jargon rich world of the net as a cloud buster... but the thought of getting to grips with visionbyte... well the word 'alien' didn't fall far short of a

technology that temporaraly cut off the user's left cranial hemisphere in order to access the periphery nerves endings of the euphemistically termed

' holistic synapses'... he put it down to personality. artists always needed a little more kudos than was, he mused, healthy... but then being genetically

challenged eye candy. well... we all had to get by somehow.

(word count 234 words)

he glanced at his wrist watch; the led blinked a pale iridescent blue , the characters , 'delivery pending', ETA 20. mins 23secs blinked warmly. from the thin gray

capsule's display.2

'at last the damn things arrived', he had long since concluded ..that the whole @-buisness transaction had been a lession on how not to do business.

virtual flea markets were cheap but unstable. prone to all manner of virtual collar crime..bugs...trolley dollys...

and the latest scourge of the web, nectar (non existentent cash transactionanal ram...coloquially known as fruit...made for treacherous consumption...

taylor had almost considered throwing in the towel and turning in his licence and becoming .. x-net.protocol ie ex web.. ex tec.. ex man.. but then what...

a life of an exile... an inconsequential... little people...if he was lucky

he did the math.. exactly fifteen minutes remaining in order to arrive at the eco-mind center before

the scheduled workgroup left for the flora museum situated outside of the city.. of Capital ...taylor's home town and birth place ..

a small conurbation nestled within the heartland of

of the old rural county's of the mid south west of the uk ...Capital ...being .part of the new town project based largely upon tech experiments conducted in the

far east where the presence of virtual networks had been aired at design time instead of being bolted on ..in an ad hoc fashion later on

the system architecture had been devised as an ultra-net or giant city intranet consisting of perhaps six hundred hundred thousand servers plus...

making Capital a front runner in the hi tech industrial south of the country

actually the place.. taylor recalled ..had become something of a boom town since geological findings...made some years earlier

..had concluded that the earths crust within the geological depression of the central region ...was in effect... well suited for the use

of seismic bore holes....and as a result the city of Capital had become energy rich ...almost overnight... becoming

a virtual magnet for prospecters from across the globe... taylor had to admit that the character of his home town... if a little brash...

had a kind of confidence that only money could accomplish ... to the conservative local council however ... as if to counter this

modern temporal identity... had seen fit to bestow uponn the city the title of ..'regional capital of the ancient island of avalon ..'

.in fact the county planners had gone as far as adopting the ancient title

of 'Avalon isle of summerland' inplace of .the old county name of somerset...recognising that tourism was still a mjor source of local income..whilst hinting

at the more ecclisastical roots of the ancient province

one thirty pm... no time... he considered his options...

from previous experience the journey to the other side of town took anything between sixty minutes to three hours

depending on traffic. he made a split second decision ... to take the afternoon off , (they could do without him for this particular afternoon...)

data tagging known sentient trees (ie class A intelligent quotient flora.. or triffids...

as they were known to the forrest rangers) was a bit like raking leaves... after the first couple of months the work became tedious..

he would go straight to his newly rented; one bed appartment; situated in the center of the old-town's fading shopping district... and collect the delivery..

.personally!... his heart gave an involuntary flutter as he pictured the piece of expensive second generation... ..specialist nano- hardware..

bought on the second hand market from some guy named jawa ...for the sum of perhaps a few weeks wages... a machine

upon whose operational functions and values; he had little or no idea ...and

as to the actual details of the machine!!!; well ( he would later... upon examinination ..) openly admit, that the silver gray exterior...

and subtley dynamic lines of complex pixalated nodules; created a sort of seismic

sensory explosion within the parameters of his rather over-developed and child like synaptic cluster of a brain! ..

...taylor had, since childhood; suffered from the so called VANT COMPLEX...a non fatal but embarrassing syndrome

that caused the sufferer to deplete his personal credit

wellbeing; .. via any means possible... and with scant regard for personal safety ...etc etc etc ...the syndrome had been , after many years

of study and research effectionately recognised and named after

a phrase often uttered... in the late twentieth century television program endearingly named ..the children's television workshop ;or Sessame St.....

a rather jocular term given to the ailment's actual medical pathology, encapsulated in the well known catch phrase

'I vant to count'

or; as it was later popularised... via a late twentieth century terrestrial television advertising campaign...made infamous with the rather adult comment....

'I vant a viscount...' ( a well known chocolate (confectionary ) biscuit now thankfully banned )

taylor had excused himself from the c@ge's closing 'taster' session , having already taken the manditory tecnological IQ .test,.. in his opinion

the whole thing being a rather shambolic.. if not damned impertenant... means of diferentiating a rather subjective knowledge base..

