There are times I really hate Crusties.

Werewolves.

I hate these mangy, flea bitten, smelly mutts with a passion. Only the Goths (vampires) wind me up as much. I'm playing through the zion training archive and we're hitting on the Effectuator. However, he's surrounded himself with these crusties and I'm having a hard time working my way through them. One on one, they have no chance, but I'm swamped by four and five of them. They're wiping the floor with me.



Now I know why there are so many at the moment!

I'm sitting down on a bench recovering near the Tabor Park Hardline, watching the weather do it's general weirdness these days when there's another connection.

"You need more Silver Bullets."

Tell me about it. I just never get use them.

"Pity I can't get more over to you."

Well, I'll ask Mind and Poolshark to give me a hand next time.

"Well, with the Oligraphs gone for the moment, everyone really took a deep breath. Veil got away from the Kid after they'd finished they're upload. She got called to a machine meeting. Turns out that the Machines had had enough of being nice to the Oligarchs and as they have difficulty in reprogramming the source, they asked the Cypherites and their human operatives to do it. But since when does a secret like that stay silent?"

Oh, two maybe even three minutes?

"Exactly, Before you knew it, the Frenchman wanted in but there's only one member of his staff that has any chance of getting in."

Let me guess. The very Trainman he exiled and where your backup code was sent to? It's typical that just when you're making progress there's always complications.

"Well, only my RSI was destroyed by Halion. I've been floating around since then, whispering in peoples ears here and there. Little bit of prodding people in the right direction never hurt. The Trainman was able to pull me together again and I went from being an effective ghost in the Matrix to a prisoner on his construct. Mind you, he was a prisoner there with me so it wasn't so bad, could have been Smith."

Now there's someone I'm expecting to turn up at any minute.

"I'd keep on expecting if I were you."

Well, I've still got all these cookies to use up from last time.

"Anyway, the Merv has to go find out how to un-exile the trainman. So he's away doing that. Zion decided that they were going to try to backpack on the back of the Machine operators into the Source. No such luck. I may be no fan of Agent Pace but she certainly has enough of Ghost's number to stop him at every turn."

No luck there then. You've never told me how long ago this all happened?

"Oh, well, that was a couple of months ago. Virtual has been slowly eating more power than the other instances and it was beginning to show. The Architect says he's using the other power grids from the other systems to supplement it, but that's causing power loss in Machine City itself."

That why you keep on dropping out? The Power loss?

"Kiddo, it always feels like we're on empty over here. By the Way, Persephone says hello."

Really? I have no idea why but send her my regards if she wants them.

"I'll do th....."

And the connection drops yet again. What ever is going on over in Virtual and the machine source is bad. Mind you it might good from a zion point of view.

But Why would Persephone want to say hello. However, if these power drains are as bad as the Oracle says, How long until the other matrix instances collapse. Imagine, if a Matrix instance fails, all the bluepills wake up and that looses the machines even more power. The chances are it will cause a domino effect across all the whole thing.

Mind you, if the machine's power goes, so does the Frenchman and the machine city. Humanity would win.

What are the chances it would be that simple?

My train of thought is interuppted by a noise behind me. I turn and look.

Aw Pants!




Now we have Zombies as well!