(from the Firewall mission briefing background information) With a thought, she activated the conferencing software, beginning by projecting an image into the center of the conference table. The image was a schematic of a beehive habitat burrowed into a moderately sized asteroid of a few kilometers in radius, with some construction projecting above the surface of the irregular rock, one of the projections in particular reaching up to a small torus and tin-can cluster. “This is the Dorfl Trust Habitat, a mutualist and utilitarian Extropian habitat in the Belt. It was founded eight years ago, in After Fall Two, by Quentin Saint James and the other members of the Dorfl Trust. Last year there was a serious incident aboard the habitat, but, first, a little background on the Dorfl Trust.” The image changed, to that of a large, vaguely humanoid figure, but too large, too exaggerated and poorly formed to be any practical morph, with red, glowing eyes in a lumpen face. “This is Dorfl, a character from the Discworld, a twentieth century novel series, and the namesake and inspiration for the Dorfl Trust.” Several heads around the table nodded, obviously recognizing the reference. “In the novels, Dorfl was a golem -- a sort of magical artificial man made of clay -- and put to work doing the messy jobs that others weren’t willing to do. He was property, until one of the other characters purchased him from his owner and set him free by giving him his own receipt. He was then, after some adventures, hired by the City Watch. Now Constable Dorfl, not requiring the necessities of life that most people needed to spend their earnings on, saved up his income and purchased another golem, which he then freed in the same manner. These two golems then saved up their joint earnings to purchase and free a third golem, and so forth. In a later book, another character referred to the entire situation as ‘the most polite and socially responsible revolution in history’.” The image changed to that of a picture of a group of people in well-tailored suits, smiling in the approved and official manner mandated for a group photo. “The Dorfl Trust was founded in response to the massive number of infugee indentures and egos in dead storage left after the Fall, and their resulting exploitation by the hypercorps.” The image shifted to a densely worded contract, with a long list of signatories. “They work in a manner inspired by and similar to the Golem Trust, buying up indenture contracts and egos in dead storage, freeing them, training them and then finding them work, with the stipulation that some of their wages are given back to the Trust until they pay back the cost of the purchase of their contract, training and placement. These monies are then used to continue the cycle, and many alumni of the Trust often continue to donate a portion of their earnings back to the Trust even after their obligations are met.” She looked around the room. About half of the table, including those two sentinels Arkady and Terrance and the androgenous Sascha, had varying degrees of skepticism in their kinesics, although Navin and Betty were looking intrigued and the Vector, MacKenzie, was unreadable. “There has been some problems with corruption over the last eight years, mostly involving attempts at skimming from the Trust’s accounts and attempts by some less than bright members attempting to set up their own personal empires of influence over the indentures, but, overall, the system has been working fairly well, with there being approximately one million alumni and members of the Dorfl Trust at present, mostly concentrated in the Belt and associated with Extropian factions. The habitat, being structured along Extropian principles, also ended up becoming a base of operations for other organizations with similar goals, including an office for the Underground Railroad and at least one ego liberator service, who once managed to scam the Nine Lives syndicate out of a considerable number of egos, which they then sold to the Dorfl Trust.”

“Eight months ago, there was an incident at the Dorfl Trust Habitat.” The image shifted to a scene out of hell, a battle stalemated in a zero gravity corridor, two groups, both dressed in similar clothing, with little to differentiate the two sides, both shooting at each other. After a few moments of the video, Mariko watched the kinesics of those around her, taking note of how quickly each of her fellow sentinels noticed the anomaly. Arkady was first, she noticed, as his eyebrows quirked. He then looked up at her with a questioning expression. At her slight nod, he returned his attention to the video. Betty then noticed. “That group...” she began hesitantly, and then plowed on ahead, obviously figuring that since she had already spoken up, she might as well keep going. “Both sides are obviously using tacnets to coordinate, but that group, the ones with the heavier weapons, they’re even more coordinated than even tacnets should be giving them. I’ve only seen that kind of crazy move-as-one coordination in the middle of a fight among neo-synergists or massed forks.” “Exactly right,” Mariko confirmed. “What happened is someone attempted a hostile Trojan takeover of the Dorfl Trust habitat and only failed due to bad luck.” The image changed again, away from the scene of battle to an graphic display consisting of a flowchart that highlighted as she spoke. “What apparently happened is someone first began infiltrating the habitat and its subcontractor services at least a year previously, selling the Trust compromised egos, apparently using some form of psychosurgery to implant a hidden secondary personality underneath the primary ego. This secondary personality would only have been detectable during a fairly deep psychosurgical or psychiatric analysis, which was not part of the standard Dorfl Trust mental health assessment for incoming egos at the time. It is also suspected that one or more of the Dorfl Trust