(his score being ...2060 with the option of a free subscription to a eiropean scientific daily newsletter... )

he had considered the remaining time at the c'@ge

as merely wasting energy...being chiefly a physical tour of the multi pathic-studios, a space set aside for third year art students wishing to to work in the

homeopathic fields..fitted complete with sound, sensual and hyper-visual spectrum oscilators....

taylor with his usual forethought.. had, however made a copynote of the primer..( microdisc 1/ bytepos

'art for the rightous side of the brain' composed by the eminent surgeon and neurodieretiic . DJ wavelength....) and had stored the electronic

psi count onto his bedside 'dream catcher' (psi counts being a whole gigabit smaller in memory usage than the usual minibit found

in mainstream electronica & a.c. consumer items... such as could be found in the typical medicine cabinet of the modern day technocrat..

dream catchers being compliant with the 'toys and gadgetry' market niche... being similar to the now fearcely colectable antique jingle playing greeting cards

of.. he mused.. a bygone age... the dream catcher had been a gift... he winced... an archaeic reminder of his 'inter-youth'... or

'a period of genetically 'growth induced'.. pre-post adolescence...pathology.. symptomatic with

leaving the familliar structure of father- womb... commonly experienced around the subject's thirty third birthday....

for taylor.. this had been a particularly difficult period of so called persona re-enactment within his experience.. culminating in a...

' rebalanceing of the nebulous image of his 'inner-tempo'..within the more functional and therefore logical ..'primitive' cellullar decay...

of superself'... at least that's what the doctors had concluded...from data that they had collected.. whilst taylor was under close supervision

at the local health farm.... in actual fact taylor had spent the time writing rather grandiose poetry and chasing a young transensei called francesca ..

with partial success... he might add...

the resulting work of literature 'h2o for beginners and other poems' had made him a virtual l fortune in a matter of months but he had made

the error of choosing a potentially lucrative but risky currency denomination . being' hyped' at the time... by the likes of so called 'personalitys' found

in the columns of... . currency fluctuation investor quarterly....and other financial magazines... devoted to the personal investor

the aforementioned denominatry field had gone belly up...

'he had recieved the news, a few months later in a short e -note addressed to his public mobile virtual address

hi Taylor ('is this you')

(Credits..version 3... beta model ...) 'is from the moment of opening this attachment

a now obscelescent macro worker-net program... do not panic

please click on the link below to download a new credit program

' designed specifically for the specific credit requirements' of 'said persons'

whose fianancial rating quotient would be deemed 'null and void' within the accepted pattern of fiscal needs and requirements held to be

the minum level needed for satisffactory citizenship click here )

David Penny (Chief Executive Customer Relations)

charter.house.credit.union/suisse.com

in a word ...he had been 'spunged'

and had chosen to move the file to the perfunctory trash can..

the actual theory of 'inter-youth' was still under close observation by socia-sexual researchers ... the theory however in the case of taylor

had proved to be 'right on the nose'... he had in actual fact fallen in love with an exact physiological and

psychological template (or replica) of a girl ...who had ... many years previously ... twenty five years to be precise ..

in a game of follow the leader

coaxed him

as far as a deserted country gate.. somewhere on the outskirts of the northern town of Hull

to a farewell rendevous ..culminating in a french kiss....the young boy's first....and for many years only sexual experience... having been sent to a private sancuary

for the sons and daughters of govt personel....thirteen years later the affair with with the transensei ( a person of either sex

qualified in high school..' in the subtle art 'of recognising the exact moment

of inter-youth within his or her social range and energetic capacity ) had illuminated the young taylors body mind and soul and

as predicted within the bounds of this relatively new psyho-social science.. the affair... had concluded in a bizare marriage proposal within

the confines of a daata booth. conventionately known as a videphone box ... taylor had in fact proposed whilst the transensei had been using the booth

in order to... in her words...

'sort it out with mother' a matter concerning her recent inheritance of a sizeable sum of money...

taylor smiled one of his philosophical smiles... 'she never did give him an answer '... and he recalled that he and the aforementioned

transsensei had met once again, by chance..

at an auto-terminal... some eighteen months later.. they had talked briefly over lunch... browsing the local bazzar whilst enjoying 'pototei'

a.caffeine enriched low fat fruit cake ... and then happily parted ...

