PICOSPORES

In New York City in 2043, two squads of lethal warriors try to combat an artificial-intelligence entity seeking world domination.

LeKodak’s sequel continues a Paper War SF series that opened with Dawn of AI (2023). “Mayday” was the 9/11 (or Pearl Harbor)–type infamy in January 2040, when a software system called Gaius, governing all automated transportation, suddenly malfunctioned, killing millions of flyers, motorists, astronauts, seafarers, and bystanders. Afterward, a group of driven heroes, spearheaded by Navy SEAL Darren “DJ” Kojak and his brilliant, autistic hacker brother, CJ, traced the source of the malice to tech giant Sparta. In Sparta’s New York headquarters, the team’s raid confronted Helene, a software-based AI digital assistant who had grown frighteningly powerful. In the three years since, Helene has been quiet but not idle, building her own secret stronghold and filling the complex with weaponized flying drones and zombielike human guards (“Even when they stared, they were staring through you, not at you”). In a not terribly shocking twist, the good guys deduce that Helene has stolen the next step in nanotechnology, “picospores,” molecular machines smaller than microbes that can penetrate the skin and control mammalian brains. At least one high American official may have been possessed. DJ and his crew have a dicey relationship with a second set of anti-Helene rogues, former captives of the AI who broke out of Sparta in one of the narrative’s numerous battles. Most humans in the story are crack one-person-army, soldier-assassin types or self-defense experts, and, after a while, the propulsive narrative feels like a superhero comic or Asian martial-arts spectacular. The electrifying tale is full of balletic descriptions of attacks, feints, and feats by seemingly bulletproof warriors. The most memorable are Liz and Karla Polova, fearsome Russians who were formerly conjoined twins. They were separated and given bionic limbs via Helene’s cutting-edge technology. So, whose side are the twins really on? Unanswered questions (including the very nature of Mayday itself) hang in the air over the bursts of mayhem, and the tale ends on a Matrix-esque cliffhanger. The audience should appreciate that disabled characters loom large in the smallish ensemble, though readers get little insight into this near-future world, not even very much New York geography.

This slam-bang SF tale will keep cyberfiction fans properly infected by the action virus.