I’d watched many cyberpathers go cyber-diving, and of course had no problems doing the tech side of things myself, as I’d invented the whole Goldilocking shtick with the gold in my hair.

Scarletlocking didn’t sound right, after all.

Still, that is very different from actually interacting with programming on the psionic level, and being able to reach out and poke electrons this way and that. While I didn’t do much hacking due to time constraints and the constant connection required, I had kept up on all the programming, my Hacking Mastery stayed at /5, and I both contributed to the array of techniques the Goldilocks used and used them myself when I was in an area with an open Boole worth playing around in.

The Mekkers would’ve cringed at how fast I could crack a basic Boole and head down into the understructure of the programming. While the dense core programming of the Boole was always at 15+, the secondary stuff was basically permeable to me now.

Just so the kids could experience 14 Ranks at work, I had made a habit of Boole-diving whenever I was around one, be it a city, space station, or ship. I wasn’t really any better than any of my kids with an appropriate Talent, but I could understand things about the programming they couldn’t, and so bypass stuff they couldn’t... while the stuff they could go through they did so much faster than I could.

Now the cyberpathers got to watch me wielding electrokinesis at their level, and go through this system with the touch of a Fourteen and some insane Mental Stats. They weren’t shy about advising I do this or that, either, and I wasn’t hesitant about following their suggestions, either.

Time dilation is a big thing once you go into the dataverse, but even so they were gasping as I slid through the systems, spinning out a plot of the hardware and software, parsing it out for them to take apart even further as I skipped past verification points and security checks, touching and reprogramming several of them in passing deftly, arranging modifications to existing systems to support my suborning of the systems here.

I paused as I felt the organic feel to the monitoring feeds touching me back from inside the system. While they weren’t using brainboxes where I was, they were at the far end, probably a scrubbed cyberpath pslaved to the job. Voids wouldn’t have any problems finding volunteers for that duty.

Since nobody dared to use actual AI, brainboxed humans were the only alternative if you wanted living interaction with computer networks, and cyberpaths were at once the most desired and most despised. No cyborg could interact with systems the way a cyberpath could, regardless of how advanced your hardware was, or how much of your brain you replaced.

These systems were being monitored by a psi-active entity at the far end.

How wonderful! This brainslave was now lazy as all heck, and wasn’t using security protocols properly. He was directly manipulating the coding to allow himself to pass obstructions in his own custom way, i.e., he had given himself a psionic backdoor to the coding.

Replicating that touch was far from impossible, it was just an energy signature. Once I had it, it was only replicating his tactics, and then bouncing them back at him... with adjustments.

Giving a brain in a box a virus wasn’t actually all that difficult. After all, the best way to purge a virus was to disconnect the hardware, and brainboxes had problems doing that by themselves. If you could get past their security and nix any alarms, they were basically helpless.

Efficiency over absolute security, I simply started feeding this distant brain coding replies and data with his own energy signature on it, like his own thoughts were coming back to him. The data had what he wanted, but was layered with algorithms that only a post-Ten would register as not belonging. In remarkably little time I was inside his psi-walls, and rewriting parts of his mental processes from the distance.

Two minutes of real time later he extended a cyberfeeler out in a certain pattern, I latched on, and I was inside the brain, straddling the system without actually needing to ride it.

The hackers watching hissed at what I’d done. It was a combination of psicraft, psychology, programming, and artful cryptography that had all the nerds weeping in admiration for the pure elegance of it all... and wincing when they realized the same thing could be done to them if their mental discipline wasn’t up to snuff.

Getting up to snuff against a Rantha could be rather difficult, and this pslaved brain, scrubbed free of personality and soul, certainly didn’t have the means.

It wasn’t difficult to get schematics of his entire purview of authority thereafter, a combination of being downloaded Bob the Brain’s entire repetitive task schedule, along with his knowledge of the network I encouraged him to give me. Since he was doing data dumps psychically instead of physically, there was no strain or stress on the system to be tracked.

Yeah, a pure hacker would have been caught. A pre-Ten cyberpath probably couldn’t have done this. But once I was in with the right tool, this millennia-old security design revealed its weakness.

In truth, it was damn hard to keep post-Tens out of stuff, as tech is static, and people evolve and adapt in real time. Add in psionics that can affect the energy and the hardware as well as the software, and you have a nightmare for information security, which can generally only be fought by another active party being on station and watching for what you are doing... or not staying connected to the Boole.

There was certainly a watcher for the watchers, but I was keeping this completely at the psychic level... and that tiny little spark of hate and defiance from the brain, barely aware of what he had been turned into, was something that made sure that Bob wasn’t going to be taking the initiative to inquire if something was wrong. His thoughts wandered over the scope of his duties, the machines he had access to, their locations in cyberspace and reality, security programs, technology interfaces, layouts and systems across a huge chunk of the planet, and ways to reach out and touch them.

There were systems he didn’t have clearance to access, which didn’t mean he couldn’t do so, only that he had imperatives he couldn’t defy to leave them alone.