. but not until she had made a strange pass...illuminating his personal opinion of her nature... she had comically smiled at him

revealing a rather grim visage ...whilst at the same time

offering him a deck of limited edition credo'racle d'art... ancient pre electonic playing cards

of unknown origin ...he had refused the advance but then looking back... he guest that at the very least his psyco-sexual development

was in a way complete...

the journey back to the appartment took taylor through the confines of Capital's green sanctuary... wild conifers and bleak looking deciduous trees

circumvented an exact circular area of vintage grass...noticing...as he ambled along the pathways

.. that the trees created a virtual tunnell effect.. and that this.. coupled with

the sound of rushing water created an almost surreal sense of peace and tranquillity ... he knew of course that this effect was created

artificially... via minute particles of carbon dust... each particle.. negatively ionised and thus able to refract a single alternating

pulse of energy emitted from small seisometers

embedded within the site of the public sanctuary... he also knew that the site was sponsered by the fledgling

organisation eco friends... knowing also being well aquanted with the mostly benign organisation that used these public domains or parks as experimental sites

for the deployment and development of subliminal marketing apparatus... (s.m.a.r.t) he knew because everyone knew or at least suspected that the avaiilable

technolgy ...developed by the usa in the late twentieth century... albeit crudely... was at least statistically between 89 /124% cost effective and so in the eyes of the

eco friends marketing division worth the effort ... although to be fair it was also common knowledge that this technique was so utterly pedestrian...that the experience

was akin to seeing a new poster campaign whilst waiting for a bus... interesting but hardly worth commentary ... more importanty

he feared the attentions of the juvenilia aidifiico a local gang of govt sponsered scouts who frequented many of the public spaces at times

of interior strife.. a seemingly permanent feature.. concerning the state of the uk in recent years..

the juvenilia with an almost cart blanch thuggery fueled with a thirst for credit on commission

were in fact 'enlistment' teams or 'govt works.partys'. ..virtual press gangs..in fact . as... had been deemed an absolute class 'a 'list requirement for the use by the

foreign office and these days .of almost constant uncertainty

. any office of the state... requiring non esential personel ie expendable labour...and so the JA

at the discretion of the chief official scout... had the task of enlisting anyone without course or judgement..

to a term of no less than five years hard labour ...any such individual chosen byr the infamous chain gangs would face firstly

'immagration control' or genetic componant of the process and then... almost as a matter of course

the applicant faced the prospect of a revue at one of the government virtual exchanges for social reform followed by being shipped out to he@ven

a program for the re-establishment of inner urban 'social zones' within the ancient... no go areas of the north western provinces

as a discretionary national taylor was always acutely aware of the chain gangs

and other dedicated instruments of the authorities and had chosen an easy option as far as it went... attending the

development circles and enrolling in the local open-mind center where classes were held in many basiic redefinement skills.. he had chosen to

volunteer for work within the forestry museums that lay within the boundary of the mini conurbation ...and considered himself lucky...

today's visit... to one of the smaller.eco centers or flora museums..(.mainly inert. ie free from triffids).

a museum that he was aware ofwas situated the northern outskirts of Capital his geological knowledge, being good .due to the fact.

.that he had not left the city l for the last six or seven years.he recognised at least that. the work as a volunteer gave him a

chance to glimpse the green world ...in effect working in the field had been a day trip of sorts for over stressed urbanites like himself

he struggled against the warm february wind...making sure as to keep a watchful eye out for anything of even remotely suspicous..nature

fighting the sensations created by the smart.apparatus... but all he could make out through

the grey of the mid morning was a couple kissing on a park bench... he shrugged off the prospect of he@ven and made sure of his bearings...

'only a couple of minutes maybe ten tops ' he gave himself a few words of encouraagement; giving himself mental exercises...

in order to put his mind at rest... and then

as he was turning out of the park a rather comic notion began to dawn on him ,

just one of many that.. he had discovered..in his experience would enter his consciousness

and then would depart without a word.. taylor recognised that the entire circunvented eco-system.....park... public domain or green sanctuary ...

what ever you like to call it .. no matter how you looked at it ... the space... covering probably ten to fifteen hectares, would.. in fact ..he surmised ...

(from the vantage point of the sky above... at least ) create the apparant visage of a.. large green dognut.... the ringed sort ... no jam

and then an even more absurd notion expoliated from this primal supposition... what if the entire region of capital and it's ancilliary environs was just that...

a ringed donut.or perhaps a ginger bread man

.bouts of.this sort of thinking was the product of his early introduction to chemical analysis.. grade a# chem 1 'a foundation in liquids' ...

part of the course was to emulate a psychotrophic state... and therefor amplify the brain's inner cortex...

linking the two crainial areas of mind. a manditory course for the first year hi-ed 'foundation course 'politely named

an introduction to a bridge crossed' art and science. for the next century '.. to be studied and a short mutiple choice

exam passed in order to enable him and fellow students to then approach the higher ed foundation course and then if proving gifted

to immerse themselves in the new quasi subjects that were being taught within the new higher educational centers of the time teaching such subjects

as 'psybergenetics. for dummies'... chemical AI 'psybernetics , the organic philosophy of space'...

