Alucard is 11 years old, and one of the few remaining non-collectivized humans on earth. It all started with the TRANS-ON headset, developed by the Vesperante Corporation. At first, it was a device that simply allowed uploading thought to the Exanet, but soon, competing corporations driven by sheer avarice invented third party headsets called Personality Terminals. These could download as well as upload. They were a huge hit, and Brown's Law soon ensured real-time communications.

For awhile it was good. The worlds most brilliant minds merged and new discoveries were made at a rate mensurable in seconds.

Then, disaster stuck. A new service known as Meta-You arose, and acted as an arbitrator between regular people like you and me, who lacked the neural capacity to link otherwise. Still for awhile, it was bening, but slowly, surely, a super-meme was building up in the darkness. Freed from the geologic span of genetic evolution, this meme achieved humanlike sophistication in under a decade, and then went far, far beyond it.

People linked to Meta-You recuited more and more people, and then the President of Perrennial, the world government passed the so-called Link-in Law. It was now a criminal offence not to have a personality terminal, and to be wires at all times. That was pretty much the end, for most people. However, a resistance movement, a meme within the supermeme formed, and these people broke free. They discarded the Personality Terminals, and propelled by a compulsion far beyond their understanding headed to the remnants of the Vesperante Corporation's HQ. There, they found exactly 100 TRANS-ON headsets, the last in the entire world. They donned them and for the most part, faded into history once more. Still every now and then, one was discovered and killed, and their headset destroyed. Now there are only 10 left, and one headset with no owner.

A generation has passed, and the original resistance is dead. Their children carry on their work though, and this is the story of one of them: the savior of us all.

Alucard.