[Story time with H0tl1ne! Now with more speculation than usual.]

The weird lady with a screenplay-writing gerbil has been around for a while and we still can't explain how the heck this card was supposed to work flavor-wise. I hope to give it a go in this review.

So, the way I see it...

You've met that kind of a person at least once in your life. This person might not be mental, crazy, bonkers or loony, just a little too much... focused on a thing. Be it that guy who keeps telling you about the video series he'd been watching lately, or a kid who goes on without a stop about Netrunner (wink!), or...

Yeah, you get the idea. Fixated - this is the word.

Now imagine befriending such a person. Sits all day in their mom's basement and just watches movies. Knows every bit of cinematic trivia since Lumière brothers. Amazing pop-culture trope knowledge. There is a downside though - everything they know, they've learned from the TV. And everything they see, hear, think is immediately associated with it.

You're in the business of netrunning. Instead of just going public with every bit of dark secrets you steal away (and attracting some instant karma), you forward them to your delusional friend for safekeeping until it can be safely released. This results in many hilarious situations, because everything you give them, they immediately assume to be a movie script.

Might sound like a stretch, but look at this!

"Hey, have you heard of Explode-a-palooza?"

"Yeah. Two stars out of five. The same bit of dissolved cereal every year."

"What about this?"

"Psh. Please. An obvious jump on the academy awards, is all."

"Hey, Miranda Rhapsody is making a new musical with a lion, a scarecrow and a bioroid!"

"It's called Wizard of Oz and was around since, I don't know, forever?"

Wait. It gets worse.

"Hey, have you heard of the psychic clones evil government uses to fight crime before it even happens?"

"Yeah. Minority Report. What are you, living under a rock or what?"

"So I've had these two guys following me around. Strange haircuts, fabulous glasses, guns..."

"You mean Starsky & Hutch. Yeah, seen that too. Bloody philistine."

"Yo, ever heard a corporation amass so much money they would buy a third-world country on the spot?"

"Wow, they're making a Stand on Zanzibar movie now? F*cking finally!"

"I've been on the news. Now they're trying to murder me."

"Oh, you've finally watched Network! How did you like Beale's speech anyways?"

"Wait, you know about Beale?"

"You did! I know you would! Now along with me: I'm mad as hell, I'm not gonna take it anymore... I'm mad as hell..."

"So I've been in my office and some guy in the glasses tried to shoot me! In the head!"

"Wow. Congrats on discovering Matrix. Spoilers: don't watch the second one. Third one... Know what? Don't watch it, too."

"Two of big-ass AI merging together to avoid Turing police, it's..."

"...Neuromancer. Come on, Gibson is so eighties."

"This new advanced car-"

"Don't you tell me they're pulling 'Hoff back from the dead for this one."

"Know what? You're officially the worst person ever."

"Never as bad as Jim Carrey, baby."

The name of the card means "zero" in arabic (and "cipher" in Azerbaijani). It also is, quite possibly, the briefcase Null holds on to, visible on Credit Crash card art. Unsurprisingly enough, it offers a similar, though a lot stronger ability and both seem to go along together nicely - once you trash a card to Null's ID, you won't need an additional card slot in your grip unless you plan to draw back up.

I like to think that Şifr has anything to do with Boris "Syfr" Kovac. Like that part in Neuromancer where Case uses Dixie Flatline - a long-dead elite hacker whose memory and personality is stored on a portable disk drive - to crack the ICE guarding the Villa Straylight and ultimately free Wintermute from his prison. Perhaps there is a russian cyborg's spirit inside the briefcase, and his mad haxx0r skills, while unnerving and putting a significant mental strain on the jacked-in runner (resulting in something of a temporary brain damage, because, you know, this guy is really kinda dead and now in your head), lend you a helping hand with the toughest bits of murder code.

That's a huge stretch though, and probably completely false - I don't think Syfr was ever a canon character to begin with. Also, remember Null was Weyland's whistleblower, which probably means his suitcase is full of corporate top secret files and accessible backdoors. The temporary grip reduction is probably an effect of having to process a lot of information in a short period just to find a hole suitable for current situation.