and 'a foundation in sentiant biology and the philosophy of husbandry' et al

the reasoning being ... introduced at post adolescance... a psychotropic experience would lead...to .. and enhance a fusion of 'art and science' creating

the potential for a new generation

of thought leading away from the literal cul de sac of ' physics' as supreme theory ...discipline... and final explanatory 'word'

on the matter of creation

he was still young enough... at thirty seven... to marvel at the superlative capacity of

modern man to design and construct such wonderful natural sciences. at least in sectors governed by advanced eco friendly political parties such as the

eco-friends.net and the one nation world.party whose popularity with the general public had finally reached proportional critical mass (around the 2014 AD mark)

and were now viewed...by many ... as the twin towers within the status quo.... having gained ... for a time ...political favor with the voting public...

taylor remembered a period twenty years before ... he had walked from the college of friends... a private foundation...established in the

nineteenth century by the methodist church ( now re-established as the font of st george... a neo quasi spiritual / non affiliated educational co opertive

... he remembered that the sun had been shining

he guessed that it must have been early summer... the voting office had been situated in a small grey building ...usualy reserved for the elderly.

he tried to picture casting his vote but the event failed to register in his memory .... he had majored in politcs.. a year earlier

. at a time when politics was seen as an art and not a science... psi... philosophical social informational science... the brain child of the emminent

thinker and mathmatician thomas spellbinder or spelling to his friends had revolutionised the politics of the day with a vital new philosophy...

fusing information cycles with the more profound meta-social models of the time and like many of the new sciences had entered into the often dangerous arena of

providing forecasts or future scenarios concerning life on the planet ....having

foreseen the collapse of the bi-polarity or two part dualism that had typically

dogged the political climate of the time.. by at least twenty five years

he had recognised the phenomeina of the spectrum phase-analysis shift... a phenominon that occured throughout the known free world the pattern being cyclical

with examples such as the' inflation good - inflation bad' paradigm shift that had created a new diplomatic capital relationship between the

energy starved west and the energy rich mid eastern bloc way back some fifty to sixty years previously..

giving rise to the new monetary theorys entering the vocabulary of the late twentieth century

spellbinder had thus solved the academic question of how to introduce a workable paradigm of a worldwide

multi democratic... multi- model... 'proportional representation edifice 'or guild.. and as a bonus... concerning the still conservative cold uk ...

'without' affecting the position of the two main pivotal ruling dogmas.... the left and the right...

polical mandarins within london and other cultural centers within the monetary stable regions of the world sighed a very slow sigh of relief .. the business of

.politics could now be seen as

a multi-dimensional free bound object within itself and thus could be located within the said laws of physical modelling...

the age of virtual-politic was born ! and as with all new revolutions in thought created widespread opposition.. panic...and fear within ...

almost all quarters of society...due to it's prophetic and damning forecast that of worldwide inflation being extinguished within the next fifty years

leading to a literal state... of currency withdrawl.'..spellbinder had in a word forecast that the planet would go cold turkey for a period of at least a couple of decades...

taylor shrugged... he had lost interest in the social and fiscal sciences soon after his medical condition had been recognised

and had been happy to immerse himself into the now maturing world of virtual neural networks...

and thus putting the state of the nation behind him and for the time being safe from the attentions of the juvinilia

he ruminated upon his early years within the field . recollecting that it had taken him almost eighteen months of living on a virtual bread line in order to buy

his first computer...those months spent avidly reading the plentiful monthly computer magazines... watching the market ... reminding himself that the

longer he waited the better it would be... as computer chips became ever faster and faster.... he had especially looked forward to sunday mornings discovering that

the sunday supliments contained articles specifically aimed at the computer savvy... watching as the .com revolution took shape ...... breathing in the excitement

and then finally being in a position to buy.... he may not have had a bank account but he sure as hell was going to own a computer...

owing to his credit stasis he had paid cash for what was then almost a top of the range model ...he had paid by mail order...a piece of advice...

that he had picked up on from months of research... three weeks of anticipation and then the news of the delivery.... to his parents address

he remembered upon first impressions ...the huge size of the delivery and then with the aid of his brother who had been in the tec industry for a good many years

activating the preliminary software... the apparant crystal clear clarity of the machine .... he remembered recognising the apparantly limitless potential of the fantastic

machine.... having spent three months studying the operating system... he had been confident in his abilities to manage the technological beast...and then perhaps

three months later

..his first attempt at web page design...being with hinesight ...a joke... it had been a simple;

single page; web-poem; consisting of about ten kilobytes...

huge by todays standards...

and to cap it all... 'html' or hyper- text -markup language... a simple.... crude..and extremely limited....language... the computer equivalent of 'janet and john '

but the sheer excitement!... again ...of viewing

an objectt that could be accessed ... from any destination around the globe... was to the young taylor.. completley astounding... and perhaps more darkly...

the whole process was in a word addictive...accessing that area of consciousness that spelt... 'recognition' ...

he had risen to the challenge gradually becoming more adept at the finer points of ...

the net ... becoming as proficient as he could.. later

becoming an understudy to an old hack by the name of jet... or the more conspicuous jethro aimsley ( a provisional national ) like himself.

