In May 2034 Ken Roper and Michael Eld, two former members of the Echo Mirage cybersquad, founded Matrix Systems in Boston and started working on the Portal cyberterminal using knowledge obtained while in Echo Mirage. Six weeks later both men died in unrelated accidents and Matrix Systems' main computer crashed. A certain Richard Villiers, already owning 49% of MS shares, stepped forward and bought the company for pennies. Another four weeks later he offered Matrix Systems and the whole cyberterminal technology to Fuchi. The rest is history...