Plot summary
(From Wikipedia)
Santee St. John is a reporter for NewsReal, a shock site for which he records video via a virtual “interface” allowing viewers to actually experience his recordings on the World Wide Web. He is sent to record a massacre of indigenous people being attacked at Chiapas, Mexico without warning by landowners working for capitalist corporations. However, due to a business deal with Mexico’s government, NewsReal decides not to show the story, prompting Santee to take a sabbatical. While on sabbatical, he meets Margaret Mayfield, a rebel Zapatista with whom he is swayed to travel with and, eventually, fall in love with and decide to fight against the capitalist elite.
St. John and Mayfield decide to join a group called Intrepid Explorers, working for the corporations, in order to find a strong group of Zapatistas to join. They are met by an individual claiming to be Subcomandante Marcos, the first revolutionary to use cyberspace, who helped Santee and Margaret establish a plan: to give the rebel victims of the capitalists’ massacres interfaces, which will allow the entire world to experience their sufferings via the World Wide Web by actually taking on all sense perceptions of that person through a completely realistic virtual reality simulator.
Margaret Mayfield went on her part of the mission with Webster Webfoot, who used to be one of the most highly rated internet stars but became a “webkicker” and now tries to avoid using an interface whenever possible. However, once there, she is told that Santee is dead and that the funeral will be held the very next day; she and Webster travel to Chiapas, where the funeral is to be held, and discover that Santee is not actually dead, but that someone has faked his demise. Margaret abandons Webster, leaving him some cash for travel, and travels with a hotel owner named Zack Hayman who seems to have an inside connection with the conspirators.
In Chiapas, Margaret discovers that Santee left her a personalized interface, which cannot be activated until Santee is actually present. At the same time, Webster’s girlfriend on the internet, Starchilde or “Starr” for short, discovers through her work on a space station that there exists oil on Mars, which means that biological extraterrestrial life must have existed on the planet at some point, as well as that Mexican rebels are being shipped to Mars in order to harvest the oil. Back on Earth, Zack, the hotel manager whom Margaret is with, discovered that the rebels are being sent to Mars in part so that the rich landowners can take their land without resistance. Santee and Margaret believed that they were setting up the victims with interfaces so that they would be able to show their sufferings to others outside of Mexico, but in fact the interfaces were going to make them think that they were receiving messages from Santee, while they were actually going to be tricked to going to Mars as slave labor.
On the ship near Mars, Starr discovers that the slaves are to be sent to Mars in order to live there for a time and scout out any biological hazards or chemical hazards. Starr meets an intelligent AI, called Alice Irene, who serves as a literal deus ex machine. Starr convinces Alice Irene to join the cause of the rebels by having her examine the entire Internet and come to her own conclusions about the corruption of the current capitalist regime. Starr was given control of the ship, and the Zapatistas took control with the assistance of Alice Irene. The revolutionaries were given the option to stay on Earth or go to Mars, but as a form of utopian paradise rather than as slave labor. Santee St. John and Margaret Mayfield chose to stay on earth, while the remaining main characters chose life on Mars.
