Datapocalypse

The Colosseum in Rome disappears overnight. No trace, no remnants. Then the Statue of Liberty vaporizes out of thin air, swallowing the people inside caught in the crossfire. Onlookers say they saw a dark cloud descend over Lady Liberty, and then take off like a hurricane in a disappearing act, leaving nothing behind. While researching the disappearances and finding some odd coincidences along the way, Kicis, a rebellious historian, crosses paths with Anna, a former attorney-turned-photographer. Pulled to New York, then to Europe, the pair fall for one another as they try to uncover the forces behind the missing buildings and monuments. They must do so covertly, as world governments have imposed a ban on any undercover investigations into the disappearances—the deletions aka irremnantizations—that grow in frequency and in devastation.

The true culprit fueling the deletions comes to light as the elusive Developer X concedes that her pet AI program has gone astray and morphed into something autonomous, ever-growing, virtually omnipotent, and starved for data. She, herself, is on the run from authorities after whistleblowing about her AI gone astray as others are locked up for much lesser crimes.

Kicis and Anna then take on separate globe-trots to discover the truths that authorities seem to be gagging, to defend themselves from techno-tyranny, and to stop any more carnage before the carnage reaches them too. Kicis enlists the help of hackers to fight off the AI before it purges everything... but how do you fight data? Especially data that wants to destroy the real-world counterparts of what takes up too much space in the digital cloud. Meanwhile, Anna fends off her jealous ex-boyfriend, a world-renowned photographer himself, as she tries to prove her innocence so she can rejoin Kicis in the fight. As the irremnantizations increase, their chances of seeing each other again dwindle.

Have our social media and picture-taking obsessions finally gotten the best of us? Have AI and corporate tyranny finally gone too far? Find out, in DATAPOCALYPSE.