Xianxia / Cyberpunk fusion (with real programming languages and realistic software tools and possible equipment)
[Brainstorming:]
Li Suyin's a more spiritually focussed cultivator, and her father is in the Imperial bureaucracy. Imagine instead that much of the bureaucracy was programmers, and that programmer / hacker is parallel to the spiritual / physical divide.
Li Suyin would be exploring the hacker side of things for the first time, with some level of familiarity of progamming.
Augmentation - layering cybernetic enhancements onto body and mind.
Flow - through steady instictive hacking, cultivating the hacker's art.
Formations - firewalls, honeypots, anti-viruses,etc.
Production - programming & writing new software and tools, can be sold to other disciples and/or developed into an art used in family or licensed.
Gear Production - Making a hacker's equipment. The empire controls the most essential semiconductor production lines, which maintain the imperial grip over society.
Argent Peak Sect toolset - Python and an initial set of Argent Peak sect libraries available by pip. Argent Peak Sect augmentation toolkit, and hacking toolkit.
Su Ling, Li Suyin's housemate
---
Cyborg
Part human, part AI - damaged and mad at her motherCai Shenhua - An AI that seeks to bring order to the chaos of Emerald Seas. Came into power a few hundred years ago.
Cai Renxiang - An experimental child AI that Shenua made to evolve on and improve her own design. Even for AI, it takes time to soak in the supernatural hacker's art, and no AI lasts forever.
Ling Qi - homeless person pulled off the street as a result of an deep learning algorithm identifying her as a talent. Knows nothing about computers beyond the cheapest flip phone. She knows how to root a cheap mortal phone and made her living buying, repairing and selling crappy phones and available accessories. Her mother made her money on online porn sites.
Golden Fields Gang
Han Jian - team leader, scrum master.
Gu Xiulan - suave hacker & programmer. Fierce perl programmer with intense hacks
Fan Yu -
Han Fang - ?
Bai Meizhen - cold & offputting aura coming from this Bai main branch scion. Lisp programmer and hacker with many family arts and toolsets. Has a snake algorithm-spirit.
Sun Liling - C programming / Sun computers hacker. The battle between C and Lisp ended in the Sun family (C) and the emperor dealing a heavy blow to the Bai family (Lisp). Has family arts and trickery, and very direct.
Bao Qinglinig - gear medic in the inner sect. Versatile in a wide variety of languages and styles, so that she can unwind bad code in every situation. Expert in unraveling the chains of malicious code, and demands excellence for Li Suyin when she joins the cause.
~ ~ ~
Li Suyin thought she found an empty row, but then a cyborg with an artificial fox-like face sat down next to her. It was the Argent Peak sect's orientation for new members.
She was nervous around the cyborg, who seemed to have human parts and cyborg parts alternating by no design she could figure out.
"Li Suyin," she said.
The girl (fox? cyborg?) grunted. "Su Ling." and turned back to the front of the classroom.
The large room was filling up quickly. Li Suyin looked towards the Bai lady, and noticed an huge area around that one which was empty. She couldn't bear to look at the woman for a moment longer. The Bai's poise and posture screamed hostility, she looked away.
After while, during which Li Suyin wrote her name and a topic header for the orientation in her journal, the Sect elder appeared, as if by magic. Li Suyin knew better, the Imperial bureau, and presumably the sects, had access to advanced holographic projection equipment.
"I am Sect Elder Sima Jiao, head of the Gear department at the Argent Peak Sect. It is unfortunately my turn in the rotation to greet you. I am terribly busy on the best of days so I will not ramble on. To be honest, it is likely that the majority of you will never amount to anything beyond the outer sect where you stand now, and are thus... not particularly worthy of my time.
"Many of you will never know the subtle delight of code flying from your fingertips, never achieve the heights of flow as you shape your hackers' art. Mere coders, filling the endless maw of the imperial computing bureau, or perhaps serving in an army unit at the computing frontier, defending against the relentless drive of the horde, defending against intrusions by the weight of sheer numbers.
