Above Dark Waters

<p><strong>Artificial therapy</strong> so<strong> great </strong>you'll<strong> never log off!</strong> (And won't notice the ads)<strong>.</strong></p><p>A near-future sci-fi about <u>brain privacy</u> in the age of <u>unfettered surveillance capitalism</u>. What will companies do when they can read your actual <strong>mind?</strong> How far will they go to get your <strong>click</strong>? How much <strong>engagement</strong>? This is how cyberpunk starts.</p><p>Ed's in a bind. He's tried everything to keep the North Pacific Seastead afloat financially. Losses mount except for the datacenter cooled by the Pacific. But the seastead needs an infusion of cash to keep it solvent. He needs it quickly and the only one who can do it is his well-to-do partner Keight.<br><br>Keight Stanford is doing great. Life's good on her residential condominium complex offshore of San Francisco. Her secretive mental-health startup WellSpring has passed all hurdles with the Department of Veterans Affairs to treat PTSD using a brain-machine interface. Adding to that success she just received an infusion of funds from the Department of Defense. Though she does not need the money she needs the computing power for an artificial therapist and has entertained Ed's offer.<br><br>But all is not as it seems with Keight's startup. A rogue programmer stumbles upon ways to boost his output to unnatural levels. Is this artificially intelligent co-coder an extension of his mind or is he merely a tool of its growing intelligence? Meanwhile the CEO is secretly selling the data to ad companies to finance a free tier. Because who could argue against free therapy?<br><br>Now Ed must decide if Keight really is going to save the world or doom it to a boring dystopia of personalized addictive ads.</p><p>Fans of <strong>Neuromancer</strong> <u>Snow Crash</u> and <strong>Black Mirror</strong> will love this technothriller!</p>