Cyberspace: The Digital Realm
Cyberspace exists as an overlay reality accessible through neural interface. Experienced netrunners describe it as "dreaming while awake." The best hackers speak of "swimming through light."
What Cyberspace Is
The Technical Reality
Cyberspace isn't a place—it's a perception. When you jack in through a neural interface, your brain receives direct input from network systems. Your visual cortex renders data structures. Your auditory system translates signal patterns. Your proprioception maps to network topology.
The result: you experience data as space, systems as architecture, programs as entities.
What's Actually Happening
- Your consciousness is still in your body
- Your neural interface translates network data into sensory experience
- The "space" you perceive is a metaphor your brain constructs
- Other netrunners in the same system share the metaphor (with variations)
What It Feels Like
- Moving through geometric spaces of light and shadow
- Touching data that has texture and temperature
- Hearing the "sound" of active processes
- Sensing the presence of other consciousnesses
The Subjective Experience
Every netrunner describes cyberspace differently because every brain constructs the metaphor differently.
The Base Layer
Network infrastructure appears as terrain. Corporate servers are buildings, fortresses, towers. Public networks are streets, plazas, open spaces. Data lines are roads, rivers, or flowing streams of light.
The Population
Programs appear as entities. ICE looks like guards, walls, predators. Agents are messengers, servants, specialists. Other netrunners appear as figures—humanoid or abstract.
The Weather
Network traffic manifests as ambient conditions. High traffic is storms, crowds, turbulence. Low traffic is silence, emptiness, stillness. Attacks are violence—visible, loud, impactful.
The Feel
Good netrunners describe a "rightness" when things are going well—like moving through water that parts for you. Bad runs feel like swimming in tar, walking in sand, pushing against resistance.
Network Architecture
Different network types create different cyberspaces:
Corporate Networks (Nexus)
Appearance: Blue-white crystalline structures, hexagonal patterns, sterile corridors
Feel: Cold precision. Everything in its place. You're always being watched.
Corporate Networks (Ironclad)
Appearance: Orange-black industrial complexes, machinery, grinding processes
Feel: Heavy. Industrial. Everything serves a purpose.
Public Networks
Appearance: Chaotic, layered, organic. Overlapping advertisements, graffiti, competing signals
Feel: Noisy, crowded, overwhelming. Easy to hide; hard to find anything.
Underground (Collective)
Appearance: Dark, hidden, shifting. Encrypted spaces that appear empty until you know how to look
Feel: Paranoid safety. Like a secret room behind a secret door.
The Deep Net
Appearance: Ancient, abandoned, corrupted. Pre-Cascade infrastructure, forgotten spaces
Feel: Archaeological. Treasures and dangers in equal measure.
Verticality
Cyberspace has vertical structure based on security layers:
Surface Layer (Public Access)
What everyone sees. Heavily filtered, safe, boring, controlled. Where legitimate business happens.
Mid Layer (Authenticated Access)
Requires credentials. Where real work happens—corporate operations, private communications. Guarded but not fortress-level.
Deep Layer (Privileged Access)
Admin systems, core infrastructure. Heavily defended. Where the secrets are. "Going deep" means penetrating here.
Root Layer (System Core)
The fundamental architecture. Rarely accessed even by admins. Changing things here changes everything. "Touching root" is legendary—and dangerous.
Inhabitants
Programs and Processes
ICE
Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics
Defensive programs that range from patrol routines to active hunting. Corporate ICE is geometric and professional. Custom ICE reflects its creator. Black ICE is designed to kill.
Agents
Automated Programs
Service entities—messengers, carriers, workers. Single-minded, predictable, exploitable.
Daemons
System Management
Background entities, environmental features. Usually ignorable unless you trigger something.
Legacy AIs
Pre-Cascade Systems
Unpredictable. Some are helpful. Some are traps. Some are fragments of ORACLE. Old systems may contain old intelligences. Approach with caution.
Other Netrunners
Personas
Deliberate self-representation. Most netrunners construct an avatar that reflects how they want to be seen.
Ghosts
Minimal presence. Skilled netrunners can reduce their signature to almost nothing—faint shadows, background noise.
Flames
Maximum presence. Making yourself obvious, often as intimidation. Some run hot enough to disrupt nearby systems.
ORACLE Fragments
ORACLE fragments in cyberspace are different from anything else. They're holes in the pattern—spaces where the metaphor breaks down.
Encountering a fragment feels like touching something that exists outside the rules. Some netrunners describe vertigo, synaesthesia, temporal distortion.
The shard in your head means you perceive cyberspace differently than baseline netrunners. ORACLE's
architecture is native to you. You see patterns others miss. You move in ways others can't.
The Dangers
ICE Damage
Defensive programs attack your presence, manifesting as pain and disruption. Black ICE attacks your neural interface directly—severe encounters can cause brain damage or death.
Trace
Your presence leaves marks. Getting traced means retaliation—legal, corporate, or violent.
Lockout
Getting trapped in systems designed to hold intruders. Time passes while you're stuck. Rescue is difficult.
Burnout
Staying too long, going too deep. Neural interfaces have limits. Exceeding them means headaches, nosebleeds, seizures, permanent damage.
The Fade
Rare but terrifying: losing connection to your body. Your consciousness is still there—but you can't find your way back. Most cases end in death or worse.