iBoy

Memory

Original & 3G: 128MB eDRAM

3GS: 256MB eDRAM

Display

320 x 48opx, 3.5m (89mm), 2:3 aspect ratio, 18-bit (262,144-colour)

LCD at 163 pixels per inch (ppi)

Input

Multi-touch touchscreen display,

headset controls, proximity and ambient light sensors,

3-axis accelerometer

3GS also includes: digital compass

Camera

Original & 3G: 2.0 megapixels with geotagging

3GS: 3.0 megapixels with video

(VGA at 3ofps), geotagging,

and automatic focus, white balance, &; exposure

Connectivity

WiFi (8o2.nb/g), Bluetooth

2.0+EDR (3GS: 2.1), USB 2.o/Dock connector

Quad band GSM 850 900 1800 1900

MHz GPRS/EDGE

3G also includes: A-GPS; Tri band

UMTS/HSDPA 850, 1900, 2100MHz

3GS also supports: 7.2Mbps HSDPA

Online services iTunes Store, App Store. MobileMe

Dimensions

Original:

115mm (4.5m) (h)

61 mm (2.4m) (w)

11.6mm (0.46m) (d)

3G & 3GS:

115.5mm (4.55m) (h)

62.1mm (2.44m) (w)

12.3mm (0.48m) (d)

Weight

Original & 3GS: 135g (4.80Z)

3G: 133g (4.70Z)

Actually, that was far more information than I needed, and most of it didn't make much sense to me anyway. But it confirmed what I'd already assumed: I had WiFi capability, I could connect to the web. I had access to every single website in the world, which is a lot of websites:

Web pages in the world, August 2005:19.2 billion pages were indexed by Yahoo as of August 2005.

Websites in the world, August 2005: 70,392,567 websites were indexed by Netcraft as of August 2005.

Web pages per website: 273 (rounding to the nearest whole number).

Web pages in the world, February 2007: multiplying our estimate of the number of web pages per website by Netcraft's February 2007 count of websites, we arrive at 29.7 billion pages on the World Wide Web as of February 2007.

And there was even more. There were databanks, secure sites, programs and websites that were supposed to be inaccessible to unauthorized users, but my iBrain knew how to get into them.

My iBrain, my iSelf ...

My i.

What else did it allow me to do? Well, I could send and receive texts and calls, of course ... and, what's more, I seemed to be able to phone and text with complete anonymity. So, if I wanted to, I could send texts and make calls without anyone knowing who they were from.

And I could hear other calls too. I could access other mobiles — stored texts, call logs, address books ... what­ever was there. I knew it all. I knew where the phones were. I could either triangulate their signals or, with a lot of the new phones, simply locate them via their GPS chips. I could reach out into the radio-waved air and pick out a single specific telephone conversation from among all the millions of others ...

What else?

I could take pictures — click.

Make videos — click, whirr.

Watch videos, watch TV, play games.

I could see every email on every computer and every phone in the world.

I could download everything downloadable ...

I could do virtually anything.

I could overdose on information.

I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness for a while, emptying my head of everything. I was drained, exhausted. My skull ached. I was excited, confused, bewildered, thrilled ...

This ... whatever and however it was ...

This was awe-inspiring.

A radio-controlled clock inside my head (receiving its time signal over the air from Anthorn in Cumbria [MSF 6okHz]) told me that it was 23:32:43.

I lifted my hands and held them in front of my face. A soft glow was emanating from my skin — a gentle, very pale, almost purplish light. I watched, oddly unsurprised, as the glow started to shimmer, and my skin began pulsat­ing again ... radiating, floating, swirling with the essence of everything. I didn't have to see the rest of my body to know that it was happening all over — I could feel it. And now that I was witnessing it up close for the first time, I knew what it was. It was everything, the same kind of everything that I had in my head: 30 billion web pages, galaxies of words and pictures and sounds and voices ... all of it shimmering in and over and under my flesh.

And now I could control it.

All I had to do was switch something off in my head (I didn't know what it was), and my skin would fade back to normal; switch it on again, and the cyber-galaxies came back.

I was learning.

At 00:49:18 I learned that Lucy hadn't used her mobile since the attack, she hadn't sent any texts or emails, and that she had a MySpace page but there hadn't been any activity on it for months. No messages, no comments, no blog entries, nothing. In fact, her MySpace profile was virtually blank — no friends, no photos, no videos, no favourites, no information at all. Just her screen name — aGirl — and that was it.