Literature / Encryption Straffe

A Web Serial Novel originally posted on Space Battles, later self published on Kindle. A Cyberpunk novel set in an alternate world of 2013, with highly developed cognitive brain-machine interface technology. It follows paths of four protagonists: Genie, Rich, Pious One and Roberto, from different points in a complex timeline.

2013, first year of the future. Cognitive network technology has utilized the human brain as the most valued element in creativity, research, communication, warfare and encryption.

Genie wears a series of skins he couldn't recognize, in order to pursue the father of deception.Children of the new world open a cursed message to inherit a memory preserved for them.Pious One makes himself a core member of his great expectations.Roberto Napoli is about to be buried alive by angry farmers.A sinister neuromancer haunts the heart of this wonderful reality, connecting their stories together.

Described by its author as like Ready Player One meets Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.

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Encryption Straffe contains examples of:

• The Ace: Both Volk and Pious One are one-man killing machines, for Illyrican Rangers and Pious Unit respectively.
  • Volk had decades of fighting experience and knows a power armor like the back of his hand.
  • Pious One fought his way through an entire compound guarded by East German remnant soldiers unscratched and unsupported.
• Action Girl: Cherub, one of Genie’s teammates. Several other Illyrican Rangers members are also women. In the final arc, Alfie Versberg.
• Alternate History: The 1990s was different from OTL, with more low intensity conflicts happening all across Europe.
• Amazon Brigade: The early model Power Armor used by New Illyrica and other factions requires more training for men than women to fully utilize, because of skeletal structure differences.
• Arc Words: "The man nicknamed X's job is Y”.
  • The man nicknamed Genie’s job was testing this one smartphone puzzle game made for a kid’s TV series franchise.
  • The man nicknamed – no, assigned with the callsign – Pious One’s job was stopping the decade-long German unification crisis turning into a shooting war.
  • The man assigned to Operation Piety, Phase One, could no longer continue his job. Why? He was planted vertically into a fresh hole in an unassuming country meadow, only his head above the ground.
  • The man nicknamed Genie's job was waiting for the arrival of, and greeting the Higher Powers’ representative.
• The Atoner: Pious One.
• Anachronic Order: Training simulations created from memories give the cast a way to experience the past.
• Audience Surrogate: Although Genie knows enough of modern infantry combat, he knows little about the cyberpunk side of things in this world.
• Balkan Bastard: Three of the protagonist Genie's employer and commanders fought in The Yugoslav Wars: Dr. Prishtina, Captain Walther Volk and Major Bishop. Though, it's not specified on whose side. Volk is actually German while the other two are Croatian. Many of Genie's teammates are from a younger generation of the region, such as Rich, Vucko and Kekes.
  • Roberto is helped by some Volksdeutsch partisans, ethnic Germans of Yugoslavia fighting against Nazi rule.
• Book Ends: The first and last chapter are both firefights in New Illyrica where Overmind splinters fight each other for control of the city.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Alfie Versberg, a medical researcher who has highly notable bleached hair. She also delivers for a fast food restaurant; this made her frequently needing to deny serving mystery meat.
• Cool Cars: Alfie’s Audi RS5. Rich’s Peugeot 206 and Vucko’s Mitsubishi Lancer are also mentioned to be highly modified for street racing.
  • Improbably Cool Car: How did Alfie get a brand new and modified Audi?
• Cryptic Background Reference: Most details in the history or status of New Illyrica, CyberSyn, and Overmind could only be inferred through insider dialogue.
• Cyberpunk: The Post-Cyberpunk flavor. The plot is set in an alternate 2010s where Cold War superscience lead to daily used computer technology that interacts with human cognitive functions. It explores the more grounded roots of megacorps and private forces, presenting real world conflicts in a cyberpunk lens.
• Cyberpunk Is Techno: A synthpop theme song written for the novel is available on YouTube.
• Defector from Decadence: The German defectors from 999th Light African Division, a unit historically known for them.
  • Pious One.
• Eagleland Osmosis: Rich is the embodiment of this, up to his nickname. He also developed a habit for American junk food, and swings American slangs like “chill” or “dude” around, none of which is approved by Genie the real American.
• Expy:
  • Both Overmind and Illyrican Rangers are expies of Outer Heaven.
    • The cognitive harness technology used by Illyrican Rangers is similar to the SOP system, with the the Battle Emotion Adaptive Regulation function from Genocidal Organ tacked on.
    • Volk is a highly experienced soldier who goes either by a one-word animal-inspired name, or “boss”, his past heavily censored. Just like the last incarnation of Snake.
  • The protagonist Genie experienced separation and mental conditioning similar to Alex Mason.
  • The city of New Illyrica was based on the unrecognized private state of Liberland in concept, but reimagined as a fully developed city state.
    • Its business selling domain names was a practice used by Tonga, British Indian Ocean Islands, and Libya.
  • Overmind is an expy of USAID's Public Security Office, an American agency supporting law enforcement of its allies.
