II

NO TURNING BACK

Almost two decades after MiCe! had cracked his first cassette, young Matrix was faced with an identical dilemma. He was addicted to games, but he could not afford them. The dilemma was the same, but the technology had advanced almost beyond recognition. Games now boasted breathtakingly sophisticated graphics, intricate storylines and mind-bending challenges.

For many gamers, their obsession had intensified correspondingly. Cassettes and floppy disks were already museum pieces and time was running out for CD-Roms, DVDs and memory sticks (before they were even invented). Increasingly games could exist merely as code on the Internet. However, you could not store very many on your domestic PC. Furthermore, these were the days of dial-up modems, when hooking up to the Internet meant keeping the phone line busy for hours. But if, with your home computer, you could access a much bigger computer, then you could store and share all the games you liked . . .

fXp stands for File Exchange Protocol, but all you need to know about fXp is that it enables the very swift transfer of data between two computers. It is especially useful for exchanging data between servers. It is important to spell out that a server is simply a computer that has been adapted to function as a communications hub. Thus a large company, for example, will have its own server that provides Internet access for all employees. Many servers are big and powerful and not dependent on telephone lines for their access to the Web.

The fXp message boards united a fraternity whose members hacked into servers and then used them to store and play games. Matrix was