Publisher's blurb: For the average person, life is brutally hard. There is drudgery and filth and endless streams of meaningless, menial work. And then there is the Aetherium. More than a virtual reprieve from the urbanized nightmare of the 23rd century, the Aetherium is a digital landscape of countless dimensional frontiers, a virtual reality so vivid as to be indistinguishable from reality itself. The Aetherium, then, is the essential human commodity. Uncountable billions plug themselves in every single day to live dynamic dreams of a better existence.