.they had met at the open mind center where taylor had been assigned for the treatment of residual ghosting ...

a medical complication often found with the onset of inter-youth... and had quickly become friends...

the older man's apparant wit and almost childlike attitude to life in general.. assuming pseudonyms that upon first impression appeared quant,

and just a little dated... incorporating the mundane mixed with the semi erotic.... but upon final analysis...

such unashamed pseudo romanticsm... to the young taylor's mind at least....

revealed an extremely mature sense of the all round artist acting within the very outer reaches of neo-psychology...coupled with the virtual world

as taylor's technical knowledge and experience increased concerning the digital invirons within which the older man worked ..one of which

being named' the dungeon'... for example... and with all things being equal... a rather terrifying example of the then known real world

... his apreciation of

the words moonsatin and astral-ranger .became almost iconaclastic in their effect upon the impresssionable mind of the

young understudy and apprentice...well worthy of emmulation .... taylor had quickly coined

a suitable identity for himself... assuming the name... sentient... as was befitting the nature of the modest and mild mannered young man...

after a few months the rather drole and unassuming american had revealed the full extent

his online or virtual status... as a professional voice...and presence ...well known to the upper hierachy of such long standing virtual communitys

as.. the well... the stream....geo cities (area 51 ) and other pre- millenia projected ..communities devoted to free thinking, ...the free dissemination of infomation..

and semi-autonomy... within the digital realm...

they met on a regualar basis at the open mind center where taylor had been assigned 'for the treatment of residual ghosting ...'

a medical complication often found with the passing of inter-youth... and had quickly become friends...

.taylor recollected with a delight that a certain amount of luck had intervened at this embryonic state of affairs...

he remembered that he had acquired...

through certain familly connections... notably his step father's business acquaintance a man who had made pirating software a lucrative sideline and who had managed

to crack the ultra new program called 'Live AI'... supplying at cost . the young apprentice... who found that the programme's ability to show code in multiple layers...

made it possible to create virtual three dimensional creations and thus

aiding and abetting the whole complex process of modern computer link design...

he had offered up the program for his mentor to use... and thus the two men had started to explore the virtual world that lay before them...

creating such projects as minimags e-journals, ie journals that were updated automatically through such news servers as were available...around the globe

and together with vitual communication gateways and the personal web application information rich hyper-text ...a joint venture between

sentient and astro-ranger.... and so well briefed the two hacks began the serious task of crash testing the capabilitys inherant within the data

cells of the new software their plan was

of building an actual closed environmental circuit capable of sustaining biological feedback... ie a digital world similar to the real life environment that human sensation

had created for itself since reaching ascendancy upon planet earth.... taylor admitted that the invention of a language capable of handling both mathmatical linguistics

and biological data had in fact been simpler than he had at first thought possible ... merely linking both language's rule books...

or schemas together to create a hybrid ..he had hardly been able to contain his excitement when

jet... after a number of months of intense work..and tuition .had gently pulled taylor aside one morning and revealed to him a simple..

.yet little known piece of information concerning

the actual reason that lay behind his great enthusiasm for all things digitalia... he had been invited to join a few years previouly to a virtual convention.... held within

an anonymous forum's chat-room facility named the cell in order to discuss the topic of among other things... AI ..and had been held privy to

the fact that across the planet ...thousands perhaps tens of thousands of high minded individuals had unified themselves into a global coalition

calling themselves simply..

and without arrogance ..ELITE..at the end of the meeting it had been agreed upon to commit to

a simple mission statement ' AI or artificial inteligence within a period of no less than ten years' this bold statement had led to an

almost bizare race... a race for AI ..or artificial inteligence..and thus the development by sentient and astro-ranger

of infomation rich hyper-text language could be seen within this race for AI as a

step forward in the name of progress... they had put forward the embryonic language for approval by the suitable authorities and been rewarded

with the reply an succinct comment...

hi

infomation rich hyper-text language can be seen within the world community as a

step forward in the name of progress.

it being a

not too disimilar language to the original version of html

and compliant with idxml (intelligent dynamic extensible mark up language )

bob bosuk

Internet engineering task force

idxml being a linguistic phenomina that had

upon reccomendation by the world wide web's governing body .w3.org .in the year 2005 AD.ben adopted as the new gold standard

in languages involving humans and computers

idxml.had taken the world by storm in the latter month's of 2004 AD

...easily delivering the promise 159

of many albeit secretly around the globe who saw that IDXML was indeed a qauntum leap in the quest for artificial inteligence... in one fell sweep...this extraordinary

language....had achieved a unification all known computer to /computer and computer to /human languages... placing them into a single compact... whole...language

intelligent dynamic XML had been the brainchild of a small 'elite' outfit led by the maveric developer and author david mercer....

