Description :

Jimmy's net persona is an almost painfully perfect rendition of what was his physical likeness. A sixteen year old teenager, hiding behind oversized glasses. His expression is one of sadness tinted with fear, and nobody's ever heard him speak. Nobody alive.

History :

"Jimmy Yound wasn't a netrunner. No way, not in the traditionnal sense of the word - he denied it himself. He was just a timid and kind teenager, always eager to please every real runner he met, those he saw as legends. And that included almost anyone that had ever entered a datafortress. He himself was in the net just for one reason : he loved coding personas for virtuals. That's how he was admitted to the Knights of the Round Table, and met with Lord British."

"Never heard of the Knights ? How long have you been in the net, for Bartmoss' sake ? They're a group of UK runners, dedicated to fighting the martial law authority. Lord British was one of them, a rogue AI the Knights had helped escape Heckler and Koch's London branch. They're cracks, mind you, not the kind to admit weefles, even less a guy like Jimmy."

"But while all Jimmy did was code virtuals, he was really good at it. His personas were creative, intricate, with an adaptive personality that evolved as your virtual grew. If you asked him nicely, he would even do custom jobs, specific VPs tailored to your needs. And best of all, what he did was free. He'd post the code on several BBS, for anybody to do what he wanted. Even without knowing, you've probably encountered several of his masterpieces - the whole 'Gothic Babe' Microtech serie is evolved from his work, for example.

"So one day, he got invited to one of the Knights' gathering. He had heard of them, and built an amazing 'squire' VP to populate their meetings. Such a great job that they invited him. Not for joining, mind you, just to thank him. He made a lot of friends, and got invited again and again. He met with Lord British, and six months later, at its request, did the greatest job anyone has ever done in VPs since : using his own personality as a matrix, he incorporated a personality into the AI core routines."

"What's so special about it ? You don't get it kid, do you ? The 'personalities' you see in most AI are no more than subroutines, used for interacting with a specific media called 'people'. It has no incidence upon the AI decision-making process, being just another module, like operating doors in a building. Jimmy linked the behavioural model to Lord British' pseudo-neural network. It would not fake joy or anger, it would feel it."

"Then, in august 19, Jimmy released his 'Zargonian Sex God/Goddess 1.0'. Fully custom, and so realistic you could build a relationship with the thing. It would read your reaction, and adapt its own so that you'd be totally 'satisfied'. Within two months, sales of all companies producing similar models had dropped to near-zero. That included those of the Playboy Corporation, and within a week, they flatlined him."

"There was an uproar in the community of seasonned hackers. Since he had met the Knights, many an experienced runner had been touched by his friendly and timid manners. Attacks upon the Playboy Corp. during the next six months almost caused to company to go bankrupt."

"But Lord British went way further than attacks. From Jimmy's personality matrix, it created a 'ghost', another Jimmy Young made of pure code. Then it used its intimate knowledge of the IG algorithms to link it straight into the routing layer of the Net, sending it to the lower plane of routers and switching protocols. The ghost was armed with a battery of lethal software, and sent on a revenge mission. During a crazy month, dozens of corporate runners fell to the attacks of Jimmy Young."

"Lord British had been too far, of course. The corps gathered their best netrunners, modified the IG algorithms so the ghost couldn't kill anyone anymore, locked the main routing tables, and purged him off the system. Then they found out where Lord British was hosted, and erased it."

"Jimmy's not dead. Not again. He's still out there, lurking at the edge of the protected zones, slipping through a security hole from time to time. I've met him once, during a run gone weird, while a massive counterattack in Chiba was disrupting the very fabric of the Net around me, threatening to turn my neurons into jelly. He appeared in the middle of the storm, and things seemed to freeze around us while he led me out of the fortress. Didn't say anything, just looked at me with terribly sad eyes..."

Dog, in the Hunt Club

Art by Abe Wong(psiflare@xenopsi.com), used with permission