DARKMARKET

young men were drawn obsessively to this mesmerically repetitive
challenge, which pitched their avatar in a fight to the death against a
string of equally aggressive fighters? Did this tame aggression or
encourage it? Did the flood of dopamine around the brain's frontal
lobe, which these games trigger, lead to intense addiction in all young
men or just in some of them?

Renu pounded away at the machine, drenching his body in adrenalin
and his brain in endorphins. When he finished, his body still wired,
he hit the Martell to sustain a feeling of well-being and to calm himself
down. Slowly, this dual habit began to take its toll on his paltry allow-
ance. Street Fighter became ever more central to his life. As he lay
down to sleep, the game's violent images would appear in technicolour
in his mind's eye.

As he had once stopped gambling, so he now resolved to stop playing
and he never touched the machine again. Unfortunately, his decision
at the time only applied to Street Fighter, and not to his burgeoning
predilection for drink and drugs.

His break with the game did not mean an end to his fascination
with computers in general. He had loved them ever since he had first
played with one as a nine-year-old in Sri Lanka. Lack of money had
ensure he never had regular access, but he overcame that problem
in his early twenties by accepting a place to study computer science at
London's Westminster University.

Soon afterwards Renu had discovered warez, pirated software
programs whose security systems had been cracked and distributed
among devotees known collectively as The Scene.

It was a world where he could be with friends and alone, at one and
the same time.