Following the failure of the FTL
Communications Network and generally upheld interstellar law, it became
possible to hire out jobs that had formerly been illegal under the Terrestrial
Alliance. The “Agony Columns” are
similar to Classifieds in a newspaper, or a dating service – an individual pays
to post a request, with a contact number that is provided by the local System
Agency.
System Agencies pay a nominal fee to spike
drive ships to carry information from one system to another, thus providing
updated Agony Column information across nearby systems. The downside to this is that out-system
listings may already be filled or closed by the time they reach a local System
Agency, and it may be some time before the listing is updated. Those responding to out-system listings are
cautioned to use their own best judgement!
In some systems, the local System Agency
may use viral transportation to encode packets onto outgoing ships without the
knowledge or payment of the owners. This
is frowned on by GalSysCom, but is not illegal in most systems. A ship that discovers a System Agency packet
hidden in its computers may delete or sequester the packet without fear of
prosecution.
(Sequestering a packet prevents it from
uploading to local System Agencies, thus limiting access to the information
contained within...at least until such time as it is provided by another spike
drive ship. Parties possessing the
packet may then decrypt it in order to “claim jump” any interesting tidbits
they may find.)
The Agony Columns are used not only to
offer clandestine employment, but also list potential job offers with various
corporations and other places of employment, personal messages, birth notices,
death notices, wedding notices, and anything else a user is willing to pay 1
credit per 10 characters to post.
If I need to get a packet message to a guy in the Outer Rim two weeks ago (standard Aereth), can I send it by Tachyonic Telephone to the Local System Agency, and if so how much does it increase the cost per 10 characters?
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