Tag: Shadowrun

Why would PMCs be in politically-unstable places, as opposed to waiting in comfort to be called?

Private Military Companies

When I’m running a campaign — Shadowrun, D&D or Call of Cthulhu — I’m constantly expanding the universe I put my players in. I like the setting to be internally realistic, and as a result I am constantly reading up on things. For my last Shadowrun campaign, I dove into vault lines, volcanos, radio activity, extreme weather conditions, etc.

I came across something on the World Building Stack Exchange that I thought was interesting, and I thought I’d share. Someone asked why private military companies would keep their troops stationed in unstable places. The first answer was a great insight into the world of PMCs, mercenaries, and it gave a good background information for Shadowrunners and how they must live their lives.

The original link can be found here, but I’ve also copied and pasted the relevant bits here, in case the link goes dead.

Original Post

I’m writing a story, based off of the Stars Without Number system. Now, there’s one thing bugging me, and that’s that the military contractors and bounty hunters and the like are all congregating in the war-torn areas, waiting to be hired, instead of relaxing in luxury, waiting to be called.

There’s mostly reliable, long-distance superluminal communication, but only in the sense that you can put a message on a ship (or into the ship’s computers) and have that ship carry it, mostly reliably, between systems.

How can I explain why PMCs would do anything but stay at home, waiting to be hired to fight?

Top Rated Reply

Not sure quite what definition you want to give of “being a mercenary”, but I spent a few years as a contractor in Africa, Asia and the Middle East after leaving the Army, so I can tell you why I spent a bit of time wandering around the smellier parts of the world between contracts.

Connections

You get hired and find contracts by making sure people know you. I was in Special Forces for 6 years, and in a tiny community like that your reputation is everything. Once you get out it is the only way you get good contracts, too — not by applying for them, but by getting cold-called by someone you know and already worked with before.

But the longer you’ve been out of the military where assignments aren’t your decision and you meet new people as a matter of course, you wind up becoming slowly isolated. Whatever sort of work you have been doing is the only way you meet people if you’re only in the ugly parts of the world when you’re on contract. That means you only meet people who do the same kind of work as you, and pretty soon your old contacts change careers (nobody does this forever, not unless they get paid extremely well — but its actually feast-or-famine, and that begins to wear on you). Over time your contacts go stale, contracts become less frequent, wars end, new wars start in places you’ve never been, rules change, industry players change, empires come and go, languages you know becomes useless, etc.

We watch all this firsthand, which is why we know that we can’t count on being comfortable, ever, and absolutely none of us trust things like pension programs after watching entire governments implode overnight. That also means we don’t have much faith in getting a next call while we’re a world away sitting on our asses enjoying the good life. Yes, you do that a little, but only when you know you already have a contract lined up to go back to.

Location location location

So what does one do? Why do programmers looking for easy cash from VCs they can blindside with a storm of buzzwords migrate to San Francisco? Its one of the absolute worse places to run a company, but its one of the best for starting a company simply because the community is there. In the same way one might wonder why I would wander around a shithole like Baghdad or take a trip to Mali when job hunting? Because the community is there.

Its not just bases and checkpoints and whatnot. Those of us who have to stay there a lot begin doing more pleasant things with our time. Some start up private bars, open restaurants, hire stranded immigrant workers who were screwed over by their former employers and start a service shops that handle things people like us know are needed (vehicle repair, gear cleaning, safe parcel delivery, couriers, good alcohol smuggling, proper medical supply import, etc.). We tend to those things when you’re not on contract, meet local girls (“local” as in she’s there, and so are you for the moment), train with each other partly as play and partly to keep skills alive (and its fun), etc. and keep making contacts. It takes a little effort, but you can make life comfortable for yourself in the middle of the never-ending nightmare that is most of the world.

Most of us are, if not friends, at least cut from the same cloth. We’ve had similar experiences. We like to swap stories and lies with one another over a drink. We like to roll and box with each other for fun. We have beer shoots on the weekends sometimes (loser buys for everyone). Very few of us can train much back home. People at home sincerely do not understand a huge part of our lives. We come from the same dozen or so countries. We speak, if not the same language, the same 2 or 3 common pidgins. Its a comfortable place, even if its a rough one. And sure, maybe a few towns over people are getting their houses knocked over and roughed up by the local gangs or whatever, but nobody comes to mess with our little cobbled together neighborhood in that way. So yeah, its less safe than living in, say, Austin, but its a lot safer than the general violence statistics for the region would make it appear. And that’s just better for us — less competition.