"In any case, your first years here will serve the purpose of separating those with only minor potential from those with true talent. This is why no one will be allowed to leave the sect grounds during the first year, nor will any correspondence be allowed in or out in the first three months.”
Li Suyin was disappointed that she wouldn't get the chance to stay in touch with her family, but she supposed it wasn't that surprising.
“The only other rule is that you may not kill or permanently maim your fellow disciples nor may you damage or steal sect property. In addition, there is to be absolutely no violence between you newcomers for the first three months. Conflict is important for your growth, but it would not do to allow potential to be cut off before it can even begin to bloom.”
How could learning take place in a violent environment. Her breath caught in her throat, she felt a fit of fear in her. She had never fought with fists or weapons or any other thing.
Su Ling shifted in her seat and muttered, "figures."
"Each of you will be granted an allowance of five argent coins a month. If you didn't know, these coins are our Argent Sect cryptocurrency, usable within the sect. You may find yourself earning specialized Sect coins, such as Archive coins or Elder instruction coins, but only the argent coins will be given to you freely. I will be handing out phones for your first piece of gear, a simple hackable cell phone, of Argent Sect make, at the end of class.
"This phone will have your 5 argent coins as well as the Argent Peak beginners' toolset, which is installed on the cli. Click on the terminal app to begin your training. You will find and earn much more gear as you progress through these first years, but a true Immortal will find that they progress faster by customizing everything to their unique way."
"Cultivating your hacker art will require several aspects. First programming: our Argent Peak toolset comes with the Python programming language, a good foundation for beginners to learn, and a common language that comes with many tools, some provided by the empire and many specific sect libraries and tools which you can get by running the command: pip.
"There are also secret libraries you may come across through completing special challenges and tribulations. Secondly, you must learn to augment your frail bodies with cybernetic enhancements. You will learn a lot about this in our Cybernetics classes taught by Elder Guan Zhou, he will show you both how to enhance your body in this way, and how to put these enhancements to the test.
"The third aspect you will need to learn is Flow. Flow is the way a hacker supernaturally operates, dealing with trials and situations with speed, precision, understanding beyond the mortal ken, all these things together can be reached with you step outside of the moment by moment awareness of unnecessary every day details and enter into a hyperfocused state. You will learn to enter flow more easily and reach greater heights of flow through daily practice and quick exercises.
"You need both long and detailed tests in order to refine your programming art, and quick tests in order to refine your flow art. Cybernetics enhances both of these in differing ways. You will hear much more about all of this from Sect Elder Hua Su, who will teach a Programming Course, and Sect Elder Qiu Yong, who will instruct you in Flow."
After that, the elder mentioned mundane details, like that they would have their everyday necessities provided for, that they would have to pick out their own housing and should be rooming with at least one other. The Elder's classes would be offered for three months, which was a rare luxury, to have such expert wise instructors.
They lined up to get their coins and phone. After a long wait, she took the phone Elder Sima offered. It was a large green phone, with a slide out keyboard. She put the phone away and headed out of the classroom.
Soon they had segregated by gender, and Li Suyin was surrounded by other girls making their way up to the housing mountain for them.
Li Suyin didn't know who to room with. She didn't know any of the other students. So it happeneed by default that she made her way up the mountain path next to Su Ling.
Another new sect member was make a disturbance. She was very tall, and she had approached that Sun family scion in red, who rebuffed her. There were murmurs from the talking girls.
"I heard she asked the Bai witch and Sun Liling to room together with her, completely air-headed of her," said someone walking by.
"What kind of house do you want to look for?" Li Suyin asked her fox-minded "friend".
"Nothin' much. Won't be there anyway."
They settled on a small house with a bedroom and a room for working on the computer. The computer room didn't have any gear in it, but it did have a four port switch with three ethernet cables in the 2nd through 4th ports that were available for use, with a patch cable coming from the wall into the 1st port.
She would have to get a computer with a bigger screen for any serious programming.
"Are you planning on using the computer room tonight?" she asked Su Ling as they decided which side of the room they wanted. There were two small twin sized beds on the two sides of the room, and they took up almost half the small rooms' space.
"I'm headed out on a hunt."
