Synopsis
When a freelance AI expert is implicated in a seemingly random shootout, his own freedom is on the line once he’s targeted by the law. Now on the run in a retro-future, cyber-noir world, he must use his tools and skills to clear his name while also uncovering a malicious force behind a city-wide conspiracy…or be destroyed by it. As his aide, he has a specialized AI assistant that has its own stakes to fight for in a world of virtual and actual battlefields. Together both must tear down the systems that implicated the Freelancer in order to extricate them both from the network of dangers they are caught in.
An Era Carried Forward
At the end of the millennium, mankind had ascended. After years of Cold War, the same technology used by the military to communicate secrets and conduct scientific research became public. Now data was available to anyone who had a phone line and a few bucks. This was the dawn of the Information Super Highway, and the tollbooths were cheap. It was a time of prosperity, and it looked like everything was safe beneath the dome of the Dot-com Bubble. That was until the Bubble burst. The world was almost destroyed by it and we still haven’t recovered.
The year is now 2004, and a few of us are trying to keep it together and piece back the fragments of the Bubble that once meant abundance for the world. The technologies have long since been fragmented and every powerful corporation in the world is trying to own the whole pie leaving the scraps for the rest of us. That’s where we come in…