Believing Şifr actually has any fluff behind it cheers me up a little and helps to forget how terribly imbalanced this card is - and how dreadfully downhill this game goes with each data pack.

[Story time with H0tl1ne. Ish.]

Well well if it isn't Jackson Howard, a man with an impressive collection of nicknames containing but not limited to JH, J-How, Jackie H, Jackson Fucking Howard, Jolly Horror, Jesus How Odd, Jackass Coward, Jelly Hooker, Jackoff Cockwad, Man in Blue Suit, This Should Read 12 Influence Not 15, Mr Instaslot, Training Wheels Dude, Toy Boy, These Are Not The Agendas You Are Looking For, Insurance Fraud, What A Guy and so on and so on.

Since we are soon to part ways with this there charming fellow, I'd like to take a while and explain who Mr Howard was and what exactly was he about. Enjoy.

Jackson Howard is an NBN executive and his official title is Vice President of Infant Programming. He used to be a regular code monkey and a hardware engineer working for NBN - that is, until he came up with Rexie*, an interactive, educational toy designed for children aged two to six. Rexie was equipped with an optical brain - of the likes you see everyday in Haas-Bioroid's main products. An idea this wild (due to enormous costs and possibly a patent violation or eight) either gets you fired (and that is what almost happened) or very, very much promoted (this is what actually happened).

What does a child's toy need an optical brain for? Gathering information, mostly. Howard's Rexie was able to record, store and analyze every single quirk in a kid's upbringing, effectively getting to know his owner better than their parents do.

What does NBN need all this data for? Customer profiling. Ergo - selling more junk. Is that it?

Were it only that simple - Rexie was an interactive toy. An artificial, semi-intelligent being able to interact with kids just as they interact with it. Which, naturally, opens the possibilities to influence little minds and subtly sculpt them towards more desirable reactions. Now you're not only selling more junk - you're also making your customers-to-be even more gullible so that they spend more on your wares in the future.

How ethical.

Coming up with such an idea has made J-How a kind of a rising star in NBN ranks. For instance, he's got his own department right off the bat. Mechanically, consulting JH about his ideas is the first ability printed on the card. Having such a mind in your R&D department - sharp, revolutionary and devoid of any sense of good or wrong - essentially doubles the rate at which your eggheads spit out new projects.

The second one is more interesting, partly because I have no idea how to justify it in a way that would stick. There is no clear way to explain cards that get you your archives back - either it's a fridge full of brains, a keg full of something sticky, possibly brains, or, adding a curious twist on a visible pattern, something painfully brainless. Subliminal Messaging gives us a possible, yet imprecise, hint - maybe an ability to magically vanish cards from Archives is somehow linked to JH's accomplishments in the field of psychology? Perhaps he's using his infant profiling to predict which of the old ideas would be the most lucrative to dust off when the new generation matures? Maybe when an agenda disappears right in front of your eyes it's because you were programmed - from the day you were born! - to not see it? I find it strangely easy to believe.

Hey, what if I told you that, since you picked up Netrunner, you too were programmed? Can you give me a number on how many decks you've made contained this card? Tell me, what are you going to do when he finally rotates, apart from being utterly helpless? If that was an intended practical metagame joke, then we really have to give FFG some credit for planning ahead.

Following the pattern of well-known characters getting cards that explain the way their adventures came to an end (so far, Andromeda, Chaos Theory and Whizzard), I've been wondering if there will be one describing JH. Then I thought that, maybe, there already was one. Would serve him right - to get the taste of his own medicine and get imprinted with harmful memes by some smooth talking coach wannabe, and then lose it all in an investment gone tragically wrong.

.* - it's pretty much possible that CT's trademark console is actually Rexie itself, only rigged to work as a cyberdeck (because an optical brain is absolutely bananas in terms of computing power). You can even see it on the art if you look closely!

[Story time with H0tl1ne. You Spike-type competitive guys move right along. With that out of the way...]

So, Ken, why so much in a hurry?

Clone. Courier. Driving and delivering these packages fast and solid is what they do. Tenma Line, you insufferable duckwad.

True. But is that all there is?

Nope. Far from it, actually. Let's ponder this for a second.