We’re feeding off of the chaos

Most of the world is not very well planned out. When a crisis occurs and a bigshot needs to go somewhere bad in a big hurry there simply isn’t time to establish a strong guard force and mobilize it. Most countries don’t even have decent diplomatic security forces, so external contractors are a necessity.

Usually an office that is already in position will get a call at the 11th hour with a desperate need for diplomatic security. Not ten minutes later a few of us are running up and down the street knocking on doors, calling each other “Do you have any solid guys and a few locals you can bring on a run to X in two days?” and “Hey, do you still have that bigass armored bus? How about the bricked-out Mercedes and the Rhino, are they out of the shop yet?” and so on.

The next day we’re all out, not officially on contract yet, but we’re already rehearsing, making sure everybody knows what to do. One major advantage of working in a group like this is that you generally only need to rehearse actions-on, get guys new to a particular technique or scenario up to speed, and cover a few contingent actions. That’s a lot different from having to rigidly train core skills because most of the trigger-pullers are privates who just left home for the first time. (The general age range of the guys I prefer to work with is 30~60 — and don’t let 60 throw you off, there is this freakish phenomenon we call “old man strength” and its totally real.)

A few days later we’ve swapped out our patches and hats for whatever logos the prime contractor has and are standing all clean and pretty at the airfield waiting to meet the guy who is paying for the party.

From the outside I suppose it looks like Xe (or Blackwater, or whatever they are now), or Triple Canopy or Aegis or whoever appear to be some full-time private military force you can just hire on short notice — but that doesn’t mean they have a barracks in Florida or Cape Town and are just waiting for the green light. Its expensive to have us around, just eating through corporate profits. They assemble their forces from people they already know right then and roll. (The really huge contracts that cover a whole warzone may wind up being slightly different in effect, because those contracts may be ongoing for 5 years at a time, but even those stories must eventually end.) The only people with some level of job security are the country/region managers and up. The polite girl who used to call me from Virginia to tell me my travel routes, for example, had much better job security than any contract lead ever would.

That’s just diplomatic security. There are plenty of other contracts like training foreign militaries, providing direct QRF support, high-value recovery (sort of borderline legally), K&R response, countersurveillance, and some other stuff for example, but the way you get to know each other and find your next job tends to be the same: by being out there, being well known, being likable, making friends, working lower-paying contracts that involve a ton of people to have a chance to meet some other guys, and remembering who the dirtbags were so you can avoid them in the future.

It sounds bad to say “we feed off the chaos”, but that’s true. But its also true that the chaos is never-ending, people suck, nothing is stable, and nobody gives a crap about your problems but you and maybe your family. Its not going to get any better, and it hasn’t been any different throughout history — we’re just this season’s leaves, soon to be swept away whether we spend them shivering in our beds trying to stay safe or out there sweating, trying to get some cash together so we can get out of the crappy places of the world and start a family somewhere less screwed up.

So in the end…

Why do gravitate to the eye of the storm? Because in a world with no job security you have to make your own luck.

What about the organizations?

The above discussion was all about the people involved, explaining some of the reasons why I would occasionally hang around nasty places while off contract or at least spend my off-days while on contract making sure I had a good shot at having another contract one later on (or finding a better one right away if the current one paid peanuts but was super dangerous for no reason). That’s all about us guys who are on-off contract every few months (or whenever the phone rings) and have no job security. The companies that are actually getting the contract awards have slightly different, but related, reasons to always have a presence in a disturbed region.

Contracting companies don’t really have any job security, either. Any given conflict will eventually end, and — contrary to the hilariously off-base conspiracy theories that PMCs “cause conflict to profit off them” — peace could break out at any time. But this is Earth. We can rest easy in the knowledge thatwar is a natural state of mankind. The trick is, just like owning a chain of grocery stores or selling fire insurance, you have to diversify your presence and product offerings to make sure you’ve got market coverage if you want your company to survive beyond a sing huge conflict. (A lot of PMCs have come and gone just around the Iraq conflict. Others will come and go elsewhere. A few have a semi-permanent presence on the eternally screwed up continents.)

