Cyberspace

History:

The first net was supposed to give trolls freedom. It would server as a platform for those without a voice. It would offer unlimited knowledge to those who hungered for it. It would bring fractured trollkind closer together than ever before in their history. But those hopes were hollow. False The Net spread its tendrils around the empire faster than anyone could have predicted. Before anyone could even consider the full range of consequences. They’d “information subhighway” turned out to be their path straight to hell. They were robbed of their privacy, deprived of free will and stripped of dignity. It was supposed to save them, but now even the Net itself cannot be saved. It was molded by the corps, and govornment alike with sharp edges, spikes and traps at every corner.

Before, the net was an untamed jungle- if you could navigate it you had a chance to survive. After the empire it became a warp gate security check, every step you take is recorded and checking your credentials as long as you dont have a VPN masking you. But it’s all for your own good, of course…

Modern Cyberspace

Cyberspace is just like the internet but it’s full submersion. Sort of a straight out of ready player one, tron or summer wars concept. You do however need the cybernetics to access it, those are the jacks that some trolls have on the sides of their head or on the back of their neck on their spine. Cyberspace itself is massive. You could probably fit the entire galaxy ten times over inside of it. Anything is possible here, you can look however you want, sound however you want, go wherever you want the possibilities are pretty endless. The one catch with this however is that it is all monitored. Just like any sort of totalitarian state Alternia is no different with constantly monitoring everything that goes on in cyberspace and the web itself. There are ways to get around being tracked but considering things like VPNs and tor browsers are illegal it’s hard to get any sort of privacy even in private chat rooms.

Avatars in cyberspace can be anything you want. You want to be an alien? Sure. You want to be your favorite character from a video game or a show? Yep that’s all possible, even fantasy characters or anthropomorphic creatures. You could just be yourself as well or the ideal version of yourself. Sky’s the limit. There are even designers of avatars out there that make some extra money by designing a personal avatar for someone.

Chat rooms in cyberspace tend to actually look like rooms where you can literally sit in and talk to other people’s avatars face to face. These chat rooms can be customized however the admin wants, they can have portals (think of a website link) to game zones or portals to shops that look like malls, anything you can think of. There are music launches that have ongoing streams of music and there are theaters type areas that you can watch videos and some of them the videos have a full 3D render of the area that was filmed so you can walk around in it. There are actual archives you can walk though and view, life sized galleries to showcase art, movies you can actually be a character in, full submersion mmos, battle royals, races, anything you can find on the internet you can find in cyberspace and you can actually experience it as if your seeing it with your own eyes.

Also to get this out of the way, Sburb/Sgrub is in Cyberspace, but it's not some world ending game like in canon. Instead it is a highly advanced server based mmo that is extremely popular. It is a real virtual reality game that you can invite friends to play on a personal server. I mean if cyberspace exists and highly advanced A.I.s and technology this would have to be somewhere in the mix.

When you are virtual however there’s little to no connection to the outside world, you can’t really feel or see anything unless someone shakes you or unplugs the jack cables. The latter tends to hurt. I would sort of relate it to the cookies in black mirror, especially from the USS Calistar episode. Your avatar also never gets tired and your physical body isn’t affected by anything that happens in the virtual world. So you could spend hours walking around a “recreation” of the imperial palace and your legs would never get sore. Even tough you can't feel anything in virtual though sometimes your body will tend to react the same as it would to real world stimuli to compensate or you. Some even get fantom feeling since their brain tries to rationalize the data it is given and cyberspace tends to feel real. S

Just like any sort of digitized thing cyberspace itself is made of code. Code can be broken and manipulated. Someone who knows how to do that can bend cyberspace, they can bend reality like using cheat codes in a video game. Easy example is the walk through walls cheat from Pokémon. Cyberspace is set up in a way that can and will trick anyone in it that they are walking on a flat surface or they are opening that door to a shop or they are piloting that space ship. But it’s all just code and you can tell the code it’s something else. You want to sink through the floor and walk upside down underneath it? Someone like a programmer or hacker can do that. Because of this however there are also precautions for companies and websites that implement their own firewalls, security and basic AI’s that can lock you out of places all together or ban your IP shooting you halfway across the web. Most smart hackers and programmers don’t want to touch those. Some firewalls and security systems can and will send an electrical current straight up the cables connecting someone and fry their brain. The imperial palace security does exactly that, you don’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole because it can and will kill you.

Shadowspace

Everything explained above is the surface level of cyberspace but just like the internet there is the deep web. In this universe it’s referred to as “shadowspace”. Most trolls that just use cyberspace as an escapism from the real world don’t even know shadowspace exists or how to even get there.

These are the hidden parts of cyberspace that you can not get to unless you know where the portals are. These portals are usually hidden in message boards and lobby areas and can only be opened up if you know where they are and you can disrupt the code. Think of a hidden lever in a mansion that opens up to a secret room just this one is made of code.

You do not want to go into shadowspace without a VPN or a cover of sorts, some even use proxy avatars. Because the empire tracks everything they can and will follow you down into shadowspace unless you use something disposable or can protect your identity which is hard enough to do when VPNs are illegal.

Down there you can find everything as long as you know where to go and how to get there. Portals tend to pop up and disappear at a moment's notice and shadowspace itself is more of a vast empty nothingness you can float through until you find a portal. In these portals you can find anything from illegal drugs and weapon shops to cheesy unregistered chat rooms built by kids. The Silk Road is down there and it’s the biggest wide spread illegal marketplace where you can find and buy anything under the sun, even a ticket out of the empire if you know where to find it. Again though these places pop up and disappear without a moment's notice and can reappear at random times or in different locations so it’s really hard to maneuver down there, especially if you don’t know what you are doing.