Headcrash Essays - Virtual Reality, Bruce Bethke, Cyberspace

Headcrash By Bruce Bethke It takes place in the year 2005. The world has become a world controlled by computers and large multi-billion dollar companies. Our lead character, Jack Burroughs, has an adventure in Cyberspace (on the Internet). In order to understand the plot, one must understand the technology of the time. While most people today have a dial up TCP/IP connection to the Internet running at speeds up to 56Kbs, the Internet connections at that time where immensely greater then what we have today. In the year 2005, one is able to strap on a Virtual Reality suite and actually browse the Internet in real time, meaning a super fast connection to the Internet Now, where does Jack Burroughs fit into all of this? Well, quite frankly, he doesn't really have much to do with it, except that Jack is an employee of MIS, a branch of an immensely large company. His branch of the company provides hardware, software, data, and network support to all the other subsidiaries. The way that the internet and Virtual Reality relates is the fact that Jack spends a lot time in his mothers basement playing around with his VR headset, and other various accessories, in a virtual, multi user dimensional VirtualBar called Heaven. He masquerades around under the alias, MAX_KOOL with his friend, Gunner, or Joe LeMat. The plot of the story really starts to develop when MAX_KOOL is offered a hacking job by an amorous woman named Amber. He is offered 1 million dollars for the job. Having lost his job with MIS just recently, (oh ya, I forgot to mention that. Oh well, now you know) he accepts it. Jack and Joe decide to work together on this one. They take the $10,000 in money to rent a room in an office. Being a very complicated job, Amber sends Jack some new experimental interface to help him. With all the new interface plugged in (and with the ProctoProd sung in its place), Jack and Joe realize that the new interface makes them "Super Users". Super Users can do thing in Cyberspace that defies the laws of the Internet. They are infinitely fast, strong, and see and do things that no one else can do. After setting up their equipment, Jack gets ready to hack into MIS's computer system with his new equipment (Oh ya, he's first assigned to steal files from his old employer, MIS, which he doesn't mind doing.) Being a natural Cybergeek, Jack has no problems. He gets the files and returns them to Amber. It turns out that this last run was just a test set up to test MAX_KOOL's skills. Satisfied with his performance, they get ready to do the real heist, to acquire evidence that this author stole the only copy of another author's book and published it as his own. With the help of some other folk, Jack and Joe brake into the "Castle Frankistilen". In the castle, nothing goes as planned. They go though many different virtual scenarios, and in the end, the alarms goes off as they get the info and the Nazi guards start pouring in. When Jack gets the info, Amber double-crosses him and takes it. After all this confusion, they are all captured and are taken to a mock trial, (with a teddy bear as a judge and a bird as a defense attorney, etc.). The reason for the trial was that the computers in Cyberspace got mad at all the Super Users and decided that either they are going to control everyone or go to a dessert island. This comes to that and Jack is sent off to the island. It turns out that the "Island" is not and island. Jack walks to the other side and gets a job as a towel boy at some hotel, which concludes our story. In this book, I believe that there weren't many major conflicts. The major conflicts are as follows: Person vs. Person and person vs. self. Person vs. person is shown throughout the book. Jack is always in conflict with something, if it's his mother, all the way to Jack vs. Eliza. The more obvious person vs. person was with Jack and Eliza, or with Jack and Melinda. Since Melinda was Jack's boss, they were always arguing and threatening each other. Eliza actually attacked Jack many times in cyberspace in the book, showing a very obvious person vs. person conflict. Person vs. self is shown through jack's alter ego "MAX_KOOL". Jack secretly longs to be like MAX_KOOL,