Places

Unlike the primordial enigmas that constitute the Three Worlds, the Digital Web as we know it has a verifiable history; in several cases, the Zone’s pioneers are still alive today. The primary founder, however, perished from the Earthly plane, if not from existence, in the process of opening this grand can of worms. Computer genius Alan Turing, revered as an Archmaster by the Virtual Adepts who dominate the Web, created the esoteric computations that allowed him to access this space. Reputedly assassinated (a so-called “suicide” in mortal histories) in the middle of a grand experiment, Turing is said to have either opened, created, or been sucked into the Digital Web in 1954. Whatever it is that actually occurred that day, the virtual frontier literally started with a bang.

In its earliest days, the Web is said to have been composed of text and fog, drifts of typewriter-font words drifting or darting across a dark void of luminescent mist. According to certain Web-historians, even that mist was formed of code – glowing strings of numerals and symbols drawn from all human languages, bound together by the odd alchemy of

human thought. Rigid geometric patterns – perhaps reflecting the Platonic solids in a new configuration – soon followed the discovery of this space, with bold colors and angular shapes replacing the original environment.

During its transition from code-fogs and bright geometry to the Zone’s current state, the Digital Web went through a phase right out of Heavy Metal Magazine. Bizarre sectors, comic-book physics, bright colors, and more testosterone-fueled perversity than should be allowed to exist in one space, all flourished from the late ‘70s to the mid-‘90s. A circular trade-off between Web reality and popular sci-fi crafted the visions of both. By the late ‘90s, though, a combination of sophisticated Computer Graphics Imaging, increased net traffic, and the combined imaginations of Sleepers and Awakened had turned the Tron-like cyberscape into a lush electronic world.

These days, a trip to the Digital Web brings you into a hyperreal multiverse of rich vistas and startling colors. Although it’s still bolder and often louder than the mortal realm, there’s a sensual sophistication that was lacking, perhaps impossible, in the older Web. As with the Three Worlds, the Web reverberates with vivid sensations. And yet there’s a lingering flatness to it all, especially when compared to the primal impressions of the Three Worlds. Most of the Web feels like a pyrokinetic bazaar, but for all the sound and fury and polymorphous culture, there’s something missing.

It’s scent. The Digital Web doesn’t smell like anything. Taste is oddly lacking too – not just in the aesthetic sense, but in the sensory sense. As vivid as the sights and sounds and even tactile impressions can be, the Digital Web still falls a bit short of full satisfaction as far as the human animal is concerned. That said, considering how ripe certain netizens probably are in person, that missing sense might not be an entirely bad thing.