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My father pointed at it.

‘Here’s the Link when it’s busy.’ he said. ‘You can see quite plainly that data activity is now at incredible levels. From nearly 10,000 TB to 300,000 just by everyone in this room opening a single bookmark. You all probably experienced a slowdown in efficiency. It should illustrate my point: the Link uses enormous amounts of data to operate, and we are running out of the capacity to deal with all this demand.’

My father put his hand into the graphic and pulled at it with his hand. The view of the peaks and troughs suddenly became an image of each individual Link transmission, hundreds of coloured lines in a web-like structure. He teased free a couple of strands and then expanded them.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘Someone’s been making holiday plans.’

A ShopFront portal for a travel agency hung in the air.

‘An adventure holiday. With virtual tours built into the LinkData, all hot-linked to Wikis and information databases, with geographical, climatic and historical data. There are multiple links to reviews and photo-galleries; and to videos of people who have already been on the holiday.

‘One portal, but it contains a massive amount of information; information that has to
exist physically
as stored data. One portal out of billions.’

He screwed the ShopFront up in his hand and stretched it back into a thread. Then he opened up the second thread.

‘Ah, I think my son is in the room,’ he said, exposing my GameServer page to everyone in the room. A muscled warrior stood in a verdant landscape, a biomechanical sword in his hand.

‘A simulated world in which millions of Linked players can live out digital dreams of chivalry and heroism in a world of magic and adventure.’

I realised that the odds of my father finding my page were too vast for it to be accidental. He had pulled out that thread from the web deliberately, knowing already that it was mine. I felt sick and embarrassed.

It wasn’t right that my father was using MY personal data as an example. It was an invasion of privacy, just like showing someone’s holiday plans had been.

Perry was grinning again and I felt like reminding him that he and I met up in ‘Last Quest’ just about every day.

‘We’ll leave debates about the necessity of such diversions for another time,’ he said, and I knew that he was actually talking straight at me. ‘What I would like you all to think about is the enormous amount of information required to keep a simulated world like this going.’

He put his fingers into the image and drew out another skein of strands of data.

‘My son has spent . . .’ He expanded one of the strands, ‘well . . . over a hundred hours in this one game. In that time he has slain over sixty foes, and completed 39% of the major campaign for the game, as well as working on four nonessential side missions. He has reached Level 45 as a warrior, has died twice and, due to some of his early decisions in the game, is now incapable of gathering two of the best weapons in the game. Shame.’

He winked at the audience and it got a laugh. I felt that they were laughing at me, personally. I gritted my teeth and tried to pretend that it was all hilariously funny.

‘It seems that there is a LinkPortal for everything,’ my father said, shrinking the game back into an anonymous strand amidst hundreds. ‘And that, people, is the problem in a nutshell.

He swatted the strands away and they glistened in the air before disappearing completely.

‘Which is why we have been working on new storage methods, and new ways of handling data. It’s been a daunting task, but we are just about to reveal the fruits of our labours.’

He paused and looked into the audience.

Then he made a dramatic gesture with his hands and a new image appeared before us.

It took a while to even
begin
to figure out what it was.

It appeared to be a landscape made up of odd, intricate pink trees

It looked like bacteria magnified by the lenses of a powerful microscope.

Or was it a depiction of a coral reef?

I squinted and turned my head to one side, but still had no idea what I was looking at. I did notice, however, that it was moving. The trees, or coral, or whatever the hex they were, swayed slightly from side to side as if moved by a gentle breeze.

‘This is what we are calling a
neural forest
,’ My father explained. ‘And it is the very first of its kind. It is, in effect, the answer to all our data needs. It can store and process massive amounts of data, and it requires only one thing in return.’

He looked around, a serious expression on his face. I suddenly realised that he was nervous. I wondered what it was that he had to feel nervous about – if what he said was true, then he had solved one of the pressing issues of our society.

Then he spoke, and I felt nervous too.

‘It requires food.’ He said, and the whole chamber became full of very loud voices that @*)(34jiojKH(*{)EWQ*{()Q*RW{) EQR)(E{)R(ETRE[YTREYERT09YQR9WQRWE0RT9ER0Y40359345=91ASDKFJASD;GKFKJ)(**65443

?Error Report? =

File:
113/45/02pdu
Source:
LinkData\LinkDiary\Peter_Vincent\Personal

We were on the journey back home, and my father was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were white.

‘Idiots,’ he muttered, through clenched teeth. ‘Primitive, backwards-looking idiots.’

‘You
did
just tell them you’ve grown a massive human brain in a laboratory,’ I said. ‘And that, in exchange for food, it will think us out of our problems. You can see why they reacted a
bit
negatively, can’t you?’

My father shook his head.

‘It’s not a
human
brain,’ he said, curtly. ‘It’s artificial. I
made
it.’

‘All those people heard was that you had made a brain and you were feeding it. You can understand their reservations . . .’

‘No,’ My father said sternly. ‘I
really
can’t.’ He connected to the dashboard with his right-hand filaments and the car went on to AutoDrive.

‘Do you know how bad things are?’ he asked, looking directly at me. His face was deadly serious and his eyes burned like coals in his sockets. ‘I mean,
really
?’

I shook my head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You don’t. Nobody does. Because no one has been allowed to see the truth. No matter what people say, the truth really won’t set people free, and it’s not going to lead them to make a reasoned judgement. The truth will send them screaming into their homes.’

‘I can see that we’re using a lot of memory . . .’ I said.

My father let out a tiny fragment of a laugh that sounded more like a bark than an expression of humour.

‘Memory,’ he said. ‘If only people could see how much of a curse that word has become . . .’

