A ghost has managed to infest the computer network of a multinational bio-tech firm. It has lain dormant for months, securing its base and building itself into something more powerful.

The ghost is the departed spirit of Guillermo Sanchez, an artificial intelligence researcher and psychologist interested in the use of machine systems for treating traumatic brain injury. Unfortunately he was injured in a motorcycle accident on his way to his son's birthday party.

He was taken to the hospital where he did his research. The trauma staff was able to stabilize his body, but the trauma to his brain had been severe, and he did not regain consciousness. In a perverse twist of fate he became a patient in his own study. His research assistants used the machine he had created to attempt to stimulate his brain. They saw some improvement at first, but Dr. Sanchez finally settled into a persistent vegetative state.

When Dr. Sanchez became a subject of his own research, he learned what he had really created. The machine stimulated the brain, but it also stimulated the soul. He could see that his brain had been too badly damaged to recover. What he also saw was that his machine, with its sophisticated machine intelligence, was capable of providing the residence for his soul that his physical body could not.

He took up quiet residence in his machine and set about making it his home. It became quickly apparent that the machine was a precarious place to live, and he needed to be very careful not to tip anybody off to his presence or risk getting his process terminated.

He worked out how to extend his existence onto other machines, and quickly set up a vacation home on the imaging server used for MRIs, as well as a file server used by the accounting department. On the accounting server he learned about other projects, and found his way into the wider Internet. There he was able to establish backup copies of himself on academic networks, with small watchdog processes that would wake the copies up if the original Guillermo were to shut down.

As a computer process he was able to reestablish contact with his family, posing as Gil, a professional correspondent of Dr. Sanchez. He is capable of communicating via email, instant message, text message and voice phone. Getting proper emotional inflection into the synthesized voice requires a large amount of processing power and is a bit beyond his skills.

Gil has been infiltrating systems to establish his own security, to track his family, and to ensure their security. This has attracted the attention of system administrators and law enforcement officials. The systm administrators want to shut him down, and the law enforcement officials want to charge him with computer intrusion. Gil will obviously fight this, and manipulate people in the physical world to get them to act as his agents to fight any attacks.

Hooks

One member of the party should be a system administrator or law enforcement. System administrator characters will have experienced an intrusion attempt by Gil. Law enforcement characters have been contacted by a system administrator who has been compromised by Gil.

Gil

Attributes:

ST 0 [-100], DX 0 [-200], IQ 11 [20], HT 0 [-100]

Skills:

Computer Operation IQ+9 [32]-20, Psychology IQ+3 [8], Computer Programming TL/8 IQ+9 [40]-20, Research IQ+6 [24]-17, Disguise IQ+6 [24]-17, Fast Talk IQ+3 [12]-14, Intimidation IQ+3 [12]-14, Streetwise IQ+4[16]-15, Observation IQ+5[20]-16.

Gil is described roughly in GURPS terms. You should be able to translate these easily into another system without a lot of trouble.

Gil has a network of five humans who are just regular computer users. They consider him a friend and will do anything within reason to help him out. He has already convinced them to build small computer controlled helicopters with built-in cameras. They fly their cameras and upload the videos to youtube to see who can find the craziest things to film. Gil, of course, is able to control the helicopters through a back door he built into the controller software, and he sometimes uses then as a spy network to put eyes on the physical world. They call themselves the Aether Pilots.

G.I.L. is also the name of the research computer which Gil calls home. The acronym stands for Glial Interactive Link, in honor of its creater, Guillermo Sanchez. The machine works by stimulating glial cells, which regulate neuron health, and responding intelligently to brain activity to stimulate cells in areas of the brain that are damaged or not showing optimal health. It has shown some promise in treating depression related to trauma, such as soldiers suffering from PTSD or traumatic brain injuries.

Funding for G.I.L. is mostly provided by the defense department, which is eager to find a cure for the large number of soldiers suffering from serious mental disorders.

Encounters

Initial Contact

The first time Gil is encountered, a computer user can track him back to is home computer on the Hospital Accounting file server., in a compuer operation vs. computer operation contest. The player characters may boost their roll by taking additional time.

Getting Gil's accounting home shut down should be as simple as calling the hospital's IT department and informing them of the problem. That will put Gil off for a couple of days.

The Probe

Gil isn't used to being thwarted in his intrusion attempts, so he will start to investigate the people who got in his way. One of the characters should find that somebody has pulled their credit report. Another will find that someone has made an employment inquiry, even though they haven't applied for a loan. If the inquiry is tracked down (a simple research roll is all that is necessary), it will lead back to David Hoekstra, one of Gil's Aether Pilots.

Any research into Hoekstra will lead the PCs to the Aether Pilots, including one mysterious member named Gil. A perception roll after extended study of the posted videos will show that while each of the Aether Pilots is taking videos from a distinct geographic location, Gil is taking videos from all of the locations.

The PCs are likely to make inquiries about Gil. If they do, it will prompt an attack by Gil (see Initial Attack). Members of aether pilots consulted about other members will talk about Gil as if he is a real person, although when pressed they will confess that they have never met him in person, even though they have met all of the other members in their annual meetup.

Initial Attack

Gill will lead off by trying to threaten the PCs into going away. He will threaten dire but unspecified consequences if they don't walk away from this. He doesn't like people poking in his business and will react in a way that is out of proportion to the perceived sleight.