contracted psychiatrists was either unknowingly compromised with a Manchurian sub-personality or an infiltrator themselves.” The image shifted to an org chart, which began to highlight key areas in red as she spoke. “These compromised egos became success stories for the Dorfl Trust, with many excelling and joining the Trust itself as full members and not former indentures. In retrospect, this should have been a warning sign, but at the time it was seen as an indicator of the Trust’s excellent, and, regardless, the infiltrators made up only a small percentage of the total population. Regardless, as the plot reached fruition, many personnel in key areas and subcontractors, having been members of the Trust and then hired on as workers and contractors, were compromised.” The image shifted once more, now displaying an ego identity sheet for one Anton Kawalski, with a secondary sheet next to it labeled Howard Niles, and a third sheet with the name Jasper Maynard. “As the plot reached critical mass, the triggerman, Anton Kawalski, a.k.a. Howard Niles, a.k.a. Jasper Maynard, suspected hypercorp black ops operative, arrived aboard a personal transport. Once aboard and entrenched aboard the habitat, having brought in weapons, ammunition, rare elements to make more of the same and a desktop cornucopia machine, he transmitted an activation code through the local mesh. This then activated the Manchurian programming in the infiltrators, paralyzing or destroying the dominant egos and giving the infiltrator egos full control of their respective sleeves and began an uprising with the aim of gaining control of the habitat.” “The fighting was intensive; the first targets for the subverted sleeves were the long range comm arrays, resulting in the habitat being unable to call for help.” “Fortunately, due to circumstances beyond his immediate control and, as I’ve learned, the actions of a team of Firewall sentinels, the takeover was foiled at a considerable cost of materials and lives, some of which have still not been resleeved, due to worries about contamination with infiltrator egos which have so far been undetected in those egos, but are still known to have been suborned during the uprising.” “As the takeover was put down, ‘Anton’ managed to escape by informing the habitat as to the presence of a nuclear device aboard his transport, currently docked aboard the habitat.” The image of the habitat returned, with a light blinking against the body of the asteroid indicating a location. “He threatened to detonate the device if his demands were not met. During the time that a response to determine the veracity of his threats, he used this to delay to escape, using a suborned farcaster facility to egocast away. Subsequently, the transport was eventually boarded and, while no purpose built nuclear device was discovered, a program was found in the control software for the fusion drive which could have resulted in the detonation of the transport with a yield of approximately twelve to fifteen megatons. During this investigation, an activation signal was received by the transport, and before the onboard fusion reactor could bring itself it a critical state, the reactor was shut down and the bomb effectively disarmed.” Mariko looked around the room. Everyone’s faces were grim and set. Well, there was more where that came from. Hell, this was just the background! “After this point, the infiltrators either suicided or fought to the point of forcing the habitat defenders to kill them, doing considerable damage to the habitat as a result.” On the display, a sadly large number of tags highlighted damage to various locations across the habitat, causing Tarrant to visibly wince in dismay. “At this point, eight months later, repairs are still on-going.” “Total damage done to the habitat and its residents totaled in the tens of millions of credits, with over seven hundred killed and in need of resleeve -- and for one hundred and fifty-seven of that total, resleeve progressed slowly, as their backups needed to have any secondary infiltrator egos found and, when possible, removed. Fourteen have been classified as potentially incurable, with their detected infiltrator egos being deemed impossible to remove from the primary host ego without risk of severe damage.” At this, everyone in the room had an ugly look on their faces. It didn’t matter the faction or the background, psychosurgery on that scale was no more and no less than mental rape of someone’s mind, and everyone was outraged at that sort of thing. Which brought her to her next point... “Questioning of the infiltrator egos has yielded few clues. All are identical forks of the same ego, but have been so massively pared down as to have no useful information. All were heavily conditioned to be completely loyal and obedient to their activator, and all attempted suicide upon capture or activation as an infomorph in a secure simulspace.“ “Meanwhile, the Dorfl Trust’s indenture and training programs had taken a massive hit, both to their momentum and their current activity. Rebuilding the destroyed facilities and infrastructure reduces the number of egos that can be trained or even kept active at once, and the funds required for the rebuilding are directly competing with the funds for the acquisition of new indenture contracts and egos in dead storage. Compared to a month before the incident, the immediate aftermath saw eighty-three percent of the retraining and other habitat infrastructure destroyed, significantly damaged or disabled, and at present, the habitat is running at only seventy-two percent capacity as compared to nine months ago. For the Dorfl Trust, this was nearly a deadly blow that could have easily destroyed the habitat and the Trust as an indenture-freeing institution, and would have if not for the generous contributions by their former clients, the indentures they freed and the egos they rescued from dead storage. Regardless, it was still a major setback.”