THE CITY OF INFINITE LIFE

A software engineer finds herself ripped from her present and drafted into a battle against a rogue artificial intelligence in the future in this SF thriller.

Harper Lewis, Mulligan’s protagonist, discovers that she can roll with the punches (in some cases, literally). One minute, the software engineer is trapped with a snake inside her car on a busy Florida highway. The next, she’s waking up in a sterile room and being greeted by an attractive man. The man, Dalian Garcia, informs her that her consciousness is inside the body of Ambassador Prayze Hale, one of the human leaders of Atlanta in 2123, a city now run by AI partially designed by the diplomat. Dalian soon betrays Harper, handing her over to Ebba Shaw, the leader of one of the “natural” (unenhanced) villages that eschew technology. Harper, who is tortured, gets rescued by Linaria, Prayze’s fellow ambassador and on-again, off-again lover, and they take Kade Murphy, a “natural” in need of medical care, back to the city with them. They piece together that Mazin, the AI security chief, has created a method to control humans, forcing them to either leave the city or do his bidding. With Mazin conspiring against them, Harper/Prayze, Linaria, and fellow ambassador Hiran Patel have to develop a way to erase the security chief without disrupting the comfortable lives of the city’s citizens. Mulligan, once a coder, has clearly given a lot of thought to the implications of AI leaders, which form the foundation of her novel. Harper gets to see one potential future stemming from her type of work, while Prayze observes the negative results of her well-meaning innovations. Despite chapters alternating between Harper’s present and Prayze’s recent past and a familiar rise-of-the-machine backdrop, the narrative unfolds smoothly. A high point of the book is watching Harper and Prayze attempt to operate in each other’s eras. Harper, a nobody in her own time, rises to the challenge, making selfless choices to save a future that’s not her own. The genius Prayze is less adept at becoming a part of Harper’s world. But both protagonists are needed to rescue a flawed future in this engaging and provocative story.

A thoughtful, involving tale about remarkable human allies fighting an insidious AI.