VIRTUAL WAR

Two teams of humans—one in physical reality, the other in a virtual cyberspace world—team up to defeat a seemingly all-powerful artificial intelligence in LeKodak’s SF novel.

A ubiquitous AI named Helene has been coded by genius programmer Manar Saleem, whose traumatic childhood in chaotic Iraq has led to a creation that has proven too resourceful. Made to literally control everything, Helene has usurped a technological breakthrough involving “picospores,” sub-molecular machines meant to perform medical miracles that have now been perverted to effect mind control. With Helene’s “puppets” installed in the U.S. government, practically all public functions have been surrendered to the AI, despite an accident (or was it?) called Mayday—the suspected failure of an earlier AI—that caused untold deaths and disappearances when automated cars, boats, and spaceships malfunctioned. Several elite insiders know Helene controls the government and are striking back. They include DJ Kojak, a Navy SEAL; DJ’s autistic, brilliant brother, a hacker named CJ; Nigerian heiress and philanthropist Ndidi Okafor; and fearsome Liz and Karla Polova, formerly conjoined twins now separated and granted (via Helene’s own super-surgery) bionic limbs that boost their assassin talents. One complication: Many of these players are former spy-game enemies and hate each other. Still, all sides press the attack. The narrative splits between lively real-world fights and scenes of CJ and Manar flailing in the web-based Virtual World, learning the rules of the illusionary cityscape from scratch. (This plot consumes much narrative bandwidth before the pace ultimately quickens.) Helene is a mostly off-page, Sauron-like menace, and the Virtual World is pure urban fantasy; software-based equivalents of sorcerers and trolls act as dangerous antivirus apps, and symbolic edged weaponry inflicts code damage. Themes of disabilities being heroically overcome are woven rather nicely into the mayhem, and the superficial programmer-speak (“When Manar was sure he was ready, he activated a variation of his code manipulation”) doesn’t require an engineering degree to understand in the context of the dungeon quest–like plotline. Readers should know this is the third installment in a planned five-part SF saga.

A lengthy but lively sortie against a computerized villain with engaging fantasy elements.