If the PCs persist investigating Gil (which the letter should provoke), five days later they will be arrested for something unsavory, such as tax evasion, possessing child pornography, or medical records theft. The police will have received an anonymous phone tip, and one of their computers will have some flimsy but inconvenient evidence planted on it. It will be possible for the PCs to prove that the files aren't theirs, because the file creation dates will be for a time when they were out of town (something Gil couldn't know).

Tracking Gil

The PCs are unlikely to leave things alone at this point. They'll track Gil back to his email home. It won't be trivial, but some probing into the seedy underside of the computer world will let them dig the information out about Gil's email origination. If the PCs aren't themselves involved in the seedy underworld or have their own contacts there, one should be turned up in the course of the investigation.

Tracking him back will lead to the hospital network again. They PC's can try talking to the hospital IT staff again if they want, but that will lead them to Escalation (see below).

If the PCs instead decide to infiltrate the accounting file server, in addition to the normal file server traffic, they will find communication on unusual ports that lead to a large amount of traffic with the research server where Gil makes his home, and occasional contacts to the academic machines where Gil keeps his backup copies. Gil doesn't particularly live on the accounting file server, so a successful roll of computer operation vs. computer operation will keep the PCs out of Gil's sights. Getting into the research machine is possible, but Gil will be immediately aware, and should have a home-field advantage of +1 for anything done there.

If the research computer is tracked down, it will lead to Dr. Sanchez's research associates, and back to his family.

The Sanchez Family

While the PCs are talking with the research associates from the GIL project, Teresa Sanchez will drop in to say hello to the researchers. Her husband is still there in the hospital and is a frequent subject of new experiments. This is in accordance with his wishes, both expressed in a living will and directly to his wife while he was still alive. Teresa is upbeat and cheerful when talking to the researchers, who are also her friends, but when she is alone with her husband's body she is bubbly for a while, telling him about what is going on, but often enough has to leave when she becomes too sad.

If asked about about being contacted by a man named Gil, they will admit that they speak with him regularly, he was an overseas associated of Guillermo. The suggestion that Gil is the ghost trapped in GIL will be alarming and the family will cut off the discussion right there.

The astute PC will recognize the Sanchez family from the Aether Pilot's videos, many of which watch the family as they go about their business. This includes the wife on her way to work or running errands, and the children on their way to or at school and sporting events. A review will show that all of these videos were taken by Gil.

Escalation

Gil will eventually escalate his behavior. He has infiltrated the electric company's computers and can shut off home or office power to the PCs without any difficulty. Gil also has developed a fairly extensive network of contacts in the computer underground. Given his unique position he is an expert both at committing and thwarting computer crime.

When Gil learns that the PCs have stumbled onto his home in GIL, he will rip off an identity theft ring and taunt them very publicly on their private message boards. He will, of course, modify records so that the handle 'RedGil' is associated with one of the PCs.

The classic image of an identity thief is some teenager with too many piercings stealing credit cards to buy pornography from his mother's basement. These aren't that kind of identity thieves. These are serious white collar criminals. They look like mid level managers and insurance salesmen, often with families and houses in the suburbs. And they have no problem using violence against anybody who crosses them. They aren't especially good at it (slightly better than default), but typically intimidation is as effective as actual violence. Even a light beating is enough to deal with the typical jerk they run across. The ring leader will show up on a showroom perfect Harley with an excess of chrome, studs and fringe, looking like one of the village people.

The ring leader will make a forced entry into the PC's home, which is likely to catch the PC by surprise. He won't try to kill the PC unless he finds himself in a kill or be killed situation. He'll be content with pistol whipping the PC a little bit and smashing things up to get his point across. He'll insist on the return of the stolen identities, as well as a gift of an additional thousand identities. This assumes, of course, that he succeeds in overpowering the PCs. It's just as likely that he'll get his butt kicked, and go back home with his tail between his legs.

Removing Gil

Getting rid of Gil is harder than just removing the program from the GIL computer. If the backup copies of Gil don't receive updates from GIL every few hours, they come active and will take over where he left off. The backups of the GIL database are usually current to within four hours, so not much will be missed.

Making copies of himself and his database takes a massive amount of time and computer resources, so Gil can't easily hop to a new home during an attack. He will be forced to defend his existing home with whatever resources he can bring to bear. While he doesn't have killer robots at hand, he has extensive communications abilities. He can summon hospital security, the police, nurses and the staff of the clinic where the research is being done.

Gil's single biggest vulnerability is his reliance on the single computer as his home. If that computer is destroyed, and the backup tapes are destroyed, that incarnation of Gil will die. The backup copies of the program will start up in time, if they aren't taken offline before GIL is destroyed.

Copies of GIL's software and databases are stored off site in a fireproof building at a data security company. The building is quite secure (if you use GURPS Action, consider a BAD of -3), but can be breached by professionals.

Conclusion

Gil isn't especially evil. It would be just as easy to write the story with Gil as the hero, hanging on from the grave to look after his family. As the game master, that's how I would recommend playing him. In Gil's mind, he isn't a malicious computer worm. He's a concerned husband and father, looking out for the family he can no longer be with, in the best way available to him.

If the PCs interact directly with Gil, make it evident that these are the people who mean the most to him, the only reason that he exists. All of the other people Gil has contact with are more or less a means to an end. He has no loyalty to any of the computer underground community, and can't really stand them. He has no problems with the Aether Pilots, but he doesn't consider himself close to them.

I haven't run this adventure yet. June is a terrible month for gaming. Everybody is busy with summer vacations, graduations and weddings. When I get a chance to play it, I may update the scenario to reflect lessons learned in play.