TECHIE'S ARCADE

Deckers are often viewed as badly grown up teenagers... Techie's arcade prooves that right, and imprves the concept! Hid deep within the city, this is the favorite hackers hang out. Follow me, as we enter Techie's realm!

The entrance

Nothing special here... Your typical junk-house of the barrens, looking almost too typical to be honest. Nothing betrays the action action inside, except maybe the datajack on the guys entering the place. But we're in the barrens, people have learned not to ask questions. Nobody ask anything when people who want to enter punch 10 numbers on a keypad. This is all normal stuff, for the barrens anyway. Beside, nobody notices there is a couple of sattelite dishes on the roof, among some other junk...

What the building doesn't show is its armored walls under the brick and the multiple state-of-the-fragging-art defense sytems in there. Nobody ever noticed this because these security systems never served any purpose, nobody dare run against Techie's. Because nobody want some of the best decker in town on their trail.

Inside

The place looks like the standard decker's haven: it looks like it was designed to be inhabited by machines instead of by humans. The walls show no sign of decoration and there's only one, big room, with a small door in the back that leads to Techie's office.

The room is divided in two sections: the toy arcade games and the decker arcade, with no real separation between the two. The toy arcade games are typical videogames deckers can play at while drinking some beer from the minibar (there ain't no such thing as a free game or a free beer, chummer). The latest and greatest videogames are there, sometimes a good month before they are officially released. You can even find there some unique games, programmed by the habitués of the place...

The decker arcade is something else entirely. It's a group of cyberdecks connected to the dishes on the roof with which deckers can go have a fun ride using the latest software (that Techie can sell, of course...) to run against some low level corps (screens always show what the decker is doing, so he shouldn't go to too high security system if he wants to keep that nice face of his). This feature is by far the most popular of the place: trying new software in social environment while making easy runs is relaxing for many runners. Multiple deckers can jack in the deck, to chat with the decker while he makes his run. The security system to not being traced is simple yet efficient: every connection goes through a decked sattelite. No low-level corp can afford to search a decker the other side of a sattalite, and even if they did, well, Techie didn't build those nifty security systems after all...

Once the run is over, the decker can buy the software he just tried at the normal cost, minus the price of the last 'game'. A 'game' like Techie like to call them is a run with some software on demonstration. Such games cost between 20Y to 2000Y, depending on the software used and the lenght of the game. There are, of course, multiple software in the decks, the decker only pays for those he wants to use, the others remain locked. In these case the decker uses some old version of the programs so he doesn't have to rely on only one piece of software.

Techie

Techie is a agoraphobic dwarf deckmeister. He's among the best deckers in town but has found that he can make almost as much money selling stuff to deckers than using it. He looks like he's in the 40s, but nobody really knows knows his real age. Techie doesn't give a shit about what he looks like, and it shows: his hair is too long and unclean, his beard was shaved last century and he wears the latest squatters fashion. Surprinsingly, he's pretty charismatic nonetheless and has fooled many into buying things for a higher price than they should, but those were people he didn't like. Techie doesn't ask too much money from real friends...

Nobody really knows about his past... Some say he worked in Echo Mirage, which would make him old friend with Damien Knight, but few believe it. Others talk about some secret project in the heart of Madagascar, but even fewer listne to them. Some go as far as to say he's Fastjack, but almost nobody listen to them. The truth is, nobody knows where he got his incredible decking skill. At least, nobody who lived to tell it...