Ashling Alchemi's Page

Ashling Alchemi: "dream chemistry". My father named me. My father, 1 part poet, 3 parts genius. A Neural Circuitry Scientist for NGen Corp. He’s dead now. So is the corporation he used to work for.

I am a ghost of Insilico, a solitary neural-hacker. I like my cities dark, my buildings tall, and enough dark shadows to slip through the city unnoticed. The more tunnels the better.

I was born in another city as a cyborg, implanted in utero with the latest and greatest Neural-Geneisis processing unit from NGen Corp, standard issue for all children born to employees of NGen. Not just a perk of the job, as my mother naively thought, but part of NGen’s massive in vivo experiment. I am a result of that experiment.

When I was 9, NGen’s west-end fusion plant exploded. Most of the city perished, but I escaped, separated from my parents and sister. I was taken in by some independent androids in the Underground. The blast blinded me but they restored my sight with modded ocular implants. It was the first time I was glad to be a cyborg. Once it was safe to sneak through the streets, I found my childhood home a pile of rubble and my family gone. I never saw them again. That was 12 years ago.

I was dead to the world and I remained intent on staying that way. I traveled from city to city, staying as far out of the way as possible, living in the shadows, and learning new hacks and better ways to infiltrate corporate servers and AI without leaving a trace.

After learning the blast was an attack by NGen on its employees as a cover-up, I dedicated my life to tearing down the system from the inside out, trying to take down every corporation until humanity could live free again. I learned how to hack and mod cyber implants to interface with my NPU. At first I just sold mods on the black market to survive. I took easily to neuro-hacking other cyborgs and began doing odd favors for other underground residents in exchange for fuel cells, food, and rare mod upgrades. My services are never cheap, if you can even find me. I’m not an easy hire.

My specialty is taking down targets for easy assassination, or whatever the client wants to do with them once they’re down. I never ask. I never do two jobs for the same client, either, and I only take jobs when I need fuel or cash. Cyborgs have all manner of security systems set up to prevent spirit hacks, but I found early on that these systems have the lowest defense during a certain stage of slow-wave-sleep. All I have to do is wait for the target to fall asleep, then hack in, tweak the hypocretin system here, modify a histamine receptor there, and set the astrocytic adenosine timer. When it goes off, the target is paralyzed but awake--completely neutralized--and the client can do … whatever it is they do. Like I said, I don’t ask.

So now I have found my way to Insilico. Fitting name…I feel like my whole life has been a giant experiment in silico. But this is real life, isn’t it? Well, real when the VR system in my visor isn’t activated. I gotta tell you, real sucks. Big time. I’ve envied the dead more than once for not having to deal with all the BS life throws at ya day after day, but I’m sure I’ll get my turn at dead one of these days. So on I go.

Sometimes I think I hear a faint signal or static on the secret neural com-link my sister and I made to play ‘droids & mercs’ as kids, but it’s probably just a misfiring circuit during a micro-sleep. I’d like to think she survived and is out there somewhere, but the odds of surviving were not in anyone’s favor. I keep it on just in case…