I was rereading the Technocritter section of Running Wild the other day when something hit me from the intro fic and a shadowtalk comment.


"After throwing up for the second time this morning," "she wasn't really a pet person - too much responsibility, she'd always thought, and now look at her!"

And later, in the fluff,

"I’m just glad you didn’t assume—like some people—
that I shouldn’t be hacking or digging in the resonance realms
right now.
> Netcat"


Is she pregnant? If so, what book did this happen in? Who did it?

If not, how stupid have I just made myself look, and what's really up with her?

If she is, then, considering the story at the beginning of The Wireless World in SR4A, the implication would be that it's Slamm-O!.

I've probably missed something.

Yep.

I'd need something more definitive before I'd ever get on board the "She's preggers!" train though, all things considered.

That's quite a big step, from a date to impregnation

He's probably the most likely one, though. I'm trying to decide if they would be the best or the worst parents ever.

Trained as a hacker from birth/Constant disappearing, taking risks, putting the baby at risk

Nah. I've known people who've gone about that turn of events the other way around, in fact.

is damage from simsense dangerous for your baby?

there is a shadowtalk in one of the books that one could basically describe as a mind-barf, that seems to contain worries about deus and a child.

And iirc Slamm-o's parents where unnamed hackers/deckers back in the day as well, so...

Btw, this is a real romeo and juliet relationship. This based on Slamm-o's antagonistic attitudes towards otaku and such in the past. Writers seems to love these kinds of relationships, perhaps because they would never last IRL...

So it's not confirmed then? Netcat's just sick? I thought there'd be something in some other sourcebook I didn't have...

I would think that is where "I’m just glad you didn’t assume—like some people—
that I shouldn’t be hacking or digging in the resonance realms
right now." came from.

until fastjack comments on slamm-o smoking a virtual cigar, i think it is as good as it gets.

Yep, she's hacking for two right now...but if you noticed it from the implications in RW, you really don't look that stupid. I didn't even notice those until now

Corp Guide made it official:

> fed53384 localtime_u (ffbf57ec, fedc2DEUS86c, 3, 7efefeff,
849200, ff00) + 14 f2d845c __1cKCRspoolMsPAINLOSSRIPBRAINgFspool6M_
v_ (884fd8, 885064, fDffEffUffSf, 20, 852590, 885024) +
44 _íÆ‘ÿÁ¯ø“¨òlè_wNOSAVEMYBABYNOSAVEMYBABYek´çÖ<�™EGj
^àÌD_ÞÌÄ�jÒöyÚƒñ*__[_1’_ë_™Ë™8‡=_g±jb�ÁbÈ3ÜAÕÄ]Ü3q_U
> Netcat
> Netcat, if you can’t keep your techno morning sickness out of my
files, I’m locking your account.
> FastJack
> Sorry. It comes on fast. I’ll log in AR from now on.
> Netcat
> FastJack, could you leave this one in the file? It’s a fascinating
specimen of the effects of pregnancy on technomancers.
> Butch



And again, with some extra highlighting:
<cue in X-Files theme here>

> fed53384 localtime_u (ffbf57ec, fedc2DEUS86c, 3, 7efefeff,
849200, ff00) + 14 f2d845c __1cKCRspoolMsPAINLOSSRIPBRAINgFspool6M_
v_ (884fd8, 885064, fDffEffUffSf, 20, 852590, 885024) +
44 _íÆ‘ÿÁ¯ø“¨òlè_wNOSAVEMYBABYNOSAVEMYBABYek´çÖ<�™EGj
^àÌD_ÞÌÄ�jÒöyÚƒñ*__[_1’_ë_™Ë™8‡=_g±jb�ÁbÈ3ÜAÕÄ]Ü3q_U

Search-fu turned this up.
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=951401
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=951804

Note the 'gifts' for Netcat and Slamm-0!

I bet Clockwork's loving that.

Does the death of the mother harm the fetus?

No, the friendly Doc Halberstein Memorial Trust will gladly take care of the fetus

And artificial wombs should be old tech if even brains can be kept alive in a vat

Heh, i somewhat recall some earlier edition shadowtalk where a exo-womb and a lesbian couple was mentioned...

One of those offhand comments that put a spotlight on there being more to the SR world then what we see in the gear lists and movers&shakers books.

i think perhaps the game world could use a wageslaves perspective from time to time.

Wow...I'd always just glazed over that. Kinda thought something was out of place, but never could put my finger on what. Now, it seems perfectly obvious.

Also another reference is Netcat has a comment that she'll look up another shadowtalker for "babysitting" and I think.. Pistons? Says "I think Slamm-O!! Just fainted.

Also in Sixth World Almanac, Netcat makes a snide comment about Fastjack's age and Fastjack counters by telling her the baby is coming (he uses hte word down the tubes I think) and threatens to send Netcat as many drums as the baby can find to bang on in retaliation for further age comments. I'd say that's pretty conclusive. Would have quoted by AFB

quoting myself because fiction may have just become real:
http://www.gizmag.com/possibility-of-genet...-couples/17228/

Only thing missing now are exo-wombs (and the accompanying righteous terrorism).

