Here is a freebie Shadowrun Character:
Call him Cluster.
He thought up the name himself. He was 10 years old and living in Pullyalup Barrens and stealing wi-fi from anyone he could. The people who did have a signal strength couldn’t afford the level of security required to protect it from someone who had half an idea of what they were doing. He knew more than half of what he was doing. The tech stuff came to him regular, the way a man instinctively knows when to stop staring at someone or the way a woman knows how to suss out danger. He had that sort of sense about the matrix. He knew how to get in and out of places from the moment he had the government jack put in. The jack was courtesy of an outreach program. Back then they still had such things and his mom cared enough to do the research and resulting paperwork to get him fitted. Hell, there weren’t more than a handful of kids on the block who even went to classes. Most just ran the streets–trying to fall in with one gang or the other.
Cluster, or Sam as they called him back then, was never outside. He knew he wasn’t made for the streets. His dad had been a soldier–at least that is what his mom said. He never knew the man. He was gone long before Sam came around. Back then his school friends called him sam-wise. They made fun of him everyday, but it was a gentle ribbing built out of friendship and misplaced envy. Sam did good in school. They did good in life. They had sports and tutors and home cooked meals. He had twenty seven miles of elevated train tracks to navigate just to show up nearly on time each morning.
What really bugged him was the dad talk. He was one of two kids that didn’t have a tidy nuclear family. Most of the rest of them had corporate parents. Nothing so glorious as mitsuhama, but corporate nonetheless. He was asian like a lot of them, so the expectations were there.
When they talked about their fathers they spoke in reverent tones with stories driven by success and upward mobility. Hiro’s dad was about to be promoted. Lisa’s dad recently received a commendation and she got to go to the ceremony. Sam wasn’t a part of that world, so he invented a way in. His dad had served overseas and then again in Chicago. He had plenty of commendations. He had a bronze star, but his mom wouldn’t let him touch it because she thought he might break it or something.
He knew enough about matrix searches to learn all he could about the military and about the things his father could have done. He learned, for example, that the army dropped bombs on Chicago during the worst of the threat. He saw the pictures. They seared their way into his psyche. Cluster Bombs.
Some Thoughts:
- I am still quite pleased with myself for that Monday morning hulk post/pic.
- The clicks of this computer are extremely satisfying… especially when I can go fast. However, I don’t have a feel enough for it yet to go fast without looking at the keyboard and still making errors.