The year is 2030, the world has been completely computerized. Everything anyone does any more is done by typing on a keyboard, or by voice recognition software. Telecommuting failed in the mid-twenties so everyone uses their computerized cars to go to and from work. Paper and coined currency has become obsolete, a magnetic strip card holds a person's financial information, as well as everything else about them. The term hacker no longer stands for what it used to. Rather than being curiosity fiends, hackers are now set on the destruction of data. They have taken on the shape and the form of the twentieth century crackers. The digital domain is patrolled by CyberCops, a group of former hackers now devoted to upholding the former hacker ethic and protecting online data from the computer underground: the new hackers and the digital anarchists. One group dominates this underground, they call themselves the Knights of Chaos. Led by a mysterious figure known as DarkStar, they manipulate the millions of nanobytes streaming through the world's data lines, changing the lives of people to fit their purposes.