He slammed his left hand on to the dashboard.

I didn’t get another word out of for the rest of the journey, but sitting there in the passenger seat I suddenly realised that there was something different about him.

It was an odd, inexplicable thing. When my father had looked me in the eyes, I could have sworn that his eyes were brown.

Dark, hazel brown.

My father’s eyes are, and have always been, blue.

LinkList/Peter_Vincent
333/F11B/501

My Top 5 Virtual GameServer Games

5. Everyone’s Polo

There’s Polo, then there’s Everyone’s Polo.

With 30 different genetically-engineered horses and another 30 cybernetically-enhanced battle steeds, you must rise to the top of the pile in the Premier League of Polo, while managing your stables, budgets, and compete against riders with uncanny AI.

It’s the next best thing to playing.

4. Dimensiongate 4

The first three Dimensiongate games have tried to fuse puzzle solving, theoretical physics and simple yet effective graphics, but with this one LUminOUS games have really pulled out all the stops.

You’re still solving complex puzzles based on the laws of physics but it’s never looked better, or felt more important, to solve equations.

3. Corona

This one’s more than a little controversial: the developers got a lot of bad LinkMins for making what is, in effect, a war simulation. OK, they manage to dress up in hi-tech, outer space disguise, but at heart this is all about the pure exhilaration of armed combat. As part of a team of space soldiers, the future of the human race lies in your hands. As does a veritable arsenal of flesh-ripping weaponry.

2. Darkness Eternal

Not my usual kind of fare, but Darkness Eternal is a remarkably gripping and complex thriller that psychologically profiles you as you play, bending the game to fit that profile. It draws its imagery from your own mind, and uses the user’s own thoughts against their game character as weapons.

And the coolest thing? If your mood is different, the game is different.

1. Last Quest XXII

As a warrior of light you are tasked with saving the world from falling into chaos at the hands of the cruel tyrant Malevola.

Sounds simplistic?

It isn’t.

Last Quest is always at the bleeding edge of game development, and XXII pushes the envelope wide open. Intuitive control system and filament feedback make this the biggest and best yet.

And the plot – wow, almost totally impenetrable.

You are Cantone, the last in a long line of warriors of the Light and your quest begins as peace reigns, for the first time ever, over the world of Evaline. The Great Machine – a device that cancels out magical energy, has finally removed magic from the planet. It means that, for the first time in its history, Evaline is free of the influences of gods and wizards. Humankind is finally free to make its own destiny.

Only one source of magical power remains – the MotherStone.

Your last task as a warrior of light, before retirement to the Hall of Heroes, is to transport the MotherStone from Nimbus, the cloud city, to Eurazia, the site of the great machine, where it can be processed and made safe.

But dark forces led by Malevola, the deathless mage, are determined that your quest should fail. If the MotherStone falls into Malevola’s hands before it is made safe then it will become a weapon of unimaginable power – the last magic in a world now defenceless against magic.

File:
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Source:
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Perry flashed me when I got back to my room.

?What the hex was all that about?
He wanted to know.
/You were there./
I told him.
/You know as much as I do./ ?Yeah, but brains in jars that we’re going to start using as 
computers?
 

Perry said.
?I mean, isn’t that all a little too weird, even for your dad?

It’s what I’d been thinking myself, but hearing Perry saying it just made me feel cross and defensive.

/It’s hardly brains in jars./
I snapped.
?You were listening, weren’t you?

/I was sitting next to you. ?Remember?

/I also remember my father saying that the Neural Forest was an artificially created substance, not a stupid brain-ina-jar. And your father is working on this thing too. ?If you’re that outraged, why don’t you speak to him?

/Not outraged. Just confused./

/It wasn’t the most predictable end to a lecture for families.../ I said.

?Have you seen a write-up for the Keynote on the Link yet?
Perry asked.

/No./
I said.

/Me either./
Perry said.
/I was expecting to find reports and outraged threads, but there’s nothing./

/That’s weird... /

/I know, but no one is talking about it. Negative on the chatter front. If I was a paranoid type I might be thinking ‘cover up’./

I didn’t mention that Perry was one of the most paranoid people I knew.

/Anyway,/
he said,
/I’ve got to go, I’m low on calcium. Catch you tomorrow./

/Tomorrow, mate./
I said, and signed off.

Perry’s call had left me feeling a weird mixture of things, none of them pleasant. I tried to remember exactly what my father had said in the Science Council chamber, but it was fading in my memory already, as if it had only glanced against the surface of my mind.

I consulted the LinkDiary entries I’d been making live, but some of the data was corrupted and I couldn’t access the file.

All the other files before and after it were fine.

My recollections of the Keynote ended with my father saying that his neural forest technology required food. Then there were blocks of scrambled data. When my memory resumed I was already in the car on the way home.

Which was really, really strange.

And, I have to say, kind of worrying.

Timestamps on both memories said there was a thirtythree minute gap between them.

Had I blacked out?

For half an hour?

I wondered if everyone in the room had experienced the missing time.

I flashed Perry back but he wasn’t answering so I checked the Link for other people’s recollections, but it was just as Perry had said: there wasn’t a single mention of the talk anywhere on the whole worldwide network.

It simply made no sense. I mean, a kitten can’t wake up without forty different angles of the event turning up on the Link within a minute, so an announcement like my father’s, which had shocked even me, how could that not be there?

I was going to investigate further when I felt a tingle on the Link.

From a recent bookmark.

Amalfi.

I think I took two seconds to compose myself before I accepted the feed.

/Hi, Soy twin./
Alpha’s thoughts travelled into mine.