When everything goes to crap and the local embassy or company office needs to source something locally, it is a very good thing if you’ve already got a point of contact in country. Nothing fancy, just renting a one-room office or keeping a local on hire to answer the phone. If operations are fairly regular, though, like when a larger trend of conflicts is ongoing, it is absolutely impossible to keep up with regulatory requirements. Your job is, after all, to wield lethal force. In reality you do this every time you move a chair, pick up a rock, throw a baseball, grab any kind of farm tool you can imagine, or get the cutting board from under the sink… but that’s not how regulators see things. (And before you say “but you don’t wage wars with rocks and knives and stuff” — that is precisely what insurgents do.) Sourcing the best weapons money can buy in a country like the US, UK or France is not terribly difficult — but shipping them out sure is. The other side is even harder: getting authorization to ship weapons into a warzone. Now that last bit is highly ironic given the typical glut of weaponry just laying around and the fact that there is usually a vibrant black market in action — but it is absolutely insane the layers of paperwork, ass-kissing, bribing, cousin marriages, and personal relationships you have to maintain to ship a container of 30 rifles from Arizona to Pakistan.

Given that doing things the 100% legal way involves insurmountable regulatory hurdles, and to even be allowed to do things legally one must do the illegal stuff anyway to grease the skids on the operation (the bribes, cousin jiggering and relationships part) the path of least resistance is usually to source and maintain weapons locally and then make that legal by way of the bribes and whatnot. The end result is that you have mountains of paperwork to do (once your cache is made legal it will have to be registered and maintained by an armorer), but its done quickly and you have access to what you need now (money and arms) instead of never getting the operation off the ground because someone else can beat your price and timeline by sourcing locally. Its a race to market! But maybe not the sort of race to market everyone is aware occurs.

The tradeoff is money (flexible) and time (inflexible) in exchange for a much lower availability of the weapons you want to use. In a big theater like Iraq or Afghanistan its not so hard to get real M-4’s and things, but they will often be Bushmasters instead of Colts, for example (and when the the teeth on the bolt break while you’re firing… you really hope the rest of them hold until you can maybe find a new one and a new barrel, which is anything but certain). In a smaller theater you are rarely that lucky and will have to settle for unreliable remakes (that look good, but don’t sound so good), crappy magazines (failure to feed == failure to fire), ill-maintained former stockpile gear (that works, but requires some rehabilitation work), former Soviet stock (contrary to the popular image, the AK-47 and PKM are not the first choice of most discerning infantrymen…), or a big fat pile of “frankenguns”. And that’s just guns! The situation with ammunition is absolutely laughable most of the time (protip: practice stoppage drills).

[Frankengun: A firearm, usually of Soviet design, that is assembled from the not-yet-totally-broken parts of a collection of other guns that used to work. This is particularly common with PKMs, which are already bad enough when they are in factory condition compared to an M-240B* or an MG-3**.]

*  or MAG-58, or M-60, or...
** or MG-42, or MG-11, or MG-53, or...
See, guns have lineages, too! The PKM's line had a lot of inbreeding...

Where individuals trying to find contract work hang around to be known and put themselves in the right places at the right times, companies hoping to score prime contracts have to have an early logistical presence and maintain it in order to be confident they can service any contracts at all.

EDIT

In the spirit of this answer I’m preserving a thread that occurred in comments below that will certainly be lost to moderation eventually.

tl;dr: A tech contractor who worked for a PMC some of the same places I have asked some details about where the tactical contractors hang out and we had some back and forth. Ultimately, I want to keep in touch with the guy. This is partly out of habit, partly to reminisce, partly because I sense a kindred spirit, and partly because who knows when it might be a good thing to know another guy who does PMC work that is into tech?

http://zxq9.com/archives/1223

This is what I am talking about in terms of contractors sticking together like a tangle of Christmas-light-string shaped magnetic fishhooks.

Some Thoughts on Leaving a Lasting Impression

BreakdownOfRPGPlayersI’ve been playing tabletop RPG’s with my friends for over 20 years. In that time some people have come, some people have gone, but the one thing that remained the same is that we’ve always been keen on good, solid, collaborative storytelling. We’ve played so many different campaigns — predominantly Shadowrun, D&D and Call of Cthulhu, with some small jaunts into other games like Vampire: The Masquerade and Eclipse Phase, and alternative Shadowrun settings — that it’s impossible to remember all of them.

