by
Since the age of fourteen Damon Leiter has had a brain-computer interface implanted beneath his skull to correct a neurological disorder. As a teenager, it branded him as an outcast—as an adult it endows him with extraordinary abilities. He may represent the next step in human evolution. When computerized brain augments replace smartphones as the must-have status item, mega-corporations and governments conspire together and marketing becomes mind control. Damon is uniquely equipped to lead a worldwide resistance. But Damon can’t be sure he isn’t playing into the hands of the rich and powerful. They might even be right: Maybe the real threat to humanity is Damon himself.
Memorial Hospital Trauma Center, Surgical Critical Care Unit—Fifth Floor:
Damon Leiter looked down over his broken body and understood that the course of his life had become defined by two things:
The computer implants in his head had undergone a hard reset.
And he was going to have to rely on his organic brain to figure out who’d tried to kill him.
READ MOREThe implants were still functioning—he could feel them—unless it was an illusion, like phantom limbs after an amputation. Data from the past forty-eight hours should have flowed back into his conscious awareness a few minutes after such a reset. That’s what he’d been told—but it had never happened before, should never have happened. He checked for the presence of long-stored data, like a tongue probing a tooth. Yes, older data was still there. He took a mental sniff: there was lots of wifi and white-fi in the area—the stale, rusty smell of older, slower frequencies probably installed five years ago, but also the ozone-sharp scent of the newest vintage. That made sense. He was in a hospital room, and there was probably a well-connected nursing station nearby.
Like a human brain, his implants had a buffer to hold new data for a time before it was sorted by importance for long-term storage. A diagnostic scan didn’t show any lasting malfunction, just a blank where the past forty-eight hours should be. No digital memory of those two days at all. That was a problem.
COLLAPSE“Scott Overton is a terrific writer, and his vision of tomorrow is both realistic and frightening. Read this book!”
