In this 2003 novel by the author of Neuromancer, the main character lives a disconnected existence as she travels around the world. However, she finds company in an online group that is as obsessed as she is with some mysterious online film images.

She unzips the cigarette pocket on the Rickson's sleeve and looks at Baranov's card.

stellanor@armaz.ru. Looking faded in this light, as though Baranov had written it years ago.

She puts it carefully away again, zips up the little pocket. Opens her bag and removes the iBook and phone.

Hotmail. Timing out. Empty.

She opens a blank message, outgoing.

My name is Cayce Pollard. I'm sitting on the grass in a park in London. It's sunny and warm. I'm 32 years old. My father disappeared on September 11, 2001, in New York, but we haven't been able to prove he was killed in the attack. I began to follow the footage you've been

That "you" stops her. Pecks at the delete key, losing the "you've been."

Katherine McNally had had Cayce compose letters, letters which would never, it was understood, be sent, and which in some cases couldn't be, the addressee being dead.

Someone showed me one segment and I looked for more. I found a site where people discussed it, and I began to post there, asking questions. I can't tell you

This time, it doesn't stop her.

why, but it became very important to me, to all of us there. Parkaboy and Ivy and Maurice and Filmy, all the others too. We went there whenever we could, to be with other people who understood. We looked for more footage. Some people stayed out surfing, weeks at a time, never posting until someone discovered a new segment.

All through that winter, the mildest she'd known in Manhattan, though in memory the darkest, she'd gone to F:F:F -- to give herself to the dream.

We don't know what you're doing, or why. Parkaboy thinks you're dreaming. Dreaming for us. Sometimes he sounds as though he thinks you're dreaming us. He has this whole edged-out participation mystique: how we have to allow ourselves so far into the investigation of whatever this is, whatever you're doing, that we become part of it. Hack into the system. Merge with it, deep enough that it, not you, begins to talk to us. He says it's like Coleridge, and De Quincey. He says it's shamanic. That we may all seem to just be sitting there, staring at the screen, but really, some of us anyway, we're adventurers. We're out there, seeking, taking risks. In hope, he says, of bringing back wonders. Trouble is, lately, I've been living that.

She looks up, everything made pale and washed-out by the light. She's forgotten to bring her sunglasses again.

I've been out there, out here, seeking. Taking risks. Not sure exactly why. Scared. Turns out there are some very not-nice people, out here. Though I guess that was never news.

Act I, Scene II