deep coma from which the patient cannot wake. Irene "Renie" Sulaweyo, an instructor in "virtual engineering" at a polytechnic institute in Durban, South Africa, is devastated when her younger brother, Stephen, falls victim to this disease. She and her former San technology student ǃXabbu begin to investigate what has happened and start discovering strange goings-on in the Net, including an evil hypnotic entity and the constant reappearance of a mysterious golden city. She seeks expert assistance from a previous instructor, Susan van Bleeck. But it soon becomes apparent that she has made powerful enemies: Renie is dismissed from her job, the apartment complex where she and her unemployed father Long Joseph live is burned down, and Professor van Bleeck is murdered. Renie turns to two of van Bleeck's acquaintances: a retired security expert and hacker called "Blue Dog Anchorite" and the French researcher Martine Desroubins. Blue Dog Anchorite informs the others that Otherland, the mysterious network where the golden city is located, was specially commissioned by a cryptic organization known as the "Grail Brotherhood", comprising some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men and women, and that he is the only surviving member of the team who devised Otherland's security, his colleagues having died in unusual circumstances. With the help of Martine and Blue Dog, Renie, ǃXabbu, Long Joseph and van Bleeck's assistant Jeremiah Dako break into Wasps' Nest, a mothballed military base in the Drakensberg which nevertheless contains equipment facilitating extended stays online. While Long Joseph and Jeremiah stay offline, she, ǃXabbu and Martine (who remains in France) break into the Otherland network to reach the golden city. In North America, Orlando Gardiner and his friend Sam Fredericks, famous contestants in the Middle Country, a Medieval fantasy gameworld, go on an apparently routine quest, where Orlando finds his own image of the golden city. While he is distracted by the image, his gaming character is killed, and he becomes obsessed with finding out what the city is and why it was shown to him. Following the trail of the city, he and Fredericks gain access to the online fringe community TreeHouse, from where they too find their way into Otherland. Renie, ǃXabbu, Martine, Orlando and Fredericks, along with several others, find themselves in an uncomfortable situation. In the simulation world, they are held prisoner by the king of Temilún (the golden city), who is none other than Bolivar