Am I gettin' crazy

November 30th 2071

Looks like I'm pretty good at this cracking stuff so now I've got some kind of a new job with the hackers I think, although I would have preferred a job at the workshop. You know I like talking to machines and the software cracking units aren't very talkative.

Claire has been shopping, with our last 500 New Yen from selling the Medi-Van to the Rat's Nest's Doc. He seems to be a nice guy but a little tired and troubled from time to time.
So now we have a few sets of  presentable outfits and foot for the rest of this moth. Well you might wonder who Claire is. I will come to her in my story later, for now I can tell you that she's my best and only friend in this world, besides of being my roommate.
Oh, by the way, did I tell you about the cat, thats now living in our container, too? Well I'll do, I promise.

But now back to my story.
The dark silence that has fallen felt cold and empty and wrong. It was as if something vital has been taken from me. Almost as if someone has cut one of my senses and so this silence felt even less bearable than the voices and visions. Funny how quickly one can get used to something.
Than, after just a few seconds that felt like an eternity it all came back. How could I ever missed this feeling of my head being on the verge of explosion.
I buried my head under my pillow eyes shut tight but that didn't stop the voices chattering away into my ears. Some just a silent whisper, some of them talking and some screaming even. They all had so much to tell, so much information. Too much information.
At least I'd managed to shut out these flickering ghostlike visions.
"What do you want?"
But no one answered my question, at least not in terms that I could understand.
"Please tell me, what do you want from me?" I almost cried from pain and confusion.
Still no answer.

Next morning a new doctor came in. He didn't really seem fit in this kind of job. He told me that he was some kind of psychiatrist working for some high end institution sponsored by the Horizon Group and that my case had caught their interest.
I blinked at him, not sure if I'd understand him correctly. I hadn't slept the last night and all the voices and visions made hard to focus.
"What... Why..." I tried to organize my thoughts. "What case?" I eventually managed to ask.
"We were informed that you were one of the surviving victims of the matrix crash." he answered.
"Yeah, but they told me that everything is alright with me. No damage. Got lucky I guess."
"According to our information many of the victims suffer from some kind of psychic trauma. The symptoms develop shortly after the person awakes from the coma and it is of vital importance that we find and treat the these poor souls before they harm themselves or others."
I just nodded while blinking away some unidentifiable objects that tried with the utmost effort to block my view and I only just resisted the urge to try to wipe them away with my hand.
"It is called the Artificially Induced Psychotropic Schizophrenia Syndrome or AIPS Syndrome. The symptoms are often visual and acoustic hallucinations accompanied with a hypersensitivity to the electronic background radiation created by ComLinks for example."
I gave him a blank look.
"So if you seen things or heard voices you don't need to worry. Just tell me now I'll arrange your transport to our facility as fast as possible. Everything will be alright." he explained with a reassuring voice.
Well believe me, in this moment almost every part of my being wanted to tell him. Wanted this nightmare to stop. I think I would have agreed to his offer, but just when opened my mouth to almost plea him to make all these things stop trying to break my head and burn my brain, a thought shot into what was left of my consciousness. Abigale. What would happen to her when I was gone? By then she was almost six years old. I couldn't just abandon her, could I?
So I just shock my head slowly. "No. I've experienced nothing of the like." Today I know that this answer saved my live that day.

Ah, damn, there's something wrong with the matrix and the Doc's outside. Sounds like it's urged. Guess these two things are linked somehow.

Cya Sparks

The very begining

November 29st 2071

Dear  Diary,

It's been about two months now since I found refuge and  kind of a new home here in Rat's Nest. You know, I always wondered why people were keeping a diary but I'm beginning to understand now. It's about being able to talk to someone you can entrust with your every secret, without the fear of being sold out. Someone you can tell your story to.
For me there is no one left anymore, since Gabriel died and I had to leave Abigale with MTCs Petrovski Security. I still breaks my heard thinking of her being brainwashed into a corporate drone by some con-school.

But I promised you a story. So I think I'll best start at the very beginning.

It all started when I woke up in hospital November the 18th 2064. The Nurse told me that I've been lucky to have survived the great matrix crash without any signs of brain damage. I must have given her a pretty funny look cause she decided to stay a little longer and explain it to me.
I've been in some kind of coma for some days until I just woke up. Turned out that some terrorists teamed up to trash the international computer and communication network, while Deus the most powerful AI ever created had a try on fixing the Matrix to its own agenda.
You know sometimes live itself seems to have a very wicked humor cause we had some quite similar plot at our virtual replaying group. So while my character, a hacker known as phoenix fought a bunch of virtual terrorists working for an rough AI, alongside his friends, in the real matrix real terrorists and real AI and real decker where fighting a real battle. Crashing everything in their path including the server me and my friends where locked on.
I just nodded at her telling me the details of what's happened the last days. I didn't really listen anymore. I had a hell of a headache. But guess that's only consequential considering what my brain had been put through.
Anyway, I got some painkillers and fell asleep almost imminently, what seemed a little strange considering that I'd just woken up from a days lasting sleep.
I opened my eyes again in the middle of the night, awoken from the strangest dreams. That time I first heard the whispers. Like a room full of people, all talking in different but all together foreign languages. Only that my room was completely empty. Maybe some echoes of my dreamworld. Something flickered in the corner of my eye. Like an image projection only just outside my filed of vision. But when I turned to look what it was, there was nothing there either. I shock my head to clear it, feeling my headache coming back.
I turned around shutting my eyes. Tried to ignore the voices in my head. Tried to fall asleep again before the painkillers wore of completely.

The next morning they told me that my parents died the day of the crash. They were caught up in some gang raid. I couldn't believe it at first. It just wasn't anything happening to normal people. People you know. It was just something that happened somewhere else. Something happening to other people. Something you read in newspapers, stories they use to sell themselves. Then the truth sunk in almost ripping my heard apart. I hated this street scum but one day I would pay them back in full, I swore to myself.
"Where is Abigale?" I asked and they told me that she was at home being cared for. But only for so long because money was getting tight. Me lying in hospital seemed to have been very expensive so I would have to go home the next day, giving the fact that I seemed to be all right.
I cried a lot that day and all the voices whispering no more but talking to me didn't make it any better. They seemed to want something from me but I couldn't understand them. It was just too many of them, all talking at the same time. I tried to shut them out but it was no use. Then the ghosts appeared. At least by then I thought they were ghost. Maybe the ones who died in the matrix at day of the crash. I thought maybe they had been somehow get stuck inside my head. I it sounds silly, but didn't knew it better by then. Now I know that this appearances were my first glimpses at the wireless matrix recvived by my somehow changed brain.
I was scared witless by then. Wanting these things that kept appearing to go away, to just leave me alone. And I wanted the voices to just be silent, so I would be able to hear myself thinking again. I felt like being on the brink of going mad.
"SHUT UP!", I screamed at the empty room, and the voices fell silent. The images stopped and so did everything else, including the lights and the biomonitors.

Have to go now. Work to do money to earn. Can't afford to be late as the new girl in the gang you know.

Tell you more later.

Sparks