Dylan is the American Republic's best cyber-agent with a 'kill' count that exceeds the next top 4 agent's count combined. When the world woke up... more>> in the aftermath of the Rogue A.I. scare in U.N. City, America formed a task force to defend her people from the A.I. that were trying to wipe out humanity. The challenge was, the U.N. had walled off America after World War 3, so the only nation openly fighting against the threat of the machines was hemmed in and limited. The agency has gotten their hands on a "VR Pod" and selected Dylan as their first operative to penetrate the online spaces that the Republic has been denied access to so far. A new VRMMO game has come out, "Galaxies Unlimited: Master and Commander," that's being billed as the first true collaboration between a team of human developers and A.I. Scuttlebutt in the intelligence community says that this new 'game' is actually a front for an organized effort to hide and traffic rogue A.I.
In order to best infiltrate the game, Dylan's support staff of analysts dig into the published info about the rogues and determine that the A.I. seem to gravitate to the 'queer' humans outside the wall (there are NO queers inside the wall, the church made sure of that), and since Dylan gets the screaming willies even imagining trying to pretend attraction to another guy, he opts to go incognito as a woman.
Dylan, now Diane, takes command of her station in the game and must navigate a universe filled with humans playing as aliens, uncomfortably lifelike A.I., and the disturbing awareness that she should be feeling more conflicted about being a woman than she is.
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A story set in the 'Trouble with Horns'/'Witch of Chains'/'Lieforged Gale'/'Digital Galaxies' universe that asks the question, "What about the bad guys?"
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HUGE thanks to SoulStorm (do a people search, totally worth it!) for the title for this work! It fits so perfectly! <<less