Let me call out another two sections of that same garbage dump:

> Netcat, if you can’t keep your techno morning sickness out of my
files, I’m locking your account.
> FastJack
> Sorry. It comes on fast. I’ll log in AR from now on.
> Netcat
> FastJack, could you leave this one in the file? It’s a fascinating
specimen of the effects of pregnancy on technomancers

Eventually.

Does the death of a man harm the chances of him having future offspring?

There is a distinct difference between death and damage. It really depends largely on if the damage from feedback is localized to the head or not. I think it is generally accepted that it is localized to the head, so I don't think feedback would be particularly dangerous to the fetus, excepting of course the death of the mother.

Except undue hardship, duress, and stress have been known to trigger spontaneous abortions (i.e. a miscarriage) in the mother.

And anything mucking with the brain/neurosystem in a manner that would induce physiological damage (such as Black IC would), could easily cause hormonal imbalances that might harm the development of a fetus, or cause the body to abort. High blood pressure and hyperthyroidism are both known risk factors for miscarriages; no reason Black IC couldn't cause either of those through damage to the brain stem.

Mmm, possibly true. Never been pregnant so wouldn't know myself. Really depends on how good of a TM Netcat is and what sort of stuff she is doing.

Remember kids, when uploading something to an untrusted peer, always remember to use a firewall.

Im not sure if this is sad that I remember this, but I think Slamm-0!s parents went by the names of Fury and Brick bat..

I think Slamm-O is the father. He and 'kat are pretty close.

Confirmed. Target: Matrix p. 88-89

*Headdesk*

Last line in Spells and Chrome.

kinda related (stolen from reddit):

One human cell contains 75MB genetic information. One sperm contains a half of that; that is 37.5MB. One ml of semen contains 100 million sperms. An average ejaculation lasts for 5 sec and contains 2.25 ml semen.
This means that the through-put of a man's member is equal to (37.5MB x 100,000,000 x 2.25)/5 = 1,687,500,000,000,000 byte/second 16875 Тerabyte/sec This means that the female egg cell withstands this DDoS attack at 1,6875 terabyte per second, and only lets through one(!) data package, thereby being the best frigging hardware firewall in the world! The downside of it is that once in a way this one small data package gets through and hangs the system for the whole of 9 months!

*Groans*

That is amazing. I've quoted that (and edited it).

It is cool.

It should be noted, however, that the speed at which the male member produces the ejaculate is not the speed at which the sperm arrive at the egg. They have a couple of days worth of swimming to do before they get there. In the course of things, the millions of little guys spread out quite a bit, many even going the wrong way, so the egg doesn't have to deal with all of them at once. Which would be impossible anyway because there would be too many of them to all fit on the surface of the egg. This spreading out is part of the selection process which inhibits weaker and deformed sperm from getting much of a chance to fertilize the egg.

See THIS for an idea of how many are there at the time of fertilization.

Than the true firewall is the female's reproductive system with a secondary firewall around the egg. The analogy still holds true... more or less.

Quite. Many of the sperm die (or sacrifice themselves for the greater good) on the way there.

(They get picked off by the immune system too).

Life is hard when you're 1/2 a cell (not technically true, but technically true at the same time).

The immune system (even a guy's) sees them as mutant cells needing to be purged because they have the wrong number of chromosomes.

Yeah. As I said, life's hard at that stage.

Is anyone else feeling sad for all those spent lives? :'(

Also, if you think standard lady-plumbing comes wth awesome security features (and just generally awesome features, but we won't get into that), consider what happens when you install a patch(the Pill, et al)?

Well, all we know is that Netcat, despite all her hacking skills and whatnot in being a TM still failed at that one.

Most wishful intruders won´t get arround the "air gap defenses" of said reproductive system.

?

Neo-@ or not, I got statements about that...

Ah, thanks

I'm going to call shenanigans on this math. While there's lots of genetic information getting transferred, it's all just the same 75MB getting sent in different half-sets. AKA, many of those sperm are carrying duplicate DNA. You're only going to have about 2^23 different combinations (I.e. about 8 million) of that same 75MB. Mind you, the different combinations are what makes humans unique, but barring any mass-scale mutations per each sperm, you're still only sending 75MB over and over again.

The math still works, and its still a "DDoS" on the egg cell.
(A DDoS attack in fact is the same packet over and over, doesn't need to be, but typically is)

It's like throwing marbles: you just need to throw marbles; they don't need to be all the same color or all different colors - they just need to be thrown.

By correlation, it doesn't matter what information I send for a DDoS attack - thirty-thousand Justin Beiber music videos work just as well as thirty-thousand assorted music videos (albeit JB's may end up scarring you more....).

CGL better start with the quality again, or else we'll just have to get...

CREATIVE.