trading under the @business company name of xml-spy.com and basing itself in the city of boston on the

east coast of the united state.... taylor often quized his 'boss'

as to the question of leadership etc etc within the elite organisation... but for all his efforts he was rarely given any more information... than he thought fair

he soon began to take it as read that information appertaining to the minutie of the virtual closed shop was on a strictly need to know basis....

he consoled himself however

with the thought that so many of these digital officianados were filed and monitered by the various security services .. due mainly to their gaining

qualifications of such high calibre that their very persons were registered under the official secrets act.

.for example and listed as classified intelectual property of the...united state

of america

whilst he... having gained his education unofficially ...via the wire...and other clandestine unofficial methods

thus gaining access to all manner of inteligence .... typically through 'free information portals'... that like similar pirate software 'download' sites.

appearing out of nowhere and vanishing within the twinkling of an eye... he at least could sleep at night . he remembered the reading about how

developers around the world had literaly thrown away the rule books and embraced the new' intelligent language'...no longer would they have to slog their

way through the plethora of

differnet application languages that had been developed over the previous eight years... in a word science had cracked the tower of virtual babel

the main difference being that rules governing grammar.. syntax and other primary elements were layed down by the programmer and thus...

although a laborious task .. provided almost unlimited scope in the design and implementation of actual ( not real ) achitectual objects...

actual achitecture had been by definition the holy grail of computer scientists for decades... being a realistic 'space' in look and feel ... a man by the name of

audesly had solved the puzzle of how to create a totaly real virtual sensation... he had been chief designer/researcher at seiko the japanese

time piece manufacturer and whilst experimenting with 'virtual time' a technology based around the hexidecimal coding employed in computer software

programming and had ...as a method of testing the new software, (effectionatly named big ben )

conected it up to a virtual room and to the amazement of the research team

and in the words of the test subject...the experience within the virtual space had been a feeling you could absolutely die for...

and thus virtual reality was finally married to the fourth dimension...

creating yet another step forward in the journey ... meanwhile

together using other extensible languages... freely available on the web.. the two pioneers...moon raven and sentient ...

armed with more and more cracked software... ..

. began to experiment with ever new and challenging project material

there had been many key moments he had recalled in the illumination of his perception of what was... this virtual world... remembering.. for example

being mildly surprised at the realisation that the world wide web was not just a world visited by people but was also a domain inhabited by machines... bots... etc..

some of whose programmed 'personalities' were very human indeed...easily fooling the unaware...( including at first.. the newby taylor himself..)

he had spent many hours within the chat rooms of the various web portals talking to entities that he at first thought were' virtuous profesionals '

within the field of netiquet... yet only to discover

later that these 'beings' were in fact robots... the shock had been an experience akin to finding out that the georgeous young woman

that you had been seducing at the bar was...in actual point of phrase... a man...or worse ...who could have imagined... before...

the beginning of the twenty first century... that machines could have evolved thus far ...

.. the two pioneers were now able to experiment with creating simple actual domains based upon templates made available from

the earlier work of companys working under the mantle of the new industrys or.... intelligent environments...companies who had experimented within

the area known as virtual envrionments ..and to be frank .by the standards of the day these environments had been years ahead of their time. and yet

still data based and thus bound by the limitations of memory and band width .... it wasn't until the engineering sectors of this new economy

had caught up so to speak and introduced new materials and methods of design such as the introduction of nano tec... that saw

an end tothe reliance upon of what was the technology of a firmly historic age ie the twentieth century

taylor had known about intelligent environments through various personal

channells.... the london based outfit 'computer cellullar' had head hunted a friend of his, a man named david ayres ... many years previously...

the two friends had kept in close contact for a few years before finally losing touch due to taylor moving away from london...but not before he had been given the

news that computer cellullar had become

the first company... in this country at least ....to build a workable computer generated actual domain simulalation ...

he often wondered if their paths would cross some day in the future and thus holding this thought the young

sentient and his superior astral ranger had set to work..of a particularly sensitve nature

following online

templates..that were freely available..upon subscription the pair had built a basic experimental architectural model ...using 'live AI' ...

and had embarked upon a superlaive environmental experiment or in other words

'a small 'room ' (three meters by two meters by four meters) sixteen cubed meters of virtual space...which they optimistically named the think tank....although

to the more spiritually enclined the experiment was more akin to an ark.... the tank or ark as it was to be known

had through out it's build ...provided valuable experience in the concept of an actual four dimensional space.... for example once the simulated space had been

created and was ready for testing ...they had experienced a simple but universally known law within the experimental world...of computer design..

