Prologue

A few weeks after the invention of the multinet, Bear Schwartzsfend was a household name. It had long been so in his native world of Arrivrealm; now creatures living under acid seas or in technicolor trees knew it as well. Even if many of them could not pronounce it.

Bear was a physicist, a quantum mechanic tinkering with the gears of the universe. Most civilized people lived without understanding of the world they themselves had made. They could not explain the workings of their toaster ovens, let alone the timer mechanisms and coils of the world. In some abstract way the universe was made of mostly nothing, and forms of atomic energy sluiced through their bodies at every waking moment. But reality was far too absurd for people to live in it.

Like modern day witch doctors, Bear and his colleagues made it their business to understand and manipulate the secret and unfathomable mysteries of the universe. Universes. Multiverse. Every once in a while they would announce a new fairy tale of how the world worked, and people would be shocked, alarmed, turned upside-down. New art movements would evolve, new popular science books would be written, and then people would return to living as they had for thousands of years. It was not theoreticians who changed the world. It was the inventors who took the new understanding and made devices ne'er 'fore seen. You go to witch doctors for medicine, not mythology, after all.

This time, it was the multinet, the Internet of internets. Bear was known for inventing things along this line; his thesis project, in fact, was the Quantum Brain. But there was only one person with a Quantum Brain, and anyone with a computer could connect to the multinet. Beacons of intelligence light years and dimensions apart were drawn into one picture like constellations in the night sky.

Bear showed up at the press conference announcing its launch only to berate the reporters for bothering him. He was already working on his next project, the purpose for which the multinet was created. He had no interest in the vast reaches of pornography and spam.

Unfortunately, he was not quite finished with this next invention when the invaders arrived.