Kal's noncommital negative about his interest in the all-female gang made Valerie shrug, and she just watched the gang leave on their bikes as he talked to the dredge-dwelling kid. His interest seemed to be caught by whatever the boy had to say, but Valerie couldn't really follow the flow of the conversation. So she just sat and waited, idly browsing the 'net while watching her surroundings. Didn't seem to be any good job offers, maybe she should check the boards if any hacker wanted back-up.<br/><br/>Just as Valerie was lecturing some n3t n00b about why his set-up sucked, Kal returned, sliding those glasses of his onto his face along with a cocky grin. "Tell you what... I think I will take you up on that drink." Valerie rolled her eyes, looking only mildly amused.<i>"Opportunity calling then?"</i><br/><br/>Apparently it did, as a few minutes later the pair of them arrived at some back-alley bar that, if Kal's words were to be believed, was pretty much the bottom on the barrel.The dirty alley and chorus of sexual outcries above her didn't breed much confidence. Val sat half-hidden near the entrance. Clearly, Kal figured she'd be useful since he didn't get someone he trust to escort her back. Taking a deep breath, she half-closed her eyes. Well, no sense in just twiddling her thumbs.<br/><br/>The datastream was build in layers. All build and translated from the raw data by your NeuroNet interface with it's the complex algorithms and scripts. Valerie took a step back out of her body, leaving an proximity alarm in case someone approached her or left the bar. She didn't really want any surprises. Her mind transcended from the shell of her broken body and dove into the first, raw layer of the Neuronet and out of the dirty back-alley street into a world of light. The news from inside the bar, the radio playing music two apartments up, the thousands of back-and-forth messages. The raw layer was pure data, broadcast from everywhere. Radio, television, messages, satellite, and so on. Like 90% of it was trash or encrypted. This was also the common 'net used by the masses, only all that accessible and useful raw data was translated into your NeuroNet sites thanks to NeuroInterfaces.<br/><br/>She dove deeper into the datastream, going from data to the constructs and structure behind them as she went up a layer. Here she could see all the devices lighting up. You could only glimpse at the big servers that ran everything here, but you could see what your buddy was doing on his deck for example. This is were the smalltime data jackers and hackers spend most of their time. Fooling around randomly accessing nearby devices to see if their scripts and systems were powerful enough to find a gap in the device's defenses. Above this device layer, was the network layer. Reaching that required more than some data-interpretation algorithm you jacked from some forum.<br/><br/><br/><br/>In here, she could reach out to the ancient systems still governing the dreg. Those servers both put up by locals to keep the networks up and useful or just plain forgotten in some company's basement. Outdated, glitchy and constantly getting their security breached. Here, your fellow NeuroRunners dropped from hundreds to mere dozens. Even then, most couldn't do much more than observe the electricity grid or the traffic monitors. Valerie was still learning as well. She could access the traffic monitors, as she did now, but she couldn't really make use of them properly yet. Going from node to node she could access individual camera's and detectors, maybe several at the same time, but the actual command center that could her an overview and access to the fun stuff remained locked for now. Valerie dodged another NeuroRunner that tried to access her connection, moving through the datanodes. Things could get hostile here, and potentially deadly. This wasn't a digital playground like the device layer. This was a wasteland and everyone was after the same resources and data.<br/><br/>Valerie lingered in the network layer, just moving between nodes to casually observe the dreg. As soon as Kal told her whatever he was after, she could find it. Well. She might, it could easily be off the grid too. She killed some time by fooling around on her favorite message board. A lot of the people on it were vets quite eager to teach people like her. Valerie lacked experience, but so far so good she had managed to bridge that gap with her education, equipment and brains. But she could only really excel like those veterans once she had experience riding the bluff, and could rely on her instincts rather than careful and slow calculations.<br/><br/>In truth, there were layers still above this one, beyond Valerie's skill and tech. Conversation boards hidden in the shadow of data where the real giants and gods of the net dwelled. And beyond that still there were rumours of strange places on the 'net that held information and data that wasn't yet written. Ideas and feelings not yet conceived, but predicted by humanity's patterns of behaviour. Or shadows of data, still existing in some strange manner after the original files were all deleted. Amongst NeuroRunners these were mystical, almost divine places that only existed in tall tales. Full of wonder and danger. Stories abound of hackers losing their minds or just plain up vanishing.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>