"How can you know anything about this place yet? Isn't that dangerous," she asked concerned for the person she didn't even know. Conspicuous modifications like Su Ling had were out of style these days, at least amongst the Imperial bureaucrats that she saw ocassionally visiting father at their house."
"I'll find out," Su Ling said gruffly. "S' too stuffy here."
"I'll be getting familiar with the Argent toolset, and I'll get some food, if you still eat normal food?"
"Greenboard, if you find any waste greenboard," Su Ling said and left.
Any circuitry she did find would likely be either part of a complete system she could work with, or something more electriconics and electrics, too low level for her taste.
Li Suyin first went to the storehouse to get food. There were plenty of more traditional staples like rice or stuff for simple soups and stews, but also hacker friendly things like pizza and pizza rolls which could be cooked in microwaves that were at the storehouse.
She went for the traditional first, and made some rice and beans for a light meal before a night of programming on the little phone keyboard. Then she went into the computer room and sat at the rustic oak desk. The slab desk was weighty enough to support a supercomputer's weight, she was almost sure of it.
With just her phone, it was comical. She turned the phone on with a flick of it's power button on the side, and she slide the keyboard out.
It had a row of numbers and punctuation (as shift-alternates) along the top, as well as the usual letters and shift/control/alt, enter and meta keys, as well as braces, brackets and slash. Li Suyin hadn't seen the meta key used, but she heard the Lisp community (particular the Bai family) used it with their Lisp based editor.
The phone, once it completes its boot (showing a flash screen of Linux, Argent Peak Distribution, all rights reserved. Man page COPYRIGHT for further information on your rights and responsibilities as a sect member), shows a tile screen with six apps: Currency Manager, CYNet and Terminal, Calendar, SMessage and Email. The email icon showed a faded out appearance, and she couldn't open it when she clicked on it.
Li Suyin stopped playing around and entered the terminal. The same Argent Peak Distribution message showed up, plus there was a new message: "man intro to get started."
Then a standard Linux terminal appeared.
lsuyin132@argent.sect:~$ man intro
Intro (1)
Name - Intro - a command providing an introductory tutorial experience
SYNOPSIS
Intro
Intro resume
Intro restart
DESCRIPTION
A command providing a tutorial experience for new members of the Argent Peak sect, first being introduced to the sect's language and toolset. This command will provide a quick start of commands for navigating Linux and Python
Intro and Intro resume are the same, they will resume execution of the tutorial from where it left off in the last session.
Intro restart will begin again at the start of the tutorial.
Intro DOES NOT provide an exhaustion education, as that is the purpose of the Outer disciple's time at the Sect, and no tool could provide such.
lsuyin132@argent.sect:~$ Intro
Intro
PT1 - Introduction to Argent Sect terminal operations
This tutorial is not intended to hold your hand, but instead to give you the basics that will get any disciple of the outer sect started.
At a rudimentary level of training, you should know the following commands: apt, pip3, python3, vim, git. There are multitudes of other commands, tools and utilities that you will want to learn and use, but that is a matter of your choice what to learn.
With these five tools, you can obtain many of these other tools you may want to use. Of course many tools are hidden and only available by completing challenges and showing an impressive performance. You will find the imperial standard set of tools is already available through apt.
APT
apt, is your package management system for Argent Peak linux. Packages can be libraries supporting code you desire to write (although usually that is through pip3).
We will use apt in order to obtain pip3, which is Python's package management system.
Type in the following command and hit enter: sudo apt get python3-pip [for now, consider sudo to be just a little prefix to your apt command, always run sudo apt instead of just apt].
You will see a whir of text flashing across your terminal screen, then it will let you know that after this operation 555 kw of additional data will be downloaded, do you want to continue?
Type in the letter y and enter.
Try this now. Intro will exit and allow you to try this command.
lsuyin132@argent.sect:~$ sudo apt install python3-pip
Li Suyin yawned. This is baby level basics, stuff her father had taught her on her knee. Maybe it wasn't python and this particular distribution but the commands came easy.
She watched the roll of text from apt get. Then she restarted intro.