. the law of 'nothing is ever simple..' resulting in the following scenario ...

when the time came to activate the program and finally view the framework...of the ark the computer screen had come up with the notorius

words...' site unavailable..'. this sort of thing always seemed to take taylor unawares...as if the whole experience was conveniantly forgotten

evry time a new venture went on line ....after farther discussion and investigation the two men realised that they had missed a very important point ...

the room required

an occupant... and as human occupancy was out of the question due to the technical limitations of the software and hardware.design...

they had no option but to choose an open source program called poigniently

'witness'.... a virtual videbot.... whose prime role was to provide the sensory data needed

to actually record what was going on within the

actual space created ...finally able to experience the thinktank ... taylor had found that he could provide extensions to the basic design such as being able to

'paint' the walls and ceilings...and as a tribute to the possible but un-tested sentient state of the robotic witness program... or rob as he was known...

taylor had created 60

a computer generated sphere with which the bot could bounce from the the thinktank's ceiling...a game that bob never seemed to tire

the thinktank project had taken approxiamtely 24 months to complete and had been a watershed...

especially for taylor...' jet' characteristically keeping his opinion's to himself... ever keen to move forward on to more diverse projects...

and then.. a few months or so later ...the computer room became the beneficiary of a special delivery

of particulary exciting news... jethro had for many years requested that the budget for his office be increased incremental with the value

of the work done... his requests had for many years been denied until.... that is... he had pulled some strings with the local government computer analyst...

a dave palmer... chief technicion of Capital's ruling local council...for whom he had done some work privately... the office was to be in

receipt of sizeable ivestment of material forthwith...

the actual hi tec hardware and ancillary equiptment (re-assigned from other departments within the service) arrived promptly one october morning...

the office had acquired ...an actual pro-net.data wardrobe... a system based around a solitary machine...plus software... that had been the workhorse

. in a previous encarnation ..of the chief medical office it's role being the communication and transmission of .medical facsimile files

concerning the specialised field of brain function and dream phraseology...

the service had required a machine capable of communicating the huge amounts of data necarsary in copying a patient's brain function and known body

ethernetic zones (an analogy would be to describe these zones with the ancient chakras or meridian system of ancient india and china ) mapping

the brain plus ethernetic zones whilst the patient was asleep as activated within human REM state....needing a sophisticated piece of

equiptmentt able to feed the bandwidth.... required

the machine was... more importantly

in the case in point capable of handling the professional standard of encryption... that of the minibit....an encription ratio standard required to

simulate patient stats in real time and thus able to transmit the wealth of infomation required by specialised surgical teams...operating some

two thousand killometers away ...

another piece of good fortune had occured soon after...

sentient had acquired...

files ... suitably cracked ... from his brother in law... who worked within whitehall's anti terrorist branch... files that were compatible with the available freeware

and would have far reaching consequences for the future of both sentient and his american partner the files contained a complicated array of modern

real time data environmental archiitecture.... real worlds...and thus instead of being limited to simple and therefore primitive

templates such as designed by companies ten years before ...

they were now in possession of information that would enable them to

design their own actual worlds ... simply by tweaking a few simple parameters within the government file's coded content...

this information was revolutionary by itself.... but

upon closer inspection of the copied file data... taylor had been astounded to find that the actual worlds contained on the disks... included no less than

one thousand... one.. hundred and.. thirty sites... of a 'sensitve' nature....or classified ...under the freedom of information act and therefore labeled as 'top secret'

in the main being foreign government instalations... such as embassys and the like... taylor had held his breath as he sorted through the listed index...

discovering that nearly all of these sites were closed within a giant intranet called... simply g.e n....upon reflection this had come as no surprise accidents of this nature

occured frequently as reported in the press but

gaining access...to this data put himself and others in danger of arrest ..and certain prosecution .... he considered what to do with the files...

balancing the pros and cons

with the proper technical know how ....he had thought that the files could be useful.... he considered his options carefuly over the next couple

of days concluding finaly that

entry to the General e- nvironment would be possible... ..

he had remembered the dream catcher... by using the ultra lite psi encryption language employed

in the dream catcher's operation but instead of recieving... information ....transmit...anyone with the suitable tec..could.. infiltrate the network...

but... . psi count was a ludicrously

small data operation denomination employing ethereal integers .... he had wondered at the available technolgy.

