In a society who collapsed because of the excess of virtual interaction, a new group, the neo-luddites, progressively takes over the weak government. They have managed to outlaw high bandwidth Internet connections and work on downgrading the Internet network to a modem based structure.
Joanna is a double agent. Cablewoman by day for the neo-luddites and member of the counter revolution by night. She organises fiestas, huge silent parties where people gather in the same room to enjoy the thrills of virtual interaction. Joanna regrets her past as a successful v-prostitute, a person who sells her feelings to make virtual worlds more realistic.
Cass accompanies her husband August to all his neo-luddite rallies but don't understand him any more. During one of her husband's speeches, she leaves the rally and wanders the streets where she discovers for the first time the fantastic freedom found behind a virtual reality helmet.
Meanwhile in the neo-luddites stronghold, Alex, a software designer, creates viral idols that are designed to infect still existing virtual worlds. He is alone and misses the only person who ever understood him, Cassandra, a childhood love. He hijacks the system to transform one of the idols into what could Cassandra be today. He uses this model to try to find the woman, with no success.
More and more insensitive to her husband's cause, Cass finds a way to get invited to a fiesta. There she meets Joanna. The two women are fascinated by one another. For Cass, Joanna is a new role model, and Joanna sees in Cass' admiration the way to regain some of her past glory. Joanna invites Cass to more important fiestas where the two women get closer without daring breaking the physical barrier created by the VR suit.
Despite Cassandra's update to the status of an idoru, an idol with an independent AI, Alex is frustrated. The interactions with the simplistic model aren't rewarding. He goes on a search for a v-prostitute to enrich Cassandra's personality. After many unsuccessful attempts, he finally meets Joanna who does a perfect job. Alex's dependency on her skills and Cass' admiration feed her narcissism. She uses the virtual Cassandra to replay her real life interactions with Cass and sometimes confuses the two.
After an unsuccessful attempt to bring back passion in his marriage, August follows Cass to a fiesta and discovers her as she exchanges a first kiss with Joanna. Mad with jealousy, he takes her home and becomes violent during the argument. Cass runs away. As she tries to contact Joanna, she discovers the virtual relationship between Joanna and Alex. She sneaks into Joanna's console and replaces her in the idoru's skin. Alex falls in love immediately with the couple Cass/Cassandra.
Joanna discovers that she has a competitor. She declares her love for Alex's mind. Rejected by Alex, she creates altered avatars of the idoru to play her virtual vengeance. She finds herself even more alone when Cass refuses to go to fiestas, preferring to use the time for interaction with Alex through the idoru.
When Joanna discovers Cass's plan to meet Alex at a fiesta, she informs August of the situation. To save his job August, who has been blind to Alex's excessive use of computing power, is obliged to inform is hierarchy. The militia tries to arrest Alex and prepares to raid the fiesta. August goes to the fiesta early to catch the lovers before the militia.
Alex barely escapes from the militia. He reaches the fiesta and meets Cass. August can't stand the second insult to his marriage and tries to kill Cass. At the same time the militia raids the fiesta and arrests Alex and August. Cass walks home safe. Thanks to Cass's blackmail on August, Alex is freed. Cass waits for him by the prison's door dressed as Cassandra, the idoru.
Last edited by jpdrecourt two years ago. You do not have permission to edit this outline.
Comments
Looking forward to the challenge — tagline two years ago
Thanks for adding this jp. — matthanson two years ago
grrr, Plotbot ate my first comment.
I really like how we are going. This makes a lot more sense and is much more tangiable than when we started, IMO.
My objection is to the line "They have managed to outlaw high bandwidth Internet connections and work on downgrading the Internet network to a modem based structure."
Modems are not inherently slow, the speed issues with dialup were more to do with telecommunications infrastructure than the modems themselves.
Perhaps we could use fibre-optic cables to represent the fast and copper wire to represent the slow? Fibre optics *are* inherently faster and are distinctly visually different from copper wire.
(See, eg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fibreoptic.jpg vs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:FTP_cable3.jpg) — Urzumph two years ago
@urzumph: yes you're right of course re: cable (fibre optic) speeds. what is the rationale for wires then? - I would say wireless signals are jammed, so 'official' communications must go over a cable - and the isp switching has been replaced with high encryption filtering so most people are in 'slow lane', apart from the regime's elite (programmers like alex).
What do you think? — matthanson two years ago
Wireless signals could be non-working for a number of reasons. Anything which causes sufficient electromagnetic interference should do it (if you want absolutes you'll need a hardware engineer, I'm a little out of my depth here). Jamming would do it, but so would natural phenomena which cause large magnetic disturbances such as sunspots or (potentially) malfunctioning equipment which uses the same radio band. Since the band in use is the ISM band, a lot of equipment uses the band. Pretty much any consumer equipment other than mobile phones and televisions would do it, industrial equipment, plus scientific research equipment.
I'm not 100% sure what you mean by 'isp switching has been replaced with high encryption filtering'. That's probably because switching (packet switching) and filtering (web proxy w/ blacklist or packet filtering firewalls) are technical terms with specific meanings, and they don't make sense in this context.
I'm guessing you mean the concept of multiple ISPs has been replaced by one (government monopoly?) which heavily censors what their users view and only allow known users to view material. In which case that makes sense and I agree. The only thing worth noting is encryption doesn't help the censorship, it hinders it. For most people today that's a good thing, but if you are a monopoly who wants to censor it's users, it's really not. — Urzumph two years ago
Perhaps we could work from a scenario where wireless communication had become the norm, and the current wired consumer network had mostly died back through lack of maintenance, leaving only the 'backbone' network. The Neo-Luddites could have put a blanket jam on all wireless communications, leaving only access at the old switching points. As a stop-gap, the bandwidth at these points (scattered throughout the city), could be throttled using software. This would be relatively easy to bypass by hackers and so the Neos set about downgrading the access points to only accept low bandwidth comms. — jokigenki two years ago
Hi, yesterday there was this moondarkness in europe. I had a nice dream :
In a near future: A society, addicted, trapped and slaved. There is only one government, one language, one currency and one company. Everyone is playing it:
“The Universe”. Everyone from the youngest children to the old geezers. It is a virtual game, every human has a virtual avatar “in game” .You have to play the game, there is no alternative. When somebody new is born in this world, he or she will be automatically signed up for “the game”. And a virtual copy of them appears. Everyone gets a small start up credit. You can only pay for real and virtual stuff with this online currency.
You work on game, communicate in game. The people are spending almost every single second of their life in this virtual world. The game is produced and published by “the company”. Everyone works for the company. Some are in game designers, others are “masters of the universe”., the have more possibilities in game. There are rumors, that there are even ghosts and gods in this world and artificial intelligences.
There is a police and even a religion. You are better a follower to this belief.
You can find everything in this virtual world, almost; you have to search long time to find true love. Everyone is in a remorseless competition to each other. There are different “fractions” fighting each other. The people are plugged in this world with a neural interface. If you die in game, you also die in the real world.
Bit there is one group, fighting against the company, fighting for true love. They want to help the people and to free them. But do the people really want to be free ?
sry for my bad english
george — gee81 two years ago
http://www.plotbot.com/showdowns/noobworld/join/44bb6d57 — gee81 two years ago
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