(noting the 'cyberpunk' tag)

Pretty good odds, though, the mysterious figure winds up being connected to the employer of whatever job they're on. And is mysterious because they spend an inordinate amount of time "removing" anyone who can talk about them :)

Heh. Not in this case, admittedly... at least, not deliberately. Deedee wants to hire her to get the dirt on their actual employer... and mysterious because as an information broker, she's very good with making sure that awkward questions get diverted into misinformation.

Oh, and the 'not deliberately' applies specifically to the 'connected to the employer of whatever job they're on' part. People who deal in information end up getting connected; it's pretty much a requirement for the job. Especially when the person being researched has more resources than you think.

Oh just remembering some of the tenets I recall hearing about -punk style fiction - "only trust yourself, and even then not completely".

Well, yes, there is that.

Even if you trust the person you're talking to, do you trust the location you're talking in?

"Do you shake the hand of the man on the viddynews every night you watch him with your eyes?" said the humaniform mind from within her felinoid prosthetic body. "Set in your mind this: that absolute realism and reality altogether functions as parallel to our modern world. No more and no less than metadata-composition tacked onto the physicality we can perceive in flesh and physical sense; the Net-Matrix not limited to therein the computers that generate and maintain it. We can all be liars herein, set in the small patch of anonymity we have gifted to us, precious in the face of choice. And you have a choice, man of flesh," she smiled, winsome-wise and properly feline-sharp, "like everyone else does this morning or in the days to come set on the horizon before us. Will you tend to opportune and take what you wish, on the honour of those who can't stop you? Or will you instead opine to put something back, and build it bigger than it was?"

-2Paw.

Of course, there's also:
Kurt Vonnegut wrote:We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
Pretending to be a nasty and angry person doesn't 'let it out', it just gives you practice in being nasty and angry.

And along that note and yours, I'll note that one of Huntress' last lines in the story is, "Helping build something will be a nice change of pace."

My cousin, the Whowolf, is very familiar with Kurt Vonnegut, and letting everyone know who has spoken a particular line in the past. But knowing Huntress has a sister that she is or was close to, each of their own paths distinct and unique definitions of what they chose to do (and not to do) in the face of tragedy borne from life lost and immoral corporate behaviour, taking opportunity's path in two different directions but functional reflections of each thereof, not oddly similar, leads me to the same conclusion you told me of Huntress' inner psychology: she is not a horrible person, and not a mercenary tigress or fighting cat by desire or nature. It is what she needed to be, to move past her lost, the face and adopted belief and tone of self that kept her from breaking apart into bones and meat. As was her sister's choice in turn.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that cyberpunk has righteously, all but aggressively set its teeth in being a morality play in a world where technology has given every option a body- literally- could want, if you have the credits and contacts. But like opportunity in our own world's present and past, such opportunity can be used as a weapon of denial of that opportunity, misrepresenting or hiding what the opportunity means or camouflaging it with a cover story that is inaccurate or all or mostly fiction, or held for a ransom that technology, a price that must consider from the buyer or customer sacrifice, whether a rich man toying with technology in his own body, or the food to buy the bread that will keep the living beggar of the future from starving.

These things are therein all of us in our own world and present, and in a future age of flesh and steel enmeshed, they are subtler in tone, but stronger in nature. Utopia is not the gleaming fiction on the horizon, set to spoil if we take our eyes away for a brief moment. It is within, and therein ourselves it is and must be found, to be found in the end.

-2Paw.

EDIT: I'm sorry about the 'Comment hidden by its owner' at the bottom; that was initially my post, and my sillyperson self didn't check to make sure it would attach it as a child reply to your post, and not the OP to a new thread.

Well, 'Utopia' literally means 'no place'... I mean, really, not only is no place perfect because the people aren't perfect, but 'perfect' means 'no improvement is possible', and there are a lot of people who wouldn't want to live in any place where they didn't have anything to work towards.

On the other hand, people deliberately making it difficult for others to get forward or out of their current situation is sadly all too common.

The same could be said about 'God', or an ultima creator or creatrix: he or she is less than the smallest part of their creations, because in their omnipotence and omniscience, they are permanently doomed to win or succeed to do whatever they wish, but that also means they are incapable of failing, and learning from any failures, because conceptually if not literally they do not know how to lose, or what to learn from a loss. To be able to define what success and failure is means that they've got 'cheat codes' for all of existence; they won't learn how to play the game and win on their own merit, because they can define whatever that game is, and flip the board anytime they like and start over.

And that being said, they are not likely to be happy, or to feel whole, despite their power and what they are. My Mirror-M'Ress is much the same way: she could easily overpower anyone aboard the I.S.S. Enterprise physically, but that comes with the psychological abuse, the sense of not belonging and feeling little more than a functionary and aboard-ship tool, an animal without a physical cage but a psychological one in turn. Her duties process the lies, the truths and secrets send and received aboard ship or out into the ether, but nothing she learns can be used to her advantage, or do anything about her position aboard ship, her size and inability to simply walk down a ship's corridor amongst them, another drop in the huge bucket full of water that she must fight interally.

(An) Utopia is a great idea, but it can't exist, any more than 'zero' or 'perfection' can. It's a light on the horizon that we are encouraged (or we encourage ourselves) to seek and meet. It's like what the Apocalypse was to the oWoD's Garou were, an end result that would be horrible, but by its existence (and not yet having hit the inescapable result unavoidably, until the 2003 'revision') it also provided the hope that it could be averted, that the horror could be pressed back into the hole it came from. That, the struggle to be the best, most decent person you can, and not sink into horror borne within you, was the crux of being a Werewolf, and White Wolf shoehorning in the Apocalypse actually happening destroyed its worth.

-2Paw