  • The simulation training system invokes the image of the one in Coded Arms, acknowledged by the author in an after note.
  • Andy's Wisconsin Classics, a fictional American restaurant, was an expy of IHOP and Denny’s.
• Faceless Goons: Balaclavas are frequently used by soldiers of every faction. Pious Squad members even only saw each others' faces after their first mission.
• Historical Domain Character: Many met by Roberto, the protagonist of the “past” chapters set in 1944-45:
  • American Merril’s Marauder members Roy Matsumoto and Mitchell Werbell were pictured alongside him in a photo.
  • Austrian ace pilot and later Italian nobleman, Gottlieb Banfield.
  • German war criminal, commander of the SS in northern Italy, Walter Rauff.
• Meaningful Name: A breather section within an otherwise tense chapter was dedicated to Characters talking about names and callsigns.
  • Genie's real name was Clint Eastwood Newton, leading to his friends theorizing that it was a code name because of the Man With No Name.
  • The "Volk" in Walther Volk means "wolf" in Russian but "people" in German.
• MegaCorp: CyberSyn, the corporation that owns nearly everything in New Illyrica. However, it was only a part of Overmind.
• Mind Screw: A significant part of Chapter 5 until Chapter 11 took place in various simulations, with a timeline deliberately rearranged to throw off inquisitive readers.
• Minnesota Nice: Genie is helpful to friends and obedient to orders, even though he is from Wisconsin.
• Multinational Team:
  • Genie's squad in the Illyrican Rangers, the Beta Company Headquarters Scout Team.
    • Genie: Eagle Land.
    • Walther Volk: Former Ossis with Osas.
    • Rich: Croatian with mixed cultural background.
    • Vucko: Bosnian.
    • Kekes: Slovenian.
    • Cherub and Ghoul: Chinese with Chopper Support.
• New Weird: The highly surreal second and third arcs depicted the feats of cognition technology as indistinguishable from magic from people immersed in it.
• N.G.O. Superpower: Overmind is a creation between the internal security organs of many NATO countries that evolved to control two cities, multiple front companies, and pretty much all of the private armies in the world.
• Powered Armor: Illyrican Rangers and other PMC armies under Overmind all have access to a power armor model based on the real-world Russian exoskeleton Ratnik. Later, the Super Power Armor is deployed with enhanced reflexes and electronic warfare capacities.
• Private Military Contractor: Many working under Overmind or outside. Illyrican Rangers, Lifeline Security, Cartagena Defense and Militia Treskaev, just the named ones.
• Rambunctious Italian: The Italian American undercover agent Roberto Napoli and some of his partisan friends.
• Redshirt Army: Averted. The Illyrican Rangers suffered very little losses. Pious Unit and the Adriatic partisans also had a high retention rate despite harrowing firefights.
• Robo Cam: Genie sometimes receive orders to hack into cameras of drones and remote controlled weapon stations, even cameras mounted on hostile soldiers. He calls the experience dehumanizing of himself.
• Rotating Protagonist: The novel has 4 POV characters, and each take turns being Supporting Protagonist for another: Genie, Roberto, Rich and Pious One.
• Secret War: Overmind has dedicated itself to fighting one since the Berlin Wall fell.
• Shout-Out: Many of them.
  • CyberSyn, the biggest company in New Illyrica, was named after the real world Chilean national computer messaging system. In-universe, the creator was mentioned to have worked with Overmind.
  • Walther Volk was a shout-out to famous Yugoslav movie Walter Defends Sarajevo.
  • Rich’s surname Gaile comes from The Tiger's Wife.
  • Andy’s Wisconsin Favorites was based on a location and mascot in a comic by Sam Alden of Adventure Time fame.
  • One of the buildings in New Illyrica is named after Fritz Lang.
  • In Pious Squad’s small talk, they mention a gas station accident caused by American soldiers using German euqipment, which was an important scene in Buffalo Soldiers.
  • Rich repatedly describes a "Harry and Hermione dynamic" between Genie and Cherub.
  • Some Faceless Mooks are described as wearing “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 skull masks”.
• Selective Historical Armoury: The joint Italian-Yugoslav-Volksdeutsch resistance in late 1944 got their hands on at least one very rare OG-43 SMG, along with some better known but still rare St G-44s. The Big Bad of their arc was even more ridiculous, his personal squad using silenced OG-43s.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Some hacker has rigged Flowers On The Wall by The Statler Brothers to play when things are about to go extremely wrong. The song was used as a brainwashing Trigger Phrase.
• The Squad: Averted. Genie spends most of the book separated from his squad, picking up new allies.
• Trigger Phrase: See above. Later, other characters also use their own chants to unlock program backdoors.
• Virtual-Reality Interrogation: three entire chapters, 9, 10 and 11 are dedicated to such a process in a simulated hellscape, nicknamed by the author as the "hell arc".
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Rich is this towards everyone else, but especially Vucko.
• Wacky Americans Have Wacky Names: Clint Eastwood Newton was the only named American in his entire corporation. He preferred to go with his nickname "Genie". Other Americans are more conventionally named, like Mitch Parkson and Percival McBride.
  • However, Mitch Parkson's son is named Dodge.
• We Are Not the Wehrmacht: Protagonist of a few chapters, Pious One, is a Bundeswehr special force operator on his way out.
• Villain Song: The Overmind theme music.
  • It's eventually revealed every Image Song is one.