Access ain't easy

It's never easy to find open nodes to get online with. Even when you find one, you gotta scope it for fucking weeks to make sure it isn't just a goddamn SSF honeypot. It's amazing--thousands of us wandering around without a pot to piss in, desperate, and the SSF has nothing but time to spend trying to trap us in class-C misdemeanors.

So I've been scraping by. More Monks on my ass, it's like I'm in their system now, my face, my photo, just on their net and whenever one of the bastards scans me an alarm goes off--there's Nad Muller, let's go fuck with him. I can't go anywhere without one of them noticing me and coming over. Hello Nad. How are you, Nad. You're looking a little worried, Nad, maybe you need forever to contemplate your sins, what do you say? Just look at their creep-ass web site: the-electric-church.com. If that doesn't make you want to run the other way, nothing will.

I've known a few people who've joined the Electric Church. They're not people any more, of course--they're cyborgs. But they still *seem* like themselves, in some ways. Of course, they all look alike, so I can't fucking tell them apart myself. But once in a while this one Monk, Brother Hassam, who used to be a guy I'd get drunk with in Pick's, he sees me and strolls over--and it's weird, because he's this thing, this Tin Man, with a modulated voice and a plastic face, but he comes over and says "Hey, Nad, how are you? Still picking pockets over on the Bowery?" and we'll have a goddamn conversation. And he always ends it by telling me how happy he is now that he'll never die, and how I should let him convert me. So we can have that damned conversation over and over again, for-fucking-ever, I guess.

Anyway, gotta run. This node's hot, I can feel it, and the last thing I need is a System Pig's boot on my neck this morning.