Fiona leaned forward and wrapped her arms snugly around her father's body, 
nestled her head between his shoulder blades, and held tight. She thought that 
the subject of CryptNet was closed; but a quarter of an hour later, as 
Kidnapper carried them swiftly through the trees down toward Seattle, her 
father spoke again, picking up the
sentence where he had left it, as if he had 
merely paused
for breath. His voice was slow and distant and almost trancelike, 
the memories percolating outward from deep storage with little participation 
from his conscious mind. "CryptNet's true desire is the Seed—a 
technology that, in their diabolical scheme, will one day supplant the Feed, 
upon which our society and many others are founded. Protocol, to us, has 
brought prosperity and peace—to CryptNet, however, it is a contemptible 
system of oppression. They believe that information has an almost mystical 
power of free flow and self-replication, as water seeks its own level or sparks 
fly upward—and lacking any moral code, they confuse inevitability with 
Right. It is their view that one day, instead of Feeds terminating in matter 
compilers, we will have Seeds that, sown on the earth, will sprout up into 
houses, hamburgers, spaceships, and books—that the Seed will develop 
inevitably from the Feed, and that upon it will be founded a more highly 
evolved society."