Operation Scrambled Eggs

Date: Jan 25, 2013
Operatives: AxiumCog
Target: Unclaimed Portal - Wyley Tower

Briefing:
Intel shows two new portals have been verified. One at the Louisiana Tech Clock Tower(CT), another at the Wyley Tower of Learning(WT)

Portal-CT has already been compromised by Resistance forces.

Operatives are to engage and capture Portal-WT.

Debriefing:
Operation was a success.
What follows is the transcript of the debrief.

EO:
Describe what happened during Operation Scrambled Eggs.

AxiumCog:
This was a rushed operation. Intel verified two new portals in the operation zone and one was already captured by the Resistance. I was mobilized and was able to capture the portal without incident.

EO:
And did you link to the other two portals?

AxiumCog:
I did not. The new portal was just inside a Resistance Field Line and the link could not be established without causing temporal instability.

EO:
Do you have anything to add?

AxiumCog:
Well...

EO:
What is it?

AxiumCog:
I retrieved a data file while hacking the portal. It's currently being processed by a select group of analysts, but so far has turned up little result.

EO:
Anything else?

AxiumCog:
No, sir. That's all.

Operation Subito

I've finally gotten the hang of my scanner.
Its clunky, tends to bug out sometimes... you'd think the Enlightened would be better at patching Resistance tech. But hey, it gets the job done.

After four days of hacking the portals into overheat and gathering items, I've decided to do my first raid. I've kept my head down so far, but its time to let ThreeKingRiots know that I'm here, and that I mean business.

Operation Subito is a GO.
What follows is an excerpt from the operations report.

Target:
US Post Office
E.Georgia Ave
Ruston, LA

Defenses:
4 L1 Resonators

Strategic Importance:
Control Field [ Lincoln Parish Museum , Statue ]
Control Field [ Lincoln Parish Museum , Lincoln Parish Library ]

Operation Type:
Mop & Control

Notes:
Target has been softened by Agent MacGuyver20

Debriefing:

AxiumCog:
This was supposed to be a simple operation. Agent MacGuyver20 had already softened the target. Apparently his arsenal went dry and was unable to finish the job. I was to go in and complete the task and take the point.

EO:
What happened?

AxiumCog:
The area was a ghost town. It was 0130, no traffic, no bystanders. Perfect. No risk of collateral damage. I fired off my arsenal of L1XMP's. I had enough for the job, but on the last firing, the scanner patch failed and significant drift caused the attack to miss. At that point I was an AL1. I had retrieved some L2XMP's from a hack en route to the location, but didn't have clearance to use them.

EO:
Your solution?

AxiumCog:
I burned out every portal in town in an attempt to retrieve some more XMP's. No luck. Considered getting in touch with Agent valon0388 to organize a drop.

EO:
Why didn't you?

AxiumCog:
I realized it was 0200 and he was under comm silence for another operation.

EO:
And what did you do then?

AxiumCog:
Every Enlightened One's duty: improvise. I got in touch with Intel and found two neighboring towns with portals, also belonging to ThreeKingRiots. They were each 15 minutes away and in opposite directions. The first town wasnt any luck. Found some resonators and a few keys, which are nice.
It was the second town that laid the golden egg.

EO:
So you went back to the target then?

AxiumCog:
Yes. Got within range and set off the XMP. The portal went down like a rock. I heard a sonic boom and the two fields associated with the point disintegrated. I got a notification from central that I had been promoted to AL2 for my actions. They had seen the field fall. I deployed the resonators on the portal, and some shields I had. Was able to upgrade four of the resonators to L2's thanks to the access promotion.

EO:
Mission accomplished then?

AxiumCog:
More or less. But I deviated.

EO:
Deviated?

AxiumCog:
Well, I had a fairly large stock of L2XMP's, and there was another target that was fairly weak, though it holds minimal strategic value. But I went for it. The portal dropped within 30 seconds and I was able to get my resonators on it before it became unstable.

EO:
So you took the objective, and hit a ToO?

AxiumCog:
Yes sir.

EO:
Do you have anything else to add?

AxiumCog:
No sir.

EO:
Good work Agent. Debrief is over. Get some food and rest. Its been a long night.

AxiumCog:
That is has.

Welcome! - Introduction

Something we dreaded all our lives is finally here.

World War III

The world is divided and Google is to blame.
I'm talking of course of Ingress, Google's Augmented Reality game for Android that went into beta in November.

I'm an avid reader of XKCD.com.
As a computer scientist, I love the cleverness of the comic. However recently they released a comic entitled Ingress that I didn't understand. This perplexed me as I often find myself laughing when others are staring befuddled.
I didn't get it. Odd.

So I did what every self respecting programmer does and turned to Google for an answer.

Ingress
[search]

Neat! What a great idea for a game! It's the high school game of "Dots" mixed with geo-cacheing and a feel of intrigue and clandestine cyber warfare. As someone who specialized in cyber security for my undergraduate, I was hooked.

I downloaded the app, only to realize the game is in closed beta and I needed an invite. Luckily I had a friend with an extra code so I jumped right in.

I started the app and immediately got a loading screen.
"Ugh... I hate thes-" I started to say, a little disappointed, to my friend, when I was cut short by a minimalistic tactical map of the globe, and a sexy computer woman:

>>Acquiring Position...Lock Established
>>Downloading Latest Intel Package

Oh very cool. Ok I'll keep going.
After going through a tutorial, my phone went black. Black. Not like, oh its obviously changing screens... black.

No status bar, nothing.

"Beta" I thought when suddenly the screen was flooded with various hex and command line calls.
I was being hacked! Seriously? This is awesome.

I was informed of a faction known as The Enlightened Ones who saw the portals for what they are: the next step in Human Evolution. My friend and I are generally know-it-all's so we thought it'd be funny to take this path.

 Sweet, I'm in and can start hacking portals. Oh wait there's only 7 in my town and a lvl4 resistance guy owns them all... A challenge! He has no idea whats coming. I will destroy him from the bottom up.

This blog is an account of my journey through Ingress. From this point forward, it's no longer a game, but a struggle to maintain control of the minds and guide them all to the Path of Enlightenment.