The campaigns that I remember most clearly are the ones that I am most proud of and those that were the most fun. The first time I really plotted a D&D campaign was back in the early naughties, when I ran a D&D campaign in the Forgotten Realms’ Khedron Valley. I had really taken my time to plan things out, think things through, and do a lot of world building even before starting the game. I’ve become much better at this, which is why I’m currently running a rather successful alternate Shadowrun campaign, where I’ve taken out all the elements that bugged me (read about it here, and here) creating something that comes much closer to cyberpunk than manapunk, which is what the cannon Shadowrun can be categorised as. So as time goes by, and I get smarter and wiser, the games I’ve prepared have become much better and more memorable.

But sometimes there’s something that really stands out. I ran a mini-campaign once when the SARS outbreak was at its peak. It was a realistic, modern-day setting, using Shadowrun’s third edition rules, in which the players were hired by the WHO to investigate the lockdown of Hong Kong because of an outbreak of a mysterious illness. That game was memorable because it completely derailed in silliness. I’m not sure we ever finished the story, but it was hilarious.

Another time, while playing Shadowrun around the time of the 2059 Corporate War, the players were required to kidnap David Hague, a high ranking Fuchi executive, as he flies into Seattle. They spent many sessions planning the kidnapping, only to find that the incoming flight exploded mid-air and crash landed in the Redmond barrens, completely derailing the storyline. They weren’t very happy with that, and probably still aren’t. They still bring it up from time to time when they take a carefully planned approach to something. They’re probably bitter, but that story left them with a lasting impression.

And I find that this is something I’m chasing; something that leaves a lasting impression. I’m not sure if I’m trying hard enough, or too hard, but it’s very difficult to find that balance of a great collaborative story, and setting something up that leaves a lasting impression and won’t leave the players feel rail-roaded.

Gaming Frequency

Today’s gaming was cancelled. Our rule is that if the GM, or more than one person can’t make it, we cancel. It’s happened quite frequently when we were playing D&D, and I was determined to keep the momentum going by finding alternatives to cancelling — like gaming earlier, or on different days — but it’s proven to be difficult as of late. I will have to put more effort in. Momentum is incredibly important.

So for today, I think I will watch Ghost in the Shell: Arise, and perhaps do some video gaming instead.

Shadowrun & Lethality

Shadowrun has always been a gritty roleplaying game, whose lethality was rather legendary. It simply wouldn’t do to run head-long into a hail of bullets and expect to survive. No matter how augmented or jazzed up your character was, even a Troll cyberzombie goes down if enough guns or spells were brought to bear.

Fourth edition was made an order of magnitude more lethal than third edition. In return, fourth edition decided to scale down the healing times. Personally, I always enjoyed the long, realistic healing times, but truth be told, they could throw a monkey wrench into the timeline of a story and was therefore often circumvented by GM ex machina where a sympathetic/opportunistic street doctor or mage would present themselves.

In fourth edition, stun damage is healed by rolling a Willpower + Body (1 hour) extended test. Physical damage is healed by rolling Body x 2 (1 day) extended test. This means that with a body and willpower of 3, you’ll likely recover 10 boxes of stun in ten hours, and 10 boxes of physical in ten days, the latter implying that you can heal back from a deadly wound in only ten days.

A caveat here is that if you roll a glitch, you double the time for that extended test run. So 1 hour becomes 2 hours, and 1 day becomes 2 days. The likelihood of that is relatively low, which means that barring a critical glitch, you’ll be out a maximum of 20 hours for 10 stun, and 20 days for 10 physical.

Optional rules were provided to make healing more realistic, like adding damage modifiers to the extended test, effectively meaning that the threshold for success on the extended test run is the total number of damage modifiers you’ve incurred. Another optional rule suggests using only Body, instead of Body x 2 to test for healing physical damage.

Personally, I think I will go with the first rule, to just tweak that lethality of fourth edition without completely breaking the flow of the game. I could always fall back on a GM ex machina, if necessary. Also, I want to develop something that would dictate whether or not the damage done to a character warrants some sort of augmentation, but I have to think about that.

On a related note, I recently read a post on Reddit that suggested that most roleplaying games are systems of advancement and that Shadowrun’s fourth edition (and to a large extent all of the editions of Call of Cthulhu) is so lethal that the only way to ensure advancement is to not die. This idea is reinforced by the fact that the more conservative players who tend to hold on to their characters the longest, are the ones to advance to higher levels of power.

