Ghost_Layer: Pixely Blue Yonder, #1

By Nathan Lee Green

In the near future, the internet exists as an interactive online world called the Layer. Caedmon is an up and coming data deliverer, finally catching some breaks in his quest to build a new reputation and career. He finds himself involved in an exclusive group of digital elites responsible for building parts of the Layer he loves, but hounded by online law enforcement agencies. Tangled up in both sides' schemes, Caedmon confronts hard choices that will earn him a place in digital history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nathan Lee Green
• Release date: Feb 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215528259

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE INTERVIEW

< Begin transcription: >

DeLado: My name is Monika DeLado. This is Digital Yesterday, the audio show about the biggest online happenings from the recent past, with in-depth interviews and new research bringing to light perspectives and details you’ve never heard before, about stories you’ve already forgotten ever happened.

In this series, I’ll be diving deep into the early days of the Ghost_Layer, exposing some of the characters who shaped the digital environment the most, and solving some of the mysteries buried under the headlines of the moment, to find the truth about how the most profound transformation of our time changed our lives and our world, and the lives of the players who were near the center of the whole thing.

First, an interview with Caedmon Ruiz-Smith, the young nobody who blew open the Tenacity Dream story by choosing to talk when everyone else kept quiet.

DeLado: He sits in the chair across from me, not looking anxious but not relaxed either. Just sort of mildly uncomfortable. A mug sits on the table before him, steam pulsing up and away from his face.

He is young. Thin. He doesn't stand out, really, not in any particular way. Not extremely attractive or unattractive. His face is sort of mushy, no hard lines. His eyes are the one exception to the otherwise uninterestingness of his appearance. They are greyish-blue and have a certain sparkle that catches me off guard, reminds me of wild old fishermen. Except they, the fisherman, are bronzed and he is so very pale, like a ghost.

‘Let's start at the very beginning,’ I say. ‘For anyone who's been living in a cave for the last couple decades, what is the Ghost_Layer?'

He leans back in his chair and takes a deep breath.

Ruiz-Smith: ‘The internet took shape at the beginning of the century. It changed the world, but it was restrictive. It was limited. The only way to access it or use it was through one of the old computers, with a screen and a keyboard and this thing called a mouse.

'It wasn't long before you could interact with the internet through smaller, more intuitive and user-friendly devices. Phones and tabs. Everyone began using them to use the internet.

'At the same time that technology was making everything smaller and faster and user interfaces were becoming simpler and more a part of everyday life, digital games were evolving. The software companies back then were working hard at making virtual worlds look and act more and more like our own.

'People would play these games together. The internet was like a spider's web that connected them to servers and to each other. In fact, they used to call the internet the World Wide Web. Anyway, these players would get completely lost in the games, immersed in a second reality. They found it more compelling than their own.

'That was when companies began to experiment with a fully immersive internet experience. Mesh together the second reality of the games, whole and complete, with the limitless potential of the internet. Billions of people sharing a digital world.

'Again, people got lost in their made up worlds. Many elements of the games blended into the immersive experiences of the internet. Those experiences, those portals, became lenses through which you saw the raw information. The information was the same, but the lenses shaped it into a digital reality. And those digital realities could be created any way the shapers wanted.

'All of those different lenses, at first separate and strictly controlled and guarded, began to mesh together into one giant mish-mash of internet immersion, which came to be known informally as the game layer. The specific set of languages, libraries, protocols, and platforms which emerged as the favored ecosystem for building this new metaverse were called the Ghost_Layer, but mostly the whole thing came to be known simply as the Layer.’

DeLado: ‘Were you one of those people who 'got lost' in the Layer?'

Ruiz-Smith: 'Yeah, I guess you could say that. When I was a kid I was really into those games. Back then they were called massively multiplayer online games. Then, when I was a teenager, EnTrance released the first immersive browser. That was the beginning of the whole thing. People started using EnTrance’s interface tools to develop websites into virtual places instead of 2D pages of information. Virtual stores, virtual streets, virtual parks. The possibilities were limited only by the tools and a designer's imagination, and the tools were evolving so quickly it was hard to keep up.'

DeLado: ‘What is EnTrance?’

Ruiz-Smith: 'It's dead now, but back then it was the hottest company in the world. A college kid named Ingo Jespersen started it. He was the one who saw how to create a mesh framework to join the digital world into a cohesive and interactive whole before anyone else did, or before they could act on it. He was a visionary.'

DeLado: 'Was?'

Ruiz-Smith: 'I mean, he still is. But he's in prison for hacktivism. They won't let him anywhere near a console for five to ten. If he's doing anything visionary now, it's with pen and paper.'

DeLado: 'Tell me about Brandon Wu.'

He looks down and shifts in his chair. He picks up the mug, still steaming, then puts it back down without taking a drink.

Ruiz-Smith: 'Brandon Wu became EnTrance’s biggest competitor. He launched his company, Tenacity Dream, on the heels of EnTrance’s first public beta release of its browser, but Tenacity didn’t release their own browser until later. They copied the idea and made a few small improvements. When Ingo was arrested, EnTrance fell apart and Tenacity moved in to become the big player in the field. They made millions in no time at all, building on the backs of all Ingo and his crew had done.'

DeLado: 'And you knew Brandon?'

Ruiz-Smith: 'Yeah.'

< End transcription. >

CHAPTER 2

BRIGHTCYCLES

Caedmon Ruiz-Smith rode a robostrich flat out on a straight line of highway across wild rolling plains, like an old west cowboy upon his faithful steed, or a gasoline-era that a biker on his roaring metal hog.

Digital wind ruffled digital hair as the cares of the world shrank into the wild, if occasionally pixely, blue yonder at his back.

The Ghost_Layer did not contain the same enormities of nothingness as, say, the universe, or the ocean, or the Sahara desert, but it was built on principles of design which emphasized negative spaces, or vast empty areas, which highlighted the interestingness of the more thoughtfully designed and inhabited places.

Most of the servers were mostly empty. Randomly generated terrain filled in the spaces server bosses did not care about yet. For example: wild rolling plains.

Ahead, the rolling plains ended abruptly in rocky cliffs which descended into deep dark nothingness. Thick white fog shrouded whatever lay beyond the cliffs. The only feature of interest on the whole horizon, a steel bridge like something out of Great Depression-era America, stretched out over the chasm, its other end lost in the cotton blanket of fog.

He started across the bridge. Everything slowed to a crawl for half a minute while his digital incarnation jumped through millions of feet of cable and was first acknowledged, then admitted, then transferred onto another