Code:
"Fairchild": You ever heard of a company called Wisp Innovations?
"Fairchild": Well. *scratches her cheek* Wisp is a subsidiary of Cryer that I worked for.
"Fairchild": Well, it used to be. It no longer exists as far as I know.
"Fairchild": Yeah.
"Fairchild": But Wisp didn't deal in that. They made... more... powerful things.
"Fairchild": More advanced drugs.
"Fairchild": We've engineered something called Vergil. Cryer now calls it a recreational drug, but Vergil is something much, /much/ more.
"Fairchild": Well, you see.
"Fairchild": That's the thing. It doesn't get you high. Quite the opposite actually.
"Fairchild": Some time ago, through some contacts in the Omicrons, we managed to find a species of alien bacteria.
"Fairchild": Turned out that this bacteria had some special properties.
"Fairchild": Not really dangerous. Useful as hell, though. Or so I was told.
"Fairchild": Well, long story short. A professor at Wisp, and a good friend of mine, figured out that these bacteria-
"Fairchild": -could be paired with nanites to create something quite extraordinary.
"Fairchild": Specifically, an interface to the human brain.
"Fairchild": Wisp worked with some top scientists from Ageira to make this happen and it did, eventually.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: Wow... So I could mind control REDACTED, finally.
"Fairchild": Well, you see. No.
"Fairchild": We've worked as hard as possible to make sure this doesn't happen. There were... casualties.
"Fairchild": But eventually, yes. We engineered a secure system which, essentially, allowed you to launch an instance of nexOS-
"Fairchild": -literally in your head.
"Fairchild": But soon after Vergil was released, some... problems started.
"Fairchild": But, well, before that.
"Fairchild": I was the first subject on which Vergil was tested fully.
"Fairchild": My experience is different, and from what I know it's different for everyone.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: How was it for you then?
"Fairchild": The integration, while generally painless, is quite interesting though.
"Fairchild": It's... personal though, so I'd rather not talk about it.
"Fairchild": But, well.
"Fairchild": There was a problem in Wisp after Vergil was finished.
"Fairchild": Something Cryer called "corporate restructuring".
"Fairchild": Something I would call a "hostile takeover".
"Fairchild": Basically all of the assets of Wisp were bought out and seized by Cryer.
"Fairchild": The professor who led Vergil, Nikita Nagrebetskiy, was outright refused any rights to his research.
"Fairchild": So, well, he asked me for help.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: Ah... Well... so you mean to say that there's a drug out there which installs an operating system in people's brains and which-
Forlorn|-REDACTED: in turn allow those people to be mind controlled or something?
"Fairchild": No, no, gods.
"Fairchild": Mind control is impossible. We made sure of that.
"Fairchild": There always is a 'master override'.
"Fairchild": This is the reason why casualties happened.
"Fairchild": One, specifically, some expendable Outcast we found too close to Atka.
"Fairchild": We had to investigate brain patterns for various negative emotions, like panic, terror, extreme fear, et cetera.
"Fairchild": It would require very deep, wetware programming to change these patterns. Not something anyone would be able to do.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: That's not so ethical, is it?
"Fairchild": Well, depends who you ask.
"Fairchild": Of course, it violates human rights.
"Fairchild": Such experimentation that is.
"Fairchild": But Outcasts aren't humans. At least they aren't for Cryer.
"Fairchild": They aren't for me either.
"Fairchild": Nobody who voluntarily puts themselves under the influence of Cardamine is human.
"Fairchild": Well.
"Fairchild": Regardless.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: So, what would happen if I decided to go to a pharmacy now, and swallowed some of those drugs?
"Fairchild": I couldn't tell you.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: In fact, I just might. Because you won't tell me.
"Fairchild": Neither me, nor Nagrebetskiy knows what they changed.
"Fairchild": They may have removed our overrides. Who knows.
"Fairchild": Maybe Cryer is indeed planning mind control on a massive scale.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: I wonder what else you're not telling me, Fairchild. Because this info is massive.
"Fairchild": Well.
"Fairchild": We still have the original code for Vergil.
"Fairchild": And the nano-replicator recipes for the nanobots.
"Fairchild": We don't have any of the bacteria, but that requires just an expedition to the Omicrons with appropriate equipment.
"Fairchild": And, of course, an AR lab to produce the clean version of Vergil.
"Fairchild": That's what we want to do, in a nutshell..
Forlorn|-REDACTED: "You"?
"Fairchild": Oh. I haven't told you something, yeah.
"Fairchild": Nagrebetskiy, the professor who made Vergil, right?
"Fairchild": He... Well, he became ill. After all, he was an old man.
"Fairchild": But thanks to Vergil, he undergone a quite dangerous operation, he called it 'Brain-in-a-jar'.
"Fairchild": Do... Well, do I have to tell you what that might have been or is your imagination good enough to envision that yourself?
"Fairchild": Yeah. And, thanks to Vergil, we are now... well... connected.
"Fairchild": He sees with my eyes, hears with my ears, feels with my skin.
"Fairchild": This is why I said, Fairchild is not one person.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: Uh... I suppose it would feel very weird to the old man if you ever had a lover.
"Fairchild": I couldn't know, we don't share memories.
"Fairchild": You see, once you start Vergil for the first time, your memories are kind of separated.
"Fairchild": You obviously keep your human brain as normal, but what you see and hear goes into Q-coherence storage.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: So is it like a nomad incubus or something ... can he take control over you at times?
"Fairchild": Your thoughts, if you so desire, as well.
"Fairchild": No, of course not.
"Fairchild": Only if I agree.
"Fairchild": It's /my/ body after all.
"Fairchild": But there are certain implications of this.
"Fairchild": Indeed, I was the one who performed the surgery on his brain.
"Fairchild": Having /absoultely no idea/ about neurobiology.
"Fairchild": Imagine that.
"Fairchild": Well, bloody hell. I've said a lot more than I meant to.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: Yeah, I have such an effect on people.
"Fairchild": Well, you can help me out with my mission.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: Oh, and what's your mission again exactly?
"Fairchild": Provide the 'clean', early version of Vergil, open-source to anyone who desires.
"Fairchild": You're mercenaries and freelancers.. You've got contacts, probably.
"Fairchild": *sighs* You ever used a computer. Or a console, or a PAD or anything like that?
Forlorn|-REDACTED: Yes we did.
"Fairchild": Imagine skipping the entire "chair, keyboard, monitor" process.
"Fairchild": Vergil is an /interface/. It uses your brain to communicate with the console.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: That's ... *she whistles* ... something!
"Fairchild": There are many ways to do this.
Forlorn|-REDACTED: You know what, I'll make sure to talk about this with the other leaders.
"Fairchild": I, for example, have a subdermal chip implanted somewhere, uh... Here.
"Fairchild": *she points to her neck*'
Forlorn|-REDACTED: Cause, if I hear right, this actually could become a great and enduring business.
"Fairchild": That chip is basically a low-end quantum console which I can use through Vergil.
"Fairchild": Well. The code you aren't going to get for yourselves.
"Fairchild": The code is for everyone.
"Fairchild": But, if you get a head start on pumping out
"Fairchild": -clean Vergil nodes and cores, then you might get a lot of clientelle.