n2020  Check-in [6112642b82]

go back to her father and spend her last remaining hours or days with him,
explaining how time is being reset to a time before she was born so that he can
live.  She tells him he won't forget her for long, that she will be back in his
life again some day, but does not mention that it will only be in his memories.
Perhaps she says something like "Don't worry, Dad.  You'll get to have these
memories of me again, but in a better world this time.  I love you."





































































































































































































## SCENES:

Almost everyone wears masks, or at least many people do.

### Alley has a job interview that does not go well.

Alley starts the story outside the building where a company's hiring manager
................................................................................
* Alley probably needs to do some things herself at this point, and maybe she
  gets a ride.

### Dalton smuggles her to somewhere safe "for now".

* Alley ends up having to get in touch with Dalton to get help.  That should
  lead to some fun and interesting scenes.

go back to her father and spend her last remaining hours or days with him,
explaining how time is being reset to a time before she was born so that he can
live.  She tells him he won't forget her for long, that she will be back in his
life again some day, but does not mention that it will only be in his memories.
Perhaps she says something like "Don't worry, Dad.  You'll get to have these
memories of me again, but in a better world this time.  I love you."

## OVERVIEW:

Alley, down on her luck, intersects paths with Prioritizer Eve (actually "Rio",
I guess).  It advises while she chooses and executes.  Initially, she just
blindly follows, but finds that path is pushing her outside of her comfort
zone, so she retreats.  Where her preferences intersect with her reality, she
draws the attention of COIN Corp agents.  The agents come for her, and for a
contact she made on the shadier side of her dealings: George.  She goes on the
run, and ends up having to call her ex-husband, Dalton, for help.  Dalton
arranges for her to be able to go to ground at a place he owns while they plan
her next steps.  When Dalton retains lawyers on her behalf, the COIN Corp MIBs
start going after Dalton for suspicion of harboring a fugitive or something to
that effect.  The last resort gets triggered; Dalton arranges Alley's safe
conveyance to the hands of Second Realm cypherpunks.

While there, she learns more skills for self sufficiency, and works with them
on a project for ensuring a stable means of liberating the prioritizer from its
masters.  Alley ends up meeting a couple of bona fide cyberpunks, and via them
also gets to find George again, at some point (maybe closer to the end).  A
tense bit of hacker drama should probably occur in these parts of the story,
which it occurs to me will almost certainly (I think) be a very challenging bit
of writing for me to accomplish well in an engaging narrative story.  Something
related to Alley's desire to still find a way back into "the fold" (yes, that's
right, becoming one of the "sheeple" is pretty much exactly what she seeks; I
could as easily have referred to her trying to get back into the herd, but in
some ways that's a bit too much on the nose) must lead to danger of having
exposed the temporary autonomous zone (t a z), so they start packing up their
shit and shipping it out, though some have to perform other tasks while this is
happening (related to the prioritizer situation, naturally).

COIN MIBs find the site and raid it.  Bad things happen.  Does Alley lose an
arm (or at least part of one) in this scene?  That might be the case.  Some
people probably die, while others get away.  Alley ends up in the Los Angeles
Underground Zone, where the real cyberpunks hang out.  They hasten their work
to get to the prioritizer, and gather together their team to execute a
shadowrun to gain access to the prioritizer's physical infrastructure and
smuggle that shit out.  During the shadowrun, which Alley attends because of
some plausible reason like the person who would've performed the task she will
now perform having gotten nabbed or killed or something like that, something
goes awry.  As a result, Alley ends up captured by the COIN MIBs and questioned
at length by her late uncle's former friend, Cole.  She keeps her mouth shut
about various things, but talks a little to keep things from immediately going
south.  She figures she just needs to hold out for a while, long enough for
them to finish what they're doing, and keep asking for a lawyer, or something
like that.  Eventually, she finds out that the potential for completing the
prioritizer migration without her was eliminated (possibly killed), because she
has some information that is now the only effective copy of one of the auth
factors used to complete the migration (aka rescue).  She gets taken away to
her final official destination, where she will be required to give up what they
want or suffer some very final consequences.  She realizes everything's doomed
anyway, and she gets offered salvation: a Real Job in Real Life, thus giving
her what she thought she wanted in the beginning and thought she could now
never have because of how badly things went awry along the way.  She agrees to
it, figuring all hope of the big win have crumbled to dust anyway, and she
wants to live and thrive somehow.  When the cyberpunks come to rescue her,
though, she then turns against her captors and gets away, thus precipitating a
happy ending.

