User Guide

CYBERSPACE
Once you get a cyberspace deck, you’ll want to access the “matrix” itself, also known as
cyberspace. Hidden from the common citizen who is limited to accessing bases through the
Comlink system, the cyberspace grid represents information in its pure form. All of the private,
corporate, government, and military bases can be reached in cyberspace. Many of these bases
can be reached only from cyberspace because they are isolated computers with the highest levels
of protection. Visually, cyberspace is a three-dimensional representation of all the bases, which
look like geometric shapes. These bases are laid out in specific zones of the horizontal cyberspace
grid. In actuality, cyberspace is just an image generated in your brain by your cyberspace deck.
Without the deck, cyberspace would just be a complex sea of information that humans would
never be able to understand.
In operation, you might
compare travel in cyberspace to driving around in a city. The streets are
represented by the lines of the grid. The buildings are the geometric shapes of the bases. Your
car is your cyberspace deck. As with moving around a city, you can keep driving past the
buildings or stop and enter them (if you can get past the security guard).
Speaking of security guards, you may have guessed that you can’t just waltz right into a base,
even though you’re entering from cyberspace.
Each base is protected by ICE, which is designed
to keep unauthorized users from accessing the private information contained in the base.
ICE AND ICEBREAKERS
Bases are protected by ICE-Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics-which acts as an
independent, semi-intelligent barrier, keeping cowboys like you from getting inside the base.
However, cowboys do manage to break in with their specialized icebreaking softwarez. The trick
is finding the appropriate versions and types of softwarez to break through the ICE before it can
adapt its defenses to the attack. There are subtle, slow-acting viruses that sneak up on an ICE
layer and destroy it gradually, as well as brute force icebreakers that can crush an ICE layer all
at once. There are many different kinds of icebreaking programs-some good and
some bad.
You’ll also notice that icebreakers vary in their effectiveness, but you’ll have to experiment on
your own to learn more about each one.
You’ll find that the low-security bases are protected by the weakest ICE. By breaking into these,
you can develop your abilities, test your softwarez, and generally prepare for stronger and
deadlier combat with medium and high security ICE.
And there’s one more minor point you need to know.
ICE has an annoying tendency to fight
back. In fact, it can kill you.