In the near future, a riot girl hacker must escape from a secret online mental prison run by the State before her real identity is discovered and her family comes to harm.
Blake, an intense sixteen year old girl in small town Australia, becomes determined to join a David and Goliath struggle against the State following the bloody outcome of a protest. In particular, she becomes obsessed with the downfall of the State’s charismatic ruler, ‘The Chief’. Although wishing to be taken seriously by the local activists, they consider her too young to get involved and her crush on one of their number, does nothing for her credibility.
Online however it is a different story….
Blake is a hacker who uses the next generation of virtual reality technology, stolen from her unsuspecting father’s research work as Professor of Information Warfare. In the guise of an older super-heroine named Blade, she is able to cause considerable embarrassment to the Chief. With her crude software agent companion CD, (the Customised Dude), she hacks into Cityscape, a virtual city modelled on the State’s capital, from where the Chief rules. Denouncing him as a murderer and running riot, whilst managing to evade capture, Blake makes the Chief as obsessed with her as she is with him. After discovering that the Chief is experimenting on the State prison population by holding minds captive online in Cityscape, Blade and CD are spotted and she is trapped. Back in the real world, Blake falls into a coma.
From this point on, it is a race against time for Blake/Blade to stop the Chief in his bid for world domination before her mind is lost forever in Cityscape, or her true identity is discovered in the real world. Helping her is Axel, the longest survivor of the Cityscape ‘headbin’, the record being ten weeks. He's also the subject of her schoolgirl crush. Together, they play a deadly game of cat and mouse with the Chief finally trapping him back in his real body – that of an infirm old man – and leaving Cityscape in the capable control of CD. Blade and Axel bid farewell to Cityscape and arrange to meet in the flesh. Back in the real world, Blake wakes, and smiles.
Posted by .M. at June 5, 2003 05:26 PM