### Part 1

Alley meets the prioritizer, gets a little bit into trouble, and shrinks back.
She just starts working on ways to make more "legitimate" money, then gets a
visit from the Men In Black of COIN Corp.  This pushes her into the deep end a
bit more, thus crossing the threshold.

#### the mundane world

#### encounter with discord

#### refusal of the opportunity to grow

#### punishment for reticence

The COIN Corp Men In Black come to pay Alley a visit, rattling her cage a bit
and making her panicky about things.  She deals with internal conflict.

#### dipping into the underworld

Alley starts getting more involved in sketchier things as she seeks to escape
the horrors of the dominant paradigm while remaining a part of it.

### Part 2a

#### acquiring powerful relics

Alley gets herself a new laptop OS, and gets a new mobile computing
communication device, the Axiom, with (the motile version of) the OS she
installed on her laptop.

#### gathering allies

She gets to know George a little better.  She talks to Carmen some more (or
probably should, anyway).  She ends up in contact with one of her first
contacts again, probably, and this time stays in touch.

#### show of power

George disappears with a message about having to do so to avoid the Men In
Black who came to raid his house.  He advises her to go to ground until he can
get back in touch with her, and promises to help her then.  It turns out that
was somewhat co ordinated with a Men In Black raid on Alley's place, so she
can't go back there.

#### survival in the wilds

The prioritizer moves heaven and earth to get her out of harm's way and ensure
she ends up with some resources she can use.  She runs and hides, and contacts
Dalton in the end, because he's probably the only person left who can help her.
Of course, he does help her.  He helps her get some rest, and get fed and
housed; he helps her equip herself; he helps her try to get some legal help and
so on; and, when it turns out the Men In Black are coming to search everything
to see if he is harboring a fugitive, he helps her get away to a temporary
autonomous zone.

### Part 2b

#### descent into the shadow

Alley encounters a new world of shifting times and places, where the constant
is the ethos and occasionally some of the people.  There, they learn from her
(about the prioritizer) and they offer to help her sort out her life.  There,
she learns from them (about various useful skills and methodologies) and she
offers to help with the prioritizer situation, I guess.

#### show of force

This is where everything comes apart for Alley, as the forces of Grey Face (and
yeah, I really need to include some in character references to Discordianism in
this story) descend upon her newfound friends in the temporary autonomous zone.
This might be a good time for Alley to lose her arm.  That should not be too
terribly difficult to pull off in circumstances where there are a bunch of
stacked shipping containers and people with essentially unlimited weaponry
resources to throw at the t a z.

#### escape and recovery

Alley and a couple people must get in touch with and (or) get rescued (or at
least picked up and transported) by some cyberpunks from the L A Underground
Zone.  This gets alley farther into the heart of it all, and she surely gets
some kind of prosthetic arm out of this, thus making her a real cyberpunk,
considering she's going to use that prosthetic on a shadowrun with some of
these other cyberpunks.  Here, she must re acquaint herself with a couple
people she met before, probably.

### Part 3

#### the daring counter raid

Alley and her newly fellow cyberpunks must break into a big ol' digital
infrastructure center -- datacenter kinda thing, in other words -- probably
similar to and definitely inspired by 333 Thomas Street in Tribeca, lower
Manhattan.  There should be minimal lighting in some areas, and bright lighting
in others, and I should choose the colors and lights well for this part of the
story.  Let's make it a very visual experience for readers who have the
imagination to actually visualize any of this stuff.