Sure, if playing Bunkers & Badasses is your thing, then perhaps Shadowrun isn’t your thing. Personally, I enjoy the grit and realism.

alt.shadowrun.history – Genetic Anomalies and Purity

Psionics
Just after the eruption of the super volcano underneath Yellowstone in March 2021, a rare few people started to experience what can only be described as telekinetic powers; able to move small objects by will alone. The world’s attention was focused on the ecological and humanitarian disaster happening all along the Pacific rim, so for a long time the chatter about these new psionicists was dismissed as a hoax.

Eventually, when most of the chaos had died down and enough supporting evidence had been gathered, people finally started to take this phenomenon seriously. On October 7th, 2028 several large universities and other bio-medical institutions held a joint press conference to confirm the existence of psionics and release what little knowledge had been gained since their first appearance in 2021.

Publicly, not much is known about what causes psionics to manifest, nor is it understood how it works or why psionics seems to be limited to simple telekinetics. The debate is ongoing about whether this will be all there is, or whether the future holds more diverse and more powerful psionics in store for humanity. So far, careful conclusions are correlations are being drawn between the emergence of psionics and the global climate shift. Some say it’s the next step in human evolution, brought on by great hardship. Others maintain it’s likely a mutation on a genetic level caused by severe pollution. And then there are a wide range of other theories, ranging from the fantastical to the downright bizarre.

Looper - Telekinesis

Metahumanity
Shortly after the confirmation of the existence of psionics, more and more cases of mild congenital anomalies were reported in new-born children all over the world. Initially overlooked as achondroplasia, acromegaly and other common genetic defects and mutations, it took over a decade of research to determine that these were entirely new and distinct mutations in the human genome. Four new, basic human genotypes were eventually discovered to exist along side the common homo sapiens sapiens. These new “races,” for lack of a better word, were being born to homo sapiens sapiens parents indiscriminately and while rare, enough cases were available for study and eventually some careful conclusions on the characteristics of each were reached.

Homo Sapiens Pumilionis
The homo sapiens pumilionis is found to be a much shorter and slightly stockier than sapiens. Their muscle density rivals that of some lizards, leading to elevated strength and constitution. They also seemed to be far more resistant to toxins and pollution and because these were some of the first cases discovered and researched, they gave birth to the theory that they were the result of an over-exposure of one or both of the parents to pollution. This could never be verified, but the rumour has persisted and has come to include all other new sapiens genotypes.

The pumilionis is commonly referred to as “stunts” or “squats” for their stunted and squat appearance, on average standing only 140cm tall, but weighing in disproportionately heavier than that. Some human rights groups have taken issue to the vulgar names, but research has shown that the majority of the pumilionis don’t take issue to the names.

Homo Sapiens Nobilis
Homo sapiens nobilis is a rare genotype whose exotic physical characteristics have made them instantly popular in the media. They are slender and agile and generally stand a little taller than sapiens, at an average of 190cm tall, without sacrificing any of the muscle and bone density. Their faces are somewhat longer, their features somewhat finer and their eyes are generally a little larger, making them quite pleasing to the eye. Research has also indicated that they have a slightly elevated chance to show signs of psionics, with 1,43 out of every 100 people being psionically active, a slight jump over the 1,09 out of every 100 people for the rest of the sapiens.

All in all, this has lead to an overactive media attention being focused on the “exalts”, as they have become known, something which exalt rights group have encouraged. Their popularity have set them apart from the other new genotypes who, unlike exalts, have had to deal with much more bias and negative stereotyping.

Homo Sapiens Robustus
The homo sapiens robustus is the most common of the genotypes, and are often referred to as “crudes”. They derive their vulgar name from their bulkier build, high strength and strong facial features. Often sporting smaller eyes, a stronger brow and slightly broader noses than humans.

Another distinction that has earned them their name is that their scores on mental aptitude tests have consistently averaged lower than sapiens, while stunts and exalts didn’t show any signs of mental deficiencies. This has lead to some ugly stereotypes of crudes being strong but dumb, an idea that the Organisation for Highly Gifted Crudes, a sub-division of Mensa International, is trying to change. Statistics suggest that the average crude IQ, adjusted for age and nationality, around 93.

Apart from their physical and mental characteristics, there’s one more thing that sets crudes apart from the other genotypes, and that is that the fertility rate for female crudes is generally elevated, with a higher degree of multiple births than women of other genotypes.

