Firmware

Book excerpt: HF-Tech's chips have changed the world. Embedded into the heads of over 90% of the world's population, they have cured autism, dementia, provided intelligence boosts, and helped to ease some of the more mundane tasks in life. Daniel Blair works in the Workshop, creating ROMs and hacking the chips to further increase their usefulness, an activity that is deemed illegal. But Rouge, his favoured ROM, is better than the official firmware; it simply does more. And besides, who knows what really goes into HF-Tech's official software releases? What is it capable of sending? And what can it receive? Dan doesn't quite trust them, not least of all because of the flaws in the system. And when the day comes that HF-Tech releases a software update that allows a terrorist attack to take place, Dan begins to distrust the company even more. But is there a threat closer to home that he should be paying more attention to..?