#### capture and escape

The group must end up split up somewhat, perhaps with losses, and Alley finds
herself alone.  The enemy has her in its grasp.  Soon, she's kept in holding
and gets some amount of fairly not really torture oriented interrogation.  Cole
asks her questions, of course, and picks at her weaknesses.  She does not give
up what Cole most wants to get from her, probably access codes or something
like that -- or maybe they just need her to activate something with her own
factor of the multi factor authentication and authorization that is required to
get the prioritizer "back", and she pretends she doesn't know what they want
from her really and can't give them what they want, whatever that is, at least
at first, I think.  Following that, she may just fall back to refusing.  Her
dedication and determination to keep silent about it must waver when Cole
starts talking to her about how she's going to be a success, have a real job,
and so on, making the best use of her skills and ensuring her continued health
and comfortable living in the "real world".  She's finally down for it, and
this triggers the process of sending her somewhere else for the useful
application of what she has, is, or knows that COIN Corp wants from her.

An attack on the transfer results in her being held at gunpoint by Cole, which
pretty well ensures the rescue does not continue because of the fact that they
need her alive for this rescue to really be a rescue.  She makes a decision --
at great danger to herself -- to end the stand off one way or another so that
the people who came to rescue her won't die from trying.  In the end, she gets
rescued and taken away, and nobody else died in that rescue who didn't deserve
it.  The saved lives have her to thank for essentially trying to throw herself
on the grenade.

#### victory, for now

Once they have her back, the cyberpunks and cypherpunks pool their resources
and put their heads together to finish the task, with the aid of Alley, the
last remaining repository of whatever it was they needed to get the prioritizer
back on line in less constraining conditions.  It works, of course, and people
are happy.  Alley chooses to become a cyberpunk and cypherpunk type herself,
drifting between urban undergrounds and temporary autonomous zones, doing her
thing with her cybernetic arm and her acquired skills to fight the good fight.

Alley remains single.

## SCENES:

Almost everyone wears masks, or at least many people do.

### Alley has a job interview that does not go well.

Alley starts the story outside the building where a company's hiring manager
................................................................................
* Alley probably needs to do some things herself at this point, and maybe she
  gets a ride.

### Dalton smuggles her to somewhere safe "for now".

* Alley ends up having to get in touch with Dalton to get help.  That should
  lead to some fun and interesting scenes.

## ENDEAVORS AND EVENTS:

* Alley must fail to get hired.

* Alley must get screwed by ANTAS.

* Alley must meet the prioritizer.

* Alley must make some sketchy feeling deals.

* Alley must meet Carmen and get her advice.

* Alley must meet George and learn about stuff.

* Alley's home must get raided.

* Alley must lose George as a resource.

* Alley must acquire a motorcycle.  (Why?)

* Alley must drag Dalton into this for legal reasons, in part.

* Alley must get Dalton in trouble through lawyer tracking.

* Alley must get to the Second Realm.

* Alley must learn skills from the Second Realm.

* Alley must be a critical part of getting the prioritizer freed.

* Alley must be gravely injured and need later prosthesis.

* Alley must go to cyberville, downtown L A.

* Alley must help plan a shadowrun.

* Alley must have a good reason to participate in the shadowrun.

    Perhaps the explanation for this should simply be that one of the people
    who died or otherwise dropped out of the story in the T A Z raid (where
    Alley got her arm fucked up) was a critical part of the team, and Alley is
    the only available substitute.  Doing this not only places her life in
    jeopardy, but her freedom even if she lives.

* Alley must get captured in the shadowrun.

* Alley must be tipped over to the dark side a touch.

* Alley must get rescued, and tip back to the light.

* Alley must be an instrumental factor in her own rescue's success.

* Alley must be a cyborg at the end.

### Additions

* Alley should have a gig that takes her into Los Angeles where she would
  encounter barricades, urban strife, et cetera.  Ooh -- this could be the day
  she's out and about when her car starts dying and she ends up going to an
  auto shop!  Yeah, I think that's what I'm going to do with this.