Brain Dancing

"If I had to bet, I'd say the guy with his hood up is the one..." Ori remarks stating the obvious.

"Maybe, but that just makes our job harder. There's no identifiable characteristics other than their clothes we can go off of." she sighs, "Let's backtrack and see where they'd come from."

Their suspicions proved character, as whoever it was seemed to have been tracking Ori from multiple blocks away. They'd stepped out from a net cafe as he passed and followed from behind at an exact distance, allowing them to more easily hack his systems.

"So... What can we do with this?" Ori questions.

"Nothing, really." Sasha admits, "No traces, no info, and even if we asked the cafe owner they'd probably not know who we were talking about." she slumps in the tub, resting her arms on the sides, "Shame you didn't have a braindance chip installed, we might've been able to find some clues through it."

"Braindance chip?" he questions, "I get BD's, but a chip for it?"

"It's kinda complicated, basically the chip's designed to record every brain wave with complete accuracy so that it could be later exported and shared. How else do you think those porno's are made?" she grins, "And don't say you haven't seen 'em."

He chuckles, "Yeah, I guess that makes sense..." he pauses, wait didn't that sound kinda familiar...?

"Collective, any chance you could replicate what she's suggesting?" he mentally asks.

[We do not know. We could try, but we do not think any device is equipped to deal with the information load. A specialised interface would be required, and the time needed to process the data would render this exercise pointless: Flesh Administrator.]

"Sasha, can I jack in? I've got a Cyberware that works similarly to those chips. Maybe we could find something?"

She crooks a brow at him, "Okay, but don't expect anything. My stuff isn't really set up to handle unedited BD's..."

He nods, jacking in and allowing the nanites to release the stream of information. The lights in the room flicker and the equipment release a loud buzzing noise as the fans and cooling systems work overtime to keep everyone 'not on fire'.

"Ori! Slower or you're going to wreck my processors!" Sasha exclaims, prompting the nanites to slow the flow by three-quarters.

Still it was too fast, so they'd limited it all the way up to ninety five percent. The equipment was still working chugging, but at least it wasn't at risk of spontaneous combustion. The duo look down at the holoscreen as faint images begin to flash.

Random sounds blurt out, some familiar and some not, while the images seemed distorted or jumbled, as if someone had shredded a photo and asked a toddler to put it back together.

Ori sighs, "Guess that's a no-go..."

To his surprise however, Sasha shakes her head, "No... This could actually work." she gestures at the screen, "I said before my equipment wasn't designed for this, so everything is getting processed at once instead of whatever the method BD editors use. Sounds are getting mixed with visuals, heat signatures are getting mixed with other sensory input. Not to mention, at this rate it'd take four straight days to download all of it."

"Huh... Really?" Ori hums in thought.

"We're in luck too, you have a good friend who's famous for this kinda thing... Think Judy would help us out?"

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"Yeah... You're gonna have to pay me for this..." Judy sheepishly states, looking back and forth between Ori and Sasha.

"That's fine but, why...?" Ori asks

"Because I'd have to stop my current BD project to do yours. The delay will mess with my schedule so..."

"I get it. How much?"

"Can you pay seven thousand?"

"That much for a delay? I'll pay it but it's a bit much..." Ori mutters, sending the Eddies over the link.

Judy chuckles tentatively, "That's me being generous..." she shakes her head, "Let's get started?"

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It takes three full hours to download the data from the nanites, and another hour after that to decompile it into something 'usable'. Even with that they couldn't immediately access it, the sensory overload would fry most people's brains, as the nanites or 'chip' operated at a far higher capacity than an unenhanced brain could follow.

Judy went through her usual process, folding all the information into packets that you could interact with inside the Braindance, allowing you to get bite-sized pieces instead of the whole lot at once.

"Is it done?" Sasha questions, looking over Judy's shoulder as she closes down a number of pages.

"Yep, all that's left is for someone to go inside and find what you want. I'd recommend someone other than Ori go, since he's liable to miss things due to the BD being based on his brainwaves." Judy explains.

Sasha nods, "I'll do it, let's see who's hunting us..." she says, sitting down and jacking in as the other duo watch everything from the monitors.

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Sasha accesses the braindance and is momentarily blinded by the far-to-bright colours of the street. Each person's face is so clear she could see their blackheads, outside of those with interference software of course.

While most software wouldn't work when viewed in a braindance, there were higher-level ones that could. As shown by the blurry face of the Netrunner following Ori.

"See anything?" Ori asks from outside the simulation.

"Not sure yet." Sasha mutters as she pushes her sight to the assassin. Again, while their face was concealed, their clothes weren't, allowing her to get a good, long look at them. The jacket was some regular thing you could buy at any strip mall, and the shirt underneath it was similar.

The person's trousers were some synth-leather, but had nothing all that identifiable, aside from a few stains from either ketchup or blood...