Homo Sapiens Ingentis
Lastly, the homo sapiens ingentis stands much taller, averaging at 240cm in height and reaching truly staggering heights of 320cm. They are much stronger, and much hardier than the other genotypes, even the crudes, but unfortunately they suffer from an even worse form of mental deficiency with their average adjusted IQ’s hovering around 89.

Their stature being what it is, with their weight generally hovering around 150kg, many people feel intimidated by them. Studies show that people consider the ingentis to be so alien to most others that people have a hard time showing compassion for them. It has lead to people calling them “titans” and being more prone to treating them as something not human. Social isolation is common for titans, compounded by the fact that they are the least numerous of the genotypes. This is partly due to the difficult pregnancy that mothers have to endure, which has lead to a higher number of titan pregnancies being terminated before coming to term.

Homo Sapiens Sapiens
The remainder of the people are just plain humans, which is why media dubbed them “plains” or “regulars” when talking about the distinction.

Population Average height Average weight
Plains 72% 175cm 80kg
Stunts 8% 140cm 65kg
Exalts 5% 190cm 85kg
Crudes 12% 180cm 110kg
Titans 3% 240cm 140kg

Mutation

The Genetic Purity Council
A vocal minority, the most influential of which is the Genetic Purity Council (GPC), is afraid that psionics will destroy the fabric of society. They believe that the emergence of psionics is the result of deviant mutations in the human genome, brought on by pollution and lifestyle. The group claims to have proof of the existence of more powerful psionicists and that governments and corporations are actively using these psionicists to subjugate the rest of society. They have yet to release the evidence but have managed to use the claim to gain a political foothold.

As a result, their lobbying power is significant and their viewpoints are often seen and heard on different news networks, some of which are known GPC-sympathisers. Politically, they are gaining support among the poor and rural as they appeal to the disenfranchised. This has lead to widespread bigotry and occasional violence aimed at psionicists, especially exalt psionicists, since they are often seen as elitist, even without their added psionic abilities.

Their stance on the different human genotypes is much softer, which some argue is disingenuous when analysing their overall message. They claim to promote compassion for the “mutant” because “it” can’t help being an abomination and aberration. The GPC has labeled their research into the eradication of mutations top priority, citing their “inevitable achievement” as “the single greatest medical and social achievement since eradicating polio and women voting rights.”

While the GPC distances themselves from attacks on psionicists and “mutants”, top ranking and influential GPC members have been known to privately fund and support “vigilantism”.

Chronicle - Psychokinesis

Advanced Psionics
Of course, the GPC isn’t entirely off-base with their claims. Of the small amount of people capable of tapping into their psionic abilities a small subset of those individuals have shown nearly limitless potential.

The existence of people with advanced psionics (AdPsi) has remained a closely guarded secret. Governments, corporations and groups like the GPC eagerly pursue the recruitment and acquisition of such individuals and most people that show signs of AdPsi mysteriously disappear.

Over the years, several “extensive” and “thorough” investigations have been done into the existence of AdPsi, but the repetitive conclusions meant that the search by all but the most dedicated truth-seekers and skeptics has been halted. Carefully planned responses to claims of the existence of AdPsi have resulted in public ridicule and dismissal, so the people who believe in AdPsi have become as secretive about their beliefs as the people with AdPsi abilities have become about their abilities.

Psychokinesis

Every once in a while, an incident that defies explanation will come to light, which leads to a flurry of speculation in the media. People caught on camera showing extraordinary feats of strength and agility will often cause a bump in Matrix-searches on AdPsi abilities and lead to week long discussions in the chat-rooms in the deepest recesses of the Matrix.

People willing to show off their ability to levitate, ignite materials, read thoughts or turn invisible are highly sought after by news organisations because it will inevitably cause a bump in attention. Ultimately, these people either have to recant their statements, turn out to be hoaxes or disappear altogether.

But in the end, a whole host of footage has been collected of unexplained AdPsi phenomena, and some believe it will eventually lead to the revelation that AdPsi is real and their practitioners have been there all along. This keeps the conversation going and while governments, corporations and the GPC are trying to scrub the Matrix of these rumours, they have been unsuccessful at that particular game of whack-a-mole. But that doesn’t mean they’re not trying.

UNKLE - Rabbit in Your Headlights