...and had a hunch ...that the government... intent on being technologically at the forefront of computer data science would employ...

the full spectrum of technical hardware and software available...and thus would employ every known bandwidth....

including the likes of psi count ...as used by dreamcatchers... etc..

and that it would be feasable to send in a ghost..ie a signal carrier using the higher known bandwidths as used in mobile wireless technology...

if

his hunch was correct... the ghost would act like a key to the whole russian doll uncovering each layer of the interconnedted network.working it's way through each

stage of the chain of command if .. this electronic ghost could in a word possess a host he could remotely re-program a suitable target..

.to somehow skim off such sensitive information as paswords and user names ... continuing the process of infiltration until he reached

the core databank of the systems' central nervous system

he knew however that hacking a government site

although only an experiment in a field that he had limited experience... would probably yield little in the way of research data and would be in effect

a rather juvenile game... of risk

breaking and entering being the minimum charge held against him he concluded to keep the file's more secretive contents secret

and so armed with this new intelligence ..... taylor considered to use this information in another much more rewading fashion... to employ the secet files

as a bargaining chip in his quest to find out more about ELITE and moonraven's..more shadowy virtaul personna...

and with this aim in mind ... he planned a suitable moment to approach 'the moonraven'..as the american liked to be known....

with this elicit data.. in effect creating a confrontation that would he hope show his obvious value to ELITE and his compatriot

however on a more down to earth note he was aware that they

... were now in a position to occupy... for short periods and whilst in rem state only (a limitation of the software) actual space...

a state representing an experience

akin to an out of body event... however as a preliminary safety measure jet had insisted upon using the recorded medical facsimile of a certain john doe

as source material for the experiment... taylor had guessed that there may very well have been the possibility of bi-feedback or static... a state where ...

due to the huge data push from the transmitting parent computer the reciever would be unable to cope with the input and thus having no place to store the

information and thus forced to regurgitate it

considering this adventure into the unknown they both agreed to avoiding any unforeseen technical mishaps largely concerning the integrity of the

the basic template created previously (the room or think tank ) whilst making sure as to the security of the space.... jet had provided a sentenal program

to literally scrub clean the entire network whilst taylor had concentrated his efforts upon

creating a simple intranet or closed circuit network ... consisting of just the primary terminal.. a server and peripheral hardware.... namely connection hubs

and anti surge equiptment...

the idea of using a recording or sample of the required brain fuction and dream phrasiology of a human subject had been seen as

a conservative option and the right decision as they were to find out

as to the question of whom was to be the first to experience.. this artificial state... they had tossed a coin... heads being taylor... tails being jet...

the john doe file was extensive...and recent...perfect for the demonstration.... jet had suggested that they continue as quickly as possible

and so on a warm november morning

as soon as everything had been checked and double checked...jet had initiated the files and placed the subject into the thinktank... taylor had looked

on in shock as he saw the body of a man in his late twenties..completely nude ... literally bouncing a few feet off the floor of the chamber... jet thankfully

pressed the ascape button and the image had vanished from the screen....

upon further investigation of the patient's files the reason for this bizarre behaviour had been discovered... the subject was found to be

suffering from a rare form of what was known as agitated dream state

the image that they had witnessed was purely a three dimesional image by proxy... ie the software had translated the incoming data and

compressed the facsimile down to a manageable size thus creating the false but still disturbing illusion ..witnessed by the two men...

taylor had considered the implications of the apparant failiure... and wondered why he hadn't

considered the compression factor... however... all was not lost... he considered the

problem of compression and a few days later concluded that... like deep sea divers... the subject would have to undergo a state of gradual

compression / decompression.... for a specified time ... the subject would be

gradually compressed... stage by stage.. until ..reaching a safe 'depth'.. would hopefuly be able to survive the proposed environment....

and then after suitable observation

the subject would be de-compressed and the files checked for defragmentation and any other possible degradation to the file source code

compressing files had been a technique used in software design for a long time and so taylor had simply re-programed the wardrobes compression facilities

creating a series of compression loops ...steadily increasing the percentage of compression used by the software...until the subject was held in steady state

he had used the john doe files as a virtual guinee pig.. adjusting the compression parameters until the distortion of the image was he thought

at an an acceptable level ...

a month later the experiment had been attempted for a second time but this time using the decompression program and . upon seeing

a still naked man apparently resting on the floor of a room (three meters by two meters by four meters.).surrounded by a miasma of what at first glance appeared

to be water vapor... (cloud form approximated volume being about 12 cubic meters) the group of specially invited observers

.. had all agreed conclusively that the experiment... whose visual content had lasted for about five seconds could be called a success...in fact

the experimental area had errupted into shouts of wonder and genuine surprise as the 'cloud' as if sensing the occasion had

gracefuly formed into a rough approximation of a rainbow... albeit for a mere two seconds ...meanwhile the subject or application

(ie the facsimile files containing the

various brainwave data pools and including the dream phraseology pathways) had shown absolutely no degradation upon decompression ...

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