DATAHEAD

In the year 2018, during the height of the “Information Age”, experts came to believe the absorption of radiation through the excessive use of cellular devices caused cancerous brain tumors in random consumers, but their studies were wrong. What research uncovered was, in an undisclosed number of cases, male and female adult test subjects with predisposed genetics had their neurological systems affected by the continuous data that accumulated in their brains.

With cellular devices excluded as the cause of alarm, they placed culpability on an additional product called “Cyber Eyes”; microscopic thin lenses positioned directly over the cornea of the eye made to interact with Cyberspace via optic movement, eyelid command, and facial manipulation. For reasons not yet known, the optic nerve of these individuals acted as an unregulated conduit forcing data from Cyberspace into the host brain overloading it beyond capacity, ultimately sending the brain into a catatonic state. With irreversible brain damage these adults were unofficially called, “Information Addicts” or IAs. If they conceived or were with child during the trial period of using Cyber Eyes, their offspring’s DNA would consist of the same absorbed information or data they carried as well as what Cyberspace contained at the time it was passed on.

They would call these children “Dataheads”. Unlike their parents, the brain lobes of a Datahead would amass and process the information akin to a Biological Mainframe computer, however with the side effect of making the children dependent on the continual stimulation of the stored brain data and related technology as they began to grow.

When the world’s governments discover the children can successfully harness their internal cyber-data and mysteriously access and manipulate every nuclear launch code and super computer in existence, a dangerous cyber-arms race between nations begins as they seek to use the children’s abilities against competing countries. Without warning, the young Dataheads were covertly gathered and strategically spread throughout isolated corners of the earth by non-governmental forces. Dataheads now scattered across the planet and no single nation able to control them, become marked as a global threat; provoking a standoff between each of the countries they’re believed to be hiding in.

This international deadlock launches into effect a controversial security measure by government leaders within those nations to track down and graft distinctive ID receiver chips to the children’s radius bones. The institution of this security measure enabled all countries on high alert access in identifying and monitoring a real-time visual of what a Dataheads brain processed. A crimson framed, Holographic Display System (HDS) would project across the wrist, from the implanted chip whenever a Dataheads brain was data active. After they achieved this counter aim, once again the young Dataheads vanished off-the-grid this time indefinitely. With no government successful at locating the missing Dataheads a final solution consisting of a Treaty agreement between world-leaders eventually leads to the secret forming of a single world government called the Global United Order. The United States was dissolved as well as all governing countries. No country, state, or government outside of the GUO was recognized. Nuclear weapons were dismantled or destroyed no longer making Datahead abilities a viable threat.

Attempting to once and for all stifle the possibility of any future Datahead activity, immediately signed into international law was the controversial SISM (Server Information Storage Mandate). The GUO succeeded in halting and suppressing the flow of all past and present information to the free world, any hope of unrestricted technological progress and normal life itself came to a complete stop. Where Washington DC once stood flattened rubble took its place. The operational nucleus of the GUO was built directly atop the leveled state. Atrium City would become the epicenter and rapidly evolving new Capital of the world with the goal of redeveloping the entire earth.

Under GUO control, interceptor satellite systems were launched into orbit monitoring and quarantining any banned data circulating throughout the planet. An offensive static canopy permanently fortified the edges of space against outgoing launches or transmissions. Written word, books, electronic devices or any other form of communication through media or data replication, other than through GUO issued access systems, were outlawed. Any remaining virtual, cyber, or physical information to date, secured in a ground level server vault or erased. Writing implements and stationary, confiscated and destroyed. Marketed as the nucleus of the future, Atrium City would integrate Biomimicry and various forms of Simulated Reality, into the foundation of its existence; spawning a refurbished age of forcefully controlled new information and cyber technology. Any who supported this docile way of life became a Futurer; a citizen privileged to receive and possess restricted quantities of data the GUO would distribute in the form of bit-chips administered as a currency and convertible sustenance. They classified those refusing to submit as Outdaters; expatriates forced to live along the fringes of Atrium City, pressed against the massive technological boneyard the world had now become.

With primitive means, Outdaters would resist GUO suppression of information and everyday life without substantial gains. As time passed, rumors of an insurrection within the GUO began going public. Now teenagers, Dataheads would aggressively emerge from the shadows of decommissioned electronic waste in search of answers and relevance among the dueling societies only to find the threat they faced as children had returned with far-reaching consequences. Operating as techie survivalist, Dataheads begin openly plaguing Atrium City with campaigns of hacking, replicating, and black market dealing of illegal data inadvertently leading to an Outdater foothold. As banned technological advancements evolved so would methods to rid the world of Dataheads causing a wave of recklessness and paranoia to surge throughout the surrounding territories. As the threat closes in, sixteen-year-old Datahead Seth Capers and his companions face the inevitable reality, they must become the catalyst in bringing the Global United Order to its knees. Atrium City had never experienced a rebellion or a Cyber-war until now.

Present year 2034

For the first time in his life he secretly holds in his trembling hands what the world once knew as a mobile tablet, but to him its contraband an illegal artifact. As quick as his heart races with excitement at each swipe of the screen, it plunges even quicker to a slow thump as he fixates on the passage pinned across the page - “knowledge is power”- Sir Francis Bacon