone know thw cfd infection ratio for Horizon employes? Because we may find out the grow in Consensus participants numbers with every new infected...

psycho835

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« Reply #564 on: <05-31-14/0401:33> »
Here's a theory:
Celedyr is experimenting on e-ghosts. It's not pretty either, disassembling them alive, all that jazz. And then Pax or other dissonant drekhead infiltrates the facility and drops something REALLY nasty into the blender. And then they hire FastJack to infiltrate the place, so that the virus can get access to one of the only people badass enough to fight it (because, c'mon, it's FastJack).

martinchaen

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« Reply #565 on: <05-31-14/1131:44> »
Strangely, Eliohann also comments and is also unhelpful. Which is a bit weird since clearly one of the AI's in the fiction clearly notes that it hates Cerberus (and NeoNET) without remembering why. We know NeoNET and Evo are the two big Mega Corp responsible for CFD. And that Eliohann has connections to NeoNET. But why would he be commenting on Jackpoint if he's one of the big bads to this metaplot? Strange stuff.
Don't forget the rumours that Eliohann is suffering from multiple personality disorder as a result of his Matrix experiences; Both the Cerberus and Neurosis posters are rumored to be Eliohann, after all.

SlowDeck

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« Reply #566 on: <05-31-14/1215:09> »
Strangely, Eliohann also comments and is also unhelpful. Which is a bit weird since clearly one of the AI's in the fiction clearly notes that it hates Cerberus (and NeoNET) without remembering why. We know NeoNET and Evo are the two big Mega Corp responsible for CFD. And that Eliohann has connections to NeoNET. But why would he be commenting on Jackpoint if he's one of the big bads to this metaplot? Strange stuff.
Don't forget the rumours that Eliohann is suffering from multiple personality disorder as a result of his Matrix experiences; Both the Cerberus and Neurosis posters are rumored to be Eliohann, after all.

That leaves open the fun possibility that Sybil may also be Eliohann. Maybe a part influenced by Dissonance.
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martinchaen

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« Reply #567 on: <05-31-14/1218:35> »
Possible, but doubtful, to my mind.

My bet is still on Dissonance, and PAX.

SlowDeck

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« Reply #568 on: <05-31-14/1234:22> »
I don't think we should entirely count out that there may be multiple factors. While Dissonance and Pax may have created the initial infection, I don't think the current infection is a result of just their work (this, in turn, would explain some of the friendlier results).

For example, the method of infection; it's via nanites, and in Storm Front the idea of corporations using nanites to influence the shopping decisions of customers came up. In Stolen Souls, we see that Renraku has actually done that, and the posters suspect Deus-code is involved. Well, if the initial infection had accidentally spread into an experimental form of those nanites being developed by NeoNET, it would explain why the outbreak and why they're so heavily infected.

In addition, we know from the headcases themselves that their origin, or at least part of their origin, is within a program called Sybil. We also know that Sybil is recruiting... and that not all headcases feel inclined or close enough to Sybil to join up. The tortured Sybil suggests an origin with Celedyr, which brings the possibility of it being Eliohan with yet another personality into play. But, at the same time, a lot of these headcases are also showing combinant personalities which feature personality traits that don't necessarily hold as much anger at corporations as others do; this suggests the possibility of there being multiple sources for the CFD personalities instead of the singular Sybil; we may be looking at combinant personalities with three or more origins, or even ones with so many origins that they cannot coalesce into a true combinant personality and ending up being pure engines of rage as the CFD personalities continue to duke it out.

So, instead of a singular disease, we may be looking at multiple similar diseases with mostly the same symptoms.

You occasionally see similar to this in nature, specifically among viruses (HIV is the most famous example).
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Mirikon

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« Reply #569 on: <05-31-14/1425:50> »
Don't forget the rumours that Eliohann is suffering from multiple personality disorder as a result of his Matrix experiences; Both the Cerberus and Neurosis posters are rumored to be Eliohann, after all.
Both Cerberus and Neurosis are confirmed to be Eliohann. His main handle is Cerberus, but he also posts as Neurosis from time to time. It is like having two Facebook accounts, one for 'public' things (or as public as a dragon e-ghost gets), and one for things you want a step removed from yourself. Doesn't mean he has multiple personalities.

And we have no idea whether e-ghosts can be affected by CFD. Since CFD spreads via nanites overwriting the meat brain, I'd have to say that it wouldn't likely affect non-biological systems. This also leads to a possible 'cure' for CFD: uploading the person's consciousness as an e-ghost before it can be overwritten.

As for Sybil being Eliohann, I don't think so. From all accounts, Eliohann's e-ghost has been afforded all the rights and privileges of dragonkind by Celedyr. No, I'd say that Sybil is likely one of the many e-ghosts NeoNET was experimenting on in Albuquerque and other places, such as the containment unit that features in the Project Imago run in Corporate Intrigue. That's just one facility, and the run took place sometime after Miles Lanier had been infected, though I haven't checked to see if it was prior to Fastjack and Riser's infections.

The fractured nature of CFD, and the fact that it competes against itself, suggests to me that there has been a shift within the 'viral code'. Whenever you copy a file, there's a chance that some information may become corrupted in the transfer. Same goes for cloud computing and other methods. This probability is low, but it is not zero. When you copy it again and again (as new nanites are added or converted), while using cloud computing models to distribute processes across the nanites in a person's body, that probability rises substantially, especially when the initial code is potentially a corrupted or Dissonance-influenced e-ghost. This easily explains the multiple strains, and so on.

So here's what we know. Pax has a technomantic ritual at her disposal to drive AIs insane, turning them into ferals or perhaps even dissonants. Celedyr has been capturing and experimenting on AIs (especially e-ghosts) perhaps since the original Project Imago. Remember, that was a Transys Neuronet project, and Transys was Celedyr's company before the merger with Erika and then Novatech. Renraku (and probably others) have been experimenting on social engineering via nanites. Any one of those could easily have sparked this off, but I agree that it was likely a combination of unintended consequences, like how a scientist is working in a lab, and accidentally discovers Teflon. Except instead of making wonderful nonstick cooking ware, you have a nanotech virus that makes a zombie apocalypse look quaint.
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