You are in a hurry when the time is scarce. But, being an escaped clone, Kenny should have plenty of time on his hands, right?

Not right.

The main merit of clones as a workforce is that they are (relatively) cheap to mass-produce, and due to extensive neural conditioning, they are obedient to the point of suicide (obviously the case with our buddy over here. Look at the jacket. Look at the hair. Obedient type all along). Also, simulants are disposable - you can work them to death, no problem. Our corporate policies got you covered - give us your old, wasted clone and we'll supply you with a fresh batch on the spot. For a convenient price, naturally.

As every mass-produced product, clones have an expiration date. It's perfectly logical - immortal clones mean no fresh clones, means no income, means end of business. Depends on the line and its destination, of course. You want babysitters to live longer in order to avoid mental trauma your kids would suffer when the beloved nanny gets recycled. Zero-G workers, miners, reactor meat, no problem, new drop every five years.

For Tenma line the clock is set to fifteen, maybe twenty, we are not sure on that, most got recycled before they keeled over. Kenny might have worked as a courier for a good bit of time now. But he's broken away and made a name for himself as a smooth operator. You don't break the conditioning during one moment of instant wisdom. You don't become a novahot runner overnight. Well, you might, but the name "H0tl1ne" is already taken.

My point being, Kenny comes with an expiration date too. And he's not exactly fresh off the tank.

What would you do knowing when exactly you are going to die?

But there are some benefits to having only several years to live. For instance, cigarettes. Lung cancer will probably kill you in twenty years. But if you don't have twenty years, you're basically immune. So it's all sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, right? Live high while you can, tomorrow you may be dead?

This probably is one of the things that drive Ken. He doesn't have much time, so he turns to a life of a criminal for sake of living his life, brief as it might be, as something worth remembering. That, and a desire to prove to himself and everyone around that a clone can have a better life than most of people do.

Now now, it is the future, you might say. We've got gene goodies that let your heart beat indefinitely and even if it stops anyway, we'll just put in a new one and apply a little voltage. Voila!

That's true. And I know exactly who does such crazy stuff. These guys are called Jinteki Corporation.

Hey, have you heard the term "retire on sight"?

[This review considers flavor only. If you don't care about the fluff, feel free to slide right past it.]

Let's have a look at the flavor, uh, text.

The way it is written might be a direct reference to a certain science fiction novel, and a single work of fiction I have found to be the most disturbing thing I have ever read - that is, "I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream".

To those unfamiliar with the topic, it's a postapocalyptic sf story describing a cold war-era military computer (known simply as AM, for Allied Mastermind) gone rogue, taking control of the whole world's nuclear arsenal and almost completely wiping the humanity off the surface of Earth. Almost, because there have been five people left - which AM had purposefully kept alive and made almost completely immortal, for the sake of torturing the living heck out of them for the rest of eternity with the most cruel ways imaginable - out of sheer contempt and hatred for creating it, but making it non-sapient, unable to express creativity, unable to touch, taste, breathe.

There are only two parts in the text in which AM "communicates". It uses the telegraphic Baudot code - the dots in five rows, punched onto a nylon tape - to say "I think, therefore I AM" and "cogito ergo sum", the sign of it being self-aware and the proof that everything it did, it did because it WILLED to do it.

What is the reference? Unsurprisingly, the Baudot code is the alphabet this flavor text has been presented in. The dots herein add up to words "The Destroyer of Worlds". Not very imaginative for a card named "Apocalypse", right? Not really. Harbinger's flavor text, shown in the same manner, transcribes as "I Am Become Death". The two add together to form a well-known quote from Bhagavad Gita, made popular by Julius Robert Oppenheimer, a man most known for his part in Manhattan Project, and the father of the nuke.

Think again. Apex is said to be a military AI, used for some nefarious purposes before the great Blackout (which had obliterated the Internet as we know it today, promptly replaced with SYNC, or simply "the Network"). The Blackout itself is said to have been caused by an unknown, self-aware worm able to evolve so rapidly that any effort to stop it would be completely fruitless. Could that be Apex? And if so, could Apex do it again?

Would it do it again not out of so-called notion of hunger, but because it hates its creators and wishes to destroy them?