NEW YORK—What exactly constitutes a victimless crime and what happens when people are denied a safe outlet for their otherwise perverted desires? These are some of the questions Jennifer Haley poses in “The Nether,” now being presented by MCC Theater.
Sometime in the future the Internet is no longer the wide open place it once was. Now called the “Nether,” it has become a total virtual reality interface. Eighty percent of the world’s population works in computer constructed office realms; children go to school in educational realms, and so on for just about every facet of life.
The interface process consists of more than simply typing at a terminal and staring at a computer screen. Rather, it’s a system which allows the user to literally enter a specific realm and become an active participant in what happens there. This practice becoming so popular that interaction in the world of the flesh and blood has shrunk dramatically in response.
Due to its continual growth, a special police unit has been created with the authority to enforce the law in the Nether, while also monitoring the various realms for illegal activity.
One possible criminal endeavor involves a Mr. Sims (Frank Wood), who has created what he calls called “the Hideaway”—a perfect online realm for himself and an exclusive clientele. This realm involves relationships with young girls, such as Iris (Sophia Anne Caruso), someone whom Sims considers to be his favorite daughter. Iris, it should be noted, is a computer creation, though embodied by a specific person once they enter the Hideaway.
Looking to shut down this operation is police detective Morris (Merritt Wever), but Sims, who has filed all the proper paperwork to get his realm up and running in the first place, has no intention of allowing that to happen. Yet the success of Sims’s enterprise depends on the keeping of secrets; and when enough of them are revealed, it will cause both Sims’s and Morris’s situations to unravel, perhaps beyond repair.
