Internet, worldwide electronic network populated by web skaters, e-hustlers, modem punks, cyber chatters, code warriors, holochumps, techno bums, and digijackers, all scaling the super-data techno grid in search of virtuo-entertainment, iFortunes, and trouble. Online trekkers enter the Internet by hiring an info-navigator, or “chip jockey,” to jack them into the cyberzone by plugging directly into the etherstream interface to transfer thoughts, memories, and personalities to a binary web sojourner. For these Nexxus-monkeys, the digital domain is a pixelated playground of multi-dimensional locales and wild e-saloons, where they can upload intoxicating WhiskeyFiles and hire synthetic concubines to experience a simulated fornication program. Although thousands of net-settlers scroll across the binary realms, hoping to strike it rich on a data mine claim, the Virtual Plane is a lawless digital frontier overrun with compu-criminals and ruled by the brutal neuro-mob, which has no respect for artificial life if it stands in the way of making a quick credit. Plagued by illegal kilobyte trafficking and e-mercenaries staging brazen giga-heists, the Internet’s circuit rails are no longer safe for casual online explorers—known derisively as couch-pluggers—who come into contact with unscrupulous cyberdwellers and get permanently booted offline.