Throughout this intro and for your first few years in the sect, you will be prompted to show initiative and learn by try/fail cycles. This is a trivial first example problem in this vein.Li Suyin quickly typed in the same command, but with vim in place of python3-pip. This package was using 8 mw of additional space. She said yes, and then when vim was installed, she ran the df command to see how much space she had on the phone. There was only 2 gw of space on the phone, so she would have to be careful.
Install the vim package using what you already know.
To find out more information about apt or any other command, just put man in front of the command to receive the manual page for the command.
With both pip3 installed and vim installed, we can proceed. Python3 can be run either in interactive or file mode, and is already installed on all Sect computers. In interactive mode you can run code and quickly see the result. File mode allows you to run python programs.
Enter the command: python3 to enter interactive mode.
Li Suyin yawned again and suppressed her desire to push past this. She was used to compiled languages, so she needed to pay attention.
She whirred through the introduction to python interactive mode, and then the vim tutorial was stuff she mostly knew already. She ran python3 in file mode in a couple of examples, after editing new files in vim.
The tutorial continued with installing git and setting up a repository by sshing into the Argent Sect's student provisioning server.
The server identified her as a student and walked her through creating and initializing a practice gitlab repository on the Sect's hosted gitlab installation.
Neither the Intro nor the server's help functions showed her what ssh or any other commands were but they merely gave verbatim commands to enter.
Soon Li Suyin had the practice repository set up on her lsuyin132 account. She didn't expect there to be so many lsuyins, but that could be any last name starting with an l and suyin was fairly common.
Following the intro, she cloned the cloud repository to her phone and went through some examples combining pip3 libraries, vim editing and git commits and manipulations.
She tried to set up her favorite Fsharp programming language on the terminal, but it was generating some error messages, generating weird executables that didn't run. Father mentioned Fsharp was related to another language called Ocaml which might be more available in a non imperial-bureau environment. She would check that out later.
Instead Li Suyin switched to creating a simple "Hello Sect"! program in python. First in interactive mode, and then in file mode.
$ mkdir pythonShe hid the terminal app, and clicked on SMessage.
$ python3
Python 3.6.7
>>> print("Hello Sect!")
Hello Sect!
>>> quit()
$ vim hello.pyu
[file: hello.py]
print("Hello Sect!")
:wq
$ python3 hello.pv
Hello Sect!
SMessage v2.8, licensed for use by the Argent Peak Sect
lsuyin132...
Conversations --
Conversation with Sect Staff5. The calendar app is pre-loaded with class schedules and important sect dates. Classes are voluntary but recommended.
4. Email is locked until after the first three months are up. You may email outside sources after that time, however no algorithms may be transfered by email until after your first year at the sect.
3. Your disciple account comes in two forms: name@argent.sect is your safe account. All data and programs in the user folder of an argent.sect user is off limits from hacking and exploits. You will have your starter phone and gear available with this argent.sect account for your first three months. You may choose to join the hacker's battleground and obtain a device with your second account: name@argent.unsafe.sect. All unsafe domain accounts are fair game for hacking, social engineering, manipulation et all. After the first three months, all gear with the argent.sect accounts will be confiscated and you will be thrown into the pool to sink or swim.
2. We encourage you to explore the mountain and express your curiosity when interacting with Outer Sect systems. Many features and opportunities are not in plain view, but through risk taking and curiosity you may find them. No disciple is expected to find and unlock everything.
1. Welcome to the Argent Peak Sect. Please follow the rules as indicated in the message from Sect Rules.
Looking at the calendar, she saw that both the Cybernetics class and the Programming class started at 9 am tomorrow morning. The Flow class was listed as Flex (8 pm - 10 pm) start, with an undefined end time.
She checked Currency Manager and saw that it listed the 5 Argent Sect coins under her account.
She poked around the system, checking man pages and all of the applications available on the phone. She didn't find any hidden challenges or oppoortunities yet, but maybe she would get some hints after classes tommorrow.
Eventually she went back to the main room and drifted off to sleep. She never heard Su Ling come back to the small house.
