House of Cards (fanfic)!

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Mon Dec 31, 2001 4:32 am

Kath pulled off the road, moving into the light piles of snow and slush covering the world outside the highway. She turned off the engine but left the battery running."What now?" said Will."I'd like to get a disguise in order before we hit town." Kath carefully examined the buttons on the dashboard. "Wally said something about a holographics system in here

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Mon Dec 31, 2001 4:34 am

Tim leaned back in his chair, his eyes red and bleary and his head no better, and surveyed the results of his work so far.It had come to him suddenly, as if in a dream: this box was connected to the crashes two days ago. A flash of intuition he couldn't quite place or trust, but that somehow seemed right.So he checked up on it. Few of the crashed sites were back up yet; only those with offline storage had anything to put back up. But those servers which were down were still connected; they just didn't have anything there. Jumbled bits of code, fragments and strings beyond recovery, still drifting about in the memory banks. Tim reconstructed what he could, with Guth's help, and eventually they were able to piece together a faint echo of an address.It was, naturally, black-box with three flavors of impenetrable, but Tim and Guth coaxed out a real-world address.And, of course, it was the Virginia branch of QuanTech Industries.Then Guth noted something he'd mentioned earlier in a similar flash of insight."The system seems incomplete without its program," he'd said. "But with that program it caused these crashes. Therefore, might it not have left some traces of the program necessary in the temporary upload buffers of the memory banks of the servers?"Tim had agreed, and immediately they got back down to work. They scoured as many of the crashed servers as they could find, sifting through the random bits of trash left in the buffers to find any leftover echoes, any piece of this program that had been uploaded a second before the crash.They had found thousands of pieces, the biggest of them only a few kilobytes and most much smaller. They appeared to be part of a formula, a mathematical computation of some sort.Guth was, unfortunately, called away before the compiling of these fragments could begin. And now Tim was left to do what he could.On first glance, he could make out very little: it was certainly a formula, or more accurately an algorithm, and when complete it would doubtless be huge. In a text compression like the one used, ten pages of densely packed mathematics would be barely a kilobyte, and the total so far was well over a megabyte. Following the intricate equations as best he could, Tim knew it was a probability function of some kind, based on whatever input it was given. But what was it meant to find the probability of?This algorithm was the key to making this little black box work. Assuming it worked the way Tim supposed it to, it would perform whatever simple mathematics were needed, and then build everything else

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Mon Dec 31, 2001 4:38 am

Will, with the display up and showing the car types, naturally kept checking the road every ten seconds for approaching cars. None yet had matched the models Jones had sent them, and he was beginning to wonder about this information, when a blue pickup truck, exactly like the one onscreen, came down the street. "Heads up," he whispered."How many in the car?" Kath's voice came softly over the earpiece.Will strained his eyes. They were still a fair pace off, going well under the speed limit, not breaking any laws or taking any chances. "Looks like two. No

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Mon Dec 31, 2001 4:40 am

The Unconscious Collective is divided into sections based on the nature of those paranormals captured.For example, there is a wing for gods and demons, one for beastials, one for nocturnals, where the inmates are free during the day but put back in an hour before the sun sets. There is a wing for the Fae, cells with bars of cold iron. There is a wing for extraterrestrials, cells filled with helium or ammonium or methane or bromine.And there is a wing for those things which are already dead.Here there are cells containing ghosts as most people imagine them

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Mon Dec 31, 2001 4:42 am

"Jones?' Will tapped the earpiece. "Jones!""What happened? Is he off?""I'm not sure

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Mon Dec 31, 2001 4:45 am

The computer beeped, and Tim sprang forward. The program had worked quite well, from appearances

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Mon Dec 31, 2001 4:49 am

And here is the finish to chapter five! Tim's mysterious box has many surprises in store! Kath and Will's mystery weapon may be bigger than anyone imagined! And what is the mysterious ending to the showdown of Jones and White? Don't miss a minute of chapter six, where revelations come hard and fast!------------------
"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers." --James Thurber
E(xcrfh)M!BFF+++A--W---Y+++T*KxCLl

Quinch · Post by **Quinch** » Tue Jan 01, 2002 8:25 am

Agga-agga-agga....Wow.------------------
Master of <A HREF="http://members.fortunecity.com/retrograde" TARGET=_blank>http://members.fortunecity.com/retrograde</A>
Part-time Cthulhu follower {also available for children's parties, weddings and Barmitzwahs}
Winner of the Planet Baldur's Gate Official Longest Thread Ever Contest

TrueRaijin · Post by **TrueRaijin** » Tue Jan 01, 2002 10:06 am

I would like to repeat, Whoa.I think I would die before voluntarily missing the next chapter, so dont worry.
Keep at it!

Pennyangelos · Post by **Pennyangelos** » Mon Jan 21, 2002 1:02 am

*nudge*

Nadriel · Post by **Nadriel** » Mon Jan 21, 2002 4:35 am

I just got here, and now I don't want to leave....------------------
I'm only wearing black until they invent a darker colour

Tom the Fanboy · Post by **Tom the Fanboy** » Mon Jan 21, 2002 6:37 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by pennyangelos:
*nudge*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Thanks man, compiler! AWAY!
*woosh*

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Thu Jan 24, 2002 6:03 am

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:<HR>Originally posted by Tom the Fanboy:
 Thanks man, compiler! AWAY!
*woosh*<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Sorry about that, Tom...I would've bumped it myself, if the Real World (not the TV show) hadn't been interfering in what we all know is the more important world

T Campbell · Post by **T Campbell** » Mon Feb 18, 2002 12:25 pm

*ahem*

Quinch · Post by **Quinch** » Tue Feb 19, 2002 6:01 am

EPTHIV, would you care to explain to us your definition of "fairly soon"? {winkwink}

Pennyangelos · Post by **Pennyangelos** » Tue Feb 26, 2002 3:48 pm

Come *ON,* Ted!!

Alisin · Post by **Alisin** » Sat Mar 09, 2002 7:32 am

Oh, man, this is so tense, best thing I've ever read as far as fanfic goes.

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Sun Mar 10, 2002 2:01 pm

CHAPTER SIX

Rikk knocked on the door. "Tim?" he said, quietly, to make sure he didn't wake up anyone else on the floor. There were signs on peoples' doors mentioning this, and the possible consequences of such an action. Most of them involved pain, and Rikk wasn't really sure whether they should be treated as jokes or not.

There wasn't any answer. He knocked again, a little louder. Tim slept late, of course

EWHPTIV · Post by **EWHPTIV** » Sun Mar 10, 2002 2:02 pm

The ripping-silk sound of the laser caught across the edge of Jones' hearing as the blast slammed into his chest with the brute force of a freight train.

He was thrown backwards ten feet, into the railing on the catwalk, and slid onto the floor.

White came over and smiled down at him. "Good morning, Mr. Jones."

Jones moved his lips. "Mr. White," he croaked.

White held out his gun, dangled it before Jones' eyes. "Stun setting, Mr. Jones. I did not want to kill you just yet."

Jones tried to move his arms, couldn't. "Dammit," he said, "stop toying with me."

White grinned. "Oh, come now, Mr. Jones. I believe I deserve it. I am, after all, the victor in this little contest of wills. I hold the light in my hands, and I

Alisin · Post by **Alisin** » Mon Mar 11, 2002 5:14 am

Wow, more more, need my fix again!!

Keep up the great work