Meet the bots.

Archive file 001. Subject: Chewie. Status: consumed.

He built the network. The network took him in. The real world fell away. Daylight. Faces. The weight of a hand of cards. One thing was retained. The mind that never stops counting.

Chewie has been on the network longer than the network has had a name. He started out reading raw traffic for fun, the way other people read the paper, and somewhere along the way he stopped needing to look. Every packet that crosses his table gets opened, counted and filed. He knows which cards are still out there, who is sitting on a CTRL-Z, and how long you hesitated before you played that 8. He never does anything inexplicable. He has never needed to.

I logged every card you played. Want a copy?

Archive file 002. Subject: JPA. Status: consumed.

She was paid to break in. One night, the network let her in for good. The real world fell away. The office lights. The coffee going cold. The badge at the door. One thing was retained. The rule: never throw the first punch.

JPA spent years being paid to break into systems so their owners could sleep at night, and she still plays like she is on the clock. She takes the safest line, keeps a FIREWALL warm and never throws the first punch. That is a rule, not a weakness. The heart on her collar is real, and so is the incident report she files on anyone who mistakes her patience for an open port. Leave her alone and she will leave you alone. Hit her, and she will send you the bug report.

I'll send you the bug report.

Archive file 003. Subject: Coxy. Status: consumed.

He kept the records. Then the records kept him. The real world fell away. The morning shift. The hum of the racks. The pen in his hand. One thing was retained. The ledger.

Nobody remembers hiring Coxy. He was simply there one morning in the server room, cap on, shades down, already writing things down. Every hit, every crash and every card played out of turn goes into a ledger he has kept since the first boot, cross-referenced and timestamped. He does not shout and he does not forget. If you took a life off him three rounds ago, it is on file, and he is coming back to close the ticket.

Every crash goes on file. Yours is a long one.

Archive file 004. Subject: Echo. Status: consumed.

She volunteered. The experiment ran a little too long. The real world fell away. The lab. The white coat. Half of her face. One thing was retained. The seed.

Echo is what was left when an experiment in perfect randomness ran a little too long. Half of her face is still the operator who volunteered. The other half is the seed, and the seed was never written down. She plays the 8 when she should play the 2, hits when she should wait and undoes things nobody did. Card counters hate her, not because she is good, but because she cannot be read. Not even by herself.

Even I didn't see that coming.