abstract
| - From his headquarters at one of the nation's largest datacenters, Calculator continues to salvage for parts of the Anti-Life Equation throughout every corner of the web. The occasional notification of a newly discovered fragment is the only thing that can tear him away from his series of monitors from which he watches over his comatose daughter Wendy whom he theorizes can be restored back to full health by the enigmatic Equation of the gods. His hacking skills have allowed him to take control over the system resources within the video game world of Alta Viva and use it's processors to mine for data. Each new hexadecimal sequence recovered is digitally inscribed upon the surface of several data-crystals. The end goal being the ability to harness the power of the Equation through the crystals. Unfortunately the slow and arduous process is thus far only returning incomplete code sequences - leaving the Calculator guessing as to the missing variables. With the arrival of yet another incomplete code, Calculator searches through the contact history of Oracle's recently deceased agent for another guinea pig for which to try out his hypothesized code sequence. Deciding to target a user named 'Chaos Larry', Calculator sends an online invitation to Larry asking him to meet up in the online world of Alta Viva and waits for a response. Wanting to head Calculator off at the pass, Oracle knows that she has to locate the remaining portions of the ALE first. Luckily some of her online acquaintances in China had been working on a new search engine construct prior to the Net's collapse. In an attempt to build the best possible index of the web, their engine scrubbed a copy of most all the data from the web into their archive database. Unfortunately with the information super-highway still out of commission, she is forced to take a more direct mode of contact and flies to Hong Kong where she meets up with the team in person. Their state of the art VR interface allows the Oracle to step inside a visual representation of the net's former data structure where she sees first hand the points of convergence where the Anti Life Equation's data clusters were. Realizing that Chaos Larry may be in grave danger, Oracle attempts to warn Larry to stay off the net until the Calculator can be stopped. The bull-headed hacker, not believing that a simple powerful data sequence could cause the surge that killed the previous agent, disregards Oracle's advice and heads into the Alta Viva world to see Calculator for himself. As Calculator closes in on his test subject Larry, Oracle has her friends compare the data image from the current Net with that of the Net prior to crashing in order to track down the locations of the remaining ALE clusters. Once located she has them downloaded and then wiped from the web, much to Calculator's immense displeasure. Enraged by Oracle's data-theft he traces back her signal all the way to Hong Kong, appearing on the screen and threatening to kill Chaos Larry and then come after Oracle herself!
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