Me using him as a puppet and doing the breaking while he was totally unaware of it? That was something completely different.

The Goldilocks already had a massive data analysis of the outer network underway, and I approved several passwords on the far side of them, advancing through to the inner network inside the Crater, watching the complexity of the programming shooting up as I did so. I had to bring in the Celestial Tribute to start riding in support to interpret some of the coding coming my way as I flitted through the system, tracking, recording, building a picture of the entire system, decoding the command hierarchy, looking for special stuff and connections... and dropping little things into the system that could be exploited later between blocks of seethingly powerful code in multi-layered computer languages whose complexities weren’t supposed to be decipherable by organic minds.

Ah, it was a good thing post-35 Intellects are hooked into the akasha and have infinite room there. Little things like physical limitations of organics can just take a leap, don’t need no Powered Psion making thought constructs to do the job...

There were several sections of completely black, psi-reinforced coding operating at TL 17, and even the Tribute didn’t want to take a run at them. Accordingly, I skipped right past the what’s inside portion, and went right to what it was in, and where they were.

Oh, yes, my, that could be really important, couldn’t it? My my my. Of course, not really a big surprise, but it was so nice to get confirmation.

I would have liked to get more specs on some of the stuff that was waiting ahead of us, but that level of information was under the restricted coding, and would require a more hands-on approach. Happily, that was now much easier.

I left some coding inside Bob’s psyche in case I needed to get in contact with him again, and disconnected from the psychic tether. Said coding came with a gift surge of about 150 PP to replace everything he’d lost doing what I had asked, so there would be no loss that might be tracked by something and flagged. He wouldn’t even remember he’d been low.

--------

I’d been futzing around inside cyberspace about an hour, which is a LOT of time to be messing around in the cyber realm. I’d downloaded mounds of data, the Goldilocks were rampaging through everything they could, borrowing some of my thoughtstreams where they needed them and mostly not needing them at all.

It was time I headed in for the Crater.

Bob had been a cyberspace entity, but he had access to cameras and their positions relative to one another, including some inside the Crater. That also devolved into security systems and their specs, so not only did I have an amazingly comprehensive map of their tech outside the Crater, I had a good general impression of certain areas inside it, and could make an infiltration attempt.

Well, it wasn’t going to be an attempt, it was going to succeed. I was really going to put a crimp into their plans.

From what we could make out on the camera views, there were two main areas in the Crater, which we promptly divided into the Dome and the Battlefields.

The central area of the Crater was dominated by a variant kiloplex-style dome, although much smaller, maybe equal to a 100k city. That would still be an immense amount of area for raising Void Brothers, but that also meant lots of internal training facilities of different kinds.

The external areas were also shielded, trapped, and sealed areas, in many different kinds of terrain, and with many different kinds of foes, mostly alien and bestial, within them. The many different areas were divided by walls and force fields, the creatures were basically in native habitats, and so could be hunted down by Void Brothers in badlands, urban sprawl, killer jungles, swamps, subterranean mazes, and the like.

I wondered about hunting down humans, realized the kilocity complex probably was perfect for that... and then realized what that sole kilocity on Carag IV was for. It would provide all the exposure to humans they needed, filled with crime and corruption, and criminals and people hiding from all over the galaxy.

Those who ran away to hide in the wilds, and the native barbaric tribes, would provide their own kind of challenges. I sent that off to the girls in Carag, who were very interested to learn that Void Brothers in training were probably present in the city.

I almost (almost!) had one of our Brothers pop into the place. If they did, they could have tracked down the Walmart versions very quickly, as Void Brothers can’t hide from one another.

On the flip side, they’d be able to track him down very quickly, too, and we didn’t need that happening, especially if the brainwashed fools sent out requests for help. We’d have to hide the Rifts really well for them not to quickly learn what was going on with them, even if they couldn’t figure out where they went without active, usable Helices.

Instead, I instructed them to hunt down the lads and make pets out of them. There were cheers from my girls, who were anything but afraid of what that entailed. These dimestore Voids couldn’t even Cut Life on someone who wasn’t a high-end Null, so what did the kids have to fear from them? They couldn’t break Ten while wearing their zoot suits, and their masters had no incentive whatsoever to let them get stronger than that, anyway.

Finding them, now, that was going to be an issue. Normal people simply couldn’t track and would barely even remember the presence of a Void, with their non-sticking, elusive psychic Presence.

But that hardly meant that they couldn’t be led around by the nose and lured here and there by people who knew what they were doing. They couldn’t possibly have any idea they were being hunted by extraordinarily competent Nulls, and if they were there on Carag, they were by definition inexperienced lads getting training in real human cities, and so not really the elites.

Start an Event of some kind, and if it was subtle enough, the Voids would be the only things investigating, because they’d be the only ones who could sense it. What would happen when they did?

I smiled despite myself. The young lads would be losing their zoot suits to “a horrible Event on Carag IV”...