Imagine a not-too-distant future where world commerce runs from one huge hyperserver: Oodles. Wallscreens and podphones connect to the all-powerful hub’s online personal computing applications and data storage.
Not only that: Oodles has bought out television, communications, shopping, banking and social networking, as well as the entire Internet. The economy is digitised and cash has become a collector’s item, but in one corner of Ireland the old ways fight to survive.
Enter Rachel, part-time Oodles sysadmin, about to launch into her university career. Her Da, shocked at the Oodles takeover, reveals she’s adopted. Questions plague her. Who are her real parents? Why did they give her up? And why did her Da wait so long to tell her?
Rachel, determined to leave home, rents a big old house near the city. She and her friend Talitha find strangers willing to share it: Bethany, the snarky librarian biker chick; Louise, the fish-and-chips diva with a pregnant tomcat; and Zehrani, the queenly African from the high echelons of Oodles Security.
But all is not rosy in Cyberdublin. Oodles introduces holographic status graphs to display personal information to the world. Rachel, disgusted by the invasion of privacy, refuses to wear it in public despite her Da’s peculiar liking for the new social technology.
Then there are the ragged religious saboteurs, convinced they can delay the end of the world by destroying the dominance of Oodles. But somebody else is quicker. The churchgoers find themselves acting against their own would-be ally after discovering what lies behind the plot. What will Dublin—and the world—look like without the cyber?
Follow Rachel’s search for identity in the midst of global crisis, as the sabotage mystery unfolds with a twist she’d never dare imagine.
With today’s cloud-computing technology, this scenario is possible even now. Cyberdublin will appeal to the Celtic fascination within those of Irish descent and those who wish they were. Web users will find laughs aplenty, too.
